I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my views about the dedication in a very brief form. It will give me sincere pleasure; and will make the second dedication I have received: the other being from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I value much; I don't know any that I should prefer.
I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine business, I think; but alas! the glass is so bad nowadays; realism invading even that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical resource corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man to decoration is in this age, good for the artist's spirit.
By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel? James, I think in the August or September--R. L. S. in the December _Longman_. I own I think the _école bête_, of which I am the champion, has the whiphand of the argument; but as James is to make a rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway the controversy is amusing to see. I was terribly tied down to space, which has made the end congested and dull. I shall see if I can afford to send you the April _Contemporary_--but I daresay you see it anyway--as it will contain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of old arguments on art in which you have wagged a most effective tongue. It is a sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid book that shall some day appear.
With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say "she and hers"?) to you and yours, believe me yours ever,
Do you see much of Marius Townsend? Are you next door to the Doctor's Daughter? or does "North" refer to another "Washington Square" than Henry James's?
[The following to Mr. Gosse refers to the publication of that gentleman's life of Gray, in Mr. Morley's series of English Men of Letters, and of the writer's own, now classic, volume, _A Child's Garden of Verses_.]
BONALLIE TOWER, BOURNEMOUTH, March 12, 1885.
MY DEAR GOSSE,--I was indeed much exercised how I could be worked into Gray; and lo! when I saw it, the passage seemed to have been written with a single eye to elucidate the ... worst?... well, not a very good poem of Gray's. Your little life is excellent, clean, neat, efficient. I have read many of your notes, too, with pleasure. Your connection with Gray was a happy circumstance; it was a suitable conjunction.