script copies of some of her verses, and
that years ago, but they struck me very much; and really I do not
remember another female wit worthy to sit beside her, even in French
literature. Motherwell is a true poet. But oh, I don't believe in your
John Clares, Thomas Davises, Whittiers, Hallocks--and still less in
other names which it would be invidious to name again. How pert I am!
But you give me leave to be pert, and you know the meaning of it all,
after all. Your editor quarrelled a little with me once, and I with
him, about the 'poetesses of the united empire,' in whom I couldn't or
wouldn't find a poet, though there are extant two volumes of them, and
Lady Winchilsea at the head. I hold that the writer of the ballad of
'Robin Gray' was our first poetess rightly so called, before Joanna
Baillie.

Mr. Lever is in Florence, I believe, now, and was at the Baths of
Lucca in the summer. We never see him; it is curious. He made his way
to us with the sunniest of faces and cordialest of manners at Lucca;
and I, who am much taken by manner, was quite pleased with him, and
wondered how it was that I didn't like his books. Well, he only
wanted to see that we had the right number of eyes and no odd fingers.
Robert, in return for his visit, called on him three times, I think,
and I left my card on Mrs. Lever. But he never came again--he had
seen enough of us, he could put down in his private diary that we had
neither claw nor tail; and there an end, properly enough. In fact,
he lives a different life from ours: he in the ballroom and we in the
cave, nothing could be more different; and perhaps there are not many
subjects of common interest between us. I have seen extracts in
the 'Examiner' from Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' which seemed to me
exquisitely beautiful and pathetical. Oh, there's a poet, talking of
poets. Have you read Wordsworth's last work--the legacy? With regard
to the elder Miss Jewsbury, do you know, I take Mr. Chorley's part
against you, because, although I know her only by her writings, the
writings seem to me to imply a certain vigour and originality of mind,
by no means ordinary. For instance, the fragments of her letters in
his 'Memorials of Mrs. Hemans' are much superior to any other letters
almost in the volume--certainly to Mrs. Hemans's own. Isn't this so?
And so you talk, you in England, of Prince Albert's 'folly,' do you
really? Well, among the odd things we lean to in Italy is to an actual
belief in th