Ah yes, exactly so; but when a man Has trundled out of England into France And half through Belgium, always in this prance Of steam, and still has stuck to his first plan-- Blank verse or sonnets; and as he began Would end;--why, even the blankest verse may chance To falter in default of circumstance, And even the sonnet lack its mystic span. Trees will be trees, grass grass, pools merely pools, Unto the end of time and Belgium--points Of fact which Poets (very abject fools) Get scent of--once their epithets grown tame And scarce. Even to these foreign rails--my joints Begin to find their jolting much the same. * * * * * Bruges: Hôtel du Commerce. 25 October 1849. Dear P.R.B. On the road hither last night I perpetrated only the above atrocious sonnet, in answer to the voice which urged upon me a more worthy exercise of my energies. It is all therefore that I can give you. I believe we have seen to-day almost everything very remarkable at Bruges; but I assure you we shall want to see much of it again. This is a most stunning place, immeasurably the best we have come to. There is a quantity of first-rate architecture, and very little or no Rubens. But by far the best of all are the miraculous works of Memling and Van Eyck. The former is here in a strength that quite stunned us--and perhaps proves himself to have been a greater man even than the latter. In fact, he was certainly so intellectually, and quite equal in mechanical power. His greatest production is a large triptych in the Hospital of St. John, representing in its three compartments: firstly, the _Decollation of St. John Baptist_; secondly, _the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine to the Infant Saviour_; and thirdly, _the Vision of St. John Evangelist in Patmos_. I shall not attempt any description; I assure you that the perfection of character and even drawing, the astounding finish, the glory of colour, and above all the pure religious sentiment and ecstatic poetry of these works, is not to be conceived or described. Even in seeing them, the mind is at first bewildered by such Godlike completeness; and only after some while has elapsed can at all analyse the causes of its awe and admiration; and then finds these feelings so much increased by analysis that the last impression left is mainly one of utter shame at its own inferiority. Van Eyck’s picture at the Gallery may give you some idea of the style adopted by Memling in these great pictures; but the effect of light and colour is much less poetical in Van Eyck’s; partly owing to _his_ being a more sober subject and an interior, but partly also, I believe, to the intrinsic superiority of Memling’s intellect.