the shining surface of life by our black lines drawn through and through, as if ominously for a game of the fox and goose.  For my part, however imperfect my practice may be, I am intimately convinced—­and more and more since my long seclusion—­that to live in a house with windows on every side, so as to catch both the morning and evening sunshine, is the best and brightest thing we have to do—­to say nothing about the justest and wisest.  Sympathies are our opportunities of good.

Moreover, I know nothing of your ’sweet mistress Anne.’[122] I never read a verse of hers.  Ignorance goes for much, you see, in all our mal-criticisms, and my ignorance goes to this extent.  I cannot write to you of your Anglo-American poetess.

Also, in my sweeping speech about the grandmothers, I should have stopped before such instances as the exquisite ballad of ’Auld Robin Gray,’ which is attributed to a woman, and the pathetic ’Ballow my Babe,’ which tradition calls ‘Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament.’  I have certain doubts of my own, indeed, in relation to both origins, and with regard to ‘Robin Gray’ in particular; but doubts are not worthy stuff enough to be taken into an argument, and certainly, therefore, I should have admitted those two ballads as worthy poems before the Joannan aera.

For what I ventured to say otherwise, would you not consent to join our sympathies, and receive the ‘choir’ (ah! but you are very cunningly subtle in your distinctions; I am afraid I was too simple for you) as agreeable writers of verses sometimes, leaving the word poet alone?  Because, you see, what you call the ‘bad dispensation’ by no means accounts for the want of the faculty of poetry, strictly so called.  England has had many learned women, not merely readers but writers of the learned languages, in Elizabeth’s time and afterwards—­women of deeper acquirements than are common now in the greater diffusion of letters; and yet where were the poetesses?  The divine breath which seemed to come and go, and, ere it went, filled the land with that crowd of true poets whom we call the old dramatists—­why did it never pass, even in the lyrical form, over the lips of a woman?  How strange!  And can we deny that it was so?  I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none.  It is not in the filial spirit I am deficient, I do assure you—­witness my reverent love of the grandfathers!

Seriously, I do not presume to enter into argument with you, and this in relation to a critical paper which I admire in so many ways and am grateful for in some; but is not the poet a different man from the cleverest versifier, and is it not well for the world to be taught the difference?  The divineness of poetry is far more to me than either pride of sex or personal pride, and, though willing to acknowledge the lowest breath of the inspiration, I cannot the ‘powder and patch.’  As powder and patch I may, but not as poetry.  And though I in turn may suffer for this myself—­though I too (anch’ io) may be turned out of ‘Arcadia,’ and told that I am not a poet, still, I should be content, I hope, that the divineness of poetry be proved in my humanness, rather than lowered to my uses.