_April 16._--Returned home, bringing Book IV. finished.
_April 18._--Went with Mr. Pigott to see Holman Hunt's great picture, Isabella and the Pot of Basil.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st April, 1868.]
I send you by to-day's post the MS. of Book IV., that it may be at hand whenever there is opportunity for getting it into print, and letting me have it in that form for correction. It is desirable to get as forward as we can, in case of the Americans asking for delay after their reception of the sheets--if they venture to make any arrangement. I shall send the MS. of Book V. (the last) as soon as headache will permit, but that is an uncertain limit. We returned from Torquay on the 16th, leaving the glorious weather behind us. We were more in love with the place on a better acquaintance: the weather, and the spring buds, and the choirs of birds, made it seem more of a paradise to us every day.
The poem will be less tragic than I threatened: Mr. Lewes has prevailed on me to return to my original conception, and give up the additional development, which I determined on subsequently. The poem is rather shorter in consequence. Don't you think that my artistic deference and pliability deserve that it should also be better in consequence? I now end it as I determined to end it when I first conceived the story.
_April 25._--Finished the last dialogue between Silva and Fedalma. Mr. and Mrs. Burne Jones dined with us.
_April 29._--Finished "The Spanish Gypsy."
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th Aug. 1868.]
I send you by to-day's post the conclusion of the poem in MS., and the eighteen sheets of revise. The last book is brief, but I may truly use the old epigram--that it would have taken less time to make it longer. It is a great bore that the name of my heroine is wrongly spelled in all the earlier sheets. It is a fresh proof of the fallibility of our impressions as to our own doings, that I would have confidently affirmed the name to be spelled Fedalma (as it ought to be) in my manuscript. Yet I suppose I should have affirmed falsely, for the _i_ occurs in the slips constantly.
As I shall not see these paged sheets again, will you charitably assure me that the alterations are safely made?