the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels
rather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . Give
Peni's and my love to the dearest 'nonno' (grandfather) whose sublime
unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to
what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched
feeling. (When _he_ is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or
humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long
life's ungoverned will.) May God bless him!--. . . Robert has made his
third bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are
finished--it's only matter of education. When the power of execution is
achieved, he will try at something original. Then reading hurts him; as
long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time--he
can do it now better than at the beginning. The consequence of which
is that an active occupation is salvation to him. . . . Nobody exactly
understands him except me, who am in the inside of him and hear him
breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloud
with me and can't stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems done this
winter very much, and here was a bright room with three windows
consecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and did
nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours
together--there has been little poetry done since last winter, when
he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling
combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and
the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been
happy. So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture--I
couldn't in fact at all. He has material for a volume, and will work at
it this summer, he says.

'His power is much in advance of "Strafford", which is his poorest work
of art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of the