tongue, as he could not in mine--'_testa
lunga_.' Of course, the signor meant _headlong_!--and now I have had
enough to tame me, and might be expected to stand still in my stall.
But you see I do not. Headlong I was at first, and headlong I
continue--precipitously rushing forward through all manner of nettles
and briars instead of keeping the path; guessing at the meaning of
unknown words instead of looking into the dictionary--tearing open
letters, and never untying a string,--and expecting everything to be
done in a minute, and the thunder to be as quick as the lightning. And
so, at your half word I flew at the whole one, with all its possible
consequences, and wrote what you read. Our common friend, as I think
he is, Mr. Horne, is often forced to entreat me into patience and
coolness of purpose, though his only intercourse with me has been by
letter. And, by the way, you will be sorry to hear that during his
stay in Germany _he_ has been 'headlong' (out of a metaphor) twice;
once, in falling from the Drachenfels, when he only just saved himself
by catching at a vine; and once quite lately, at Christmas, in a fall
on the ice of the Elbe in skating, when he dislocated his left
shoulder in a very painful manner. He is doing quite well, I believe,
but it was sad to have such a shadow from the German Christmas tree,
and he a stranger.

In art, however, I understand that it does not do to be headlong, but
patient and laborious--and there is a love strong enough, even in me,
to overcome nature. I apprehend what you mean in the criticism you
just intimate, and shall turn it over and over in my mind until I get
practical good from it. What no mere critic sees, but what you, an
artist, know, is the difference between the thing desired and the
thing attained, between the idea in the writer's mind and the [Greek:
eidolon] cast off in his work. All the effort--the quick'ning of the
breath and beating of the heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and
injurious to the general effect of a composition; all which you call
'insistency,' and which many would call superfluity, and which _is_
superfluous in a sense--_you_ can pardon, because you understand. The
great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would
be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours,
if the desire did not master the despondency. 'Oh for a horse with
wings!' It is wrong of me to write so of myself--only you put your
finger o