desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as when a painter at his wits’ end and hunger’s beginning says ’Here shall the figure’s hand be’—­and spots that down, meaning to reach it naturally from the other end of his canvas,—­and leaving off tired, there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and rationality.  I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,—­anyhow Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head and heart?  But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being made pure mind of.  And the special instance that vexed me, was that a man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the sights and sounds ... certainly discover them.  And so do all Northern writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of those who never did anything else,—­and try and make out, for yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk under,—­as you might bid them, those tree and flower loving creatures, pick out of our North poetry a notion of what our daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are—­’Odorosi fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.’  And which of you eternal triflers was it called yourself ‘Shelley’ and so told me years ago that in the mountains it was a feast

    When one should find those globes of deep red gold—­
    Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
    Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so well—­’Niursi—­sorbi!’ No, no,—­does not all Naples-bay and half Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta fete only to see the blessed King’s Volanti, or livery servants all in their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah’s son Shem, the founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows he did?  Oh, it makes one’s soul angry, so enough of it.  But never enough of telling you—­bring all your sympathies, come with loosest sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find ’elbow room,’ oh, shall you not!  For never did man, woman or child, Greek, Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it, but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir of its fellow, so that I don’t go about now wanting