you fear. Now that you are studying Latin for an occupation - how good
and wise it was of Mr. Redworth to propose it! - I look upon you with awe as a
classic authority and critic. I wish I had leisure to study with you. What I do
is nothing like so solid and durable.
    THE PRINCESS EGERIA originally (I must have written word of it to you - I
remember the evening off Palermo!) was conceived as a sketch; by gradations she
grew into a sort of semi-Scudéry romance, and swelled to her present portliness.
That was done by a great deal of piecing, not to say puffing, of her frame. She
would be healthier and have a chance of living longer if she were reduced by a
reversal of the processes. But how would the judicious clippings and prickings
affect our pensive public? Now that I have furnished a house and have a fixed
address, under the paws of creditors, I feel I am in the wizard-circle of my
popularity and subscribe to its laws or waken to incubus and the desert. Have I
been rash? You do not pronounce. If I have bound myself to pipe as others
please, it need not be entirely; and I can promise you it shall not be; but
still I am sensible when I lift my little quill of having forced the note of a
woodland wren into the popular nightingale's - which may end in the daw's, from
straining; or worse, a toy-whistle.
    That is, in the field of literature. Otherwise, within me deep, I am not
aware of any transmutation of the celestial into coined gold. I sound myself,
and ring clear. Incessant writing is my refuge, my solace - escape out of the
personal net. I delight in it, as in my early morning walks at Lugano, when I
went threading the streets and by the lake away to the heavenly mount, like a
dim idea worming upward in a sleepy head to bright wakefulness.
    My anonymous critic, of whom I told you, is intoxicating with eulogy. The
signature Apollonius appears to be of literary-middle indication. He marks
passages approved by you. I have also had a complimentary letter from Mr.
Dacier.
    For an instance of this delight I have in writing, so strong is it that I
can read pages I have written, and tear the stuff to strips (I did yesterday),
and resume, as if nothing had happened. The waves within are ready for any
displacement. That must be a good sign. I do not