Letter from Gilbert Parker, London, to W. E. Henley, 1891 October 13 : autograph manuscript signed.

Enclosing a manuscript for a "...short tale called "Antoine & Angelique" which I am hoping may find favour with you. I shall be very glad to see the proof if you care for the matter well enough to use it. I am preparing a magazine article on present-day plays - or rather, the dialogue of present-day plays, and I am very anxious to treat of Beau Austin, in this connection. I wonder if you would let me have the play for a few days. Of course I should take every care of it & return it promptly. It has seemed to me that dialogue is the very last thing that the critics consider and I have some things in my mind to say which I hope will be truthful, even if they touch nerves here & there in London. I shall feel so grateful if you will help me. I say it, I confess, falteringly, but still I want to say it, that your poems were a revelation to me. I have been away in the South Seas & [illegible] so long that though I knew of A Book of Verses I had never got my finger between its lines. Then, in my coming to England, many things interfered with my reading. At last however I got the book and it choked me, as true art & true feeling move men who have lived life all round. There is so much I should like to say but it seems to me like taking such a liberty : even though your verses are in my ear as though spoken to me : mine, if the world's too."