as in his life. When, shortly before he died, his
house caught fire, and the mild curate of the parish begged him to
withdraw from the library of books he loved so well, he flatly refused
to listen, and cried roundly, in a line of vehement blank verse, "By the
immortal gods, I will not stir!" [3]

Under such auspices, and with all the ardour of youth to help, my Book,
or Books, progressed. Meantime, I was breaking out into poetry in the
magazines, and writing "criticism" by the yard. At last the time came
when I remembered another friend with whom I had corresponded, and whose
advice I thought I might now ask with some confidence. This was George
Henry Lewes, to whom, when I was a boy in Glasgow, I had sent a bundle
of manuscript, with the blunt question, "Am I, or am I not, a Poet?" To
my delight he had replied to me with a qualified affirmative, saying
that in the productions he had "discerned a real faculty, and _perhaps_
a future poet. I say perhaps," he added, "because I do not know your
age, and because there are so many poetical blossoms which never come to
fruit." He had, furthermore, advised me "to write as much as I felt
impelled to write, but to publish nothing"--at any rate, for a couple of
years. Three years had passed, and I had neither published
anything--that is to say, in book form--nor had I had any further
communication with my kind correspondent. To Lewes, then, I wrote,
reminding him of our correspondence, telling him that I _had_ waited,
not two years, but three, and that I now felt inclined to face the
public. I soon received an answer, the result of which was that I went,
on Lewes's invitation, to the Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park, and met
my friend and his partner, better known as "George Eliot."

But, as the novelists say, I am anticipating. Sick to death, David Gray
had returned to the cottage of his father, the hand-loom weaver, at
Kirkintilloch, and there had peacefully passed away, leaving as his
legacy to the world the volume of beautiful poems published under the
auspices of Lord Houghton. I knew of his death the hour he died; awaking
in my bed, I was certain of my loss, and spoke of it (long before the
formal news reached me) to a temporary companion. This by the way; but
what is more to the purpose is that my first grief for a beloved comrade
had expressed itself in the words which were to form the "proem" of my
first book--

Poet gentle hearted,