Dear Mr. Sharp,
... I am much flattered by what you say about my sonnets, and glad that you like them; but I hope that in selecting so many as five for your volume you have not displaced sonnets by other authors. Sir R. Hamilton’s are indeed, as you remark, excellent, and I rejoice that you are making them better known than they have been hitherto. Wordsworth once remarked to me that he had known many men of high talents and several of real genius; but that Coleridge, and Sir W. H. Hamilton were the only men he had known to whom he would apply the term “wonderful.”
Yours faithfully,
Aubrey de Vere.
Boxhill, Dorking,
Nov. 12, 1885.
Dear Sir,
You are at liberty to make your use of the Sonnet you have named. The Italians allow of 16 lines, under the title of “Sonnets with a tail.”
But the lines of “Modern Love” were not designed for that form.
Yours very truly,