----
found his ideal in ---- he must dislike you in Portia, or in anything
where it is a case of grace and spontaneity and Nature against
affectation, over-emphasis, stilt, and false idealism--in short, utter
lack of Nature. How _can_ the same critic admire both? However, the
public is with you, happily, as it is not always when the struggle is
between good art and bad."

I quote these dear letters from my friend, not in my praise, but in his.
Until his death in 1880, he never ceased to write to me sympathetically
and encouragingly; he rejoiced in my success the more because he had
felt himself in part responsible for my marriage and its unhappy ending,
and had perhaps feared that my life would suffer. Every little detail
about me and my children, or about any of my family, was of interest to
him. He was never too busy to give an attentive ear to my difficulties.
"'Think of you lovingly if I can'!" he writes to me at a time when I had
taken a course for which all blamed me, perhaps because they did not
know enough to pardon enough--_savoir tout c'est tout pardonner_. "Can
I think of you otherwise than lovingly? _Never_, if I know you and
myself!"

Tom Taylor got through an enormous amount of work. Dramatic critic and
art critic for the _Times_, he was also editor of _Punch_ and a busy
playwright. Everyone who wanted an address written or a play altered
came to him, and his house was a kind of Mecca for pilgrims from America
and from all parts of the world. Yet he all the time occupied a position
in a Government office--the Home Office, I think it was--and often
walked from Whitehall to Lavender Sweep when his day's work was done. He
was an enthusiastic amateur actor, his favorite part being Adam in "As
You Like It," perhaps because tradition says this was a part that
Shakespeare played; at any rate, he was very good in it. Gilbert and
Sullivan, in very far-off days, used to be concerned in these amateur
theatricals. Their names were not associated then, but Kate and I
established a prophetic link by carrying on a mild flirtation, I with
Arthur Sullivan, Kate with Mr. Gilbert!

Taylor never wasted a moment. He pottered, but thought deeply all the
time; and when I used to watch him plucking at his gray beard, I
realized that he was just as busy as if his pen had been plucking at his
paper. Many would-be writers complain that the necessity of earning a
living in some other and more secure profession hinders them from