Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

[32] Hurlbut had an interleaved copy of Jameson's “Italian painters,” with notes by Margaret Fuller. ... In this volume there was an account of Correggio, describing his earnestness of purpose in becoming not merely a self-indulgent dabbler in art, but a regenerator of it, and the author added a complaint of the rarity of such characters, opposite which M. F. had written a note--“And yet all might be such.” This book Hurlbut lent to Hunt. Shortly after a new life seemed to spring up in him and he was wholly transformed; he became earnest, laborious, and invigorated, nor did Hurlbut understand the change till, long afterwards, Hunt referred to this book and said that slight note of M. F.'s struck a chord in him that made the moment an era in his life. This is one of the many fruits of her chance seeds.

He told us about Tennyson's marriage which you will like to hear. It seems that twenty years ago, at the time of his early volumes of poems, he wooed and won a fair maiden; won her heart, but not her head or conscience, for she was very strait in her theology and he very lax in comparison, and with all her efforts she could not bring herself to link their destinies, and so, alas, they parted. Yet she was true to him, and refused other fine offers; and so ten years passed away. Then the poet wrote to her again to ask if any change had come in their fates, and still the stern lady wrote back No. So passed ten years more, and both remained true, in their absence and silence. Then came “In Memoriam” with its inspiration and its faith, and in one week after its appearance there arrived a letter