I should say, roughly, that in ten minutes the young man would
be strung up to the right pitch, and that more than twenty minutes
would be too much. It is important that expectancy shall have worked
on him to the full, but it is still more important that his mood shall
not have been chafed to impatience. The danger of over-long delay is
well exemplified in the sad case of young Coventry Patmore. In his old
age Patmore wrote to Mr. Gosse a description of a visit he had paid,
at the age of eighteen, to Leigh Hunt; and you will find the letter on
page 32, vol. I, of Mr. Basil Champneys' biography of him. The
circumstances had been most propitious. The eager and sensitive spirit
of the young man, his intense admiration for `The Story of Rimini,'
the letter of introduction from his father to the venerable poet and
friend of greater bygone poets, the long walk to Hammersmith, the
small house in a square there--all was classically in order. The poet
was at home. The visitor as shown in.... `I had,' he was destined to
tell Mr. Gosse, `waited in the little parlour at least two hours, when
the door was opened and a most picturesque gentleman, with hair
flowing nearly or quite to his shoulders, a beautiful velvet coat and
a Vandyck collar of lace about a foot deep, appeared, rubbing his
hands and smiling ethereally, and saying, without a word of preface or
notice of my having waited so long, "This is a beautiful world, Mr.
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