’He makes one ashamed to groan at anything.  Whatever comes to us is in the order of things, and the sound man accepts it as his lot.  Yes, even Death—­of which he says noble things.  The old melodious weeping of the poets—­Moschus over his mallows, and Catullus with his ’Soles occidere et redire possunt’—­Whitman has no touch of that.  Noble grief there is in him, and noble melancholy can come upon him, but acquiescence is his last word.  He holds that all is good, because it exists, for everything plays its part in the scheme of nature.  When his day comes, he will die, as the greatest have done before him, and there will be no puny repining at the order of things.

’Has he then made me a thorough-going optimist?  Scarcely, for the willow cannot become the oak, Your old name for me was ’The Idealist,’ and I suppose in a measure I deserved it; I know I did in the most foolish sense of the word.  And in my idealism was of course implied a good deal of optimism.  But shall I tell you what was there in a yet larger measure?  That which is termed self-conceit.  An enemy speaking of me now—­Dalmaine for example, if he chose to tell the truth—­would say that a business life in America has taken a great deal of the humbug out of me.  I shall always be rather a weak mortal, shall always be marked by that blend of pessimism and optimism which necessarily marks the man to whom, in his heart, the beautiful is of supreme import, shall always be prone to accesses of morbid feeling, and in them, I dare say, find after all my highest pleasure.  Nay, it is certain that Moschus and Gatullus will always be more loved by me than Whitman.  For all this, I am not what I was, and I am a completer man than I was.  I shall remain here yet nine months, and who can say what further change may go on in me?

’Now to another subject.  It gladdens me to hear what you say of Thyrza, that she seems both well and happy.  I envy you the delight of hearing her sing.  It is a beautiful thing that in this way she has found expression for that poetry which I always read in her face.  By-the-by, does she still meet her sister away from the place where she lives?  Is that still necessary?  However, all these details are in your judgment.  The great thing is that she is happy in her life, that she has found a great interest.

’I wish to know—­I beg you to answer me—­whether she has ever spoken of me.  When I used to press you to speak on this subject, you always ignored that part of my letter.  Need you still do so?  Will you not tell me whether she has asked about me, has spoken in any way of me?  To he sure you must betray no confidences; yet perhaps it will not be doing so.

’Read Whitman; try to sympathise with me as I now am.  You know that I am anything but low-spirited, yet in very truth I have no single companion here to whom I can speak of intimate things, and, except on business, I write absolutely to no one in England save to you.  And intellectual sympathy I do need; I scarcely think I could live on through my life without it.