I never enquire after the effect of my work.

I have lived in comparative seclusion; and I scarcely know what collection of fugitive notes of mine you honor by describing as a book." "I mean your 'Note on three pictures in last year's _Salon_,' with the sonnets, and the fragment from your unfinished drama.

Is it finished, may I ask ?" "It is not finished.

I shall never finish it now." "I will tell you--between ourselves--that I heard one of the foremost critics of the age say, in the presence of a great poet (whom we both know), that it was such another fragment as the Venus of Milo, 'whose lost arms,' said he, 'we should fear to see, lest they should be unworthy of her.' 'You are right,' said the poet: 'I, for one, should shudder to see the fragment completed.' That is a positive fact.

But look at some of the sonnets! Burgraves says that his collection of English sonnets is incomplete because it does not contain your 'Clytemnestra,' which he had not seen when his book went to press.