Copies of "The Symphony" have been ordered sent to you and Miss Stebbins, and I have the MS. copy which you desired, ready to transmit to you. You will be glad to know that "The Symphony" has met with favor. The "Power of Prayer" in "Scribner's" for June -- although the editor cruelly mutilated the dialect in some places, turning, for instance, "Marster" (which is pure Alabama negro) into Mah'sr (which is only Dan Bryant negro, and does not exist in real life) -- has gone all over the land, and reappears before my eyes in frequent heart-breaking yet comical disguises of misprints and disfigurements. Tell me; OUGHT one to be a little ashamed of writing a dialect poem, -- as at least one newspaper has hinted? And did Robert Burns prove himself no poet by writing mostly in dialect? And is Tennyson's "Death of the North Country Farmer" -- certainly one of the very strongest things he ever wrote -- not a poem, really?

Mr. Peacock's friendship, in the matter of "The Symphony", as indeed in all others, has been wonderful, a thing too fine to speak of in prose.

To-morrow I go to Savannah, and hope to find there a letter from Miss Stebbins. Tell me of her, when you write: and tell HER, from me, how truly and faithfully I am her and

                    Your friend,
                                   Sidney Lanier.

                                   Philadelphia, Pa., July 31, 1875.

It was so good of you, my dear friend, to write me in the midst of your suffering, that it amounts to a translation of pain into something beautiful; and with this thought I console myself for the fear lest your exertion may have caused you some pang that might have been spared.

I long to hear from you; though Miss Stebbin's letter brought me a good account from your physician about you. If tender wishes were but medicinal, if fervent aspirations could but cure, if my daily upward breathings in your behalf were but as powerful as they are earnest, -- how perfect would be your state!

I have latterly been a shuttlecock betwixt two big battledores -- New York and Florida. I scarcely dare to recall how many times I have been to and fro these two States in the last six weeks. It has been just move on, all the time: car dust, cinders, the fumes of hot axle grease, these have been my portion; and between them I have almost felt sometimes as if my soul would be asphyxiated. But I now cease to wander for a month, with inexpressible delight. To-morrow I leave here for Brooklyn, where I will be engaged in hard labor for a month, namely, in finishing up the Florida book. . . .

I am very glad to find my "Symphony" copied in full in Dwight's "Journal of Music": and I am sure you will care to know that the poem has found great favor in all parts of the land. I have the keenest desire to see some English judgment on this poem; but not the least idea how to compass that end. Can you make me any suggestion in that behalf?

I am full curious to hear you talk about Tennyson's "Queen Mary". Nothing could be more astonishing than the methods of treatment with which this production has been disposed of, in the few criticisms I have seen upon it. One critic declared that it was a good poem but no drama; another avers decidedly that it is a fine drama, but not a poem; while the "Nation" man thinks that it is neither a poem nor a drama, but a sort of didactic narrative intended to be in the first place British, and, in the second place, a warning against the advancing powers of the Catholic Church. There is but a solitary thread of judgment in common among these criticisms.

I cannot tell you with how much delight I read the account of Sidney Dobell, nor with how much loving recognition I took into my heart all the extracts from his poems given in the review. I am going to read all his poems when my little holiday comes, I hope in September, and I will send you then some organized and critical thanks for having introduced me to so noble and beautiful a soul. . . .

As for you, my dear Queen Catherine, may this velvety night be spread under your feet even as Raleigh's cloak was spread for HIS queen's, so that you may walk dry shod as to all pain over to the morning, -- prays

               Your faithful
                  Sidney Lanier.

                                   195 Dean St., Brooklyn, N.Y.,
                                          August 15, 1875.

I did not dream, my dear friend, of giving you anything in the least approaching the nature of a worry, -- in asking you for a suggestion as to the best method of piercing the British hearts of oak; and you must not "think about it" as you declare you are going to do -- for a single minute. Indeed, I had, in mentioning it to you, no more definite idea in my head than that perhaps you might know somebody who knew somebody that knew somebody that . . . etc., etc., ad infinitum . . . that might . . . and then my idea of what the somebody was to do, completely faded into vague nothing.

It isn't WORTH thinking about, to you; and I have not the least doubt that what I want will finally come, in just such measure as I shall deserve.

The publishers have limited me in time so rigorously, quoad the Florida book, that I will have to work night and day to get it ready. I do not now see the least chance for a single day to devote to my own devices before the fifth or sixth of September.

And I do SO long to see you and Miss Stebbins!

Out of the sombre depths of a bottomless sea of Florida statistics in which I am at this present floundering, pray accept, my liege Queen, in art as in friendliness, all such loyal messages and fair reports compacted of love, as may come from so dull a waste of waters; graciously resting in your mind upon nothing therein save the true faithful allegiance of your humble knight and subject,

                                   Sidney L.

In November, 1875, he visited her for a week at the Parker House in Boston. Though she was at that time critically ill, she was "fairly overflowing with all manner of tender and bright and witty sayings." "Each day," he wrote, "was crowded with pleasant things which she and her numerous friends had prepared for me." On this visit to Boston Lanier spent two "delightful afternoons" with Lowell and Longfellow. Of this visit Lowell afterwards wrote President Gilman: "He was not only a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word, but had in him qualities that won affection and commanded respect. I had the pleasure of seeing him but once, when he called on me `in more gladsome days', at Elmwood, but the image of his shining presence is among the friendliest in my memory."

Lanier returned from Boston and on New Year's day sent a greeting to Miss Cushman. It is quoted as an illustration of Lanier's considerate regard for his friends, which expressed itself in many delicate ways, especially on anniversaries and special seasons of the year. It is an Elizabethan sonnet in prose: --