288 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES 1892 



away from home. But the change seemed to do him. 

 much good. Save for occasional days of headache he 

 was very bright and well, and worked at his book and 

 wrote several articles for the ' Contemporary Eeview ' 

 on Professor Weismann's theory. But poetry he 

 could not manage. 



To Mrs. Henry Pollock. 



Madeira : December 18, 1892. 



My dear Mentor, — I fear you must have been 

 thinking that I am either very ill or very heartless not 

 to have written ere this. Yet neither is the case. 

 Ill I assuredly am, but not so much as to have pre- 

 vented me from sending you a letter for the marriage 

 day. The fact is I have been trying to write a sonnet 

 for that occasion ever since I came out here, and can- 

 not. Since my breakdown in June I have entirely 

 lost the power of poetising ; I suppose it will come 

 back if my general health should ever return, but still 

 I did think that such an occasion ought to have in- 

 spired me. Nothing further than rhymes, however, 

 would come, so the day passed over without my in- 

 tended contribution to its memorials. 



So, dear Mentor, do not think hardly of me. For 

 indeed both you and Marion have been much in my 

 thoughts ; and for you especially I know this time 

 must be one of many and varied feehngs of the kind 

 that sink deepest into the heart.^ So not only my 

 old affection, but a new sympathy, is with you — a 

 sympathy in the joy as in the grief of it. 



^ Miss Pollock's marriage to Mr. Vernon Boys, F.B.S., is here re- 

 ferred to. 



