I am very glad to find my "Symphony" copied in full in Dwight's "Journal of Music": and I am sure you will care to know that the poem has found great favor in all parts of the land. I have the keenest desire to see some English judgment on this poem; but not the least idea how to compass that end. Can you make me any suggestion in that behalf?
I am full curious to hear you talk about Tennyson's "Queen Mary". Nothing could be more astonishing than the methods of treatment with which this production has been disposed of, in the few criticisms I have seen upon it. One critic declared that it was a good poem but no drama; another avers decidedly that it is a fine drama, but not a poem; while the "Nation" man thinks that it is neither a poem nor a drama, but a sort of didactic narrative intended to be in the first place British, and, in the second place, a warning against the advancing powers of the Catholic Church. There is but a solitary thread of judgment in common among these criticisms.
I cannot tell you with how much delight I read the account of Sidney Dobell, nor with how much loving recognition I took into my heart all the extracts from his poems given in the review. I am going to read all his poems when my little holiday comes, I hope in September, and I will send you then some organized and critical thanks for having introduced me to so noble and beautiful a soul. . . .
As for you, my dear Queen Catherine, may this velvety night be spread under your feet even as Raleigh's cloak was spread for HIS queen's, so that you may walk dry shod as to all pain over to the morning, — prays
Your faithful Sidney Lanier.
195 Dean St., Brooklyn, N.Y., August 15, 1875.
I did not dream, my dear friend, of giving you anything in the least approaching the nature of a worry, — in asking you for a suggestion as to the best method of piercing the British hearts of oak; and you must not "think about it" as you declare you are going to do — for a single minute. Indeed, I had, in mentioning it to you, no more definite idea in my head than that perhaps you might know somebody who knew somebody that knew somebody that . . . etc., etc., ad infinitum . . . that might . . . and then my idea of what the somebody was to do, completely faded into vague nothing.
It isn't WORTH thinking about, to you; and I have not the least doubt that what I want will finally come, in just such measure as I shall deserve.
The publishers have limited me in time so rigorously, quoad the Florida book, that I will have to work night and day to get it ready. I do not now see the least chance for a single day to devote to my own devices before the fifth or sixth of September.
And I do SO long to see you and Miss Stebbins!