It was some twenty months since the plan of publishing the _Child's Garden_ in the first instance as a picture-book had been mooted (see above, pp. 18, foll.). But it had never taken effect, and in the following March the volume appeared without illustrations in England, and also, I believe, in America. _Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park, Bournemouth, Hants, England, First week in November, I guess, 1884._ MY DEAR LOW,--Now, look here, the above is my address for three months, I hope; continue, on your part, if you please, to write to Edinburgh, which is safe; but if Mrs. Low thinks of coming to England, she might take a run down from London (four hours from Waterloo, main line) and stay a day or two with us among the pines. If not, I hope it will be only a pleasure deferred till you can join her. My Children's Verses will be published here in a volume called _A Child's Garden_. The sheets are in hand; I will see if I cannot send you the lot, so that you might have a bit of a start. In that case I would do nothing to publish in the States, and you might try an illustrated edition there; which, if the book went fairly over here, might, when ready, be imported. But of this more fully ere long. You will see some verses of mine in the last Magazine of Art, with pictures by a young lady; rather pretty, I think. If we find a market for _Phasellulus loquitur_, we can try another. I hope it isn't necessary to put the verse into that rustic printing. I am Philistine enough to prefer clean printer's type; indeed, I can form no idea of the verses thus transcribed by the incult and tottering hand of the draughtsman, nor gather any impression beyond one of weariness to the eyes. Yet the other day, in the Century, I saw it imputed as a crime to Vedder that he had not thus travestied Omar Khayyam. We live in a rum age of music without airs, stories without incident, pictures without beauty, American wood engravings that should have been etchings, and dry-point etchings that ought to have been mezzotints. I think of giving 'em literature without words; and I believe if you were to try invisible illustration, it would enjoy a considerable vogue. So long as an artist is on his head, is painting with a flute, or writes with an etcher's needle, or conducts the orchestra with a meat-axe, all is well; and plaudits shower along with roses. But any plain man who tries to follow the obtrusive canons of his art, is but a commonplace figure. To hell with him is the motto, or at least not that; for he will have his reward, but he will never be thought a person of parts.