(The landlord of the hotel asked me
down to the cellar and treated me.) Then afterwards sitting here, an
old magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of
The Princess which says, "I hear the horns of Elfland blowing,
blowing,"--no, it's "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" (I have
been into my bedroom to fetch my pen and it has made that blot), and,
reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I
thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength,
and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those
knights and heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray
lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me,
since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I
read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like, somehow,
to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude! You have made me as
happy as I was as a child with the Arabian Nights,--every step I have
walked in Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord
gave TWO bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and here
I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those delightful
Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I do but be
grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so happy? Do
you understand that what I mean is all true, and that I should break
out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in your mouth? Gold and
purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, and glory and love and honour,
and if you haven't given me all these why should I be in such an
ardour of gratitude? But I have had out of that dear book the
greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to
write and think about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is
what I'm doing, like an after-dinner speech.
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