[23] In after years Francis wrote letters that seemed to supply no possible opening for the comforter. Read to-day, their desperation offers no outlet but a return to the streets. But no sooner did F. T. come into my father's presence, than he was consoled, often without the exchange of a word.
[24] Browning left Asolo at the end of October, and died in Venice early in December.
[25] For all that, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, who walked over his own acres with Thompson as his guest, wrote:—"He could not distinguish the oak from the elm, nor did he know the name of the commonest flowers of the field."
[26] The poem by which my mother broke silence was "Veni Creator."
[27] Among the things he wrote when A. M.'s book came to hand is this of "Domus Angusta," an essay they had discussed before. "Never again meditate the suppression of your gloomy passages. It is a most false epithet for anything you could ever write. You might as well impeach of gloominess my favourite bit in 'Timon,' with the majestic melancholy of its cadence—
'My long sickness
Of wealth and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.'
Both that passage and yours are poignant; both are deeply sad; while yours has an added searchingness which makes it (in De Quincey's phrase) veritably 'heart-shattering'; but how can you call 'gloomy' what so nobly and resignedly faces the terror it evokes?"
[28] His work having appeared in a Catholic magazine, it was known to the Catholic papers. Apart from the Weekly Register, where notices of his periodical writings were printed, priority belongs to The Tablet, which printed, September, 1889, and 19th July, 1890, serious notices of the issues of Merry England containing the "Ode to the Setting Sun" and "The Hound of Heaven"; and to Miss Katharine Tynan, who quoted the whole of "The Making of Viola" from Merry England, May, 1892, in the Irish Independent in the course of the same month. The Catholic papers made no particular sign of welcome when the books themselves were published, but it may be noted that the Ave Maria, Notre Dame, Indiana, had praise for the much-abused extravagance of the opening of the "Corymbus for Autumn." To the Catholic World, February, 1895, Mr. Walter Lecky contributed many compliments and several biographical inaccuracies. In the secular press of America F. T. fared less well. The New York Post, 19th of January, 1898, found his work ". . . not altogether hopeful, since his impulses are wayward, like his life." The Critic, July, 1894, would by no means allow Browning's phrase, "conspicuous abilities," to pass unchallenged.
[29] The Anti-Jacobin, edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood.
[30] Of Sister Songs Mr. Le Gallienne wrote:—