140 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES i8Si 



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, unhke 

 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 

 a friend. All that the latter were, or in this estimate 

 must ever continue to be, I shall not now venture to 

 say; for, if I did, the peculiar ethics of the Paget 

 family (which you have been good enough to explain) 

 would certainly pound this letter into a pulp. But 

 there are two remarks which I may hazard. The 

 first is, that I make it a point of what may be called 

 SBsthetic conscience never to write anything in verse 

 which is not perfectly sincere. The next is, that my 



