Letter from Charles G. D. Roberts, "Kingscroft", Windsor, to W. E. Henley, 1893 May 24 : autograph manuscript signed.

Expressing admiration for Henley's "Song of the Sword;" saying "Many times since the appearance of your first volume I have been on the point of writing you to express my enthusiastic admiration for your work, but have put it off with the conclusion that it was hardly worth while to bother you with the compliments of a stranger. This morning, however, I am exasperated by an extravagant American eulogy of Watson, in which that skilful & [illegible] young Wordsworthian is lauded as easily chief among England's younger Singers. Now I am not blind to the fact that Watson has a genuine note, here & there; but his limitations make the idea of him as a leader or a master ridiculous. I have cursed more than a little over the serious way Americans have taken Watson ever since it was rumoured that Gladstone had smiled upon him. Then I have turned again to "Out of the Night that Covers me" - & "Heroes, my Children", - & "Spring Winds that blow", - & "Where forlorn sunsets", - & the elemental fullness of "What should the Trees" - & "When the Wind storms by" - & "Here they trysted" - & "It came with the threat" - & "Midsummer Midnight Skies" - - almost all your later stuff, indeed, (except that one which I do not like beginning "A desolate shore"). We should all be sitting at the feet of the man who writes "Death is death; but we shall die / To the Song on your bugles blown, / England - / To the stars on your bugles blown." I cannot keep still in my chair when I read that! Yours, it seems to me, is the note of mastery in England now, - the large, the manly, the heroic note. It always makes me want to pay you homage; & now it has made me try to pay it."