We have been reading H. James’s Roderick Hudson, which I eagerly press you to get at once: it is a book of a high order—the last volume in particular. I wish Meredith would read it. It took my breath away.
I am at the seventh book of the Æneid, and quite amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its difficulties). The Circe passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy’s top—O Lord, what a happy thought!—have specially delighted me.—I am, dear sir, your respected friend,
John Gregg Gillson, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc.
To Sidney Colvin
The following narrates the beginning of the author’s labours on The Master of Ballantrae. An unfinished paper written some years later in Samoa, and intended for Scribner’s Magazine, tells how the story first took shape in his mind. See Edinburgh edition, Miscellanies, vol. iv. p. 297: reprinted in Essays on the Art of Writing.
[Saranac Lake, December 24, 1887.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Thank you for your explanations. I have done no more Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have first been eaten up with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale, The Master of Ballantrae. No thought have I now apart from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draft with great interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements; the most is a dead genuine human problem—human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be about as long, I imagine, as Kidnapped.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
(1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.