to see the lot: beautiful pictures dance before me by
hundreds: I believe _Endymion_ would suit you best. It also is in
faery-land; and I see a hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery
glories, things as delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in
themselves of any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of
Pan, Peona's isle, the "slabbed margin of a well," the chase of the
butterfly, the nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of
unconnected beauties. But I divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of
the publisher.

What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a
frank heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly. The sight of
your pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; something may
come of it; yet one more bold push to get free of this prison-yard of
the abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my
contemporaries. I do not know, I have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment
which may take on the forms of imagination, or may not. If it does, I
shall owe it to you; and the thing will thus descend from Keats even if
on the wrong side of the blanket. If it can be done in prose--that is
the puzzle--I divagate again. Thank you again: you can draw and yet you
do not love the ugly: what are you doing in this age? Flee, while it is
yet time; they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to
scare witches. The ugly, my unhappy friend, is _de rigueur_: it is the
only wear! What a chance you threw away with the serpent! Why had
Apollonius no pimples? Heavens, my dear Low, you do not know your
business....

I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the gnome
is interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards
the fountain of tears. It is not always the time to rejoice.--Yours
ever,

R. L. S.

The gnome's name is _Jekyll & Hyde_; I believe you will find he is
likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.

_Same day._--I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, which
somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things that I
pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem--no, not to have reached--but
to have come a thought nearer to than I. This is the life we have
chosen: well, the choice was mad, but I should make it again.

What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say) the
Century for the sake of my name; and if that were possible,