the mind, will draw and concentrate the powers of the mind—­and Art, you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man—­or woman.  I cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one—­though one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,—­and though all are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility—­and to entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of facility.  You may write twenty lines one day—­or even three like Euripides in three days—­and a hundred lines in one more day—­and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.  And also, as you say, the lamp is trimmed behind the wall—­and the act of utterance is the evidence of foregone study still more than it is the occasion to study.  The deep interest with which I read all that you had the kindness to write to me of yourself, you must trust me for, as I find it hard to express it.  It is sympathy in one way, and interest every way!  And now, see!  Although you proved to me with admirable logic that, for reasons which you know and reasons which you don’t know, I couldn’t possibly know anything about you; though that is all true—­and proven (which is better than true)—­I really did understand of you before I was told, exactly what you told me.  Yes, I did indeed.  I felt sure that as a poet you fronted the future—­and that your chief works, in your own apprehension, were to come.  Oh—­I take no credit of sagacity for it; as I did not long ago to my sisters and brothers, when I professed to have knowledge of all their friends whom I never saw in my life, by the image coming with the name; and threw them into shouts of laughter by giving out all the blue eyes and black eyes and hazel eyes and noses Roman and Gothic ticketed aright for the Mr. Smiths and Miss Hawkinses,—­and hit the bull’s eye and the true features of the case, ten times out of twelve!  But you are different. You are to be made out by the comparative anatomy system.  You have thrown out fragments of os ... sublime ... indicative of soul-mammothism—­and you live to develop your nature,—­if you live.  That is easy and plain.  You have taken a great range—­from those high faint notes of the mystics which are beyond personality ... to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature, ‘gr-r-r- you swine’; and when these are thrown into harmony, as in a manner they are in ‘Pippa Passes’ (which I could find in my heart to covet the authorship of, more than any of your works—­), the combinations of effect must always be striking and noble—­and you must feel yourself drawn on to such combinations more and more.  But I do not, you say, know yourself—­you.  I only know abilities and faculties.  Well, then, teach me yourself—­you.  I will not insist on the knowledge—­and, in fact, you have not written the R.B. poem yet—­your rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight.  I see you only in your moon.  Do tell me all of