Ever affectionate
BA.

I am rejoicing in the People’s Edition of your work.  ‘Viva!’ (Robert’s best regards.)

[Footnote 201:  The Athenaeum review of Christmas Eve and Easter Day, while recognising the beauty of many passages in the two poems, criticised strongly the discussion of theological subjects in ’doggrel verse;’ and its analysis of the theology would hardly be satisfactory to the author.]

To Mrs. Jameson Florence:  May 4, [1850],

Dearest Friend,—­This little note will be given to you by the Mr. Stuart of whom I once told you that he was holding you up to the admiration of all Florence and the Baths of Lucca as the best English critic of Shakespeare, in his lectures on the great poet....

Robert bids me say that he wrote you a constrained half-dozen lines by Mr. Henry Greenough, who asked for a letter of introduction to you, while the asker was sitting in the room, and the form of ’dear Mrs. Jameson’ couldn’t well be escaped from.  He loves you as well as ever, you are to understand, through every complication of forms, and you are to love him, and me, for I come in as a part of him, if you please.  Did you get my thanks for the dear Petrarch pen (so steeped in double-distilled memories that it seems scarcely fit to be steeped in ink), and our appreciation as well as gratitude for the books—­which, indeed, charm us more and more?  Robert has been picking up pictures at a few pauls each, ‘hole and corner’ pictures which the ‘dealers’ had not found out; and the other day he covered himself with glory by discovering and seizing on (in a corn shop a mile from Florence) five pictures among heaps of trash; and one of the best judges in Florence (Mr. Kirkup) throws out such names for them as Cimabue, Ghirlandaio, Giottino, a crucifixion painted on a banner, Giottesque, if not Giotto, but unique, or nearly so, on account of the linen material, and a little Virgin by a Byzantine master.  The curious thing is that two angel pictures, for which he had given a scudo last year, prove to have been each sawn off the sides of the Ghirlandaio, so called, representing the ‘Eterno Padre’ clothed in a mystical garment and encircled by a rainbow, the various tints of which, together with the scarlet tips of the flying seraphs’ wings, are darted down into the smaller pictures and complete the evidence, line for line.  It has been a grand altar-piece, cut to bits.  Now come and see for yourself.  We can’t say decidedly yet whether it will be possible or impossible for us to go to England this year, but in any case you must come to see Gerardine and Italy, and we shall manage to catch you by the skirts then—­so do come.  Never mind the rumbling of political thunders, because, even if a storm breaks, you will slip under cover in these days easily, whether in France or Italy.  I can’t make out, for my part, how anybody can be afraid of such things.