Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca:
September [1853].

As to Patmore's new volume of poems, my husband and I had the pleasure
of reading in MS. the poem which gives its title to the book. He has a
great deal of thought and poetry in him. Alexander Smith I know by
copious extracts in reviews, and by some MSS. once sent to us by friends
and readers. Judging from those he must be set down as a true poet in
opulence of imagery, but defective, so far (he is said to be very young)
in the intellectual part of poetry. His images are flowers thrown to him
by the gods, beautiful and fragrant, but having no root either in Enna
or Olympus. There's no unity and holding together, no reality properly
so called, no thinking of any kind. I hear that Alfred Tennyson says of
him: 'He has fancy without imagination.' Still, it is difficult to say
at the dawn what may be written at noon. Certainly he is very rich and
full of colour; nothing is more surprising to me than his favourable
reception with the critics. I should have thought that his very merits
would be against him.

If you can read novels, and you have too much sense not to be fond of
them, read 'Villette.' The scene of the greater part of it is in
Belgium, and I think it a strong book. 'Ruth,' too, by Mrs. Gaskell, the
author of 'Mary Barton,' has pleased me very much. Do you know the
French novels? there's passion and power for you, if you like such
things. Balzac convinced me that the French language was malleable into
poetry. We are behindhand here in books, and elderly ones seem young to
us. For instance, we have not caught sight yet of 'Moore's Life,' the
extracts from which are unpropitious, I think. I had a fancy, I cannot
tell you how it grew, that Moore, though an artificial, therefore
inferior, poet, was a most brilliant letter-writer. His letters are
disappointing, and his mean clinging to the aristocracy still more so.

I wish you could suddenly walk into this valley, which seems to have
been made by the flashing scimitar of the river that cuts through the
mountain. Ah! you in England, and in Belgium still less, do not know
what scenery is, what Nature is when she is natural. You could as soon
guess at a tiger from the cat on the hearthstone. You do not know; but,
being a poet, you can dream. You have divine insights, as we all have,
of heaven, all of us with whom the mortal mind does not cake and
obstruct into cecity. No, no, no. I protest against anything I have not
reprinted. The Prometheus poems bear the mark of their time, which was
one of greenness and immaturity. Indeed, the responsibility for what I
_acknowledge_ in print is hard enough to bear. Don't put another stick
on the overloaded--_ass_, shall I say candidly?