'I have read aloud my death-cycles from Walt Whitman this evening. I was very much affected myself, never so much before, and it fetched the auditory considerable. Reading these things that I like aloud when I am painfully excited is the keenest artistic pleasure I know: it does seem strange that these dependant arts ? singing, acting and in its small way, reading aloud ? seem the best rewarded of all arts. I am sure it is more exciting for me to read, than it was for W.W. to write: and how much more must this be so with singing!'