ia--di--Torquato Tasso--il Dottore Bernardini--offriva--il sequente
Carme--tu_'--and no more; the good man, it would seem, breaking down with
the over-load of love here! But my '_O tu_' was breathed out most
sincerely, and now you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will come
after." And then he must repeat (to himself) that her poetry must be
infinitely more to him than his could be to her, "for you do what I have
only hoped to do." And he hopes she will nevermore talk of "the honor" of
his acquaintance, but he will joyfully wait for the delight of her
friendship. And to his fear that she may hate letter-writing she replies
suggesting that nobody likes writing to everybody, but it would be strange
and contradictory if she were not always delighted to hear from and to
write to him; and she can read any manuscript except the writing on the
pyramids, and if he will only treat her _en bon camarade_ "without
reference to the conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen'"; taking no
thought for his sentences (or hers), "nor for your badd speling nor for
mine," she is ready to sign and seal the contract of correspondence. And
while she throws off the ceremony, she holds faster to the kindness. She
is overjoyed with this cordial sympathy. "Is it true," she asks, "that I
know so little of you? And is it true that the productions of an artist do
not partake of his real nature? It is not true to my mind,--and therefore
it is not true that I know little of you, except in so far as it is true
that your greatest works are to come.... I think--if I may dare name
myself with you in the poetic relation--that we both have high views of
the Art we follow and steadfast purpose in the pursuit of it.... And that
neither of us would be likely to be thrown from the course by the casting
of any Atalanta ball of speedy popularity.

"And after all that has been said and mused upon the anxiety experienced
by the true artist,--is not the good immeasurably greater than the evil?
For my part I sometimes wonder how, without such an object and purpose of
life, people contrive to live at all."

And her idea of happiness "lies deep in poetry and its associations." And
he replies that what he has printed "gives no knowledge of me," and that
he has never begun what he hopes he was born to begin and end--"R. B. a
poem."

"Do you know Tennyson?" she asks, "that is, with a face to face knowledge?
I have great admiration for him," she continues. "In execu