'You have it,' she wrote once, 'the thing we all seek for, the power of beating red-hot thought into sword-blades.

Write more like the last.' But the praise always came late.

The violent mood, the self-reproach, the bitterness, were past.

His life was wrapt round again with softer influences, and he read his own words with shame when they reached him in print.

Afterwards for a while, if he wrote at all, it was of the peasant life, of quaint customs, half-forgotten legends and folklore.