By-the-bye [he says], I cannot understand what you say of Milton’s, Keats’s, and Coleridge’s sonnets. The last, it is true, was _always_ poor as a sonnetteer (I don’t see much in the _Autumnal Moon_). My own only exception to this verdict (much as I adore Coleridge’s genius) would be the ludicrous sonnet on _The House that Jack built_, which is a masterpiece in its way. I should not myself number the one you mention of Keats’s among his best half-dozen (many of his are mere drafts, strange to say); and cannot at all enter into your verdict on those of Milton, which seem to me to be every one of exceptional excellence, though a few are even finer than the rest, notably, of course, the one you name. Pardon an egotistic sentence (in answer to what you say so generously of _Lost Days_), if I express an opinion that _Known in Vain_ and _Still-born Love_ may perhaps be said to head the series in value, though _Lost Days_ might be equally a favourite with me if I did not remember in what but too opportune juncture it was wrung out of me. I have a good number of sonnets for _The House of Life_ still in MS., which I have worked on with my best effort, and, I think, will fully sustain their place. These and other things I should like to show you whenever we meet again. The MS. vol. I proposed to send is merely an old set of (chiefly) trifles, about which I should like an opinion as to whether any should be included in the future. I had spoken of Keats’s sonnet beginning To one who has been long in city pent, with its exquisite last lines-- E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear That falls through the clear ether silently, reminding one of a less spiritual figure-- Kings like a golden jewel Down a golden stair. After his bantering me, as of old he had done, on the use of long and crabbed words, I hinted that he was in honour bound to agree at least with my disparaging judgment upon _Tetrachordon_, if only because of the use of words that would “have made Quintillian stare.” I further instanced-- “Harry whose tuneful and well-measured song;” and “Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,” as examples of Milton at his weakest as a sonnet-writer. He replied: