and ejaculation, and declaring the fact that Mr. Burges had been correcting all the proofs of the poems; leaving out and emending generally, according to his own particular idea of the pattern in the mount—­is it not amusing?  I have been wicked enough to write in reply that it is happy for her and all readers ... sua si bona norint ... if during some half hour which otherwise might have been dedicated by Mr. Burges to patting out the lights of Sophocles and his peers, he was satisfied with the humbler devastation of E.B.B. upon Nonnus.  You know it is impossible to help being amused.  This correcting is a mania with that man!  And then I, who wrote what I did from the ‘Dionysiaca,’ with no respect for ‘my author,’ and an arbitrary will to ‘put the case’ of Bacchus and Ariadne as well as I could, for the sake of the art-illustrations, ... those subjects Miss Thomson sent me, ... and did it all with full liberty and persuasion of soul that nobody would think it worth while to compare English with Greek and refer me back to Nonnus and detect my wanderings from the text!!  But the critic was not to be cheated so!  And I do not doubt that he has set me all ‘to rights’ from beginning to end; and combed Ariadne’s hair close to her cheeks for me.  Have you known Nonnus, ... you who forget nothing? and have known everything, I think?  For it is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts of experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of the world and the arts of it; curious knowledge as well as general knowledge ... and deep thinking as well as wide acquisition, ... and you, looking none the older for it all!—­yes, and being besides a man of genius and working your faculty and not wasting yourself over a surface or away from an end.  Dugald Stewart said that genius made naturally a lop-sided mind—­did he not?  He ought to have known you.  And I who do ... a little ... (for I grow more loth than I was to assume the knowledge of you, my dear friend)—­I do not mean to use that word ‘humiliation’ in the sense of having felt the thing myself in any painful way, ... because I never for a moment did, or could, you know,—­never could ... never did ... except indeed when you have over praised me, which forced another personal feeling in.  Otherwise it has always been quite pleasant to me to be ’startled and humiliated’—­and more so perhaps than to be startled and exalted, if I might choose....

Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to you.  But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring on ... and you must endure as you can or will.  Also ... as you have a friend with you ‘from Italy’ ... ‘from Rome,’ and commended me for my ‘kindness and considerateness’ in changing Tuesday to Friday ... (wasn’t it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to be—­I mean, as is most convenient ‘for the nonce’ to you and your friend—­because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience, to your other friend of this ilk,