1890-02-03 to Kineton Parkes

Autograph letter signed, New York University, 438 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

[Monday, 3 February 1890]

Dear Sir,

I am much obliged to you for your kind proposal, but I see formidable difficulties. I have never painted any pictures! That is to say, no pictures exist by me.

My story is a simple one — I became a writer because I couldn't be a painter. Of course if you are going to include verses by those who have wished to be painters and who have practised the art etc. I shall be glad to send you some of mine. You will of course write an introduction and if this can be made clear I shall be only too happy to contribute, and will try to select and write up what seems to be the least unworthy.

I should like to send you two sonnets, two short poems that appeared in the Spectator. 

”A ballad of a lost soul,” a poem which seems to me with the exception of one stanza to be good — the stanza I shall recast.

There is in my last novel a poem, “To a consumptive girl,” which seems to me the best thing I have done in verse; this also I should like to send.

I remember publishing a poem in Temple Bar, a dialogue between a Greek and a Christian; it was well spoken of and might be worth republishing.

I am asking perhaps for too much space but — That is a detail, the principal thing is, can you explain that I am merely a something that painting cast into literature? If you can do this I shall be pleased to do the best I can and, so far as verse, I think I can manage to pass muster among the painters who have written verse.

One of the sonnets I propose to send is my farewell to painting and it really is not a bad sonnet. I knew very little about verse at the time but the emotion of surrendering the dream and desire of my youth carried me through the perils of the fourteen lines.

I suppose you know that Jules Breton published a large volume of verse. Mediocre indeed it is but it would be interesting to include some fragments. If you like I will translate a few pieces for you — I will translate into prose for I am bound to my theory that verse translations are the merest savagery, a theory which if you like I will set forth in a note.

Very truly yours

George Moore