I remember your mentioning Gilfillan as having encouraged your first efforts. He was powerful, though sometimes rather “tall” as a writer, generally most just as a critic, and lastly, a much better man, intellectually and morally, than Aytoun, who tried to “do for” him. His notice of Swift, in the volume in question, has very great force and eloquence. His whole edition of the _British Poets_ is the best of any to read, being such fine type and convenient bulk and weight (a great thing for an arm-chair reader). Unfortunately, he now and then (in the _Less-Read Poets_) cuts down the extracts almost to nothing, and in some cases excises objectionabilities, which is unpardonable. Much better leave the whole out. Also, the edition includes the usual array of nobodies--Addison, Akenside, and the whole alphabet down to Zany and Zero; whereas a great many of the _less-read_ would have been much-read by every worthy reader if they had only been printed in full. So well printed an edition of Donne (for instance) would have been a great boon; but from him Gilfillan only gives (among the _less-read_) the admirable _Progress of the Soul_ and some of the pregnant _Holy Sonnets_. Do you know Donne? There is hardly an English poet better worth a thorough knowledge, in spite of his provoking conceits and occasional jagged jargon. The following paragraph on Whitehead is valuable: Charles Whitehead’s principal poem is _The Solitary_, which in its day had admirers. It perhaps most recalls Goldsmith. He also wrote a supernatural poem called _Ippolito_. There was a volume of his poems published about 1848, or perhaps a little later, by Bentley. It is disappointing, on the whole, from the decided superiority of its best points to the rest.... But the novel of _Richard Savage_ is very remarkable,--a real character really worked out. To aid me in certain researches I was at the time engaged in making in the back-numbers of almost forgotten periodicals, Rossetti wrote: