Something in your work made me suspect that, despite your Australian tone, etc., you did not hail (as we Yankees say) from the Colonies. So you will find in my new vol. of Victorian Poets that I do not place you with the Colonial poets, but just preceding them, and I have a reference to your Rosetti volume. The limited space afforded by my supplementary chapter has made my references to the new men altogether too brief and inadequate. Of this I am seriously aware, but trust that you and others will take into consideration the scope and aim of the chapter. You see I have learned that “The Human Inheritance” is scarce! Of course I shall value greatly a copy from the author’s hands. And I count among the two pleasant things connected with my prose work—my earlier and natural metier being that of a poet—such letters as yours, which put me into agreeable relations with distant comrades-in-arms.
Beginning, as you have, with the opening of a new literary period, and with what you have already done, I am sure you have a fine career before you—that will extend long after your American Reviewer has ceased to watch and profit by its course.
Very sincerely yours,
Edmund C. Stedman.
A few months later Mr. Stedman wrote again:
New York, March 27, 1888.
My dear Sharp,
Let me thank you heartily, if somewhat tardily, for your very handsome and magnanimous review of the Victorian Poets. It breathes the spirit of fairness—and even generosity—throughout. You have been more than “a little blind” to my faults, and to my virtues most open-eyed and “very kind” indeed. I am sufficiently sure of my own purpose to believe that you have ground for perceiving that the spirit of my major criticisms is essential, rather than merely “technical.” I look more to the breadth and imagination of the poet than to minute details—though a stickler for natural melody and the lasting canons of art. The real value of the book lies, of course, in the chapters on some of the elder poets. You are quite right in pointing out the impossibility of correct proportion in the details of the last chapter. It is added to give more completeness to the work as a whole. For the same reason, the earlier chapters on “The General Choir” were originally introduced; but in them I knew my ground better, and could point out with more assurance the tendencies of the various “groups.” But I write merely to say that I am heartily satisfied with your criticism, and grateful for it; and that I often read your other reviews with advantage—and shall watch your career, already so fruitful, with great interest. A man who comes down to first principles and looks at things broadly, as you are doing, is sure in the end to be a man of mark.
Very faithfully yours,
Edmund C. Stedman.