d be'--and spots _that_ down, meaning to reach
it naturally from the other end of his canvas,--and leaving off tired,
there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and
rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and
leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their
old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,--anyhow
Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head
and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine
passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being
made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a
man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just
under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the
sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern
writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of
those who never did anything else,--and try and make out, for
yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk
under,--as you might bid _them_, those tree and flower loving
creatures, pick out of _our_ North poetry a notion of what _our_
daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are--'Odorosi
fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you
eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Shelley' and so told me years
ago that in the mountains it was a feast

When one should find those globes of deep red gold--
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer
over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little
ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so
well--'Niursi--sorbi!' No, no,--does not all Naples-bay and half
Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta
fete only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in
their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring
the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet
dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it
out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the
founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows
he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never
enough of telling you--bring all your sym