“As most of the poets translated are my immediate contemporaries”

Reflecting his unusually close engagement with the living French poets whose work he introduced to English readers · Draft preface to his translations

• Art
• Friendship
• Poetry

“Myself a young disciple.”

His modest description of his relationship to the recently deceased poet Ferdinand Freiligrath · Letter to Käthe Freiligrath-Kroeker, 20 March 1876

• Friendship
• Mortality
• Poetry

“Having been wholly taken up with my visiting my friends the brotherhood of poets in Paris, I have since my arrival not had a minute to write to you until the present.”

A warm glimpse of his enthusiasm for friendships within the Parisian literary world · Letter to Miss Compton, 19 December 1875

• Friendship
• Poetry

“I am told it is probably owing to some such jealousy.”

A glimpse of the tension he perceived between his literary identity and his museum employment · British Museum statement, quoted by W. D. Paden

• Fame
• Poetry

“A clerk in the Secretary's Office told me ‘it was all about my book’.”

Revealing his belief that his literary career had affected his treatment at the British Museum · British Museum statement, quoted by W. D. Paden

• Fame
• Poetry

“My meaning is that Art is good—is an incalculable gain to man.”

Expressing an unusually direct faith in the value of artistic creation · Letter quoted in the Preface to Songs of a Worker, 1881

• Art
• Beauty
• Hope

“They are therefore essentially thoughts in marble, or poems of form.”

A concise description of poetry conceived through the language of sculpture · Letter quoted in the Preface to Songs of a Worker, 1881

• Art
• Beauty
• Poetry

“Love appears to me, indeed, as the offer of heaven.”

From a long, unusually candid letter in which he set out his philosophy of love as a redemptive, almost sacred force rather than mere sentiment · Letter to Helen Snee, 22 May 1870

• Faith
• Love

“They are therefore essentially thoughts in marble, or poems of form, and it would therefore be unjustifiable to look in them for a sense which is not inherent in the purest Parian.”

Describing poetry as verbal sculpture whose meaning resides in form and beauty · Written statement quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Beauty
• Poetry

“An art in which I have as yet failed to perceive either morality or immorality.”

Separating the formal beauty of sculpture from conventional moral judgement · Written statement on sculpture quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Beauty
• Truth

“My artistic object is gained if, in them, I have kept strictly within the lines assigned to the sculptor’s art.”

Defining artistic success as fidelity to the formal discipline of sculpture · Written statement quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Beauty

“I wish to provide against the series of poems which I have associated with the art of sculpture being judged from an erroneous point of view.”

Guarding his work against interpretations that ignored its intended artistic form · Written statement quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“Art is good—is an incalculable gain to man; but art, in itself equally perfect, which grows with humanity and can assist humanity in growing—is still better.”

Arguing that the finest art combines beauty with the power to advance humanity · Letter quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Hope
• Truth

“But with Victor Hugo I do not say, ‘Art for Art’, but ‘Art for humanity’.”

Expressing his belief that art should ultimately serve and enrich human life · Letter quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Hope

“Truly, I think that a little ‘Art for Art’ has already done a great deal of good in England, and that a little more is needed, and would be equally beneficial.”

Defending the value of beauty and artistic freedom in a practical age · Letter quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Beauty

“I have been represented as saying with Baudelaire, ‘Art for Art’, and laying myself open to all the unfavourable limitations which that dictum is unjustly supposed to imply.”

Clarifying his position within the aesthetic movement and resisting an overly narrow artistic label · Letter quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

• Art
• Truth