'She announced among other things that Longfellow was her favourite poet. “Byron is nice too” she added “Especially his Elegy on the death of a mad dog.”!!! Shakespeare she has some little knowledge of – His fairies & pucks are nice – but he can’t come up to Longfellow. I nearly died with inward mirth. She vows she is going to devote herself to Literature when she grows up: but she really does appreciate good poetry – I read her some Scott one afternoon, & she understood & liked it – and then I found her an Austin-Dobson – and read her things for nearly an hour, out of his Idylls – and you should have seen how her eyes glistened as she took it all in. She expressed a wish to have something of his – and in half an hour she had mastered both the spirit & matter of “the little blue Mandarin”.'