‘Δαιμόνιε: As I am conscious of being one of those imbecile-minded people who one day admire a thing as if they could never think of anything else, and soon after cease to think of it at all, I must write to you while a little book that I took up the other day accidentally continues uppermost in my thoughts. It calls itself _Fragments in Verse and Prose, by a Young Lady_; and struck with the sentimentality of the title, I took it up to laugh at it; nor did I find anything in the preface to do away with my preconceived opinion. But on opening the book at random, among some fragments extracted from her private meditations, I began to like her most extremely. The mention of Piercefield,[36] and the initials Miss S., made me remember your having told me of a Miss Smith that lived there, while we were scrambling up the Windcliff. I am sure if you had admired her half as much as I do, you would not have let me go till we had hunted out every corner that she mentions. There is something to my mind very peculiar in all the turn of her thoughts, and those half-metaphysical, half-poetical speculations which almost put me in mind of my mother. Yesterday I mentioned the book to a person who I was surprised to find knew a great deal about her, and from whom I was still more astonished to hear that I myself knew very well indeed her intimate friend Miss H[unt], to whom most of her letters are addressed….’ And again, a little later, winding up an intimate letter in Latin to Keble, there is more of this pleasant heroine-worship, coupled with some feeling analysis and amusing self-portrayal. Hurrell’s repugnance to things German were a foregone conclusion, had he never expressed it. ‘… I could not find the places you referred me to in Miss Smith, but am happy to find that we sympathise in the extent of our admiration, if not in the sources; though indeed, I am willing to believe, both. But as for old Klopstock, I cannot read about him and his wives;[37] and am rather horrified at Miss S[mith’s] having taken so much trouble about him, or any other sentimental old German. What makes me admire Miss S[mith] so excessively, is more than I can give any intelligible account of: she either does not admire, or is not acquainted with my favourite books; and those that she fancies she admires (for I am sure she does it only in ignorance) are my inveterate enemies. Neither could I fix upon any passages in her own writings which would seem to justify me if I quoted them. But somehow I seem perfectly certain I know her intimately, and that I can trace the feelings in which all she says and does originates; and all this is so consistent, as far as it goes, with what I have imaged to myself as the archetype of human perfection, that I have invested her, in my imagination, with all its attributes….