Letter from T. E. Brown, Weymouth, to W. E. Henley, 1876 January 11 : autograph manuscript signed.

Offering a detailed and lengthy critique of "Hospital Moments", the second series of Henley's Hospital poems; offering critical comments on language, text and subject matter; saying "The Hospital Moments are not so keenly cut as the first set : but I like most of them very much. You will yourself recognize, I think the truth of what I may venture now to say. In the first set there is a repose of graphic art. You seem to lie back in your chair so quiet, but with that marvelous power of vision which no one knows better than you is the gift of the convalescent. You have had a struggle : it is over, and you feel a luxury of rest, and that still rarer luxury, the outflow or the in-flow, which is it? of an exquisitely delicate but supreme and absolute observation. In such a state a man is a sensitized plate : and photographs infallibly. But he also photographs tenderly. Whatever acid may wash the glass, there is love all round, love in the very light. And there is an almost childlike reproduction of the object. This was a great joy to me. Now these are, as you say, more subjective; and being on the subjective tack, the more subjective poems of the series are, I think the finer and the most subjective (Night-Watcher) the finest. This in fact is very fine. But it affects me more because I know out of what wine-press it has come than from its perfection as a work of art. It is very lovely; and, if the world only knew its genesis, must move all men to tears. But is it not the sort of poem which long years hence, when, as I hope you will be better known, will be construed in a kind of biographical light, and thus excite a deeper closer and more personal interest? At present we look for the objective well carved and coloured : and I am not sure that we are wrong. Hereafter it may be otherwise : absit omen! but what would the world have said, if among the papers of poor Chatterton it had found such a poem as the Night Watcher!...So it is I fancy with all poets. The Hell and the Heaven that is within them they never can tell in words. Poetry runs its chromatic course through the middle space of things that other men may be told. And indeed this is an argument for the objective as opposed to the subjective school. You can ever tear out your heart and fling it bleeding on the stage; but still there is a whole world of emotion, of hope, of fear, of love, of hate, of affinities and repulsions, which can, must, never be told. What man on earth, who is keenly as sensitively organized, could tell or if he could, would or if he would, dared unfold the infinite ramifications, pullulations, inceptions, desistances of merely sexual love which he has experienced. But complicate these with the other and more subjective modes in which we are affected intellectually, morally, physically, by women, by men, by those exquisite hermaphroditic natures which in some respects, transcend all men and women, and what colours can you give me for such work as this! No, art must stop here : this is life, and that segment of life which is the richest too, but art had better stay outside, and paint what it can paint. I beg ten thousand pardons for this rhapsody and yet I fear I shall not deter you from the subjective. But the 'Night-Watcher' is not unduly subjective, and indeed there are times when one can't help writing such things. They are not the better for that; but we are;" continuing to critique other poems, correcting what he believes was a misconception by Henley of Brown's definition of 'good Society' and expressing his displeasure at Henley's use of vulgarity in his poems; adding "...but you are too sensible not to be aware that these things are around and around you, and that it behooves you walk warily!! And his is where 'good' that is 'highly educated' society can keep you. A man of your abilities, you will allow me to say so, and situated as your are, has more to fear from the flattery of his inferiors than from anything else perhaps in the world!...You will always find a ready applause from good and kindly fellows who really know but little what they are talking about. What I should desire for you would be a circle of accomplished men and women, or if this may not be, the brotherhood of one or two absolutely well-educated, classically well-educated young men. To such men I would produce myself freely, and ask them to correct me, nor would I suffer my consciousness of my own all-round superiority to disguise from me the important particular in which they happen to surpass me...But I wish you could see, as I see, how around all that you have written there flickers the faint flame of something which the world would be very ready indeed to call 'bad taste.' This sounds like scolding : and I am certainly bilious. This horrible crinkled grey sea would make any man cross."