rt from mouth to mouth. I hope it won't be too long
before you visit town again,--I will not for an instant question that
you would then visit me also.

Six months or more intervened, however, before I was able to visit
Rossetti again. In the meantime we corresponded as fully as before: the
subject upon which we most frequently exchanged opinions being now the
sonnet.

By-the-bye [he says], I cannot understand what you say of
Milton's, Keats's, and Coleridge's sonnets. The last, it is
true, was _always_ poor as a sonnetteer (I don't see much in
the _Autumnal Moon_). My own only exception to this verdict
(much as I adore Coleridge's genius) would be the ludicrous
sonnet on _The House that Jack built_, which is a
masterpiece in its way. I should not myself number the one
you mention of Keats's among his best half-dozen (many of
his are mere drafts, strange to say); and cannot at all
enter into your verdict on those of Milton, which seem to me
to be every one of exceptional excellence, though a few are
even finer than the rest, notably, of course, the one you
name. Pardon an egotistic sentence (in answer to what you
say so generously of _Lost Days_), if I express an opinion
that _Known in Vain_ and _Still-born Love_ may perhaps be
said to head the series in value, though _Lost Days_ might
be equally a favourite with me if I did not remember in what
but too opportune juncture it was wrung out of me. I have a
good number of sonnets for _The House of Life_ still in MS.,
which I have worked on with my best effort, and, I think,
will fully sustain their place. These and other things I
should like to show you whenever we meet again. The MS. vol.
I proposed to send is merely an old set of (chiefly)
trifles, about which I should like an opinion as to whether
any should be included in the future.

I had spoken of Keats's sonnet beginning

To one who has been long in city pent,

with its exquisite last lines--

E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently,

reminding one of a less spiritual figure--

Kings like a golden jewel
Down a golden stair.

After his bantering me, as of old he had done, on the use of long and
crabbed words, I hinted that he was in honour bound to agree at least
with my disparaging judgment upon _Tetrachordon_