There is an admirable but totally unknown living poet named Dixon. I will send you two small vols, of his which he gave me long ago, but please take good care of them, and return them as soon as done with. I value them highly. I forgot till to-day that he had written any sonnets, but I see there are three in one vol. and one in another. I have marked my two favourites. He should certainly be represented in your book. If I live, I mean to write something about him in some quarter when I can. His finest passages are as fine as any living man can do. He was a canon of Carlisle Cathedral, and at present has a living somewhere. If you wanted to ask him for an original sonnet, you might mention my name, and address him at Carlisle with _Please forward_. Of course he is a Rev.
You will be sorry to hear that Davies has abandoned the hope of producing a new sonnet to his own satisfaction. I have again, however, urged him to the onslaught, and told him how deserving you are of his efforts.
Swinburne, who is a vast admirer of my sister's, thinks the _Advent_ perhaps the noblest of all her poems, and also specially loves the _Passing Away_. I do not know that I quite agree with your decided preference for the two sonnets of hers you signalise,--the _World_ is very fine, but the other, _Dead before Death_, a little sensational for her. I think _After Death_ one of her noblest, and the one _After Communion_. In my own view, the greatest of all her poems is that on France after the siege--_To-Day for Me_. A very splendid piece of feminine ascetic passion is _The Convent Threshold_.
I have run the sonnet you like, _St. Luke the Painter_, into a sequence with two more not yet printed, and given the three a general title of _Old and New Art_, as well as special titles to each. I shall annex them to _The House of Life_.
Have you ever read Vaughan? He resembles Donne a good deal as to quaintness, but with a more emotional personality.
I have altered the last line of octave in _Lost Days_. It now runs--
"The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway."
I always had it in my mind to make a change here, as the _in_ standing in the line in its former reading clashed with _in_ occurring in the previous line. I have done what I think is a prime sonnet on the murdered Czar, which I enclose, but don't show it to a soul.