146 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES issi- 



As has been said, for music Mr. Eomanes had an 

 absolute passion. A good concert of chamber or of 

 orchestral music was absolute happiness to him, and 

 he heard a great deal in these years. One or two of 

 his friends were excellent musicians. To one of these 

 he once wrote a sonnet, ' To a Member of the Bach 

 Choir,' 1 and sent it to her in the form of a Christmas 

 card, producing much pleasant mystification and 

 laughter when it was discovered from whom the 

 sonnet came. 



To Miss Paget. 



18 Cornwall Terrace, Eegent's Park : December 27, 1887. 



Dear Miss Paget, If my sonnet gave half as much 

 pleasure as your note, I am sure we have both the 

 best reasons to be glad. The letter was as much a 

 surprise to me as the former was to you, because, far 

 from seeing the ' ungraciousness ' of yesterday, even 

 then I thought that my reward was much in excess 

 of my deserving. But your further response of to- 

 day has given me a greater happiness than I can tell ; 

 let it, therefore, be told in some of the greatest words 

 of the greatest man I ever knew. These you will 

 find in the first nine lines of a letter on page 323, 

 vol. ii., of the ' Life of Darwin,' and in one respect 

 you have conferred an additional benefit, for, unlike 

 him, I did not previously know that my own feelings 

 of friendship were so fully reciprocated. If you think 

 that this amounts to a confession of dulness on my 

 part, my only excuse is that I formed too just an 

 estimate of my own merits as compared with those of 



1 Miss M. M. Paget. 



