And in another he said:
“I must thank you for sending me the little Keats volume. Curiously enough, I never read his poems at all before. Browning I can’t stand, but if you like him I must read him. You seem to live in an atmosphere of poetry, but pray be careful and do not study too hard.”
“Love-Letters of a Violinist” at last made Eric Mackay famous. The book was published in 1885, and it was Marie Corelli who arranged for its production. She had fully convinced herself of the beauty of the poems, and she determined that they should be published as became what she regarded as their great value. She corrected the proofs of the poems, selected the binding, and saw to every detail of the book. The poems were published anonymously, and at once became the talk not only of England, but of America. There was much speculation as to the authorship. Eric Mackay entered fully into the humor of the thing, and made numerous suggestions to his acquaintances as to the probable writer, even putting forth the hint that the late Duke of Edinburgh, an able violinist, might have written them. He must have chuckled hugely at the discussions about this anonymous author; and the whole story was often talked about among his friends. Miss Corelli wrote an introductory notice to a subsequent edition of the “Love-Letters,” the introductory note and the initials “G. D.”—which she had adopted—causing almost as much discussion as the publication of the “Love-Letters” themselves. “G. D.” was meant by her to signify Gratia Dei. Probably few books have ever emerged from the press in more attractive form. It was a quaint, vellum-bound, antique-looking volume tied up on all sides with strings of golden silk ribbon, and illustrated throughout with fanciful wood-cuts.
But the poems are beautiful and deserving of the fame they attained. It is curious how very different in quality they are to the author’s earlier published works, issued in 1864, 1871, and 1880. Each “Love-Letter” (and there are twelve of them) is in twenty stanzas—each stanza contains six lines. Antonio Gallenga of The Times declared the poems to be as regular and symmetrical as Dante’s “Comedy,” with as stately and solemn, ay, and as arduous a measure!... “There are marvelous powers in this poet-violinist. Petrarch himself has not so many changes for his conjugation of the verb ‘to love.’” The latter is what may be called, to quote a phrase recently used in a well-known newspaper, a “quotation from an hitherto unpublished review,” because the late Antonio Gallenga wrote a review of the “Love-Letters” at the request of Miss Corelli (whom he had known since her childhood); but The Times refused it, and he sent Miss Corelli the original manuscript, from which she quoted excerpts in her “Introduction” to the “Love-Letters.”
A lengthy review entitled “A New Love-Poet” appeared in London Society under the name of “W. Stanislas Leslie,” no other than Marie Corelli herself. For the rest, all the critics fell foul of the book and “slated” the author unmercifully.
Some of the reviewers, notwithstanding the mystery they made of it, knew all about the authorship. Miss Corelli gave the news to the world in an anonymous letter to the New York Independent, which was the first journal to reveal the identity of the writer of the poems. It published a brief statement to the effect that the author was simply a gentleman of good position, the descendant of a distinguished and very ancient family, George Eric Mackay.... “He will undoubtedly,” it was added, “be numbered with the choice few whose names are destined to live by the side of poets such as Keats, whom, as far as careful work, delicate feeling, and fiery tenderness go, Eric Mackay may be said to resemble.”
Swinburne, about whom Marie Corelli was to write so strongly in “The Sorrows of Satan,” the poet-violinist thus addressed:
“Thou art a bee, a bright, a golden thing
With too much honey; and the taste thereof
Is sometimes rough, and somewhat of a sting
Dwells in the music that we hear thee sing.”
Again, there are such pretty fancies as:
“Phœbus loosens all his golden hair
Right down the sky—and daisies turn and stare
At things we see not with our human wit,”