And meanwhile letters poured in.

"I try to write upon you," wrote Mr. Gladstone; "wholly despair of
satisfying myself--cannot quite tell whether to persevere or desist."
Mr. Pater let me know that he was writing on it for the _Guardian_. "It
is a _chef d'oeuvre_ after its kind, and justifies the care you have
devoted to it." "I see," said Andrew Lang, on April 30th, "that _R.E._
is running into as many editions as _The Rights of Man_ by Tom Paine....
You know he is not _my_ sort (at least unless you have a ghost, a
murder, a duel, and some savages)." Burne-Jones wrote, with the fun and
sweetness that made his letters a delight:

Not one least bitter word in it!--threading your way through
intricacies of parsons so finely and justly.... As each new one came
on the scene, I wondered if you would fall upon him and rend
him--but you never do.... Certainly I never thought I should devour
a book about parsons--my desires lying toward--"time upon once there
was a dreadful pirate"--but I am back again five and thirty years
and feeling softened and subdued with memories you have wakened up
so piercingly--and I wanted to tell you this.


And in the same packet lie letters from the honored and beloved Edward
Talbot, now Bishop of Winchester, Stopford Brooke--the Master of
Balliol--Lord Justice Bowen--Professor Huxley--and so many, many more.
Best of all, Henry James! His two long letters I have already printed,
naturally with his full leave and blessing, in the Library Edition of
the novel. Not his the grudging and faultfinding temper that besets the
lesser man when he comes to write of his contemporaries! Full of