
I was very much delighted some weeks ago to receive a copy of the New Republic with a little memorandum
in your handwriting. Time does not diminish my reverential admiration for your work, nor do the
unintelligent remarks of the English press deter me from giving expression to the same in print.
I hope soon to have an opportunity of explaining at large, in a new series of critical studies of
the Greek Poets, what I meant in the little note alluded to by the reviewer of the Quarterly,
& to show how it is only by adopting an attitude of mind similar
to yours that we can in this age be in true unity with whatever great & natural & human
has been handed to us from the past.—
I was the more pleased to have this communication from you, because I feared that the last time I wrote
to you I might perhaps have spoken something amiss. I then—it was about three years ago, I
think,—sent you a poem called "Callicrates" & asked you
questions about "Calamus." Pray believe me that I only refer to this
circumstance now in order to explain the reason why since that time I have kept silence from a fear
I might have been importunate or ill-advised in what I wrote.
There was really no reason why you should have noticed that communication; & it gives me great
satisfaction to feel that your friendly remembrance of me is not diminished.—
Now, though late, I may express the deep sorrow with which I heard of your illness. How Whitman must have borne such a trial, no one knows better than one who like myself has learned to have absolute faith in his manliness and vigour of Soul. Yet it is not the less sad to think that he who could enjoy life so fully, has met with this impediment.—
I look forward with a keen foretaste of delight to your new volume announced.
Believe me ever gratefully and indebtedly yours John Addington Symonds.—T.O.
I should have written earlier had I not been moving rapidly from place to place during an Italian journey.

