have been as impossible for any of us, on that May evening in Lowndes
Square, even to imagine such a future, as it was for Macbeth to credit
the absurdity that Birnam wood would ever come to Dunsinane!

A year later Mr. Lowell came back to London for a time in a private
capacity, and I got to know him better and to like him much.... Here is
a characteristic touch in a note I find among the old letters:

I am glad you found something to like in my book and much obliged to
you for saying so. Nobody but Wordsworth ever got beyond need of
sympathy, and he started there!



CHAPTER III


THE PUBLICATION OF _ROBERT ELSMERE_


It was in 1885, after the completion of the Amiel translation, that I
began _Robert Elsmere_, drawing the opening scenes from that expedition
to Long Sleddale in the spring of that year which I have already
mentioned. The book took me three years, nearly, to write. Again and
again I found myself dreaming that the end was near and publication only
a month or two away, only to sink back on the dismal conviction that the
second, or the first, or the third volume--or some portion of each--must
be rewritten, if I was to satisfy myself at all. I actually wrote the
last words of the last chapter in March, 1887, and came out afterward,
from my tiny writing-room at the end of the drawing-room, shaken with