But, as the novelists say, I am anticipating. Sick to death, David Gray had returned to the cottage of his father, the handloom weaver, at Kirkintilloch, and there had peacefully passed away, leaving as his legacy to the world the volume of beautiful poems published under the auspices of Lord Houghton. I knew of his death the hour he died; awaking in the night, I was certain of my loss, and spoke of it (long before the formal news reached me) to a friend. This by the way; but what is more to the purpose is that my first grief for a beloved comrade had expressed itself in the words which were to form the 'proem' of my first book--
Poet gentle hearted, Are you then departed, And have you ceased to dream the dream we loved of old so well? Has the deeply-cherish'd Aspiration perished, And are you happy, David, in that heaven where you dwell? Have you found the secret We, so wildly, sought for, And is your soul enswath'd at last in the singing robes you fought for?
Full of my dead friend, I spoke of him to Lewes and George Eliot, telling them the piteous story of his life and death. Both were deeply touched, and Lewes cried, 'Tell that story to the public'; which I did, immediately afterwards, in the _Cornhill Magazine_. By this time I had my Twins ready, and had discovered a publisher for one of them, _Undertones_. The other, _Idyls and Legends of Inverburn_, was a ruggeder bantling, containing almost the first _blank verse_ poems ever written in Scottish dialect. I selected one of the poems, 'Willie Baird,' and showed it to Lewes. He expressed himself delighted, and asked for more. I then showed him the 'Two Babes.' 'Better and better!' he wrote; 'publish a volume of such poems and your position is assured.' More than this, he at once found me a publisher, Mr. George Smith, of Messrs. Smith and Elder, who offered me a good round sum (such it seemed to me then) for the copyright. Eventually, however, after 'Willie Baird' had been published in the _Cornhill_, I withdrew the manuscript from Messrs. Smith and Elder, and transferred it to Mr. Alexander Strahan, who offered me both more liberal terms and more enthusiastic appreciation.
It was just after the appearance of my story of David Gray in the _Cornhill_ that I first met, at the Priory, North Bank, with Robert Browning. It was an odd and representative gathering of men, only one lady being present, the hostess, George Eliot. I was never much of a hero-worshipper, but I had long been a sympathetic Browningite, and I well remember George Eliot taking me aside after my first _tête-à-tête_ with the poet, and saying, 'Well, what do you think of him? Does he come up to your ideal?' He _didn't_ quite, I must confess, but I afterwards learned to know him well and to understand him better. He was delighted with my statement that one of Gray's wild ideas was to rush over to Florence and 'throw himself on the sympathy of Robert Browning.'