The Portfolio article here mentioned is _An Autumn Effect_ (see
_Essays of Travel_). The Italian story so delightedly begun was by
and by condemned and destroyed like all the others of this time.
_[Edinburgh, January 1875], Monday._
Have come from a concert. Sinico sang, _tant bien que mal_, "Ah perfido
spergiuro!"; and then we had the Eroica symphony (No. 3). I can, and
need, say no more; I am rapt out of earth by it; Beethoven is certainly
the greatest man the world has yet produced. I wonder, is there anything
so superb--I can find no word for it more specific than superb--all I
know is that all my knowledge is transcended. I finished to-day and sent
off (and a mighty mean detail it is, to set down after Beethoven's grand
passion) my Portfolio article about Buckinghamshire. In its own way I
believe it to be a good thing; and I hope you will find something in it
to like; it touches, in a dry enough manner, upon most things under
heaven, and if you like me, I think you ought to like this
intellectual--no, I withdraw the word--this artistic dog of mine.
Thaw--thaw--thaw, up here; and farewell skating, and farewell the clear
dry air and the wide, bright, white snow-surface, and all that was so
pleasant in the past.
_Wednesday._--Yesterday I wasn't well and to-night I have been ever so
busy. There came a note from the Academy, sent by John H. Ingram, the
editor of the edition of Poe's works I have been reviewing, challenging
me to find any more faults. I have found nearly sixty; so I may be
happy; but that makes me none the less sleepy; so I must go to bed.
_Friday._--I am awfully out of the humour to write; I am very inert
although quite happy; I am informed by those who are more expert that I
am bilious. _Bien_; let it be so; I am still content; and though I can
do no original work, I get forward making notes for my Knox at a good
trot.
_Saturday._--I am so happy. I am no longer here in Edinburgh. I have
been all yesterday evening and this forenoon in Italy, four hundred
years ago, with one Sannazzaro, a sculptor, painter, poet, etc., and one
Ippolita, a beautiful Duchess. O I like it badly! I wish you could hear
it at once; or rather I wish you could see it immediately in beautiful
type on such a page as it ought to be, in my first little volume of
stories. What a change this is from collecting dull notes for _John
Knox_, as I have been all the early part of the week--the difference
between life and death.--I am quite well again and in such happy
spirits, as who would not be, having spent so much of his time at that
convent on the hills with these sweet people. _Vous verrez_, and if you
don't like this story--well, I give it up if you don't like it. Not but
what there's a long way to travel yet; I am no farther than the
threshold; I have only set the men, and the game has still to be played,
and a lot of dim notions must become definite and shapely, and a deal be
clear to me that is anything but clear as yet. The story shall be
called, I think, _When the Devil was well_, in allusion to the old
proverb.
Good-bye.