that it ought to be more like.  So everybody thinks.  With regard to the head, I am of opinion that the head is beautiful, and the eyes singularly full of expression for photographed eyes, but there may be more difference of opinion about the head.  The two-third view you certainly can’t have seen.  Why, we had even resolved (as we couldn’t hope to grow younger) to stand or fall with posterity by this production.  ‘Ecco!’

As to age—­no! it’s cruel of you to talk so.  Robert’s beard was tolerably white when he was in Paris last, and, in fact, his moustache is less so than the rest, therefore there can’t be, and isn’t in this respect, so rapid a ‘decline and fall’ in his appearance.  The clipping of the side whiskers, which are very grey, is an advantage, and as to the hair, it is by no means cut short.  ‘Like an epicier?’ No indeed.  The epicier is bushy and curly about the ears (see an example in ’Galignani’), and moreover will keep the colour of the curl ’if he dyes for it’—­an extremity to which Robert and I will never be driven—­having too much the fear of attentive friends and affectionate biographers before our eyes—­as suggested by poor Balzac’s.  But Robert is looking remarkably well and young—­in spite of all lunar lights in his hair.  Though my hair keeps darker with a certain sprinkle however, underneath which forces its way outwards, I would willingly change on the whole with him, if he were not my own Robert.  He is not thin or worn, as I am—­no indeed—­and the women adore him everywhere far too much for decency.  In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago—­which does not mean as much as you may suppose, that I myself am superannuated and wholly anile, and incompetent therefore for judgment.  No, indeed, I believe people in general would think the same exactly.  And as to the modelling—­well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art—­and that is true.  But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling.  He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing.  Also, Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet.  I have struggled a little with him on this point—­for I don’t think him right—­that is to say, it wouldn’t be right for me—­and I heard the other day that it wouldn’t be right for Tennyson.  Tennyson is a regular worker, shuts himself up daily for so many hours.  And we are generally so made that a regular hour is good, even for so uncertain an influence as mesmerism.  But Robert waits for an inclination—­works by fits and starts—­he can’t do otherwise he says.[98] Then reading hurts him.  As long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time—­he can do it now better than in the beginning of time.  The consequence of which is that he wants occupation and that an active occupation