19 files changed, 65141 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/16182-8.txt b/16182-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47fbced
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21257 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846, Edited by
+Robert B. Browning
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846
+
+Author: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
+
+Editor: Robert B. Browning
+
+Release Date: July 2, 2005 [EBook #16182]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF BROWNING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS
+
+OF
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+AND
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT
+
+1845-1846
+
+
+_WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES_
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+FOURTH IMPRESSION
+
+LONDON
+
+SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
+
+1900
+
+
+[Illustration: Robert Browning
+
+from an oil painting by Gordigiani]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+In considering the question of publishing these letters, which are all
+that ever passed between my father and mother, for after their
+marriage they were never separated, it seemed to me that my only
+alternatives were to allow them to be published or to destroy them. I
+might, indeed, have left the matter to the decision of others after my
+death, but that would be evading a responsibility which I feel that I
+ought to accept.
+
+Ever since my mother's death these letters were kept by my father in a
+certain inlaid box, into which they exactly fitted, and where they
+have always rested, letter beside letter, each in its consecutive
+order and numbered on the envelope by his own hand.
+
+My father destroyed all the rest of his correspondence, and not long
+before his death he said, referring to these letters: 'There they are,
+do with them as you please when I am dead and gone!'
+
+A few of the letters are of little or no interest, but their omission
+would have saved only a few pages, and I think it well that the
+correspondence should be given in its entirety.
+
+I wish to express my gratitude to my father's friend and mine, Mrs.
+Miller Morison, for her unfailing sympathy and assistance in
+deciphering some words which had become scarcely legible owing to
+faded ink.
+
+                                                      R.B.B.
+
+1898.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+
+The correspondence contained in these volumes is printed exactly as it
+appears in the original letters, without alteration, except in respect
+of obvious slips of the pen. Even the punctuation, with its
+characteristic dots and dashes, has for the most part been preserved.
+The notes in square brackets [] have been added mainly in order to
+translate the Greek phrases, and to give the references to Greek
+poets. For these, thanks are due to Mr. F.G. Kenyon, who has revised
+the proofs with the assistance of Mr. Roger Ingpen, the latter being
+responsible for the Index.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF ROBERT BROWNING                 _Frontispiece_
+  _After the picture by Gordigiani_
+
+FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ROBERT BROWNING      _To face p. 578_
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+AND
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT
+
+1845-1846
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1845.]
+
+I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,--and this is
+no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,--whatever else,
+no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius, and there a
+graceful and natural end of the thing. Since the day last week when I
+first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been
+turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you
+of their effect upon me, for in the first flush of delight I thought I
+would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when
+I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration--perhaps even,
+as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some
+little good to be proud of hereafter!--but nothing comes of it all--so
+into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living
+poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew--Oh, how
+different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat, and prized
+highly, and put in a book with a proper account at top and bottom,
+and shut up and put away ... and the book called a 'Flora,' besides!
+After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time;
+because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give a reason
+for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music,
+the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave
+thought; but in this addressing myself to you--your own self, and for
+the first time, my feeling rises altogether. I do, as I say, love
+these books with all my heart--and I love you too. Do you know I was
+once not very far from seeing--really seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to
+me one morning 'Would you like to see Miss Barrett?' then he went to
+announce me,--then he returned ... you were too unwell, and now it is
+years ago, and I feel as at some untoward passage in my travels, as if
+I had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel or crypt,
+only a screen to push and I might have entered, but there was some
+slight, so it now seems, slight and just sufficient bar to admission,
+and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles,
+and the sight was never to be?
+
+Well, these Poems were to be, and this true thankful joy and pride
+with which I feel myself,
+
+                                      Yours ever faithfully,
+
+                                           ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+Miss Barrett,[1]
+  50 Wimpole St.
+R. Browning.
+
+[Footnote 1: With this and the following letter the addresses on the
+envelopes are given; for all subsequent letters the addresses are the
+same. The correspondence passed through the post.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                           50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 11, 1845.
+
+I thank you, dear Mr. Browning, from the bottom of my heart. You meant
+to give me pleasure by your letter--and even if the object had not
+been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly
+answered. Such a letter from such a hand! Sympathy is dear--very dear
+to me: but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the
+quintessence of sympathy to me! Will you take back my gratitude for
+it?--agreeing, too, that of all the commerce done in the world, from
+Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most
+princely thing!
+
+For the rest you draw me on with your kindness. It is difficult to get
+rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure--_that_
+is a fact, and we will not stop for the moral of it. What I was going
+to say--after a little natural hesitation--is, that if ever you emerge
+without inconvenient effort from your 'passive state,' and will _tell_
+me of such faults as rise to the surface and strike you as important
+in my poems, (for of course, I do not think of troubling you with
+criticism in detail) you will confer a lasting obligation on me, and
+one which I shall value so much, that I covet it at a distance. I do
+not pretend to any extraordinary meekness under criticism and it is
+possible enough that I might not be altogether obedient to yours. But
+with my high respect for your power in your Art and for your
+experience as an artist, it would be quite impossible for me to hear a
+general observation of yours on what appear to you my master-faults,
+without being the better for it hereafter in some way. I ask for only
+a sentence or two of general observation--and I do not ask even for
+_that_, so as to tease you--but in the humble, low voice, which is so
+excellent a thing in women--particularly when they go a-begging! The
+most frequent general criticism I receive, is, I think, upon the
+style,--'if I _would_ but change my style'! But _that_ is an objection
+(isn't it?) to the writer bodily? Buffon says, and every sincere
+writer must feel, that '_Le style c'est l'homme_'; a fact, however,
+scarcely calculated to lessen the objection with certain critics.
+
+Is it indeed true that I was so near to the pleasure and honour of
+making your acquaintance? and can it be true that you look back upon
+the lost opportunity with any regret? _But_--you know--if you had
+entered the 'crypt,' you might have caught cold, or been tired to
+death, and _wished_ yourself 'a thousand miles off;' which would have
+been worse than travelling them. It is not my interest, however, to
+put such thoughts in your head about its being 'all for the best'; and
+I would rather hope (as I do) that what I lost by one chance I may
+recover by some future one. Winters shut me up as they do dormouse's
+eyes; in the spring, _we shall see_: and I am so much better that I
+seem turning round to the outward world again. And in the meantime I
+have learnt to know your voice, not merely from the poetry but from
+the kindness in it. Mr. Kenyon often speaks of you--dear Mr.
+Kenyon!--who most unspeakably, or only speakably with tears in my
+eyes,--has been my friend and helper, and my book's friend and helper!
+critic and sympathiser, true friend of all hours! You know him well
+enough, I think, to understand that I must be grateful to him.
+
+I am writing too much,--and notwithstanding that I am writing too
+much, I will write of one thing more. I will say that I am your
+debtor, not only for this cordial letter and for all the pleasure
+which came with it, but in other ways, and those the highest: and I
+will say that while I live to follow this divine art of poetry, in
+proportion to my love for it and my devotion to it, I must be a devout
+admirer and student of your works. This is in my heart to say to
+you--and I say it.
+
+And, for the rest, I am proud to remain
+
+                                  Your obliged and faithful
+
+                                       ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Robert Browning, Esq.
+  New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+                                 Jan. 13, 1845.
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--I just shall say, in as few words as I can, that
+you make me very happy, and that, now the beginning is over, I dare
+say I shall do better, because my poor praise, number one, was nearly
+as felicitously brought out, as a certain tribute to no less a
+personage than Tasso, which I was amused with at Rome some weeks ago,
+in a neat pencilling on the plaister-wall by his tomb at
+Sant'Onofrio--'Alla cara memoria--di--(please fancy solemn interspaces
+and grave capital letters at the new lines) di--Torquato Tasso--il
+Dottore Bernardini--offriva--il seguente Carme--_O tu_'--and no
+more,--the good man, it should seem, breaking down with the overload
+of love here! But my 'O tu'--was breathed out most sincerely, and now
+you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will come after.
+Only,--and which is why I write now--it looks as if I have introduced
+some phrase or other about 'your faults' so cleverly as to give
+exactly the opposite meaning to what I meant, which was, that in my
+first ardour I had thought to tell you of _everything_ which impressed
+me in your verses, down, even, to whatever 'faults' I could find,--a
+good earnest, when I had got to _them_, that I had left out not much
+between--as if some Mr. Fellows were to say, in the overflow of his
+first enthusiasm of rewarded adventure: 'I will describe you all the
+outer life and ways of these Lycians, down to their very
+sandal-thongs,' whereto the be-corresponded one rejoins--'Shall I get
+next week, then, your dissertation on sandal-thongs'? Yes, and a
+little about the 'Olympian Horses,' and God-charioteers as well!
+
+What 'struck me as faults,' were not matters on the removal of which,
+one was to have--poetry, or high poetry,--but the very highest poetry,
+so I thought, and that, to universal recognition. For myself, or any
+artist, in many of the cases there would be a positive loss of time,
+peculiar artist's pleasure--for an instructed eye loves to see where
+the brush has dipped twice in a lustrous colour, has lain insistingly
+along a favourite outline, dwelt lovingly in a grand shadow; for these
+'too muches' for the everybody's picture are so many helps to the
+making out the real painter's picture as he had it in his brain. And
+all of the Titian's Naples Magdalen must have once been golden in its
+degree to justify that heap of hair in her hands--the _only_ gold
+effected now!
+
+But about this soon--for night is drawing on and I go out, yet cannot,
+quiet at conscience, till I report (to _myself_, for I never said it
+to you, I think) that your poetry must be, cannot but be, infinitely
+more to me than mine to you--for you _do_ what I always wanted, hoped
+to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first time. You speak
+out, _you_,--I only make men and women speak--give you truth broken
+into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in
+me, but I am going to try; so it will be no small comfort to have your
+company just now, seeing that when you have your men and women
+aforesaid, you are busied with them, whereas it seems bleak,
+melancholy work, this talking to the wind (for I have begun)--yet I
+don't think I shall let _you_ hear, after all, the savage things about
+Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.
+
+See how I go on and on to you, I who, whenever now and then pulled, by
+the head and hair, into letter-writing, get sorrowfully on for a line
+or two, as the cognate creature urged on by stick and string, and then
+come down 'flop' upon the sweet haven of page one, line last, as
+serene as the sleep of the virtuous! You will never more, I hope, talk
+of 'the honour of my acquaintance,' but I will joyfully wait for the
+delight of your friendship, and the spring, and my Chapel-sight after
+all!
+
+                                 Ever yours most faithfully,
+
+                                      R. BROWNING.
+
+For Mr. Kenyon--I have a convenient theory about _him_, and his
+otherwise quite unaccountable kindness to me; but 'tis quite night
+now, and they call me.
+
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                           50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 15, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Browning,--The fault was clearly with me and not with you.
+
+When I had an Italian master, years ago, he told me that there was an
+unpronounceable English word which absolutely expressed me, and which
+he would say in his own tongue, as he could not in mine--'_testa
+lunga_.' Of course, the signor meant _headlong_!--and now I have had
+enough to tame me, and might be expected to stand still in my stall.
+But you see I do not. Headlong I was at first, and headlong I
+continue--precipitously rushing forward through all manner of nettles
+and briars instead of keeping the path; guessing at the meaning of
+unknown words instead of looking into the dictionary--tearing open
+letters, and never untying a string,--and expecting everything to be
+done in a minute, and the thunder to be as quick as the lightning. And
+so, at your half word I flew at the whole one, with all its possible
+consequences, and wrote what you read. Our common friend, as I think
+he is, Mr. Horne, is often forced to entreat me into patience and
+coolness of purpose, though his only intercourse with me has been by
+letter. And, by the way, you will be sorry to hear that during his
+stay in Germany _he_ has been 'headlong' (out of a metaphor) twice;
+once, in falling from the Drachenfels, when he only just saved himself
+by catching at a vine; and once quite lately, at Christmas, in a fall
+on the ice of the Elbe in skating, when he dislocated his left
+shoulder in a very painful manner. He is doing quite well, I believe,
+but it was sad to have such a shadow from the German Christmas tree,
+and he a stranger.
+
+In art, however, I understand that it does not do to be headlong, but
+patient and laborious--and there is a love strong enough, even in me,
+to overcome nature. I apprehend what you mean in the criticism you
+just intimate, and shall turn it over and over in my mind until I get
+practical good from it. What no mere critic sees, but what you, an
+artist, know, is the difference between the thing desired and the
+thing attained, between the idea in the writer's mind and the [Greek:
+eidôlon] cast off in his work. All the effort--the quick'ning of the
+breath and beating of the heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and
+injurious to the general effect of a composition; all which you call
+'insistency,' and which many would call superfluity, and which _is_
+superfluous in a sense--_you_ can pardon, because you understand. The
+great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would
+be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours,
+if the desire did not master the despondency. 'Oh for a horse with
+wings!' It is wrong of me to write so of myself--only you put your
+finger on the root of a fault, which has, to my fancy, been a little
+misapprehended. I do not _say everything I think_ (as has been said of
+me by master-critics) but I _take every means to say what I think_,
+which is different!--or I fancy so!
+
+In one thing, however, you are wrong. Why should you deny the full
+measure of my delight and benefit from your writings? I could tell you
+why you should not. You have in your vision two worlds, or to use the
+language of the schools of the day, you are both subjective and
+objective in the habits of your mind. You can deal both with abstract
+thought and with human passion in the most passionate sense. Thus, you
+have an immense grasp in Art; and no one at all accustomed to consider
+the usual forms of it, could help regarding with reverence and
+gladness the gradual expansion of your powers. Then you are
+'masculine' to the height--and I, as a woman, have studied some of
+your gestures of language and intonation wistfully, as a thing beyond
+me far! and the more admirable for being beyond.
+
+Of your new work I hear with delight. How good of you to tell me. And
+it is not dramatic in the strict sense, I am to understand--(am I
+right in understanding so?) and you speak, in your own person 'to the
+winds'? no--but to the thousand living sympathies which will awake to
+hear you. A great dramatic power may develop itself otherwise than in
+the formal drama; and I have been guilty of wishing, before this hour
+(for reasons which I will not thrust upon you after all my tedious
+writing), that you would give the public a poem unassociated directly
+or indirectly with the stage, for a trial on the popular heart. I
+reverence the drama, but--
+
+_But_ I break in on myself out of consideration for you. I might have
+done it, you will think, before. I vex your 'serene sleep of the
+virtuous' like a nightmare. Do not say 'No.' I am _sure_ I do! As to
+the vain parlance of the world, I did not talk of the 'honour of your
+acquaintance' without a true sense of honour, indeed; but I shall
+willingly exchange it all (and _now_, if you please, at this moment,
+for fear of worldly mutabilities) for the 'delight of your
+friendship.'
+
+                   Believe me, therefore, dear Mr. Browning,
+
+                        Faithfully yours, and gratefully,
+
+                             ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+For Mr. Kenyon's kindness, as _I_ see it, no theory will account. I
+class it with mesmerism for that reason.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                           New Cross, Hatcham, Monday Night.
+                           [Post-mark, January 28, 1845.]
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--Your books lie on my table here, at arm's length
+from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches
+or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance
+for either green-covered volume, as if it were so much fresh trefoil
+to feel in one's hands this winter-time,--and round I turn, and,
+putting a decisive elbow on three or four half-done-with 'Bells' of
+mine, read, read, read, and just as I have shut up the book and walked
+to the window, I recollect that you wanted me to find faults there,
+and that, in an unwise hour, I engaged to do so. Meantime, the days
+go by (the whitethroat is come and sings now) and as I would not have
+you 'look down on me from your white heights' as promise breaker,
+evader, or forgetter, if I could help: and as, if I am very candid and
+contrite, you may find it in your heart to write to me again--who
+knows?--I shall say at once that the said faults cannot be lost, must
+be _somewhere_, and shall be faithfully brought you back whenever they
+turn up,--as people tell one of missing matters. I am rather exacting,
+myself, with my own gentle audience, and get to say spiteful things
+about them when they are backward in their dues of appreciation--but
+really, _really_--could I be quite sure that anybody as good as--I
+must go on, I suppose, and say--as myself, even, were honestly to feel
+towards me as I do, towards the writer of 'Bertha,' and the 'Drama,'
+and the 'Duchess,' and the 'Page' and--the whole two volumes, I should
+be paid after a fashion, I know.
+
+One thing I can do--pencil, if you like, and annotate, and dissertate
+upon that I love most and least--I think I can do it, that is.
+
+Here an odd memory comes--of a friend who,--volunteering such a
+service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality
+in a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting
+off the beginning three lines with, of course, 'bad, worse,
+worst'--made by a generous mintage of words to meet the sudden run of
+his epithets, 'worser, worserer, worserest' pay off the second terzet
+in full--no 'badder, badderer, badderest' fell to the _Second's_
+allowance, and 'worser' &c. answered the demands of the Third;
+'worster, worsterer, worsterest' supplied the emergency of the Fourth;
+and, bestowing his last 'worserestest and worstestest' on lines 13 and
+14, my friend (slapping his forehead like an emptied strong-box)
+frankly declared himself bankrupt, and honourably incompetent, to
+satisfy the reasonable expectations of the rest of the series!
+
+What an illustration of the law by which opposite ideas suggest
+opposite, and contrary images come together!
+
+See now, how, of that 'Friendship' you offer me (and here Juliet's
+word rises to my lips)--I feel sure once and for ever. I have got
+already, I see, into this little pet-handwriting of mine (not anyone
+else's) which scratches on as if theatrical copyists (ah me!) and
+BRADBURY AND EVANS' READER were not! But you shall get something
+better than this nonsense one day, if you will have patience with
+me--hardly better, though, because this does me real good, gives real
+relief, to write. After all, you know nothing, next to nothing of me,
+and that stops me. Spring is to come, however!
+
+If you hate writing to me as I hate writing to nearly everybody, I
+pray you never write--if you do, as you say, care for anything I have
+done. I will simply assure you, that meaning to begin work in deep
+earnest, _begin_ without affectation, God knows,--I do not know what
+will help me more than hearing from you,--and therefore, if you do not
+so very much hate it, I know I _shall_ hear from you--and very little
+more about your 'tiring me.'
+
+                                      Ever yours faithfully,
+
+                                           ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            50 Walpole Street: Feb. 3, 1845.
+[Transcriber's Note: So in original. Should be "Wimpole Street."]
+
+Why how could I hate to write to you, dear Mr. Browning? Could you
+believe in such a thing? If nobody likes writing to everybody (except
+such professional letter writers as you and I are _not_), yet
+everybody likes writing to somebody, and it would be strange and
+contradictory if I were not always delighted both to hear from _you_
+and to write to _you_, this talking upon paper being as good a social
+pleasure as another, when our means are somewhat straitened. As for
+me, I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people
+shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls. Not
+that I write to many in the way of regular correspondence, as our
+friend Mr. Horne predicates of me in his romances (which is mere
+romancing!), but that there are a few who will write and be written to
+by me without a sense of injury. Dear Miss Mitford, for instance. You
+do not know her, I think, personally, although she was the first to
+tell me (when I was very ill and insensible to all the glories of the
+world except poetry), of the grand scene in 'Pippa Passes.' _She_ has
+filled a large drawer in this room with delightful letters, heart-warm
+and soul-warm, ... driftings of nature (if sunshine could drift like
+snow), and which, if they should ever fall the way of all writing,
+into print, would assume the folio shape as a matter of course, and
+take rank on the lowest shelf of libraries, with Benedictine editions
+of the Fathers, [Greek: k.t.l.]. I write this to you to show how I can
+have pleasure in letters, and never think them too long, nor too
+frequent, nor too illegible from being written in little 'pet hands.'
+I can read any MS. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will
+only promise to treat me _en bon camarade_, without reference to the
+conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen,' taking no thought for
+your sentences (nor for mine), nor for your blots (nor for mine), nor
+for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling (nor
+for mine), and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you
+are in the mind for it, and with as little ceremony and less
+legibility than you would think it necessary to employ towards your
+printer--why, _then_, I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to
+rejoice in being 'articled' as your correspondent. Only _don't_ let us
+have any constraint, any ceremony! _Don't_ be civil to me when you
+feel rude,--nor loquacious when you incline to silence,--nor yielding
+in the manners when you are perverse in the mind. See how out of the
+world I am! Suffer me to profit by it in almost the only profitable
+circumstance, and let us rest from the bowing and the courtesying,
+you and I, on each side. You will find me an honest man on the whole,
+if rather hasty and prejudging, which is a different thing from
+prejudice at the worst. And we have great sympathies in common, and I
+am inclined to look up to you in many things, and to learn as much of
+everything as you will teach me. On the other hand you must prepare
+yourself to forbear and to forgive--will you? While I throw off the
+ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.
+
+Is it true, as you say, that I 'know so "little"' of you? And is it
+true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake
+of his real nature, ... that in the minor sense, man is not made in
+the image of God? It is _not_ true, to my mind--and therefore it is
+not true that I know little of you, except in as far as it is true
+(which I believe) that your greatest works are to come. Need I assure
+you that I shall always hear with the deepest interest every word you
+will say to me of what you are doing or about to do? I hear of the
+'old room' and the '"Bells" lying about,' with an interest which you
+may guess at, perhaps. And when you tell me besides, of _my poems
+being there_, and of your caring for them so much beyond the tide-mark
+of my hopes, the pleasure rounds itself into a charm, and prevents its
+own expression. Overjoyed I am with this cordial sympathy--but it is
+better, I feel, to try to justify it by future work than to thank you
+for it now. I think--if I may dare to name myself with you in the
+poetic relation--that we both have high views of the Art we follow,
+and stedfast purpose in the pursuit of it, and that we should not,
+either of _us_, be likely to be thrown from the course, by the casting
+of any Atalanta-ball of speedy popularity. But I do not know, I cannot
+guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard criticism
+and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too often
+exposed to--or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the
+exercise of Art the filling joy of your life. Not that praise must not
+always, of necessity, be delightful to the artist, but that it may be
+redundant to his content. Do you think so? or not? It appears to me
+that poets who, like Keats, are highly susceptible to criticism, must
+be jealous, in their own persons, of the future honour of their works.
+Because, if a work is worthy, honour must follow it, though the worker
+should not live to see that following overtaking. Now, is it not
+enough that the work be honoured--enough I mean, for the worker? And
+is it not enough to keep down a poet's ordinary wearing anxieties, to
+think, that if his work be worthy it will have honour, and, if not,
+that 'Sparta must have nobler sons than he'? I am writing nothing
+applicable, I see, to anything in question, but when one falls into a
+favourite train of thought, one indulges oneself in thinking on. I
+began in thinking and wondering what sort of artistic constitution you
+had, being determined, as you may observe (with a sarcastic smile at
+the impertinence), to set about knowing as much as possible of you
+immediately. Then you spoke of your 'gentle audience' (_you began_),
+and I, who know that you have not one but many enthusiastic
+admirers--the 'fit and few' in the intense meaning--yet not the
+_diffused_ fame which will come to you presently, wrote on, down the
+margin of the subject, till I parted from it altogether. But, after
+all, we are on the proper matter of sympathy. And after all, and after
+all that has been said and mused upon the 'natural ills,' the anxiety,
+and wearing out experienced by the true artist,--is not the _good_
+immeasurably greater than the _evil_? Is it not great good, and great
+joy? For my part, I wonder sometimes--I surprise myself wondering--how
+without such an object and purpose of life, people find it worth while
+to live at all. And, for happiness--why, my only idea of happiness, as
+far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, (but I have been
+straightened in some respects and in comparison with the majority of
+livers!) lies deep in poetry and its associations. And then, the
+escape from pangs of heart and bodily weakness--when you throw off
+_yourself_--what you feel to be _yourself_--into another atmosphere
+and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new,
+and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the
+sun! Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of
+depreciating and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible,
+certainly--but reasonable, not at all--and grateful, less than
+anything!
+
+My faults, my faults--Shall I help you? Ah--you see them too well, I
+fear. And do you know that _I_ also have something of your feeling
+about 'being about to _begin_,' or I should dare to praise you for
+having it. But in you, it is different--it is, in you, a virtue. When
+Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io,
+and declared at last that he was [Greek: mêdepô en prooimiois],[1]
+poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the
+'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may
+well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our
+hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you _will_ do
+what is greater. It is my faith for you.
+
+And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to
+promise and vow' for you,--and whether you have held true to early
+tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and
+what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!--(if it
+isn't proved already).
+
+But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if
+I ever write to you again--I mean, if you wish it--it may be in the
+other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of
+Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,--you
+might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet--which I guessed at
+once--and of course--
+
+    I have no joy in this contract to-day!
+    It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.
+
+                                      Ever faithfully yours,
+
+                                           ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. _Prom._ 741).]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Hatcham, Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a
+matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is
+hard to prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance,
+used certain words and ways to a mother or a father _could_, even if
+by the devil's help he _would_, reproduce or mimic them with any
+effect to anybody else that was to be won over--and so, if 'I love
+you' were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose,
+be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last
+night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain
+ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the
+fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for _that_ we
+could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes
+the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear
+Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I _said_ (to use a mild word)
+'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke
+of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was
+this--that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and
+syllables with a masoretic _other_ sound and sense, make my 'dear'
+something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a
+thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came
+of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c., which I
+should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter
+with its unmistakable eyes. _Now_, what you say of the 'bowing,' and
+convention that is to be, and _tant de façons_ that are not to be,
+helps me once and for ever--for have I not a right to say simply that,
+for reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might
+if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most
+likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me
+know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you
+care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea,
+nor a troop of true lovers!--Are not their fates written? there! Don't
+you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with
+a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But
+then--what I have printed gives _no_ knowledge of me--it evidences
+abilities of various kinds, if you will--and a dramatic sympathy with
+certain modifications of passion ... _that_ I think--But I never have
+begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end--'R.B. a
+poem'--and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you
+have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it
+is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so--these scenes and
+song-scraps _are_ such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which
+lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have
+watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery,
+bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a
+moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind
+wall between it and you; and, no doubt, _then_, precisely, does the
+poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim
+the wick--for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard--(this
+head of mine knows better)--but the work has been _inside_, and not
+when at stated times I held up my light to you--and, that there is no
+self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by
+opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of
+wood, I _could_ make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the
+whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the
+same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have
+done what was published, and half done what may never be, I say with
+some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I _hope_ sometimes,
+though phrenologists will have it that I _cannot_, and am doing
+better with this darling 'Luria'--so safe in my head, and a tiny slip
+of paper I cover with my thumb!
+
+Then you inquire about my 'sensitiveness to criticism,' and I shall be
+glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a
+course you might else not understand. I shall live always--that is for
+me--I am living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a
+thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief
+that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things
+considered--that is for _me_, and, so being, the not being listened to
+by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of
+course I must, if for merely scientific purposes, know all about this
+1845, its ways and doings, and something I do know, as that for a
+dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might
+demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market,--and that for a
+dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many
+plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought
+to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring
+me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold currency, seeing the other
+traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won't pay
+me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please,
+say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties 'decamp to the crows,' in
+Greek phrase, and _yet_ go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of
+rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens
+I should have been able to buy the last number of _Punch_, and go
+through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind
+clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they
+had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of
+this and the other 'favourable critique,' and--at least so folks
+hold--I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds,
+whereas--but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in
+the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper,
+'It's nothing to _you_, critics, hucksters, all of you, if I _have_
+this garden and this conscience--I might go die at Rome, or take to
+gin and the newspaper, for what _you_ would care!' So I don't quite
+lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have
+met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly
+and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty
+praisers--and no bad reviewers--I am quite content with my share.
+No--what I laughed at in my 'gentle audience' is a sad trick the real
+admirers have of admiring at the wrong place--enough to make an
+apostle swear. _That_ does make me savage--_never_ the other kind of
+people; why, think now--take your own 'Drama of Exile' and let _me_
+send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your
+door to-day and after--of whom the first five are the Postman, the
+seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders,
+and the Tax-gatherer--will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa's
+assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on,
+this 'Drama'--and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair
+English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the
+general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to
+affirm. But then--once again, I get these people together and give
+them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the
+Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats,
+one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red
+collar,--that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into
+vogue, and so on with the rest--and won't you just wish for your
+_Spectators_ and _Observers_ and Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Hebdomadal
+_Mercuries_ back again! You see the inference--I do sincerely esteem
+it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so
+well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to
+'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite
+inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the
+_Quarterly_ and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the
+world--out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!
+
+Out comes the sun, in comes the _Times_ and eleven strikes (it _does_)
+already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that
+this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should
+'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt--nor will you
+henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy
+writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me
+for yours ever faithfully,
+
+                                                R. BROWNING.
+
+I don't dare--yet I will--ask _can_ you read this? Because I _could_
+write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as
+you do now!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                       50 Wimpole Street, February 17, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Browning,--To begin with the end (which is only
+characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your
+handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font.
+If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I
+couldn't do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle.
+Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the
+making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons
+... Mr. Landor, for instance, who writes as if he had the sky for a
+copybook and dotted his _i_'s in proportion. People who do such things
+should wear gauntlets; yes, and have none to wear; or they wouldn't
+waste their time so. People who write--by profession--shall I
+say?--never should do it, or what will become of them when most of
+their strength retires into their head and heart, (as is the case with
+some of us and may be the case with all) and when they have to write a
+poem twelve times over, as Mr. Kenyon says I should do if I were
+virtuous? Not that I do it. Does anybody do it, I wonder? Do _you_,
+ever? From what you tell me of the trimming of the light, I imagine
+not. And besides, one may be laborious as a writer, without copying
+twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a
+moment what three times six is, without 'doing it' on their fingers;
+and in the same way one may work one's verses in one's head quite as
+laboriously as on paper--I maintain it. I consider myself a very
+patient, laborious writer--though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn
+when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were
+netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my
+stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste,
+I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by
+the mind, _will_ draw and concentrate the powers of the mind--and Art,
+you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man--or woman. I
+cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one--though
+one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,--and though all
+are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility--and to
+entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of
+facility. You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like
+Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet
+on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the
+twenty and the three. And also, as you say, the lamp is trimmed behind
+the wall--and the act of utterance is the evidence of foregone study
+still more than it is the occasion to study. The deep interest with
+which I read all that you had the kindness to write to me of yourself,
+you must trust me for, as I find it hard to express it. It is sympathy
+in one way, and interest every way! And now, see! Although you proved
+to me with admirable logic that, for reasons which you know and
+reasons which you don't know, I couldn't possibly know anything about
+you; though that is all true--and proven (which is better than
+true)--I really did understand of you before I was told, exactly what
+you told me. Yes, I did indeed. I felt sure that as a poet you fronted
+the future--and that your chief works, in your own apprehension, were
+to come. Oh--I take no credit of sagacity for it; as I did not long
+ago to my sisters and brothers, when I professed to have knowledge of
+all their friends whom I never saw in my life, by the image coming
+with the name; and threw them into shouts of laughter by giving out
+all the blue eyes and black eyes and hazel eyes and noses Roman and
+Gothic ticketed aright for the Mr. Smiths and Miss Hawkinses,--and hit
+the bull's eye and the true features of the case, ten times out of
+twelve! But _you_ are different. _You_ are to be made out by the
+comparative anatomy system. You have thrown out fragments of _os_ ...
+_sublime_ ... indicative of soul-mammothism--and you live to develop
+your nature,--_if_ you live. That is easy and plain. You have taken a
+great range--from those high faint notes of the mystics which are
+beyond personality ... to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature,
+'gr-r-r- you swine'; and when these are thrown into harmony, as in a
+manner they are in 'Pippa Passes' (which I could find in my heart to
+covet the authorship of, more than any of your works--), the
+combinations of effect must always be striking and noble--and you must
+feel yourself drawn on to such combinations more and more. But I do
+not, you say, know yourself--you. I only know abilities and faculties.
+Well, then, teach me yourself--you. I will not insist on the
+knowledge--and, in fact, you have not written the R.B. poem yet--your
+rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight. I see you only in
+your moon. Do tell me all of yourself that you can and will ... before
+the R.B. poem comes out. And what is 'Luria'? A poem and not a drama?
+I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you
+sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works
+into the great mill of the 'rank, popular' playhouse, to be ground to
+pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one,
+would as soon have 'my soul among lions.' 'There is a fascination in
+it,' says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for
+it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but to distil the dregs of the
+public and baptise oneself in that acrid moisture, where can be the
+temptation? I could swear by Shakespeare, as was once sworn 'by those
+dead at Marathon,' that I do not see where. I love the drama too. I
+look to our old dramatists as to our Kings and princes in poetry. I
+love them through all the deeps of their abominations. But the theatre
+in those days was a better medium between the people and the poet; and
+the press in those days was a less sufficient medium than now. Still,
+the poet suffered by the theatre even then; and the reasons are very
+obvious.
+
+How true--how true ... is all you say about critics. My convictions
+follow you in every word. And I delighted to read your views of the
+poet's right aspect towards criticism--I read them with the most
+complete appreciation and sympathy. I have sometimes thought that it
+would be a curious and instructive process, as illustrative of the
+wisdom and apprehensiveness of critics, if anyone would collect the
+critical soliloquies of every age touching its own literature, (as far
+as such may be extant) and _confer_ them with the literary product of
+the said ages. Professor Wilson has begun something of the kind
+apparently, in his initiatory paper of the last _Blackwood_ number on
+critics, beginning with Dryden--but he seems to have no design in his
+notice--it is a mere critique on the critic. And then, he should have
+begun earlier than Dryden--earlier even than Sir Philip Sydney, who in
+the noble 'Discourse on Poetry,' gives such singular evidence of being
+stone-critic-blind to the gods who moved around him. As far as I can
+remember, he saw even Shakespeare but indifferently. Oh, it was in his
+eyes quite an unillumed age, that period of Elizabeth which _we_ see
+full of suns! and few can see what is close to the eyes though they
+run their heads against it; the denial of contemporary genius is the
+rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest,
+till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown. And here we
+speak of understanding men, such as the Sydneys and the Drydens. Of
+the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better
+than might be expected of their badness, only the fact of their
+_influence_ is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not
+be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the
+world over. But the influence is for to-day, for this hour--not for
+to-morrow and the day after--unless indeed, as you say, the poet do
+himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it. Do you know
+Tennyson?--that is, with a face to face knowledge? I have great
+admiration for him. In execution, he is exquisite,--and, in music, a
+most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs. That such a poet
+should submit blindly to the suggestions of his critics, (I do not say
+that suggestions from without may not be accepted with discrimination
+sometimes, to the benefit of the acceptor), blindly and implicitly to
+the suggestions of his critics, is much as if Babbage were to take my
+opinion and undo his calculating machine by it. Napoleon called poetry
+_science creuse_--which, although he was not scientific in poetry
+himself, is true enough. But anybody is qualified, according to
+everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chymistry
+and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But
+then these are more serious things.
+
+Yes--and it does delight me to hear of your garden full of roses and
+soul full of comforts! You have the right to both--you have the key to
+both. You have written enough to live by, though only beginning to
+write, as you say of yourself. And this reminds me to remind you that
+when I talked of coveting most the authorship of your 'Pippa,' I did
+not mean to call it your finest work (you might reproach me for
+_that_), but just to express a personal feeling. Do you know what it
+is to covet your neighbour's poetry?--not his fame, but his poetry?--I
+dare say not. You are too generous. And, in fact, beauty is beauty,
+and, whether it comes by our own hand or another's, blessed be the
+coming of it! _I_, besides, feel _that_. And yet--and yet, I have been
+aware of a feeling within me which has spoken two or three times to
+the effect of a wish, that I had been visited with the vision of
+'Pippa,' before you--and _confiteor tibi_--I confess the baseness of
+it. The conception is, to my mind, most exquisite and altogether
+original--and the contrast in the working out of the plan, singularly
+expressive of various faculty.
+
+Is the poem under your thumb, emerging from it? and in what metre? May
+I ask such questions?
+
+And does Mr. Carlyle tell you that he has forbidden all 'singing' to
+this perverse and froward generation, which should work and not sing?
+And have you told Mr. Carlyle that song is work, and also the
+condition of work? I am a devout sitter at his feet--and it is an
+effort to me to think him wrong in anything--and once when he told me
+to write prose and not verse, I fancied that his opinion was I had
+mistaken my calling,--a fancy which in infinite kindness and
+gentleness he stooped immediately to correct. I never shall forget the
+grace of that kindness--but then! For _him_ to have thought ill of
+_me_, would not have been strange--I often think ill of myself, as God
+knows. But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season,
+the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my
+thoughts ever since. I do not know him personally at all. But as his
+disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems,
+and I heard from him as a consequence. 'Dear and noble' he is
+indeed--and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You
+feel it so--do you not? And the 'dear sir' has let him have the
+'letter of Cromwell,' I hope; and satisfied 'the obedient servant.'
+The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the
+upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the
+Romans in the farmyard--and it seems all quite natural that it should
+be so, both to geese and Romans!
+
+But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for
+reasons which I know and for reasons which I don't know. You will let
+me be grateful to you,--will you not? You must, if you will or not.
+And also--I would not wait for more leave--if I could but see your
+desk--as I do your death's heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but
+the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.
+
+                                      Ever faithfully yours,
+
+                                           ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Wednesday Morning--Spring!
+                             [Post-mark, February 26, 1845.]
+
+Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in
+Spring I shall see you, surely see you--for when did I once fail to
+get whatever I had set my heart upon? As I ask myself sometimes, with
+a strange fear.
+
+I took up this paper to write a great deal--now, I don't think I shall
+write much--'I shall see you,' I say!
+
+That 'Luria' you enquire about, shall be my last play--for it is but a
+play, woe's me! I have one done here, 'A Soul's Tragedy,' as it is
+properly enough called, but _that_ would not do to end with (end I
+will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello's country, and devotes himself
+to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows--all in
+my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my
+Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan,
+good true fellow, this one), and Domizia the Lady--loosen all these on
+dear foolish (ravishing must his folly be), golden-hearted Luria, all
+these with their worldly-wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways; and, for me,
+the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with these as with
+him,--so there can no good come of keeping this wild company any
+longer, and 'Luria' and the other sadder ruin of one Chiappino--these
+got rid of, I will do as you bid me, and--say first I have some
+Romances and Lyrics, all dramatic, to dispatch, and _then_, I shall
+stoop of a sudden under and out of this dancing ring of men and women
+hand in hand, and stand still awhile, should my eyes dazzle, and when
+that's over, they will be gone and you will be there, _pas vrai_? For,
+as I think I told you, I always shiver involuntarily when I look--no,
+glance--at this First Poem of mine to be. '_Now_,' I call it, what,
+upon my soul,--for a solemn matter it is,--what is to be done _now_,
+believed _now_, so far as it has been revealed to me--solemn words,
+truly--and to find myself writing them to any one else! Enough now.
+
+I know Tennyson 'face to face,'--no more than that. I know Carlyle and
+love him--know him so well, that I would have told you he had shaken
+that grand head of his at 'singing,' so thoroughly does he love and
+live by it. When I last saw him, a fortnight ago, he turned, from I
+don't know what other talk, quite abruptly on me with, 'Did you never
+try to write a _Song_? Of all things in the world, _that_ I should be
+proudest to do.' Then came his definition of a song--then, with an
+appealing look to Mrs. C., 'I always say that some day in _spite of
+nature and my stars_, I shall burst into a song' (he is not
+mechanically 'musical,' he meant, and the music is the poetry, he
+holds, and should enwrap the thought as Donne says 'an amber-drop
+enwraps a bee'), and then he began to recite an old Scotch song,
+stopping at the first rude couplet, 'The beginning words are merely to
+set the tune, they tell me'--and then again at the couplet about--or,
+to the effect that--'give me' (but in broad Scotch) 'give me but my
+lass, I care not for my cogie.' '_He says_,' quoth Carlyle
+magisterially, 'that if you allow him the love of his lass, you may
+take away all else, even his cogie, his cup or can, and he cares not,'
+just as a professor expounds Lycophron. And just before I left
+England, six months ago, did not I hear him croon, if not certainly
+sing, 'Charlie is my darling' ('my _darling_' with an adoring
+emphasis), and then he stood back, as it were, from the song, to look
+at it better, and said 'How must that notion of ideal wondrous
+perfection have impressed itself in this old Jacobite's "young
+Cavalier"--("They go to save their land, and the _young
+Cavalier_!!")--when I who care nothing about such a rag of a man,
+cannot but feel as he felt, in speaking his words after him!' After
+saying which, he would be sure to counsel everybody to get their heads
+clear of all singing! Don't let me forget to clap hands, we got the
+letter, dearly bought as it was by the 'Dear Sirs,' &c., and
+insignificant scrap as it proved, but still it is got, to my
+encouragement in diplomacy.
+
+Who told you of my sculls and spider webs--Horne? Last year I petted
+extraordinarily a fine fellow, (a _garden_ spider--there was the
+singularity,--the thin clever-even-for-a-spider-sort, and they are
+_so_ 'spirited and sly,' all of them--this kind makes a long cone of
+web, with a square chamber of vantage at the end, and there he sits
+loosely and looks about), a great fellow that housed himself, with
+real gusto, in the jaws of a great scull, whence he watched me as I
+wrote, and I remember speaking to Horne about his good points.
+Phrenologists look gravely at that great scull, by the way, and hope,
+in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end. He looks
+quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind. I have no little
+insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with
+a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for
+instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits
+obliged to face each other for ever,--prints put together in
+portfolios. My Polidoro's perfect Andromeda along with 'Boors
+Carousing,' by Ostade,--where I found her,--my own father's doing, or
+I would say more.
+
+And when I have said I like 'Pippa' better than anything else I have
+done yet, I shall have answered all you bade me. And now may _I_
+begin questioning? No,--for it is all a pure delight to me, so that
+you do but write. I never was without good, kind, generous friends and
+lovers, so they say--so they were and are,--perhaps they came at the
+wrong time--I never wanted them--though that makes no difference in my
+gratitude I trust,--but I know myself--surely--and always have done
+so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a
+boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, _his_ marginal note that
+'the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in
+a sane human being.' So I never deceived myself much, nor called my
+feelings for people other than they were. And who has a right to say,
+if I have not, that I had, but I said that, supernatural or no. Pray
+tell me, too, of your present doings and projects, and never write
+yourself 'grateful' to me, who _am_ grateful, very grateful to
+you,--for none of your words but I take in earnest--and tell me if
+Spring _be not_ coming, come, and I will take to writing the gravest
+of letters, because this beginning is for gladness' sake, like
+Carlyle's song couplet. My head aches a little to-day too, and, as
+poor dear Kirke White said to the moon, from his heap of mathematical
+papers,
+
+    'I throw aside the learned sheet;
+    I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so--mildly sweet.'
+
+Out on the foolish phrase, but there's hard rhyming without it.
+
+                                      Ever yours faithfully,
+
+                                           ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                           50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.
+
+Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new
+'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets.
+To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow--it feels
+as cold underfoot--and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the
+turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart,
+and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. _That_ is
+my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the _new style_! A little
+later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from
+which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at
+all. How happy you are, to be able to listen to the 'birds' without
+the commentary of the east wind, which, like other commentaries,
+spoils the music. And how happy I am to listen to you, when you write
+such kind open-hearted letters to me! I am delighted to hear all you
+say to me of yourself, and 'Luria,' and the spider, and to do him no
+dishonour in the association, of the great teacher of the age,
+Carlyle, who is also yours and mine. He fills the office of a
+poet--does he not?--by analysing humanity back into its elements, to
+the destruction of the conventions of the hour. That is--strictly
+speaking--the office of the poet, is it not?--and he discharges it
+fully, and with a wider intelligibility perhaps as far as the
+contemporary period is concerned, than if he did forthwith 'burst into
+a song.'
+
+But how I do wander!--I meant to say, and I will call myself back to
+say, that spring will really come some day I hope and believe, and the
+warm settled weather with it, and that then I shall be probably fitter
+for certain pleasures than I can appear even to myself now.
+
+And, in the meantime, I seem to see 'Luria' instead of you; I have
+visions and dream dreams. And the 'Soul's Tragedy,' which sounds to me
+like the step of a ghost of an old Drama! and you are not to think
+that I blaspheme the Drama, dear Mr. Browning; or that I ever thought
+of exhorting you to give up the 'solemn robes' and tread of the
+buskin. It is the theatre which vulgarises these things; the modern
+theatre in which we see no altar! where the thymelé is replaced by the
+caprice of a popular actor. And also, I have a fancy that your great
+dramatic power would work more clearly and audibly in the less
+definite mould--but you ride your own faculty as Oceanus did his
+sea-horse, 'directing it by your will'; and woe to the impertinence,
+which would dare to say 'turn this way' or 'turn from that way'--it
+should not be _my_ impertinence. Do not think I blaspheme the Drama. I
+have gone through 'all such reading as should never be read' (that is,
+by women!), through my love of it on the contrary. And the dramatic
+faculty is strong in you--and therefore, as 'I speak unto a wise man,
+judge what I say.'
+
+For myself and my own doings, you shall hear directly what I have been
+doing, and what I am about to do. Some years ago, as perhaps you may
+have heard, (but I hope not, for the fewer who hear of it the
+better)--some years ago, I translated or rather _undid_ into English,
+the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus. To speak of this production moderately
+(not modestly), it is the most miserable of all miserable versions of
+the class. It was completed (in the first place) in thirteen days--the
+iambics thrown into blank verse, the lyrics into rhymed octosyllabics
+and the like,--and the whole together as cold as Caucasus, and as flat
+as the nearest plain. To account for this, the haste may be something;
+but if my mind had been properly awakened at the time, I might have
+made still more haste and done it better. Well,--the comfort is, that
+the little book was unadvertised and unknown, and that most of the
+copies (through my entreaty of my father) are shut up in the wardrobe
+of his bedroom. If ever I get well I shall show my joy by making a
+bonfire of them. In the meantime, the recollection of this sin of mine
+has been my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot
+on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst
+not say I did it'--I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away
+the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an
+honest straightforward proof of repentance--was it not? and I have
+completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If
+Æschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little
+breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed according
+to his claims, but in proportion to my faculty. Whether I shall ever
+publish or not (remember) remains to be considered--that is a
+different side of the subject. If I do, it _may_ be in a
+magazine--or--but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head
+to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,--not a long
+poem, but a monologue of Æschylus as he sate a blind exile on the
+flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before
+the eagle cracked his great massy skull with a stone.
+
+But my chief _intention_ just now is the writing of a sort of
+novel-poem--a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,'
+running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into
+drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so,
+meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and
+speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my
+intention. It is not mature enough yet to be called a plan. I am
+waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one,
+and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties
+with them in the treatment.
+
+Who told me of your skulls and spiders? Why, couldn't I know it
+without being told? Did Cornelius Agrippa know nothing without being
+told? Mr. Horne never spoke it to my ears--(I never saw him face to
+face in my life, although we have corresponded for long and long), and
+he never wrote it to my eyes. Perhaps he does not know that I know it.
+Well, then! if I were to say that _I heard it from you yourself_, how
+would you answer? _And it was so._ Why, are you not aware that these
+are the days of mesmerism and clairvoyance? Are you an infidel? I have
+believed in your skulls for the last year, for my part.
+
+And I have some sympathy in your habit of feeling for chairs and
+tables. I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little
+clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly
+because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I
+was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the
+pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses
+written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them,
+but from pure gratitude. Other books I used to treat in a like
+manner--and to talk to the trees and the flowers, was a natural
+inclination--but between me and that time, the cypresses grow thick
+and dark.
+
+Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they _do_, are
+they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them _un_fulfilled? Oh,
+this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost
+believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of
+the window--at least, for me.
+
+Of course you are _self-conscious_--How could you be a poet otherwise?
+Tell me.
+
+                                      Ever faithfully yours,
+
+                                           E.B.B.
+
+And was the little book written with Mr. Mill, pure metaphysics, or
+what?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--I seem to find of a sudden--surely I knew
+before--anyhow, I _do_ find now, that with the octaves on octaves of
+quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp
+with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you
+touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this
+morning, 'just escaping' &c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as
+they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do!
+See now, this sad feeling is so strange to me, that I must write it
+out, _must_, and you might give me great, the greatest pleasure for
+years and yet find me as passive as a stone used to wine libations,
+and as ready in expressing my sense of them, but when I am pained, I
+find the old theory of the uselessness of communicating the
+circumstances of it, singularly untenable. I have been 'spoiled' in
+this world--to such an extent, indeed, that I often _reason_ out--make
+clear to myself--that I might very properly, so far as myself am
+concerned, take any step that would peril the whole of my future
+happiness--because the past is gained, secure, and on record; and,
+though not another of the old days should dawn on me, I shall not have
+lost my life, no! Out of all which you are--please--to make a sort of
+sense, if you can, so as to express that I have been deeply struck to
+find a new real unmistakable sorrow along with these as real but not
+so new joys you have given me. How strangely this connects itself in
+my mind with another subject in your note! I looked at that
+translation for a minute, not longer, years ago, knowing nothing about
+it or you, and I _only_ looked to see what rendering a passage had
+received that was often in my thoughts.[1] I forget your version (it
+was not _yours_, my _'yours' then_; I mean I had no extraordinary
+interest about it), but the original makes Prometheus (telling over
+his bestowments towards human happiness) say, as something [Greek:
+peraiterô tônde], that he stopped mortals [Greek: mê proderkesthai
+moron--to poion eurôn], asks the Chorus, [Greek: têsde pharmakon
+nosou]? Whereto he replies, [Greek: tuphlas en autois elpidas
+katôkisa] (what you hear men dissertate upon by the hour, as proving
+the immortality of the soul apart from revelation, undying yearnings,
+restless longings, instinctive desires which, unless to be eventually
+indulged, it were cruel to plant in us, &c. &c.). But, [Greek: meg'
+ôphelêma tout' edôrêsô brotois]! concludes the chorus, like a sigh
+from the admitted Eleusinian Æschylus was! You cannot think how this
+foolish circumstance struck me this evening, so I thought I would e'en
+tell you at once and be done with it. Are you not my dear friend
+already, and shall I not use you? And pray you not to 'lean out of the
+window' when my own foot is only on the stair; do wait a little for
+
+                                          Yours _ever_,
+
+                                               R.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: The following is the version of the passage in Mrs.
+Browning's later translation of the 'Prometheus' (II. 247-251 of the
+original):
+
+_Prom._              I did restrain besides
+             My mortals from premeditating death.
+
+_Cho._ How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?
+
+_Prom._ I set blind hopes to inhabit in their house.
+
+_Cho._ By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                              March 5, 1845.
+
+But I did not mean to strike a 'tragic chord'; indeed I did not!
+Sometimes one's melancholy will be uppermost and sometimes one's
+mirth,--the world goes round, you know--and I suppose that in that
+letter of mine the melancholy took the turn. As to 'escaping with my
+life,' it was just a phrase--at least it did not signify more than
+that the sense of mortality, and discomfort of it, is peculiarly
+strong with me when east winds are blowing and waters freezing. For
+the rest, I am _essentially better_, and have been for several
+winters; and I feel as if it were intended for me to live and not die,
+and I am reconciled to the feeling. Yes! I am satisfied to 'take up'
+with the blind hopes again, and have them in the house with me, for
+all that I sit by the window. By the way, did the chorus utter scorn
+in the [Greek: meg' ôphelêma]. I think not. It is well to fly towards
+the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of
+wings against the windowpanes, is it not?
+
+There is an obscurer passage, on which I covet your thoughts, where
+Prometheus, after the sublime declaration that, with a full knowledge
+of the penalty reserved for him, he had sinned of free will and
+choice--goes on to say--or to seem to say--that he had _not_, however,
+foreseen the extent and detail of the torment, the skiey rocks, and
+the friendless desolation. See v. 275. The intention of the poet
+might have been to magnify to his audience the torment of the
+martyrdom--but the heroism of the martyr diminishes in proportion--and
+there appears to be a contradiction, and oversight. Or is my view
+wrong? Tell me. And tell me too, if Æschylus not the divinest of all
+the divine Greek souls? People say after Quintilian, that he is savage
+and rude; a sort of poetic Orson, with his locks all wild. But I will
+not hear it of my master! He is strong as Zeus is--and not as a
+boxer--and tender as Power itself, which always is tenderest.
+
+But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not
+to think--whatever I may have written or implied--that I lean either
+to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through
+darkness instead of light, and speaks of it wailingly. Now, may God
+forbid that it should be so with me. I am not desponding by nature,
+and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily
+seclusion, I come out with two learnt lessons (as I sometimes say and
+oftener feel),--the wisdom of cheerfulness--and the duty of social
+intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in
+society; it has been a wholesome and not unnatural reaction. And
+altogether, I may say that the earth looks the brighter to me in
+proportion to my own deprivations. The laburnum trees and rose trees
+are plucked up by the roots--but the sunshine is in their places, and
+the root of the sunshine is above the storms. What we call Life is a
+condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and
+wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these
+faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.
+
+And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to _happiness_, and I
+feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.
+Still, it is obvious too that you have been spared, up to this time,
+the great natural afflictions, against which we are nearly all called,
+sooner or later, to struggle and wrestle--or your step would not be
+'on the stair' quite so lightly. And so, we turn to you, dear Mr.
+Browning, for comfort and gentle spiriting! Remember that as you owe
+your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. And I
+thank you for some of it already.
+
+Also, writing as from friend to friend--as you say rightly that we
+are--I ought to confess that of one class of griefs (which has been
+called too the bitterest), I know as little as you. The cruelty of the
+world, and the treason of it--the unworthiness of the dearest; of
+these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal
+experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions,
+and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the
+moralists. People have been kind to _me_, even without understanding
+me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:--nay, have not the
+very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as
+sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world,
+though I am not of it, as you see. And I have the cream of it in your
+friendship, and a little more, and I do not envy much the milkers of
+the cows.
+
+How kind you are!--how kindly and gently you speak to me! Some things
+you say are very touching, and some, surprising; and although I am
+aware that you unconsciously exaggerate what I can be to you, yet it
+is delightful to be broad awake and think of you as my friend.
+
+May God bless you!
+
+                                           Faithfully yours,
+
+                                               ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 12, 1845.]
+
+Your letter made me so happy, dear Miss Barrett, that I have kept
+quiet this while; is it too great a shame if I begin to want more
+good news of you, and to say so? Because there has been a bitter wind
+ever since. Will you grant me a great favour? Always when you write,
+though about your own works, not Greek plays merely, put me in,
+_always_, a little official bulletin-line that shall say 'I am better'
+or 'still better,' will you? That is done, then--and now, what do I
+wish to tell you first? The poem you propose to make, for the times;
+the fearless fresh living work you describe, is the _only_ Poem to be
+undertaken now by you or anyone that _is_ a Poet at all; the only
+reality, only effective piece of service to be rendered God and man;
+it is what I have been all my life intending to do, and now shall be
+much, much nearer doing, since you will along with me. And you _can_
+do it, I know and am sure--so sure, that I could find in my heart to
+be jealous of your stopping in the way even to translate the
+Prometheus; though the accompanying monologue will make amends too. Or
+shall I set you a task I meant for myself once upon a time?--which,
+oh, how you would fulfil! Restore the Prometheus [Greek: purphoros] as
+Shelley did the [Greek: Lyomenos]; when I say 'restore,' I know, or
+very much fear, that the [Greek: purphoros] was the same with the
+[Greek: purkaeus] which, by a fragment, we sorrowfully ascertain to
+have been a Satyric Drama; but surely the capabilities of the subject
+are much greater than in this, we now wonder at; nay, they include all
+those of this last--for just see how magnificently the story unrolls
+itself. The beginning of Jupiter's dynasty, the calm in Heaven after
+the storm, the ascending--(stop, I will get the book and give the
+words), [Greek: opôs tachista ton patrôon eis thronon kathezet',
+euthus daimosin nemei gera alloisin alla--k.t.l.],[1] all the while
+Prometheus being the first among the first in honour, as [Greek:
+kaitoi theoisi tois neois toutois gera tis allos, ê 'gô, pantelôs
+diôrise]?[2] then the one black hand-cloudlet storming the joyous
+blue and gold everywhere, [Greek: brotôn de tôn talaipôrôn logon ouk
+eschen oudena],[3] and the design of Zeus to blot out the whole race,
+and plant a new one. And Prometheus with his grand solitary [Greek:
+egô d' etolmêsa],[4] and his saving them, as the _first_ good, from
+annihilation. Then comes the darkening brow of Zeus, and estrangement
+from the benign circle of grateful gods, and the dissuasion of old
+confederates, and all the Right that one may fancy in Might, the
+strongest reasons [Greek: pauesthai tropou philanthrôpou][5] coming
+from the own mind of the Titan, if you will, and all the while he
+shall be proceeding steadily in the alleviation of the sufferings of
+mortals whom, [Greek: nêpious ontas to prin, ennous kai phrenôn
+epêbolous ethêke],[6] while still, in proportion, shall the doom he is
+about to draw on himself, manifest itself more and more distinctly,
+till at the last, he shall achieve the salvation of man, body (by the
+gift of fire) and soul (by even those [Greek: tuphlai elpides],[7]
+hopes of immortality), and so having rendered him utterly, according
+to the mythos here, _independent_ of Jove--for observe, Prometheus in
+the play never talks of helping mortals more, of fearing for them
+more, of even benefiting them more by his sufferings. The rest is
+between Jove and himself; he will reveal the master-secret to Jove
+when he shall have released him, &c. There is no stipulation that the
+gifts to mortals shall be continued; indeed, by the fact that it is
+Prometheus who hangs on Caucasus while 'the ephemerals possess fire,'
+one sees that somehow mysteriously _they_ are past Jove's harming now.
+Well, this wholly achieved, the price is as wholly accepted, and off
+into the darkness passes in calm triumphant grandeur the Titan, with
+Strength and Violence, and Vulcan's silent and downcast eyes, and then
+the gold clouds and renewed flushings of felicity shut up the scene
+again, with Might in his old throne again, yet with a new element of
+mistrust, and conscious shame, and fear, that writes significantly
+enough above all the glory and rejoicing that all is not as it was,
+nor will ever be. Such might be the framework of your Drama, just what
+cannot help striking one at first glance, and would not such a Drama
+go well before your translation? Do think of this and tell me--it
+nearly writes itself. You see, I meant the [Greek: meg' ôphelêma][8]
+to be a deep great truth; if there were no life beyond this, I think
+the hope in one would be an incalculable blessing _for_ this life,
+which is melancholy for one like Æschylus to feel, if he could _only_
+hope, because the argument as to the ulterior good of those hopes is
+cut clean away, and what had he left?
+
+I do not find it take away from my feeling of the magnanimity of
+Prometheus that he should, in truth, complain (as he does from
+beginning to end) of what he finds himself suffering. He could have
+prevented all, and can stop it now--of that he never thinks for a
+moment. That was the old Greek way--they never let an antagonistic
+passion neutralise the other which was to influence the man to his
+praise or blame. A Greek hero fears exceedingly and battles it out,
+cries out when he is wounded and fights on, does not say his love or
+hate makes him see no danger or feel no pain. Æschylus from first word
+to last ([Greek: idesthe me, oia paschô][9] to [Greek: esoras me, hôs
+ekdika paschô][10]) insists on the unmitigated reality of the
+punishment which only the sun, and divine ether, and the godhead of
+his mother can comprehend; still, still that is only what I suppose
+Æschylus to have done--in your poem you shall make Prometheus our way.
+
+And now enough of Greek, which I am fast forgetting (for I never look
+at books I loved once)--it was your mention of the translation that
+brought out the old fast fading outlines of the Poem in my brain--the
+Greek poem, that is. You think--for I must get to _you_--that I
+'unconsciously exaggerate what you are to me.' Now, you don't know
+what _that_ is, nor can I very well tell you, because the language
+with which I talk to myself of these matters is spiritual Attic, and
+'loves contractions,' as grammarians say; but I read it myself, and
+well know what it means, that's why I told you I was self-conscious--I
+meant that I never yet mistook my own feelings, one for
+another--there! Of what use is talking? Only do you stay here with me
+in the 'House' these few short years. Do you think I shall see you in
+two months, three months? I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to
+like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated
+it--have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by
+foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true
+time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I
+have done most of what is to be done, _any_ lodge in a garden of
+cucumbers for me! I don't even care about reading now--the world, and
+pictures of it, rather than writings about the world! But you must
+read books in order to get words and forms for 'the public' if you
+_write_, and _that_ you needs must do, if you fear God. I have no
+pleasure in writing myself--none, in the mere act--though all pleasure
+in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real
+best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a
+poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other! But I think
+you like the operation of writing as I should like that of painting or
+making music, do you not? After all, there is a great delight in the
+heart of the thing; and use and forethought have made me ready at all
+times to set to work--but--I don't know why--my heart sinks whenever I
+open this desk, and rises when I shut it. Yet but for what I have
+written you would never have heard of me--and _through_ what you have
+written, not properly _for_ it, I love and wish you well! Now, will
+you remember what I began my letter by saying--how you have promised
+to let me know if my wishing takes effect, and if you still continue
+better? And not even ... (since we are learned in magnanimity) don't
+even tell me that or anything else, if it teases you,--but wait your
+own good time, and know me for ... if these words were but my own, and
+fresh-minted for this moment's use!...
+
+                                      Yours ever faithfully,
+
+                                           R. BROWNING.
+
+[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Prometheus_, 228ff.:
+
+                                'When at first
+    He filled his father's throne, he instantly
+    Made various gifts of glory to the gods.']
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ib._ 439, 440:
+
+    'For see--their honours to these new-made gods,
+    What other gave but I?']
+
+[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 231, 232:
+
+                 'Alone of men,
+    Of miserable men, he took no count.']
+
+[Footnote 4: _Ib._ 235: 'But I dared it.']
+
+[Footnote 5: _Ib._ 11: 'Leave off his old trick of loving man.']
+
+[Footnote 6: _Ib._ 443, 444:
+
+                   'Being fools before,
+    I made them wise and true in aim of soul.']
+
+[Footnote 7: _Ib._ 250: 'Blind hopes.']
+
+[Footnote 8: _Ib._ 251: 'A great benefit.']
+
+[Footnote 9: _Ib._ 92: 'Behold what I suffer.']
+
+[Footnote 10: _Ib._ 1093: 'Dost see how I suffer this wrong?']
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                          50 Wimpole Street: March 20, 1845.
+
+Whenever I delay to write to you, dear Mr. Browning, it is not, be
+sure, that I take my 'own good time,' but submit to my own bad time.
+It was kind of you to wish to know how I was, and not unkind of me to
+suspend my answer to your question--for indeed I have not been very
+well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather!
+this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be
+well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been
+nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be--I only grow
+weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a
+corner--and then all this must end! April is coming. There will be
+both a May and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps,
+after all, we may. And as to seeing _you_ besides, I observe that you
+distrust me, and that perhaps you penetrate my morbidity and guess how
+when the moment comes to see a living human face to which I am not
+accustomed, I shrink and grow pale in the spirit. Do you? You are
+learned in human nature, and you know the consequences of leading such
+a secluded life as mine--notwithstanding all my fine philosophy about
+social duties and the like--well--if you have such knowledge or if you
+have it not, I cannot say, but I do say that I will indeed see you
+when the warm weather has revived me a little, and put the earth 'to
+rights' again so as to make pleasures of the sort possible. For if you
+think that I shall not _like_ to see you, you are wrong, for all your
+learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first--though I am not, in
+writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that
+have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely--quivering at a
+step and breath.
+
+And what you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts
+of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life
+full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with
+_sorrow_, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I
+was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the
+world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than
+I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the
+country--had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and
+poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards
+the ground like an untrained honeysuckle--and but for _one_, in my own
+house--but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green
+like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in--and
+domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about
+the grass. And so time passed, and passed--and afterwards, when my
+illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all
+done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the
+threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some
+bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life had given me room and
+time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was about to
+leave--that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters
+of the earth were _names_ to me, that I had beheld no great mountain
+or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read
+Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also
+know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live
+on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that
+I labour under signal disadvantages--that I am, in a manner, as a
+_blind poet_? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have
+had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness
+and self-analysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main.
+But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering,
+ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life
+and man, for some....
+
+But all grumbling is a vile thing. We should all thank God for our
+measures of life, and think them enough for each of us. I write so,
+that you may not mistake what I wrote before in relation to society,
+although you do not see from my point of view; and that you may
+understand what I mean fully when I say, that I have lived all my
+chief _joys_, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that
+name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone.
+Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I
+write--it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink
+and breathe,--but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of
+being, passionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition
+surely--not always--but when the wheel goes round and the procession
+is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? oh--it must be so. For the
+rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular
+case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly
+transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of
+power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment;
+and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote
+a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took
+me at the right moment! I have a _seasonable_ humility, I do assure
+you.
+
+How delightful to talk about oneself; but as you 'tempted me and I did
+eat,' I entreat your longsuffering of my sin, and ah! if you would
+but sin back so in turn! You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious
+harmony ... as in the 'si no, si no' of an Italian duet. I want to see
+more of men, and you have seen too much, you say. I am in ignorance,
+and you, in satiety. 'You don't even care about reading now.' Is it
+possible? And I am as 'fresh' about reading, as ever I was--as long as
+I keep out of the shadow of the dictionaries and of theological
+controversies, and the like. Shall I whisper it to you under the
+memory of the last rose of last summer? _I am very fond of romances_;
+yes! and I read them not only as some wise people are known to do, for
+the sake of the eloquence here and the sentiment there, and the
+graphic intermixtures here and there, but for the story! just as
+little children would, sitting on their papa's knee. My childish love
+of a story never wore out with my love of plum cake, and now there is
+not a hole in it. I make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the
+romances that other people are kind enough to write--and woe to the
+miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in
+you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If
+you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself--I give you
+notice,--with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite
+laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,'
+with a sort of deprecating reference to the _descriptions_ in the
+book, just as if I never read a novel--_I!_ I wrote a confession back
+to him which made him shake his head perhaps, and now I confess to
+_you_, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague,
+listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not
+even 'see the better part,' I am so silly.
+
+Ah! you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! _I_, who have just
+escaped with my life, after treading Milton's ground, you would send
+me to Æschylus's. No, _I do not dare_. And besides ... I am inclined
+to think that we want new _forms_, as well as thoughts. The old gods
+are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds, classical
+moulds, as they are so improperly called? If it is a necessity of Art
+to do so, why then those critics are right who hold that Art is
+exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my
+part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be
+the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to _Life_,
+and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these
+conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it
+instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For
+there is poetry _everywhere_; the 'treasure' (see the old fable) lies
+all over the field. And then Christianity is a worthy _myth_, and
+poetically acceptable.
+
+I had much to say to you, or at least something, of the 'blind hopes'
+&c., but am ashamed to take a step into a new sheet. If you mean 'to
+travel,' why, I shall have to miss you. Do you really mean it? How is
+the play going on? and the poem?
+
+May God bless you!
+
+                                       Ever and truly yours,
+
+                                            E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Monday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 31, 1845.]
+
+When you read Don Quixote, my dear romance-reader, do you ever notice
+that flower of an incident of good fellowship where the friendly
+Squire of Him of the Moon, or the Looking glasses, (I forget which)
+passes to Sancho's dry lips, (all under a cork-tree one morning)--a
+plump wine-skin,--and do you admire dear brave Miguel's knowledge of
+thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously
+considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be,
+fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a
+deep musing of an hour's length, or thereabouts, and then ... mark ...
+only _then_, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with ... such a
+piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and
+the Teian (if he wasn't a Byzantine monk, alas!) and our Mr. Kenyon's
+stately self--(since my own especial poet _à moi_, that can do all
+with anybody, only 'sips like a fly,' she says, and so cares not to
+compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)--Well, then ...
+(oh, I must get quick to the sentence's end, and be brief as an
+oracle-explainer!)--the giver is you and the taker is I, and the
+letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and
+the brown study is--how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this
+new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among
+men, that have each and all their friend, so they say (... not that I
+believe all they say--they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,--I once
+was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion
+'Dere Smith,--I calls you "_dere_" ... because you are so in your
+shop!')--and the great sigh is,--there is no deserving nor being
+grateful at all,--and the breaking silence is, and the praise is ...
+ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for
+you--10 strikes by the clock now--tell me if at 10 this morning you
+feel any good from my heart's wishes for you--I would give you all you
+want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that
+should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at
+me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid ...
+and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its
+owner 'travels' next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port
+wine--_Dii meliora piis_, and, among them to
+
+                   Yours every where, and at all times yours
+
+                        R. BROWNING.
+
+I have all to say yet--next letter. R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Night.
+                                [Post-mark, April 16, 1845.]
+
+I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the
+other evening, of Mr. Kenyon--how this wind must hurt you! And
+yesterday I had occasion to go your way--past, that is, Wimpole
+Street, the end of it,--and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave
+from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I
+came to yours,--much least than less, look up when I did come there.
+So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather
+loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of
+certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the 'Athenæum'
+last night,--one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it--'to such
+little purpose' said my friend--'for he is so inoffensive--now, if one
+were to style _you_ that--' 'Or you'--I said--and so we hugged
+ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the
+papers to-day about Maynooth, and a meeting presided over by Lord
+Mayor Gibbs, and the Reverend Mr. Somebody's speech. And Mrs. Norton
+has gone and book-made at a great rate about the Prince of Wales,
+pleasantly putting off till his time all that used of old to be put
+off till his mother's time;--altogether, I should dearly like to hear
+from you, but not till the wind goes, and sun comes--because I shall
+see Mr. Kenyon next week and get him to tell me some more. By the way,
+do you suppose anybody else looks like him? If you do, the first room
+full of real London people you go among you will fancy to be lighted
+up by a saucer of burning salt and spirits of wine in the back ground.
+
+Monday--last night when I could do nothing else I began to write to
+you, such writing as you have seen--strange! The proper time and
+season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech--when
+ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of
+mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you
+should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and _that_ is
+sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and
+sorrow,--and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little
+stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw
+breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But _you_ are
+the real deep wonder of a creature,--and I sail these paper-boats on
+you rather impudently. But I always mean to be very grave one
+day,--when I am in better spirits and can go _fuori di me_.
+
+And one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that all you gain
+by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done
+rightly in trusting to your innate ideas--or not rightly in
+distrusting them, as the case may be. You get, too, a little ...
+perhaps a considerable, good, in finding the world's accepted _moulds_
+everywhere, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal,--but
+not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After
+this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to
+yourself, that's all. Three scratches with a pen,[1] even with this
+pen,--and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and
+heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I
+have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all.
+
+                              Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett,
+
+                                   R. BROWNING.
+
+[Footnote 1: A rough sketch follows in the original.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Thursday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]
+
+If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not
+this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ...
+in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that
+the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the
+great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind;
+for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once
+to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all
+your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good
+to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was
+better that day--and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so
+long since. And _therefore_, I was logically bound to believe that you
+had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me!
+_That_ was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not
+been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your
+kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism.
+In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything--it
+_doesn't_, you know.
+
+But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and
+_motiving_, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was
+conclusive.
+
+Ah--but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well,
+for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view,
+and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say
+that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and
+act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one
+does--but every life requires a full experience, a various
+experience--and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has
+been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a
+lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the
+results in you from the external influences at work around you, that
+you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not
+_directly_, I know--but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever
+acts upon you, becomes _you_--and whatever you love or hate, whatever
+charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes _you_. Have
+you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel,
+just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his
+soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.
+
+As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but
+what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance--what a
+strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or
+something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin _manners_,
+... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account
+of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying
+that many can look like him or talk like him or _be_ like him. I know
+enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that
+I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true--I am
+getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel
+stronger in myself.
+
+But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music--and for the rest, there
+are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without
+being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! _if you think it worth
+while_!
+
+                                  Ever yours,
+
+                                       ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+And _is it_ nothing to be 'justified to one's self in one's
+resources?' '_That's all_,' indeed! For the 'soul's country' we will
+have it also--and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was
+by the way to see your letter!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Wednesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]
+
+If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the 'full stop' after
+'Morning' just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,--and how
+for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been
+reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it,
+and the folly of it....
+
+By this time you see what you have got in me--You ask me questions,
+'if I like novels,' 'if the "Improvisatore" is not good,' 'if travel
+and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,' and 'what I am
+devising--play or poem,'--and I shall not say I could not answer at
+all manner of lengths--but, let me only begin some good piece of
+writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was
+going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,--in a parallel
+case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the
+meaning--There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode
+of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,--well, you go
+breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last
+the end _must_ come, you feel--and the tangled threads draw to one,
+and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps
+them, the people, wonderfully on,--and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian
+Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,--and a detachment of the party is
+drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop
+behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady's
+uncle, 'in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a
+small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted
+wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the
+characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature'--this ends the
+page,--which you don't turn at once! But when you _do_, in bitterness
+of soul, turn it, you read--'On consideration, I' (Ben, himself)
+'shall keep them for Mr. Colburn's _New Magazine_'--and deeply you
+draw thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty
+sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings--you will ask what it
+means--and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and
+reasoning and all,--that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about
+whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I
+think of another)--
+
+I think I will really write verse to you some day--_this_ day, it is
+quite clear I had better give up trying.
+
+No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as
+Ophelia with her swan's-song,--for it grows too absurd. But remember
+that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and
+much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of
+truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in
+Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old
+belief--that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no
+more--pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante
+even--material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their
+thousands, on the contrary--strange that those great wide black eyes
+should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri,
+with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen
+tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with
+matting over it--as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of
+the soil they are said to spring from,--think of 'Saulle,' and his
+Greek attempts!
+
+I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he
+kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am
+sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the
+quarter to pray for--But surely the weather was a little better last
+week, and you, were you not better? And do you know--but it's all
+self-flattery I believe,--still I cannot help fancying the East wind
+does my head harm too!
+
+                                      Ever yours faithfully,
+
+                                           R. BROWNING.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                   Thursday.
+                                   [Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]
+
+People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the
+darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk
+a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once
+I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an
+argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor _you_ up) for a mere
+mystery. Nor that I can '_see what you have got in you_,' from a mere
+guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not
+because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our
+sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the
+lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see
+_you_ by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and
+because I am willing for you to know _me_ from the beginning, with all
+my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people
+who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you
+were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to _Colburn's
+Magazine_, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a
+perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in
+my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the
+right--why the end would be that _you_ would take to 'running after
+the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ...
+then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my
+desk...! (_Not_ a 'full stop'!.)
+
+Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making
+conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I
+wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps.
+Certainly not to _you_. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards
+to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you
+know,--and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of
+'making conversation' in a letter to _you_--never. Women are said to
+partake of the nature of children--and my brothers call me 'absurdly
+childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest'
+about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's!
+Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as
+you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of
+course. _But_--give me something to vow by--whatever you meant in the
+'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be
+much more wrong--which is a comfortable reflection.
+
+Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown--or you do not leap, ... you
+simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel
+leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for
+the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ...
+before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail,
+rather than in rain--but count me the drops congealed in one
+hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the Duchess'--do let us hear more of
+her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a
+flatterer.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                   Saturday Morning.
+                                   [Post-mark, May 3, 1845.]
+
+Now shall you see what you shall see--here shall be 'sound speech not
+to be reproved,'--for this morning you are to know that the soul of me
+has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool
+nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me
+who only coaxed my good-natured--(really)--body up, after its
+three-hours' night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about,
+incognito and without consequences--and so it shall, all but my
+right-hand which is half-spirit and 'cuts' its poor relation, and
+passes itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly
+active and ready on such occasions--Now I shall tell you all about it,
+first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then
+that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought
+not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an
+uninterrupted clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least
+having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your
+dogs--but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further
+that when I _did_ think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: ômoi], let
+me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what
+dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away
+(not from _you_, but from you in your special capacity of being
+_written_-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown
+formidable somehow--though that's not the word,--nor are you the
+person, either,--it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend
+this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of
+than taking it up with talk about books and I don't know what. Write
+what I will, you would read for once, I think--well, then,--what I
+shall write shall be--something on this book, and the other book, and
+my own books, and Mary Hewitt's books, and at the end of it--good bye,
+and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the
+thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast
+with what I suppose I ought to say ... all these things are against
+me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told--and is
+part and parcel of an older--indeed primitive body of mine, which I
+shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot
+do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no
+seeing and getting and enjoying _wholly_--and in this case, moreover,
+you are _you_, and know something about me, if not much, and have read
+Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have
+confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will _subaudire_ when
+I pull out my Mediæval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (so it was, I
+remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives ... though,
+after all, it was none of Vivian's doing, that,--all the uncle kind or
+man's, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say
+some nonsense (I very vaguely think _what_) about Dante--some
+desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as
+when a painter at his wits' end and hunger's beginning says 'Here
+shall the figure's hand be'--and spots _that_ down, meaning to reach
+it naturally from the other end of his canvas,--and leaving off tired,
+there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and
+rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and
+leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their
+old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,--anyhow
+Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head
+and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine
+passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being
+made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a
+man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just
+under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the
+sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern
+writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of
+those who never did anything else,--and try and make out, for
+yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk
+under,--as you might bid _them_, those tree and flower loving
+creatures, pick out of _our_ North poetry a notion of what _our_
+daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are--'Odorosi
+fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you
+eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Shelley' and so told me years
+ago that in the mountains it was a feast
+
+    When one should find those globes of deep red gold--
+    Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
+    Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
+
+so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer
+over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little
+ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so
+well--'Niursi--sorbi!' No, no,--does not all Naples-bay and half
+Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta
+fête only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in
+their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring
+the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet
+dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it
+out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the
+founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows
+he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never
+enough of telling you--bring all your sympathies, come with loosest
+sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find 'elbow
+room,' oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek,
+Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it,
+but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir
+of its fellow, so that I don't go about now wanting the fixed stars
+before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and--what
+other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all,
+though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without
+it;--perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other
+people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have
+been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late--I
+have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only
+very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my 'Luria' and much
+besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is
+gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight
+to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I
+said 'this must _go_, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss
+Barrett why this and this is not done,'--but I mean to tell you all,
+or more of the truth, because you call me 'flatterer,' so that my eyes
+widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of _you_, at all
+events,--of whom then? _Do_ tell me, because I want to stand with
+you--and am quite in earnest there. And 'The Flight of the Duchess,'
+to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some
+time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's
+notice,--the true stuff and story is all to come, the 'Flight,' and
+what you allude to is the mere introduction--but the Magazine has
+passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some 'Bell' or
+other--it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain 'Saul' I
+should like to show you one day--an ominous liking--for nobody ever
+sees what I do till it is printed. But as you _do_ know the printed
+little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all
+I have _really_ done,--written in the portfolio there,--though that
+would be far enough from _this_ me, that wishes to you now. I should
+like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!
+
+I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the
+difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of 'reproaching you
+for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else'--but that
+... why, '_that_' which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I
+will tell you--Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or
+other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to
+open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his
+soul--Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely
+ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of
+glebe-land,--and I _could_ say such--'could,'--the plague of it! So no
+more at present from your loving.... Or, let me tell you I am going to
+see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.--that you do not tell me how you are,
+and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ... I shall
+not see you--not--not--not--what 'knots' to untie! Surely the wind
+that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green
+now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,--that is
+South West, surely! God bless you, and me in that--and do write to me
+soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was
+
+                                                   Yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                   Monday--and Tuesday.
+                                   [Post-mark, May 6, 1845.]
+
+So when wise people happen to be ill, they sit up till six o'clock in
+the morning and get up again at nine? Do tell me how Lurias can ever
+be made out of such ungodly imprudences. If the wind blows east or
+west, where can any remedy be, while such evil deeds are being
+committed? And what is to be the end of it? And what is the
+reasonableness of it in the meantime, when we all know that thinking,
+dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear
+instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others, ...
+throwing over and buckling in that fold of death, to stroke the
+life-purple smoother. You have to live your own personal life, and
+also Luria's life--and therefore you should sleep for both. It is
+logical indeed--and rational, ... which logic is not always ... and if
+I had 'the tongue of men and of angels,' I would use it to persuade
+you. Polka, for the rest, may be good; but sleep is better. I think
+better of sleep than I ever did, now that she will not easily come
+near me except in a red hood of poppies. And besides, ... praise your
+'goodnatured body' as you like, ... it is only a seeming goodnature!
+Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!--appear mild and
+smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and
+the _soul has it_, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase!
+You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or
+tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really,
+really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by
+it--and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.
+
+This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. _What
+do you mean about your manuscripts ... about 'Saul' and the
+portfolio?_ for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses--and
+your 'Bos' comes to [Greek: bous epi glôssê].[1] I get half bribed to
+silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible
+that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I
+reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am
+afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being
+flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I
+should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ...
+however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask
+impudently of them now? Is that plain?
+
+It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if _you_ would like to 'write
+something together' with me, _I_ should like it still better. I should
+like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the
+less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical
+Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting
+into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? _you_ would
+not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations
+deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes--but I dare not do it, ... I
+mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a
+Mediæval-Gothic-architectural manuscript.
+
+The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with
+whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to
+'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of
+one of Miss Mitford's annual editorships; and ever since, he has had
+the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to
+write at all, in my dreary Devonshire days, I was his debtor for
+various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my
+opinion he is a truehearted and generous man. Do you not think so?
+Well--long and long ago, he asked me to write a drama with him on the
+Greek model; that is, for me to write the choruses, and for him to do
+the dialogue. Just then it was quite doubtful in my own mind, and
+worse than doubtful, whether I ever should write again; and the very
+doubtfulness made me speak my 'yes' more readily. Then I was desired
+to make a subject, ... to conceive a plan; and my plan was of a man,
+haunted by his own soul, ... (making her a separate personal Psyche, a
+dreadful, beautiful Psyche)--the man being haunted and terrified
+through all the turns of life by her. Did you ever feel afraid of your
+own soul, as I have done? I think it is a true wonder of our
+humanity--and fit subject enough for a wild lyrical drama. I should
+like to write it by myself at least, well enough. But with him I will
+not now. It was delayed ... delayed. He cut the plan up into scenes
+... I mean into a list of scenes ... a sort of ground-map to work
+on--and there it lies. Nothing more was done. It all lies in one
+sheet--and I have offered to give up my copyright of idea in it--if he
+likes to use it alone--or I should not object to work it out alone on
+my own side, since it comes from me: only I will not consent now to a
+_double work_ in it. There are objections--none, be it well
+understood, in Mr. Horne's disfavour,--for I think of him as well at
+this moment, and the same in all essential points, as I ever did. He
+is a man of fine imagination, and is besides good and generous. In the
+course of our acquaintance (on paper--for I never saw him) I never was
+angry with him except once; and then, _I_ was quite wrong and had to
+confess it. But this is being too 'mediæval.' Only you will see from
+it that I am a little entangled on the subject of compound works, and
+must look where I tread ... and you will understand (if you ever hear
+from Mr. Kenyon or elsewhere that I am going to write a compound-poem
+with Mr. Horne) how it _was_ true, and isn't true any more.
+
+Yes--you are going to Mr. Kenyon's on the 12th--and yes--my brother
+and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to
+dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me,
+I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May--it can't be May
+after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but
+for a few hours--the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest
+opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub
+with a bearde,' even so has the east wind had a 'bearde' of late, in a
+full growth of bristling exaggerations--the English spring-winds have
+excelled themselves in evil this year; and I have not been down-stairs
+yet.--_But_ I am certainly stronger and better than I was--that is
+undeniable--and I _shall_ be better still. You are not going away
+soon--are you? In the meantime you do not know what it is to be ... a
+little afraid of Paracelsus. So right about the Italians! and the
+'rose porporine' which made me smile. How is the head?
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Is the 'Flight of the Duchess' in the portfolio? Of course you must
+ring the Bell. That poem has a strong heart in it, to begin _so_
+strongly. Poor Hood! And all those thoughts fall mixed together. May
+God bless you.
+
+[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_ 36: 'An ox hath trodden on my
+tongue'--a Greek proverb implying silence.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Sunday--in the last hour of it.
+                             [Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
+
+May I ask how the head is? just under the bag? Mr. Kenyon was here
+to-day and told me such bad news that I cannot sleep to-night
+(although I did think once of doing it) without asking such a question
+as this, dear Mr. Browning.
+
+Let me hear how you are--Will you? and let me hear (if I can) that it
+was prudence or some unchristian virtue of the sort, and not a dreary
+necessity, which made you put aside the engagement for Tuesday--for
+Monday. I had been thinking so of seeing you on Tuesday ... with my
+sister's eyes--for the first sight.
+
+And now if you have done killing the mules and the dogs, let me have
+a straight quick arrow for myself, if you please. Just a word, to say
+how you are. I ask for no more than a word, lest the writing should be
+hurtful to you.
+
+                                   May God bless you always.
+
+                                        Your friend,
+
+                                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Monday.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
+
+My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it--but this is
+how it was,--I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to
+ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it;
+and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner
+somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my
+friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no
+better--and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear
+kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were
+broken with as little warning,--so I thought it best to forego all
+hopes of seeing him, at such a risk. And that done, I got rid of every
+other promise to pay visits for next week and next, and told
+everybody, with considerable dignity, that my London season was over
+for this year, as it assuredly is--and I shall be worried no more, and
+let walk in the garden, and go to bed at ten o'clock, and get done
+with what is most expedient to do, and my 'flesh shall come again like
+a little child's,' and one day, oh the day, I shall see you with my
+own, own eyes ... for, how little you understand me; or rather,
+yourself,--if you think I would dare see you, without your leave, that
+way! Do you suppose that your power of giving and refusing ends when
+you have shut your room-door? Did I not tell you I turned down another
+street, even, the other day, and why not down yours? And often as I
+see Mr. Kenyon, have I ever dreamed of asking any but the merest
+conventional questions about you; your health, and no more?
+
+I will answer your letter, the last one, to-morrow--I have said
+nothing of what I want to say.
+
+                                                  Ever yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Tuesday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]
+
+Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear
+Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began
+reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a 'more' or a 'most'
+in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about
+you--as, do you not know?
+
+Thank you, from my soul.
+
+Now, let me never pass occasion of speaking well of Horne, who
+deserves your opinion of him,--it is my own, too.--He has unmistakable
+genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow--it is
+the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think--the people he
+has praised fancying that they 'pose' themselves sculpturesquely in
+playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each
+other's hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a
+dishonour: _I_ feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous
+criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's
+standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man
+too,--for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature,
+which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer
+'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done
+over blue)--and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a
+'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite
+an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a
+jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of
+grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;--a thing he cannot
+understand--_so_, I am not the one he would have picked out to
+praise, had he not been _loyal_. I know he admires your poetry
+properly. God help him, and send some great artist from the country,
+(who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who
+'exasperates his H's' when the feat is to be done)--to undertake the
+part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The
+subject of your play is tempting indeed--and reminds one of that wild
+Drama of Calderon's which frightened Shelley just before his
+death--also, of Fuseli's theory with reference to his own Picture of
+Macbeth in the witches' cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed
+head from the cauldron is Macbeth's own.
+
+'If you ask me, I must ask myself'--that is, when I am to see you--I
+will _never_ ask you! You do _not_ know what I shall estimate that
+permission at,--nor do I, quite--but you do--do not you? know so much
+of me as to make my 'asking' worse than a form--I do not 'ask' you to
+write to me--not _directly_ ask, at least.
+
+I will tell you--I ask you _not_ to see me so long as you are unwell,
+or mistrustful of--
+
+No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me
+not be only writing myself
+
+                                                   Yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are
+to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly
+well--all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its
+
+[Illustration: Music: bass clef, B-flat, _Sostenuto_]
+
+That you are better I am most thankful.
+
+'Next letter' to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and
+Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them
+and mend them!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Thursday.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]
+
+But how 'mistrustfulness'? And how 'that way?' What have I said or
+done, _I_, who am not apt to _be_ mistrustful of anybody and should be
+a miraculous monster if I began with _you_! What can I have said, I
+say to myself again and again.
+
+One thing, at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have
+made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed
+to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--and by position and
+experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by
+leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by
+others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not
+mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do
+not write as I write, surely! for wasn't it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or
+who?) who said that with five lines from anyone's hand, he could take
+off his head for a corollary? I think so.
+
+Well!--but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say,
+that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my
+gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You
+will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am
+'fast bound' to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself,
+whom I receive of choice and willingly) I _cannot_ admit visitors in a
+general way--and putting the question of health quite aside, it would
+be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an
+infirmity, and hold a beggar's hat for sympathy. I should blame it in
+another woman--and the sense of it has had its weight with me
+sometimes.
+
+For the rest, ... when you write, that _I_ do not know how you would
+value, &c. _nor yourself quite_, you touch very accurately on the
+truth ... and _so_ accurately in the last clause, that to read it,
+made me smile 'tant bien que mal.' Certainly you cannot 'quite know,'
+or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from
+knowing me otherwise than on this paper--and I, for my part, 'quite
+know' my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely
+to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me--I
+never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that
+brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is
+worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most
+and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of
+me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I
+write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel
+ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because
+you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be
+nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so
+at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall
+understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in
+any case; and a friend. And do not answer this--I do not write it as a
+fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much.
+Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot
+be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that
+dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of
+coming until _that_ is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is
+done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr.
+Kenyon or to come alone--and if you would come alone, you must just
+tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should
+be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And
+my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or _you_
+will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as
+you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon,
+you must wait, I imagine, till June,--because he goes away on Monday
+and is not likely immediately to return--no, on Saturday, to-morrow.
+
+In the meantime, why I should be '_thanked_,' is an absolute mystery
+to me--but I leave it!
+
+You are generous and impetuous; _that_, I can see and feel; and so far
+from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do
+profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had
+known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius.
+Believe this of me--for it is spoken truly.
+
+In the matter of Shakespeare's 'poor players' you are severe--and yet
+I was glad to hear you severe--it is a happy excess, I think. When men
+of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to
+be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there
+will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of
+such things--but I have _heard_. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from
+Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a
+writer's medium--_not at all_, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what
+he has printed on the subject.
+
+Yes--he has been infamously used on the point of the 'New
+Spirit'--only he should have been prepared for the infamy--it was
+leaping into a gulph, ... not to 'save the republic,' but '_pour
+rire_': it was not merely putting one's foot into a hornet's nest, but
+taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of Dickens being
+dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson's friends grumbling!--he himself
+did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately
+treated--and above all, you were not placed with your _peers_ in that
+chapter--but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that
+there _is_ a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and
+am sure,--and that _you_ should be sensible to this, is only what I
+should know and be sure of _you_. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow,
+vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached,
+too justly sometimes, on men of letters.
+
+I go on writing as if I were not going to see you--soon perhaps.
+Remember that the how and the when rest with you--except that it
+cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.
+
+                                         Always your friend,
+
+                                              E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Friday Night.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
+
+My friend is not 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I
+shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or
+turn an article for _Colburn's_ on her sayings and doings
+up-stairs,--but spite of that, she does mistrust ... _so_ mistrust my
+common sense,--nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on
+asserting it!--all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch
+struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with
+name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I
+won't, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole
+tribe into the Red Sea--and those horns and tails and scalewings are
+best forgotten altogether. And now will I say a cutting thing and have
+done. Have I trusted _my_ friend so,--or said even to myself, much
+less to her, she is even as--'Mr. Simpson' who desireth the honour of
+the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his,
+Simpson's, especial solace in private--and who accordingly is led to
+that personage by a mutual friend--Simpson blushing as only adorable
+ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor
+giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the
+rooms are growing hot--or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if
+there will be another adjournment of the House to-night--whereupon Mr.
+S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his
+sleeve, and takes to his assurance once more, in something of a huff,
+and after staying his five minutes out for decency's sake, noddeth
+familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel ejaculateth
+mentally--'Well, I _did_ expect to see something different from that
+little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there
+_was_ some precious trash in that book of his'--Have _I_ said 'so will
+Miss Barrett ejaculate?'
+
+Dear Miss Barrett, I thank you for the leave you give me, and for the
+infinite kindness of the way of giving it. I will call at 2 on
+Tuesday--not sooner, that you may have time to write should any
+adverse circumstances happen ... not that they need inconvenience you,
+because ... what I want particularly to tell you for now and
+hereafter--do not mind my coming in the least, but--should you be
+unwell, for instance,--just send or leave word, and I will come again,
+and again, and again--my time is of _no_ importance, and I have
+acquaintances thick in the vicinity.
+
+Now if I do not seem grateful enough to you, _am_ I so much to blame?
+You see it is high time you _saw_ me, for I have clearly written
+myself _out_!
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Saturday.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
+
+I shall be ready on Tuesday I hope, but I hate and protest against
+your horrible 'entomology.' Beginning to explain, would thrust me
+lower and lower down the circles of some sort of an 'Inferno'; only
+with my dying breath I would maintain that I never could, consciously
+or unconsciously, mean to distrust you; or, the least in the world, to
+Simpsonize you. What I said, ... it was _you_ that put it into my head
+to say it--for certainly, in my usual disinclination to receive
+visitors, such a feeling does not enter. There, now! There, I am a
+whole 'giro' lower! Now, you will say perhaps that I distrust _you_,
+and nobody else! So it is best to be silent, and bear all the 'cutting
+things' with resignation! _that_ is certain.
+
+Still I must really say, under this dreadful incubus-charge of
+Simpsonism, ... that you, who know everything, or at least make awful
+guesses at everything in one's feelings and motives, and profess to be
+able to pin them down in a book of classified inscriptions, ... should
+have been able to understand better, or misunderstand less, in a
+matter like this--Yes! I think so. I think you should have made out
+the case in some such way as it was in nature--viz. that you had
+lashed yourself up to an exorbitant wishing to see me, ... (you who
+could see, any day, people who are a hundredfold and to all social
+purposes, my superiors!) because I was unfortunate enough to be shut
+up in a room and silly enough to make a fuss about opening the door;
+and that I grew suddenly abashed by the consciousness of this. How
+different from a distrust of _you_! how different!
+
+Ah--if, after this day, you ever see any interpretable sign of
+distrustfulness in me, you may be 'cutting' again, and I will not cry
+out. In the meantime here is a fact for your 'entomology.' I have not
+so much _distrust_, as will make a _doubt_, as will make a _curiosity_
+for next Tuesday. Not the simplest modification of _curiosity_ enters
+into the state of feeling with which I wait for Tuesday:--and if you
+are angry to hear me say so, ... why, you are more unjust than ever.
+
+(Let it be three instead of two--if the hour be as convenient to
+yourself.)
+
+Before you come, try to forgive me for my 'infinite kindness' in the
+manner of consenting to see you. Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when
+you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?
+Well! but we are friends till Tuesday--and after perhaps.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+If on Tuesday you should be not well, _pray do not come_--Now, that is
+my request to your kindness.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Envelope endorsed by Robert Browning:--Tuesday, May 20,
+1845, 3-4-1/2 p.m.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Tuesday Evening.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 21, 1845.]
+
+I trust to you for a true account of how you are--if tired, if not
+tired, if I did wrong in any thing,--or, if you please, _right_ in any
+thing--(only, not one more word about my 'kindness,' which, to get
+done with, I will grant is exceptive)--but, let us so arrange matters
+if possible,--and why should it not be--that my great happiness, such
+as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be
+obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can
+contrive. For an instance--just what strikes me--they all say here I
+speak very loud--(a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf
+relative of mine). And did I stay too long?
+
+I will tell _you_ unhesitatingly of such 'corrigenda'--nay, I will
+again say, do not humiliate me--_do not_ again,--by calling me 'kind'
+in that way.
+
+I am proud and happy in your friendship--now and ever. May God bless
+you!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Wednesday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 22, 1845.]
+
+Indeed there was nothing wrong--how could there be? And there was
+everything right--as how should there not be? And as for the 'loud
+speaking,' I did not hear any--and, instead of being worse, I ought to
+be better for what was certainly (to speak it, or be silent of it,)
+happiness and honour to me yesterday.
+
+Which reminds me to observe that you are so restricting our
+vocabulary, as to be ominous of silence in a full sense, presently.
+First, one word is not to be spoken--and then, another is not. And
+why? Why deny me the use of such words as have natural feelings
+belonging to them--and how can the use of such be 'humiliating' to
+_you_? If my heart were open to you, you could see nothing offensive
+to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been
+there--but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology
+(and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of
+some poems by some Mr. Gurney where he speaks of 'the reflective
+wisdom of a Wordsworth and the profound psychological utterances of a
+Browning') it is hard for you to understand what my mental position is
+after the peculiar experience I have suffered, and what [Greek: ti
+emoi kai soi][1] a sort of feeling is irrepressible from me to you,
+when, from the height of your brilliant happy sphere, you ask, as you
+did ask, for personal intercourse with me. What words but 'kindness'
+... but 'gratitude'--but I will not in any case be _un_kind and
+_un_grateful, and do what is displeasing to you. And let us both leave
+the subject with the words--because we perceive in it from different
+points of view; we stand on the black and white sides of the shield;
+and there is no coming to a conclusion.
+
+But you will come really on Tuesday--and again, when you like and can
+together--and it will not be more 'inconvenient' to me to be pleased,
+I suppose, than it is to people in general--will it, do you think?
+Ah--how you misjudge! Why it must obviously and naturally be
+delightful to me to receive you here when you like to come, and it
+cannot be necessary for me to say so in set words--believe it of
+
+                                                Your friend,
+
+                                                     E.B.B.
+
+[Mr. Browning's letter, to which the following is in answer was
+destroyed, see page 268 of the present volume.]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'What have I to do with thee?']
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Friday Evening.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
+
+I intended to write to you last night and this morning, and could
+not,--you do not know what pain you give me in speaking so wildly. And
+if I disobey you, my dear friend, in speaking, (I for my part) of your
+wild speaking, I do it, not to displease you, but to be in my own
+eyes, and before God, a little more worthy, or less unworthy, of a
+generosity from which I recoil by instinct and at the first glance,
+yet conclusively; and because my silence would be the most disloyal of
+all means of expression, in reference to it. Listen to me then in
+this. You have said some intemperate things ... fancies,--which you
+will not say over again, nor unsay, but _forget at once_, and _for
+ever, having said at all_; and which (so) will die out between _you
+and me alone_, like a misprint between you and the printer. And this
+you will do _for my sake_ who am your friend (and you have none
+truer)--and this I ask, because it is a condition necessary to our
+future liberty of intercourse. You remember--surely you do--that I am
+in the most exceptional of positions; and that, just _because of it_,
+I am able to receive you as I did on Tuesday; and that, for me to
+listen to 'unconscious exaggerations,' is as unbecoming to the
+humilities of my position, as unpropitious (which is of more
+consequence) to the prosperities of yours. Now, if there should be one
+word of answer attempted to this; or of reference; _I must not_ ... I
+_will not see you again_--and you will justify me later in your heart.
+So for my sake you will not say it--I think you will not--and spare me
+the sadness of having to break through an intercourse just as it is
+promising pleasure to me; to me who have so many sadnesses and so few
+pleasures. You will!--and I need not be uneasy--and I shall owe you
+that tranquillity, as one gift of many. For, that I have much to
+receive from you in all the free gifts of thinking, teaching,
+master-spirits, ... _that_, I know!--it is my own praise that I
+appreciate you, as none can more. Your influence and help in poetry
+will be full of good and gladness to me--for with many to love me in
+this house, there is no one to judge me ... _now_. Your friendship and
+sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed
+leave them with me so long or so little. Your mistakes in me ... which
+_I_ cannot mistake (--and which have humbled me by too much
+honouring--) I put away gently, and with grateful tears in my eyes;
+because _all that hail_ will beat down and spoil crowns, as well as
+'blossoms.'
+
+If I put off next Tuesday to the week after--I mean your visit,--shall
+you care much? For the relations I named to you, are to be in London
+next week; and I am to see one of my aunts whom I love, and have not
+met since my great affliction--and it will all seem to come over
+again, and I shall be out of spirits and nerves. On Tuesday week you
+can bring a tomahawk and do the criticism, and I shall try to have my
+courage ready for it--Oh, you will do me so much good--and Mr. Kenyon
+calls me 'docile' sometimes I assure you; when he wants to flatter me
+out of being obstinate--and in good earnest, I believe I shall do
+everything you tell me. The 'Prometheus' is done--but the monodrama is
+where it was--and the novel, not at all. But I think of some half
+promises half given, about something I read for 'Saul'--and the
+'Flight of the Duchess'--where is she?
+
+You are not displeased with me? _no, that_ would be hail and lightning
+together--I do not write as I might, of some words of yours--but you
+know that I am not a stone, even if silent like one. And if in the
+_un_silence, I have said one word to vex you, pity me for having had
+to say it--and for the rest, may God bless you far beyond the reach of
+vexation from my words or my deeds!
+
+                             Your friend in grateful regard,
+
+                                  E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Saturday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
+
+Don't you remember I told you, once on a time that you 'knew nothing
+of me'? whereat you demurred--but I meant what I said, and knew it was
+so. To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a
+Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of
+black cold water--and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes,
+because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction--and
+the ice grows and grows--still this last is true part of me, most
+characteristic part, _best_ part perhaps, and I disown
+nothing--only,--when you talked of '_knowing_ me'! Still, I am utterly
+unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating
+anything about _that_ to another person (all my writings are purely
+dramatic as I am always anxious to say) that when I make never so
+little an attempt, no wonder if I _bungle_ notably--'language,' too is
+an organ that never studded this heavy heavy head of mine. Will you
+not think me very brutal if I tell you I could almost smile at your
+misapprehension of what I meant to write?--Yet I _will_ tell you,
+because it will undo the bad effect of my thoughtlessness, and at the
+same time exemplify the point I have all along been honestly earnest
+to set you right upon ... my real inferiority to you; just that and no
+more. I wrote to you, in an unwise moment, on the spur of being again
+'thanked,' and, unwisely writing just as if thinking to myself, said
+what must have looked absurd enough as seen apart from the horrible
+counterbalancing never-to-be-written _rest of me_--by the side of
+which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to
+its proper and relative place, and become a mere 'thank you' for your
+good opinion--which I assure you is far too generous--for I really
+believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable
+till _you_ see that, too--since I hope for your sympathy and
+assistance, and 'frankness is everything in such a case.' I do assure
+you, that had you read my note, _only_ having '_known_' so much of me
+as is implied in having inspected, for instance, the contents, merely,
+of that fatal and often-referred-to 'portfolio' there (_Dii meliora
+piis!_), you would see in it, (the note not the portfolio) the
+blandest utterance ever mild gentleman gave birth to. But I forgot
+that one may make too much noise in a silent place by playing the few
+notes on the 'ear-piercing fife' which in Othello's regimental band
+might have been thumped into decent subordination by his
+'spirit-stirring drum'--to say nothing of gong and ophicleide. Will
+you forgive me, on promise to remember for the future, and be more
+considerate? Not that you must too much despise me, neither; nor, of
+all things, apprehend I am attitudinizing à la Byron, and giving you
+to understand unutterable somethings, longings for Lethe and all
+that--far from it! I never committed murders, and sleep the soundest
+of sleeps--but 'the heart is desperately wicked,' that is true, and
+though I dare not say 'I know' mine, yet I have had signal
+opportunities, I who began life from the beginning, and can forget
+nothing (but names, and the date of the battle of Waterloo), and have
+known good and wicked men and women, gentle and simple, shaking hands
+with Edmund Kean and Father Mathew, you and--Ottima! Then, I had a
+certain faculty of self-consciousness, years and years ago, at which
+John Mill wondered, and which ought to be improved by this time, if
+constant use helps at all--and, meaning, on the whole, to be a Poet,
+if not _the_ Poet ... for I am vain and ambitious some nights,--I do
+myself justice, and dare call things by their names to myself, and say
+boldly, this I love, this I hate, this I would do, this I would not
+do, under all kinds of circumstances,--and talking (thinking) in this
+style _to myself_, and beginning, however tremblingly, in spite of
+conviction, to write in this style _for myself_--on the top of the
+desk which contains my 'Songs of the Poets--NO. I M.P.', I
+wrote,--what you now forgive, I know! Because I am, from my heart,
+sorry that by a foolish fit of inconsideration I should have given
+pain for a minute to you, towards whom, on every account, I would
+rather soften and 'sleeken every word as to a bird' ... (and, not such
+a bird as my black self that go screeching about the world for 'dead
+horse'--corvus (picus)--mirandola!) I, too, who have been at such
+pains to acquire the reputation I enjoy in the world,--(ask Mr.
+Kenyon,) and who dine, and wine, and dance and enhance the company's
+pleasure till they make me ill and I keep house, as of late: Mr.
+Kenyon, (for I only quote where you may verify if you please) _he_
+says my common sense strikes him, and its contrast with my muddy
+metaphysical poetry! And so it shall strike you--for though I am glad
+that, since you _did_ misunderstand me, you said so, and have given me
+an opportunity of doing by another way what I wished to do in
+_that_,--yet, if you had _not_ alluded to my writing, as I meant you
+should not, you would have certainly understood _something_ of its
+drift when you found me next Tuesday precisely the same quiet (no, for
+I feel I speak too loudly, in spite of your kind disclaimer, but--)
+the same mild man-about-town you were gracious to, the other
+morning--for, indeed, my own way of worldly life is marked out long
+ago, as precisely as yours can be, and I am set going with a hand,
+winker-wise, on each side of my head, and a directing finger before my
+eyes, to say nothing of an instinctive dread I have that a certain
+whip-lash is vibrating somewhere in the neighbourhood in playful
+readiness! So 'I hope here be proofs,' Dogberry's satisfaction that,
+first, I am but a very poor creature compared to you and entitled by
+my wants to look up to you,--all I meant to say from the first of the
+first--and that, next, I shall be too much punished if, for this piece
+of mere inconsideration, you deprive me, more or less, or sooner or
+later, of the pleasure of seeing you,--a little over boisterous
+gratitude for which, perhaps, caused all the mischief! The reasons you
+give for deferring my visits next week are too cogent for me to
+dispute--that is too true--and, being now and henceforward 'on my good
+behaviour,' I will at once cheerfully submit to them, if needs
+must--but should your mere kindness and forethought, as I half
+suspect, have induced you to take such a step, you will now smile with
+me, at this new and very unnecessary addition to the 'fears of me' I
+have got so triumphantly over in your case! Wise man, was I not, to
+clench my first favourable impression so adroitly ... like a recent
+Cambridge worthy, my sister heard of; who, being on his theological
+(or rather, scripture-historical) examination, was asked by the Tutor,
+who wished to let him off easily, 'who was the first King of
+Israel?'--'Saul' answered the trembling youth. 'Good!' nodded
+approvingly the Tutor. 'Otherwise called _Paul_,' subjoined the youth
+in his elation! Now I have begged pardon, and blushingly assured you
+_that_ was only a slip of the tongue, and that I did really _mean_ all
+the while, (Paul or no Paul), the veritable son of Kish, he that owned
+the asses, and found listening to the harp the best of all things for
+an evil spirit! Pray write me a line to say, 'Oh ... if _that's_ all!'
+and remember me for good (which is very compatible with a moment's
+stupidity) and let me not for one fault, (and that the only one that
+shall be), lose _any pleasure_ ... for your friendship I am sure I
+have not lost--God bless you, my dear friend!
+
+                                                R. BROWNING.
+
+And by the way, will it not be better, as co-operating with you more
+effectually in your kind promise to forget the 'printer's error' in my
+blotted proof, to send me back that same 'proof,' if you have not
+inflicted proper and summary justice on it? When Mephistopheles last
+came to see us in this world outside here, he counselled sundry of us
+'never to write a letter,--and never to burn one'--do you know that?
+But I never mind what I am told! Seriously, I am ashamed.... I shall
+next ask a servant for my paste in the 'high fantastical' style of my
+own 'Luria.'
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                             Sunday
+                                             [May 25, 1845].
+
+I owe you the most humble of apologies dear Mr. Browning, for having
+spent so much solemnity on so simple a matter, and I hasten to pay it;
+confessing at the same time (as why should I not?) that I am quite as
+much ashamed of myself as I ought to be, which is not a little. You
+will find it difficult to believe me perhaps when I assure you that I
+never made such a mistake (I mean of over-seriousness to indefinite
+compliments), no, never in my life before--indeed my sisters have
+often jested with me (in matters of which they were cognizant) on my
+supernatural indifference to the superlative degree in general, as if
+it meant nothing in grammar. I usually know well that 'boots' may be
+called for in this world of ours, just as you called for yours; and
+that to bring '_Bootes_,' were the vilest of mal-à-pro-pos-ities.
+Also, I should have understood 'boots' where you wrote it, in the
+letter in question; if it had not been for _the relation of two
+things_ in it--and now I perfectly seem to see _how_ I mistook that
+relation; ('_seem to see_'; because I have not looked into the letter
+again since your last night's commentary, and will not--) inasmuch as
+I have observed before in my own mind, that a good deal of what is
+called obscurity in you, arises from a habit of very subtle
+association; so subtle, that you are probably unconscious of it, ...
+and the effect of which is to throw together on the same level and in
+the same light, things of likeness and unlikeness--till the reader
+grows confused as I did, and takes one for another. I may say however,
+in a poor justice to myself, that I wrote what I wrote so
+unfortunately, _through reverence for you_, and not at all from vanity
+in my own account ... although I do feel palpably while I write these
+words here and now, that I might as well leave them unwritten; for
+that no man of the world who ever lived in the world (not even _you_)
+could be expected to believe them, though said, sung, and sworn.
+
+For the rest, it is scarcely an apposite moment for you to talk, even
+'dramatically,' of my 'superiority' to you, ... unless you mean, which
+perhaps you do mean, my superiority in _simplicity_--and, verily, to
+some of the 'adorable ingenuousness,' sacred to the shade of Simpson,
+I may put in a modest claim, ... 'and have my claim allowed.' 'Pray do
+not mock me' I quote again from your Shakespeare to you who are a
+dramatic poet; ... and I will admit anything that you like, (being
+humble just now)--even that I _did not know you_. I was certainly
+innocent of the knowledge of the 'ice and cold water' you introduce me
+to, and am only just shaking my head, as Flush would, after a first
+wholesome plunge. Well--if I do not know you, I shall learn, I
+suppose, in time. I am ready to try humbly to learn--and I may
+perhaps--if you are not done in Sanscrit, which is too hard for me,
+... notwithstanding that I had the pleasure yesterday to hear, from
+America, of my profound skill in 'various languages less known than
+Hebrew'!--a liberal paraphrase on Mr. Horne's large fancies on the
+like subject, and a satisfactory reputation in itself--as long as it
+is not necessary to deserve it. So I here enclose to you your letter
+back again, as you wisely desire; although you never could doubt, I
+hope, for a moment, of its safety with me in the completest of senses:
+and then, from the heights of my superior ... stultity, and other
+qualities of the like order, ... I venture to advise you ... however
+(to speak of the letter critically, and as the dramatic composition it
+is) it is to be admitted to be very beautiful, and well worthy of the
+rest of its kin in the portfolio, ... 'Lays of the Poets,' or
+otherwise, ... I venture to advise you to burn it at once. And then,
+my dear friend, I ask you (having some claim) to burn at the same time
+the letter I was fortunate enough to write to you on Friday, and this
+present one--don't send them back to me; I hate to have letters sent
+back--but burn them for me and never mind Mephistopheles. After which
+friendly turn, you will do me the one last kindness of forgetting all
+this exquisite nonsense, and of refraining from mentioning it, by
+breath or pen, _to me or another_. Now I trust you so far:--you will
+put it with the date of the battle of Waterloo--and I, with every date
+in chronology; seeing that I can remember none of them. And we will
+shuffle the cards and take patience, and begin the game again, if you
+please--and I shall bear in mind that you are a dramatic poet, which
+is not the same thing, by any means, with _us_ of the primitive
+simplicities, who don't tread on cothurns nor shift the mask in the
+scene. And I will reverence you both as 'a poet' and as '_the_ poet';
+because it is no false 'ambition,' but a right you have--and one which
+those who live longest, will see justified to the uttermost.... In the
+meantime I need not ask Mr. Kenyon if you have any sense, because I
+have no doubt that you have quite sense enough--and even if I had a
+doubt, I shall prefer judging for myself without interposition; which
+I can do, you know, as long as you like to come and see me. And you
+can come this week if you do like it--because our relations don't come
+till the end of it, it appears--not that I made a pretence 'out of
+kindness'--pray don't judge me so outrageously--but if you like to
+come ... not on Tuesday ... but on Wednesday at three o'clock, I shall
+be very glad to see you; and I, for one, shall have forgotten
+everything by that time; being quick at forgetting my own faults
+usually. If Wednesday does not suit you, I am not sure that I _can_
+see you this week--but it depends on circumstances. Only don't think
+yourself _obliged_ to come on Wednesday. You know I _began_ by
+entreating you to be open and sincere with me--and no more--I
+_require_ no 'sleekening of every word.' I love the truth and can bear
+it--whether in word or deed--and those who have known me longest would
+tell you so fullest. Well!--May God bless you. We shall know each
+other some day perhaps--and I am
+
+                          Always and faithfully your friend,
+
+                               E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  [Post-mark, May 26, 1845.]
+
+Nay--I _must_ have last word--as all people in the wrong desire to
+have--and then, no more of the subject. You said I had given you
+_great pain_--so long as I stop _that_, think anything of me you
+choose or can! But _before_ your former letter came, I saw the
+pre-ordained uselessness of mine. Speaking is to some _end_, (apart
+from foolish self-relief, which, after all, I can do without)--and
+where there is _no_ end--you see! or, to finish
+characteristically--since the offering to cut off one's right-hand to
+save anybody a headache, is in vile taste, even for our melodramas,
+seeing that it was never yet believed in on the stage or off it,--how
+much worse to really make the ugly chop, and afterwards come
+sheepishly in, one's arm in a black sling, and find that the
+delectable gift had changed aching to nausea! There! And now, 'exit,
+prompt-side, nearest door, Luria'--and enter R.B.--next Wednesday,--as
+boldly as he suspects most people do just after they have been soundly
+frightened!
+
+I shall be most happy to see you on the day and at the hour you
+mention.
+
+                              God bless you, my dear friend,
+
+                                   R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Monday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 27, 1845.]
+
+You will think me the most changeable of all the changeable; but
+indeed it is _not_ my fault that I cannot, as I wished, receive you on
+Wednesday. There was a letter this morning; and our friends not only
+come to London but come to this house on Tuesday (to-morrow) to pass
+two or three days, until they settle in an hotel for the rest of the
+season. Therefore you see, it is doubtful whether the two days may not
+be three, and the three days four; but if they go away in time, and
+if Saturday should suit you, I will let you know by a word; and you
+can answer by a yea or nay. While they are in the house, I must give
+them what time I can--and indeed, it is something to dread altogether.
+
+                                                    Tuesday.
+
+I send you the note I had begun before receiving yours of last night,
+and also a fragment[1] from Mrs. Hedley's herein enclosed, a full and
+complete certificate, ... that you may know ... quite _know_, ... what
+the real and only reason of the obstacle to Wednesday is. On Saturday
+perhaps, or on Monday more certainly, there is likely to be no
+opposition, ... at least not on the 'côté gauche' (_my_ side!) to our
+meeting--but I will let you know more.
+
+For the rest, we have both been a little unlucky, there's no denying,
+in overcoming the embarrassments of a first acquaintance--but suffer
+me to say as one other last word, (and _quite, quite the last this
+time_!) in case there should have been anything approaching, however
+remotely, to a distrustful or unkind tone in what I wrote on Sunday,
+(and I have a sort of consciousness that in the process of my
+self-scorning I was not in the most sabbatical of moods perhaps--)
+that I do recall and abjure it, and from my heart entreat your pardon
+for it, and profess, notwithstanding it, neither to 'choose' nor 'to
+be able' to think otherwise of you than I have done, ... as of one
+_most_ generous and _most_ loyal; for that if I chose, I could not;
+and that if I could, I should not choose.
+
+                            Ever and gratefully your friend,
+
+                                 E.B.B.
+
+--And now we shall hear of 'Luria,' shall we not? and much besides.
+And Miss Mitford has sent me the most high comical of letters to
+read, addressed to her by 'R.B. Haydon historical painter' which has
+made me quite laugh; and would make _you_; expressing his righteous
+indignation at the 'great fact' and gross impropriety of any man who
+has 'thoughts too deep for tears' agreeing to wear a 'bag-wig' ... the
+case of poor Wordsworth's going to court, you know.--Mr. Haydon being
+infinitely serious all the time, and yet holding the doctrine of the
+divine right of princes in his left hand.
+
+How is your head? may I be hoping the best for it? May God bless you.
+
+[Footnote 1: ... me on Tuesday, or Wednesday? if on Tuesday, I shall
+come by the three o'clock train; if on Wednesday, _early_ in the
+morning, as I shall be anxious to secure rooms ... so that your Uncle
+and Arabel may come up on Thursday.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  [Post-mark, May 28, 1845.]
+
+Saturday, Monday, as you shall appoint--no need to say that, or my
+thanks--but this note troubles you, out of my bounden duty to help
+you, or Miss Mitford, to make the Painter run violently down a steep
+place into the sea, if that will amuse you, by further informing him,
+what I know on the best authority, that Wordsworth's 'bag-wig,' or at
+least, the more important of his court-habiliments, were considerately
+furnished for the nonce by _Mr. Rogers_ from his own wardrobe, to the
+manifest advantage of the Laureate's pocket, but more problematic
+improvement of his person, when one thinks on the astounding
+difference of 'build' in the two Poets:--the fact should be put on
+record, if only as serving to render less chimerical a promise
+sometimes figuring in the columns of provincial newspapers--that the
+two apprentices, some grocer or other advertises for, will be 'boarded
+and _clothed_ like _one_ of the family.' May not your unfinished
+(really good) head of the great man have been happily kept waiting for
+the body which can now be added on, with all this picturesqueness of
+circumstances. Precept on precept ... but then, _line upon line_, is
+allowed by as good authority, and may I not draw _my_ confirming black
+line after yours, yet not break pledge? I am most grateful to you for
+doing me justice--doing yourself, your own judgment, justice, since
+even the play-wright of Theseus and the Amazon found it one of his
+hardest devices to 'write me a speech, lest the lady be frightened,
+wherein it shall be said that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but &c. &c.'
+God bless you--one thing more, but one--you _could never have_
+misunderstood the _asking for the letter again_, I feared you might
+refer to it 'pour constater le fait'--
+
+                                        And now I am yours--
+
+                                             R.B.
+
+My head is all but well now; thank you.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Friday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 30, 1845.]
+
+Just one word to say that if Saturday, to-morrow, should be
+fine--because in the case of its raining I _shall not expect you_; you
+will find me at three o'clock.
+
+Yes--the circumstances of the costume were mentioned in the letter;
+Mr. Rogers' bag-wig and the rest, and David Wilkie's sword--and also
+that the Laureate, so equipped, fell down upon both knees in the
+superfluity of etiquette, and had to be picked up by two
+lords-in-waiting. It is a large exaggeration I do not doubt--and then
+I never sympathised with the sighing kept up by people about that
+acceptance of the Laureateship which drew the bag-wig as a corollary
+after it. Not that the Laureateship honoured _him_, but that he
+honoured it; and that, so honouring it, he preserves a symbol
+instructive to the masses, who are children and to be taught by
+symbols now as formerly. Isn't it true? or at least may it not be
+true? And won't the court laurel (such as it is) be all the worthier
+of _you_ for Wordsworth's having worn it first?
+
+And in the meantime I shall see you to-morrow perhaps? or if it should
+rain, on Monday at the same hour.
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Friday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
+
+When I see all you have done for me in this 'Prometheus,' I feel more
+than half ashamed both of it and of me for using your time so, and
+forced to say in my own defence (not to you but myself) that I never
+thought of meaning to inflict such work on you who might be doing so
+much better things in the meantime both for me and for
+others--because, you see, it is not the mere reading of the MS., but
+the 'comparing' of the text, and the melancholy comparisons between
+the English and the Greek, ... quite enough to turn you from your
+[Greek: philanthrôpou tropou][1] that I brought upon you; and indeed I
+did not mean so much, nor so soon! Yet as you have done it for me--for
+me who expected a few jottings down with a pencil and a general
+opinion; it is of course of the greatest value, besides the pleasure
+and pride which come of it; and I must say of the translation, (before
+putting it aside for the nonce), that the circumstance of your paying
+it so much attention and seeing any good in it, is quite enough reward
+for the writer and quite enough motive for self-gratulation, if it
+were all torn to fragments at this moment--which is a foolish thing to
+say because it is so obvious, and because you would know it if I said
+it or not.
+
+And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not
+to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very
+princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest
+of the small family of distrust--or of hypocrisy ... who knows? Well!
+but you are wrong ... wrong ... to think so; and you will let me say
+one word to show where you are wrong--not for you to controvert, ...
+because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your
+cognizance, and is something which I _must know best_ after all. And
+it is, ... that you persist in putting me into a false position, with
+respect to _fixing days_ and the like, and in making me feel somewhat
+as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the
+chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I
+did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly 'was 'ware' (as we
+say in the ballads) of the walls' growing alive behind me and
+extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to
+the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and
+I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised
+bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the
+chimney-piece's, ... is the necessity you provide for me in the shape
+of my having to name this day, or that day, ... and of your coming
+because I name it, and of my having to think and remember that you
+come because I name it. Through a weakness, perhaps, or morbidness, or
+one knows not how to define it, I _cannot help_ being uncomfortable in
+having to do this,--it is impossible. Not that I distrust _you_--you
+are the last in the world I could distrust: and then (although you may
+be sceptical) I am naturally given to trust ... to a fault ... as some
+say, or to a sin, as some reproach me:--and then again, if I were ever
+such a distruster, it could not be of _you_. But if you knew me--! I
+will tell you! if one of my brothers omits coming to this room for two
+days, ... I never ask why it happened! if my own father omits coming
+up-stairs to say 'good night,' I never say a word; and not from
+indifference. Do try to make out these readings of me as a _dixit
+Casaubonus_; and don't throw me down as a corrupt text, nor convict me
+for an infidel which I am not. On the contrary I am grateful and happy
+to believe that you like to come here; and even if you came here as a
+pure act of charity and pity to me, as long as you _chose to come_ I
+should not be too proud to be grateful and happy still. I could not be
+proud to _you_, and I hope you will not fancy such a possibility,
+which is the remotest of all. Yes, and _I_ am anxious to ask you to be
+wholly generous and leave off such an interpreting philosophy as you
+made use of yesterday, and forgive me when I beg you to fix your own
+days for coming for the future. Will you? It is the same thing in one
+way. If you like to come really every week, there is no hindrance to
+it--you can do it--and the privilege and obligation remain equally
+mine:--and if you name a day for coming on any week, where there is an
+obstacle on my side, you will learn it from me in a moment. Why I
+might as well charge _you_ with distrusting _me_, because you persist
+in making me choose the days. And it is not for me to do it, but for
+you--I must feel that--and I cannot help chafing myself against the
+thought that for me to begin to fix days in this way, just because you
+have quick impulses (like all imaginative persons), and wish me to do
+it now, may bring me to the catastrophe of asking you to come when you
+would rather not, ... which, as you say truly, would not be an
+important vexation to you; but to me would be worse than vexation; to
+_me_--and therefore I shrink from the very imagination of the
+possibility of such a thing, and ask you to bear with me and let it be
+as I prefer ... left to your own choice of the moment. And bear with
+me above all--because this shows no want of faith in you ... none ...
+but comes from a simple fact (with its ramifications) ... that you
+know little of me personally yet, and that _you guess_, even, but very
+little of the influence of a peculiar experience over me and out of
+me; and if I wanted a proof of this, we need not seek further than the
+very point of discussion, and the hard worldly thoughts you thought I
+was thinking of you yesterday,--I, who thought not one of them! But I
+am so used to discern the correcting and ministering angels by the
+same footsteps on the ground, that it is not wonderful I should look
+down there at any approach of a [Greek: philia taxis] whatever to this
+personal _me_. Have I not been ground down to browns and blacks? and
+is it my fault if I am not green? Not that it is my _complaint_--I
+should not be justified in complaining; I believe, as I told you, that
+there is more gladness than sadness in the world--that is, generally:
+and if some natures have to be refined by the sun, and some by the
+furnace (the less genial ones) both means are to be recognised as
+_good_, ... however different in pleasurableness and painfulness, and
+though furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit. I assured
+you there was nothing I had any power of teaching you: and there _is_
+nothing, except grief!--which I would not teach you, you know, if I
+had the occasion granted.
+
+It is a multitude of words about nothing at all, ... this--but I am
+like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the
+mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can--and believe how
+profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all,
+much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as
+you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get up
+enough pomp and circumstance to write on purpose to certify the
+important fact of my being a little stronger or a little weaker on one
+particular morning. That I am always ready and rejoiced to write to
+you, you know perfectly well, and I have proved, by 'superfluity of
+naughtiness' and prolixity through some twenty posts:--and this, and
+therefore, you will agree altogether to attribute no more to me on
+these counts, and determine to read me no more backwards with your
+Hebrew, putting in your own vowel points without my leave! Shall it be
+so?
+
+Here is a letter grown from a note which it meant to be--and I have
+been interrupted in the midst of it, or it should have gone to you
+earlier. Let what I have said in it of myself pass unquestioned and
+unnoticed, because it is of _me_ and not of _you_, ... and, if in any
+wise lunatical, all the talking and writing in the world will not put
+the implied moon into another quarter. Only be patient with me a
+little, ... and let us have a smooth ground for the poems which I am
+foreseeing the sight of with such pride and delight--Such pride and
+delight!
+
+And one thing ... which is chief, though it seems to come last!... you
+_will_ have advice (will you not?) if that pain does not grow much
+better directly? It cannot be prudent or even _safe_ to let a pain in
+the head go on so long, and no remedy be attempted for it, ... and you
+cannot be sure that it is a merely nervous pain and that it may not
+have consequences; and this, quite apart from the consideration of
+suffering. So you will see some one with an opinion to give, and take
+it? _Do_, I beseech you. You will not say 'no'? Also ... if on
+Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come on
+Thursday instead, I hope, ... seeing that it must be right for you to
+be quiet and silent when you suffer so, and a journey into London can
+let you be neither. Otherwise, I hold to my day, ... Wednesday. And
+may God bless you my dear friend.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+You are right I see, nearly everywhere, if not quite everywhere in the
+criticisms--but of course I have not looked very closely--that is, I
+have read your papers but not in connection with a _my_ side of the
+argument--but I shall lose the post after all.
+
+[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Prometheus_ II.: 'trick of loving men,' see
+note 3, on p. 39 above.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Saturday Morning,
+                                  [Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
+
+I ventured to hope this morning might bring me news of you--First
+East-winds on you, then myself, then those criticisms!--I do assure
+you I am properly apprehensive. How are you? May I go on Wednesday
+without too much [Greek: anthadia].
+
+Pray remember what I said and wrote, to the effect that my exceptions
+were, in almost every case, to the 'reading'--not to your version of
+it: but I have not specified the particular ones--not written down the
+Greek, of my suggested translations--have I? And if you do not find
+them in the margin of your copy, how you must wonder! Thus, in the
+last speech but one, of Hermes, I prefer Porson and Blomfield's
+[Greek: ei mêd' atychôn ti chala maniôn];--to the old combinations
+that include [Greek: eutychê]--though there is no MS. authority for
+emendation, it seems. But in what respect does Prometheus 'fare
+_well_,' or 'better' even, since the beginning? And is it not the old
+argument over again, that when a man _fails_ he should repent of his
+ways?--And while thinking of Hermes, let me say that '[Greek: mêde moi
+diplas odous prosbalês]' is surely--'Don't subject me to the trouble
+of a second journey ... by paying no attention to the first.' So says
+Scholiast A, and so backs him Scholiast B, especially created, it
+should appear, to show there could be _in rerum naturâ_ such another
+as his predecessor. A few other remarks occur to me, which I will tell
+you if you please; _now_, I really want to know how you are, and write
+for that.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  [Post-mark, June 9, 1845.]
+
+Just after my note left, yours came--I will try so to answer it as to
+please you; and I begin by promising cheerfully to do all you bid me
+about naming days &c. I do believe we are friends now and for ever.
+There can be no reason, therefore, that I should cling tenaciously to
+any one or other time of meeting, as if, losing that, I lost
+everything--and, for the future, I will provide against sudden
+engagements, outrageous weather &c., to your heart's content. Nor am I
+going to except against here and there a little wrong I could get up,
+as when you _imply_ from my quick impulses and the like. No, my dear
+friend--for I seem sure I shall have quite, quite time enough to do
+myself justice in your eyes--Let time show!
+
+Perhaps I feel none the less sorely, when you 'thank' me for such
+company as mine, that I cannot avoid confessing to myself that it
+would not be so absolutely out of my power, perhaps, to contrive
+really and deserve thanks in a certain acceptation--I _might_ really
+_try_, at all events, and amuse you a little better, when I do have
+the opportunity,--and I _do not_--but there is the thing! It is all of
+a piece--I _do not_ seek your friendship in order to do you good--any
+good--only to do myself good. Though I _would_, God knows, do that
+too.
+
+Enough of this.
+
+I am much better, indeed,--but will certainly follow your advice
+should the pain return. And you--you have tried a new journey from
+your room, have you not?
+
+Do recollect, at any turn, any chance so far in my favour,--that I am
+here and yours should you want any fetching and carrying in this
+outside London world. Your brothers may have their own business to
+mind, Mr. Kenyon is at New York, we will suppose; here am I--what
+else, _what else_ makes me count my cleverness to you, as I know I
+have done more than once, by word and letter, but the real wish to be
+set at work? I should have, I hope, better taste than to tell any
+everyday acquaintance, who could not go out, one single morning even,
+on account of a headache, that the weather was delightful, much less
+that I had been walking five miles and meant to run ten--yet to you I
+boasted once of polking and waltzing and more--but then would it not
+be a very superfluous piece of respect in the four-footed bird to keep
+his wings to himself because his Master Oceanos could fly forsooth?
+Whereas he begins to wave a flap and show how ready they are to be
+off--for what else were the good of him? Think of this--and
+
+                                           Know me for yours
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+For good you are, to those notes--you shall have more,--that is, the
+rest--on Wednesday then, at 3, except as you except. God bless you.
+
+Oh, let me tell you--I suppose Mr. Horne must be in town--as I
+received a letter two days ago, from the contriver of some literary
+society or other who had before written to get me to belong to it,
+protesting _against_ my reasons for refusing, and begging that 'at all
+events I would suspend my determination till I had been visited by Mr.
+H. on the subject'--and, as they can hardly mean to bring him express
+from the Drachenfels for just that, he is returned no doubt--and as he
+is your friend, I take the opportunity of mentioning the course I
+shall pursue with him or any other friend of yours I may meet,--(and
+everybody else, I may add--) the course I understand you to desire,
+with respect to our own intimacy. While I may acknowledge, I believe,
+that I correspond with you, I shall not, in any case, suffer it to be
+known that I see, or have seen you. This I just remind you of, lest
+any occasion of embarrassment should arise, for a moment, from your
+not being quite sure how _I_ had acted in any case.--Con che, le bacio
+le mani--a rivederla!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 10, 1845.]
+
+I must thank you by one word for all your kindness and
+consideration--which could not be greater; nor more felt by me. In the
+first place, afterwards (if that should not be Irish dialect) do
+understand that my letter passed from my hands to go to yours on
+_Friday_, but was thrown aside carelessly down stairs and 'covered up'
+they say, so as not to be seen until late on Saturday; and I can only
+humbly hope to have been cross enough about it (having conscientiously
+tried) to secure a little more accuracy another time.--And then, ...
+if ever I should want anything done or found, ... (a roc's egg or the
+like) you may believe me that I shall not scruple to ask you to be the
+finder; but at this moment I want nothing, indeed, except your poems;
+and that is quite the truth. Now do consider and think what I could
+possibly want in your 'outside London world'; you, who are the 'Genius
+of the lamp'!--Why if you light it and let me read your romances, &c.,
+by it, is not that the best use for it, and am I likely to look for
+another? Only I shall remember what you say, gratefully and seriously;
+and if ever I should have a good fair opportunity of giving you
+trouble (as if I had not done it already!), you may rely upon my evil
+intentions; even though dear Mr. Kenyon should not actually be at New
+York, ... which he is not, I am glad to say, as I saw him on Saturday.
+
+Which reminds me that _he_ knows of your having been here, of course!
+and will not mention it; as he understood from me that _you_ would
+not.--Thank you! Also there was an especial reason which constrained
+me, on pain of appearing a great hypocrite, to tell Miss Mitford the
+bare fact of my having seen you--and reluctantly I did it, though
+placing some hope in her promise of discretion. And how necessary the
+discretion is, will appear in the awful statistical fact of our having
+at this moment, as my sisters were calculating yesterday, some forty
+relations in London--to say nothing of the right wing of the enemy.
+For Mr. Horne, I could have told you, and really I thought I _had_
+told you of his being in England.
+
+Last paragraph of all is, that I _don't want to be amused_, ... or
+rather that I _am_ amused by everything and anything. Why surely,
+surely, you have some singular ideas about me! So, till to-morrow,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Instead of writing this note to you yesterday, as should have been, I
+went down-stairs--or rather was carried--and am not the worse.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Friday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
+
+Yes, the poem _is_ too good in certain respects for the prizes given
+in colleges, (when all the pure parsley goes naturally to the
+rabbits), and has a great deal of beauty here and there in image and
+expression. Still I do not quite agree with you that it reaches the
+Tennyson standard any wise; and for the blank verse, I cannot for a
+moment think it comparable to one of the grand passages in 'Oenone,'
+and 'Arthur' and the like. In fact I seem to hear more in that latter
+blank verse than you do, ... to hear not only a 'mighty line' as in
+Marlowe, but a noble full orbicular wholeness in complete
+passages--which always struck me as the mystery of music and great
+peculiarity in Tennyson's versification, inasmuch as he attains to
+these complete effects without that shifting of the pause practised by
+the masters, ... Shelley and others. A 'linked music' in which there
+are no links!--_that_, you would take to be a contradiction--and yet
+something like that, my ear has always seemed to perceive; and I have
+wondered curiously again and again how there could be so much union
+and no fastening. Only of course it is not model versification--and
+for dramatic purposes, it must be admitted to be bad.
+
+Which reminds me to be astonished for the second time how you could
+think such a thing of me as that I wanted to read only your lyrics,
+... or that I 'preferred the lyrics' ... or something barbarous in
+that way? You don't think me 'ambidexter,' or 'either-handed' ... and
+both hands open for what poems you will vouchsafe to me; and yet if
+you would let me see anything you may have in a readable state by you,
+... 'The Flight of the Duchess' ... or act or scene of 'The Soul's
+Tragedy,' ... I shall be so glad and grateful to you! Oh--if you
+change your mind and choose to be _bien prié_, I will grant it is your
+right, and begin my liturgy directly. But this is not teazing (in the
+intention of it!) and I understand all about the transcription, and
+the inscrutableness of rough copies,--that is, if you write as I do,
+so that my guardian angel or M. Champollion cannot read what is
+written. Only whatever they can, (remember!) _I_ can: and you are not
+to mind trusting me with the cacistography possible to mortal readers.
+
+The sun shines so that nobody dares complain of the east wind--and
+indeed I am better altogether. May God bless you, my dear friend.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
+
+When I ask my wise self what I really do remember of the Prize poem,
+the answer is--both of Chapman's lines a-top, quite worth any prize
+for their quoter--then, the good epithet of 'Green Europe' contrasting
+with Africa--then, deep in the piece, a picture of a Vestal in a
+vault, where I see a dipping and winking lamp plainest, and last of
+all the ominous 'all was dark' that dismisses you. I read the poem
+many years ago, and never since, though I have an impression that the
+versification is good, yet from your commentary I see I must have said
+a good deal more in its praise than that. But have you not discovered
+by this time that I go on talking with my thoughts away?
+
+I know, I have always been jealous of my own musical faculty (I can
+write music).--Now that I see the uselessness of such jealousy, and am
+for loosing and letting it go, it may be cramped possibly. Your music
+is more various and exquisite than any modern writer's to my ear. One
+should study the mechanical part of the art, as nearly all that there
+is to be studied--for the more one sits and thinks over the creative
+process, the more it confirms itself as 'inspiration,' nothing more
+nor less. Or, at worst, you write down old inspirations, what you
+remember of them ... but with _that_ it begins. 'Reflection' is
+exactly what it names itself--a _re_-presentation, in scattered rays
+from every angle of incidence, of what first of all became present in
+a great light, a whole one. So tell me how these lights are born, if
+you can! But I can tell anybody how to make melodious verses--let him
+do it therefore--it should be exacted of all writers.
+
+You do not understand what a new feeling it is for me to have someone
+who is to like my verses or I shall not ever like them after! So far
+differently was I circumstanced of old, that I used rather to go about
+for a subject of offence to people; writing ugly things in order to
+warn the ungenial and timorous off my grounds at once. I shall never
+do so again at least! As it is, I will bring all I dare, in as great
+quantities as I can--if not next time, after then--certainly. I must
+make an end, print this Autumn my last four 'Bells,' Lyrics, Romances,
+'The Tragedy,' and 'Luna,' and then go on with a whole heart to my own
+Poem--indeed, I have just resolved not to begin any new song, even,
+till this grand clearance is made--I will get the Tragedy transcribed
+to bring--
+
+'To bring!' Next Wednesday--if you know how happy you make me! may I
+not say _that_, my dear friend, when I feel it from my soul?
+
+I thank God that you are better: do pray make fresh endeavours to
+profit by this partial respite of the weather! All about you must urge
+that: but even from my distance some effect might come of such wishes.
+But you _are_ better--look so and speak so! God bless you.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+You let 'flowers be sent you in a letter,' every one knows, and this
+hot day draws out our very first yellow rose.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 17, 1845.]
+
+Yes, I quite believe as you do that what is called the 'creative
+process' in works of Art, is just inspiration and no less--which made
+somebody say to me not long since; And so you think that Shakespeare's
+'Othello' was of the effluence of the Holy Ghost?'--rather a startling
+deduction, ... only not quite as final as might appear to somebodies
+perhaps. At least it does not prevent my going on to agree with the
+saying of _Spiridion_, ... do you remember?... 'Tout ce que l'homme
+appelle inspiration, je l'appelle aussi revelation,' ... if there is
+not something too self-evident in it after all--my sole objection! And
+is it not true that your inability to analyse the mental process in
+question, is one of the proofs of the fact of inspiration?--as the
+gods were known of old by not being seen to move their feet,--coming
+and going in an equal sweep of radiance.--And still more wonderful
+than the first transient great light you speak of, ... and far beyond
+any work of _re_flection, except in the pure analytical sense in which
+you use the word, ... appears that gathering of light on light upon
+particular points, as you go (in composition) step by step, till you
+get intimately near to things, and see them in a fullness and
+clearness, and an intense trust in the truth of them which you have
+not in any sunshine of noon (called _real_!) but which you have _then_
+... and struggle to communicate:--an ineffectual struggle with most
+writers (oh, how ineffectual!) and when effectual, issuing in the
+'Pippa Passes,' and other master-pieces of the world.
+
+You will tell me what you mean exactly by being jealous of your own
+music? You said once that you had had a false notion of music, or had
+practised it according to the false notions of other people: but did
+you mean besides that you ever had meant to despise music
+altogether--because _that_, it is hard to set about trying to believe
+of you indeed. And then, you _can_ praise my verses for music?--Why,
+are you aware that people blame me constantly for wanting
+harmony--from Mr. Boyd who moans aloud over the indisposition of my
+'trochees' ... and no less a person than Mr. Tennyson, who said to
+somebody who repeated it, that in the want of harmony lay the chief
+defect of the poems, 'although it might verily be retrieved, as he
+could fancy that I had an ear by nature.' Well--but I am pleased that
+you should praise me--right or wrong--I mean, whether I am right or
+wrong in being pleased! and I say so to you openly, although my belief
+is that you are under a vow to our Lady of Loretto to make giddy with
+all manner of high vanities, some head, ... not too strong for such
+things, but too low for them, ... before you see again the embroidery
+on her divine petticoat. Only there's a flattery so far beyond praise
+... even _your_ praise--as where you talk of your verses being liked
+&c., and of your being happy to bring them here, ... that is scarcely
+a lawful weapon; and see if the Madonna may not signify so much to
+you!--Seriously, you will not hurry too uncomfortably, or
+uncomfortably at all, about the transcribing? Another day, you know,
+will do as well--and patience is possible to me, if not 'native to the
+soil.'
+
+Also I am behaving very well in going out into the noise; not quite
+out of doors yet, on account of the heat--and I am better as you say,
+without any doubt at all, and stronger--only my looks are a little
+deceitful; and people are apt to be heated and flushed in this
+weather, one hour, to look a little more ghastly an hour or two after.
+Not that it _is_ not true of me that I am better, mind! Because I am.
+
+The 'flower in the letter' was from one of my sisters--from Arabel
+(though many of these poems are _ideal_ ... will you understand?) and
+your rose came quite alive and fresh, though in act of dropping its
+beautiful leaves, because of having to come to me instead of living on
+in your garden, as it intended. But I thank you--for this, and all, my
+dear friend.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Thursday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 19, 1845.]
+
+When I next see you, do not let me go on and on to my confusion about
+matters I am more or less ignorant of, but always ignorant. I tell
+you plainly I only trench on them, and intrench in them, from
+gaucherie, pure and respectable ... I should certainly grow
+instructive on the prospects of hay-crops and pasture-land, if
+deprived of this resource. And now here is a week to wait before I
+shall have any occasion to relapse into Greek literature when I am
+thinking all the while, 'now I will just ask simply, what flattery
+there was,' &c. &c., which, as I had not courage to say then, I keep
+to myself for shame now. This I will say, then--wait and know me
+better, as you will one long day at the end.
+
+Why I write now, is because you did not promise, as before, to let me
+know how you are--this morning is miserably cold again--Will you tell
+me, at your own time?
+
+God bless you, my dear friend.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Thursday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 20, 1845.]
+
+If on Greek literature or anything else it is your pleasure to
+cultivate a reputation for ignorance, I will respect your desire--and
+indeed the point of the deficiency in question being far above my
+sight I am not qualified either to deny or assert the existence of it;
+so you are free to have it all your own way.
+
+About the 'flattery' however, there is a difference; and I must deny a
+little having ever used such a word ... as far as I can recollect, and
+I have been trying to recollect, ... as that word of flattery. Perhaps
+I said something about your having vowed to make me vain by writing
+this or that of my liking your verses and so on--and perhaps I said it
+too lightly ... which happened because when one doesn't know whether
+to laugh or to cry, it is far best, as a general rule, to laugh. But
+the serious truth is that it was all nonsense together what I wrote,
+and that, instead of talking of your making me vain, I should have
+talked (if it had been done sincerely) of your humbling me--inasmuch
+as nothing does humble anybody so much as being lifted up too high.
+You know what vaulting Ambition did once for himself? and when it is
+done for him by another, his fall is still heavier. And one moral of
+all this general philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you
+persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to
+say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I
+shall have no help for my dumbness. So I tell you beforehand--nothing
+extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so
+much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence'
+which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness'
+which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems
+gradually going and going--and really it would not be very strange
+(without that) if _I_ who was born a hero worshipper and have so
+continued, and who always recognised your genius, should find it
+impossible to bring out critical doxies on the workings of it. Well--I
+shall do what I can--as far as _impressions_ go, you understand--and
+_you_ must promise not to attach too much importance to anything said.
+So that is a covenant, my dear friend!--
+
+And I am really gaining strength--and I will not complain of the
+weather. As long as the thermometer keeps above sixty I am content for
+one; and the roses are not quite dead yet, which they would have been
+in the heat. And last and not least--may I ask if you were told that
+the pain in the head was not important (or was) in the causes, ... and
+was likely to be well soon? or was not? I am at the end.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Upon second or third thoughts, isn't it true that you are a little
+suspicious of me? suspicious at least of suspiciousness?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Sunday Afternoon.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 23, 1845.]
+
+And if I am 'suspicious of your suspiciousness,' who gives cause,
+pray? The matter was long ago settled, I thought, when you first took
+exception to what I said about higher and lower, and I consented to
+this much--that you should help seeing, if you could, our true
+intellectual and moral relation each to the other, so long as you
+would allow _me_ to see what _is_ there, fronting me. 'Is my eye evil
+because yours is not good?' My own friend, if I wished to 'make you
+vain,' if having 'found the Bower' I did really address myself to the
+wise business of spoiling its rose-roof,--I think that at least where
+there was such a will, there would be also something not unlike a
+way,--that I should find a proper hooked stick to tear down flowers
+with, and write you other letters than these--quite, quite others, I
+feel--though I am far from going to imagine, even for a moment, what
+might be the precise prodigy--like the notable Son of Zeus, that _was_
+to have been, and done the wonders, only he did not, because &c. &c.
+
+But I have a restless head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well,
+you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being
+positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are
+neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special
+naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to
+signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more than that ... you
+will know exactly why it happens. I will finish and transcribe the
+'Flight of the Duchess' since you spoke of that first.
+
+I am truly happy to hear that your health improves still.
+
+For me, going out does me good--reading, writing, and, what is
+odd,--infinitely most of all, _sleeping_ do me the harm,--never any
+very great harm. And all the while I am yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]
+
+I had begun to be afraid that I did not deserve to have my questions
+answered; and I was afraid of asking them over again. But it is worse
+to be afraid that you are not better at all in any essential manner
+(after all your assurances) and that the medical means have failed so
+far. Did you go to somebody who knows anything?--because there is no
+excuse, you see, in common sense, for not having the best and most
+experienced opinion when there is a choice of advice--and I am
+confident that that pain should not be suffered to go on without
+something being done. What I said about _nerves_, related to what you
+had told me of your mother's suffering and what you had fancied of the
+relation of it to your own, and not that I could be thinking about
+imaginary complaints--I wish I could. Not (either) that I believe in
+the relation ... because such things are not hereditary, are they? and
+the bare coincidence is improbable. Well, but, I wanted particularly
+to say this--_Don't bring the 'Duchess' with you on Wednesday._ I
+shall not expect anything, I write distinctly to tell you--and I would
+far far rather that you did not bring it. You see it is just as I
+thought--for that whether too much thought or study did or did not
+bring on the illness, ... yet you admit that reading and writing
+increase it ... as they would naturally do any sort of pain in the
+head--therefore if you will but be in earnest and try to get well
+_first_, we will do the 'Bells' afterwards, and there will be time for
+a whole peal of them, I hope and trust, before the winter. Now do
+admit that this is reasonable, and agree reasonably to it. And if it
+does you good to go out and take exercise, why not go out and take it?
+nay, why not go _away_ and take it? Why not try the effect of a little
+change of air--or even of a great change of air--if it should be
+necessary, or even expedient? Anything is better, you know ... or if
+you don't know, _I_ know--than to be ill, really, seriously--I mean
+for _you_ to be ill, who have so much to do and to enjoy in the world
+yet ... and all those bells waiting to be hung! So that if you will
+agree to be well first, I will promise to be ready afterwards to help
+you in any thing I can do ... transcribing or anything ... to get the
+books through the press in the shortest of times--and I am capable of
+a great deal of that sort of work without being tired, having the
+habit of writing in any sort of position, and the long habit, ...
+since, before I was ill even, I never used to write at a table (or
+scarcely ever) but on the arm of a chair, or on the seat of one,
+sitting myself on the floor, and calling myself a Lollard for dignity.
+So you will put by your 'Duchess' ... will you not? or let me see just
+that one sheet--if one should be written--which is finished? ... up to
+this moment, you understand? finished _now_.
+
+And if I have tired and teazed you with all these words it is a bad
+opportunity to take--and yet I will persist in saying through good and
+bad opportunities that I never did 'give cause' as you say, to your
+being 'suspicious of my suspiciousness' as I believe I said before. I
+deny my 'suspiciousness' altogether--it is not one of my faults. Nor
+is it quite my fault that you and I should always be quarrelling about
+over-appreciations and under-appreciations--and after all I have no
+interest nor wish, I do assure you, to depreciate myself--and you are
+not to think that I have the remotest claim to the Monthyon prize for
+good deeds in the way of modesty of self-estimation. Only when I know
+you better, as you talk of ... and when _you_ know _me_ too well, ...
+the right and the wrong of these conclusions will appear in a fuller
+light than ever so much arguing can produce now. Is it unkindly
+written of me? _no_--I _feel_ it is not!--and that 'now and ever we
+are friends,' (just as you think) _I_ think besides and am happy in
+thinking so, and could not be distrustful of you if I tried. So may
+God bless you, my ever dear friend--and mind to forget the 'Duchess'
+and to remember every good counsel!--Not that I do particularly
+confide in the medical oracles. They never did much more for _me_
+than, when my pulse was above a hundred and forty with fever, to give
+me digitalis to make me weak--and, when I could not move without
+fainting (with weakness), to give me quinine to make me feverish
+again. Yes--and they could tell from the stethoscope, how very little
+was really wrong in me ... if it were not on a vital organ--and how I
+should certainly live ... if I didn't die sooner. But then, nothing
+_has_ power over affections of the chest, except God and his
+winds--and I do hope that an obvious quick remedy may be found for
+your head. But _do_ give up the writing and all that does harm!--
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      E.B.B.
+
+Miss Mitford talked of spending Wednesday with me--and I have put it
+off to Thursday:--and if you should hear from Mr. Chorley that he is
+coming to see _her and me together on any day_, do understand that it
+was entirely her proposition and not mine, and that certainly it won't
+be acceded to, as far as _I_ am concerned; as I have explained to her
+finally. I have been vexed about it--but she can see him down-stairs
+as she has done before--and if she calls me perverse and capricious
+(which she will do) I shall stop the reflection by thanking her again
+and again (as I can do sincerely) for her kindness and goodness in
+coming to see me herself, so far!--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Morning,
+                                 [Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]
+
+(So my friend did not in the spirit see me write that _first_ letter,
+on Friday, which was too good and true to send, and met, five minutes
+after, its natural fate accordingly. Then on Saturday I thought to
+take health by storm, and walked myself half dead all the
+morning--about town too: last post-hour from this Thule of a
+suburb--4 P.M. on Saturdays, next expedition of letters, 8 A.M. on
+Mondays;--and then my real letter set out with the others--and, it
+should seem, set at rest a 'wonder whether thy friend's questions
+deserved answering'--de-served--answer-ing--!)
+
+Parenthetically so much--I want most, though, to tell you--(leaving
+out any slightest attempt at thanking you) that I am much better,
+quite well to-day--that my doctor has piloted me safely through two or
+three illnesses, and knows all about me, I do think--and that he talks
+confidently of getting rid of all the symptoms complained of--and
+_has_ made a good beginning if I may judge by to-day. As for going
+abroad, that is just the thing I most want to avoid (for a reason not
+so hard to guess, perhaps, as why my letter was slow in arriving).
+
+So, till to-morrow,--my light through the dark week.
+
+                            God ever bless you, dear friend,
+
+                                 R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 25, 1845.]
+
+What will you think when I write to ask you _not_ to come to-morrow,
+Wednesday; but ... on Friday perhaps, instead? But do see how it is;
+and judge if it is to be helped.
+
+I have waited hour after hour, hoping to hear from Miss Mitford that
+she would agree to take Thursday in change for Wednesday,--and just as
+I begin to wonder whether she can have received my letter at all, or
+whether she may not have been vexed by it into taking a vengeance and
+adhering to her own devices; (for it appealed to her esprit de sexe on
+the undeniable axiom of women having their way ... and she might
+choose to act it out!) just as I wonder over all this, and consider
+what a confusion of the elements it would be if you came and found her
+here, and Mr. Chorley at the door perhaps, waiting for some of the
+light of her countenance;--comes a note from Mr. Kenyon, to the
+effect that _he_ will be here at four o'clock P.M.--and comes a final
+note from my aunt Mrs. Hedley (supposed to be at Brighton for several
+months) to the effect that _she_ will be here at twelve o'clock, M.!!
+So do observe the constellation of adverse stars ... or the covey of
+'bad birds,' as the Romans called them, and that there is no choice,
+but to write as I am writing. It can't be helped--can it? For take
+away the doubt about Miss Mitford, and Mr. Kenyon remains--and take
+away Mr. Kenyon, and there is Mrs. Hedley--and thus it _must be for
+Friday_ ... which will learn to be a fortunate day for the
+nonce--unless Saturday should suit you better. I do not speak of
+Thursday, because of the doubt about Miss Mitford--and if any harm
+should happen to Friday, I will write again; but if you do not hear
+again, and are able to come then, you _will_ come perhaps then.
+
+In the meantime I thank you for the better news in your note--if it is
+really, really to be trusted in--but you know, you have said so often
+that you were better and better, without being really better, that it
+makes people ... 'suspicious.' Yet it is full amends for the
+disappointment to hope ... here I must break off or be too late. May
+God bless you my dear friend.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 12. Wednesday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 25, 1845.]
+
+Pomegranates you may cut deep down the middle and see into, but not
+hearts,--so why should I try and speak?
+
+Friday is best day because nearest, but Saturday is next best--it is
+next near, you know: if I get no note, therefore, Friday is my day.
+
+Now is Post-time,--which happens properly.
+
+God bless you, and so your own
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Thursday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 27, 1845.]
+
+After all it must be for Saturday, as Mrs. Hedley comes again on
+Friday, to-morrow, from _New Cross_,--or just beyond it, Eltham
+Park--to London for a few days, on account of the illness of one of
+her children. I write in the greatest haste after Miss Mitford has
+left me ... and _so_ tired! to say this, that if you can and will come
+on Saturday, ... or if not on Monday or Tuesday, there is no reason
+against it.
+
+                                         Your friend always,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Friday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 27, 1845.]
+
+Let me make haste and write down _To-morrow_, Saturday, and not later,
+lest my selfishness be thoroughly got under in its struggle with a
+better feeling that tells me you must be far too tired for another
+visitor this week.
+
+What shall I decide on?
+
+Well--Saturday is said--but I will stay not quite so long, nor talk
+nearly so loud as of old-times; nor will you, if you understand
+anything of me, fail to send down word should you be at all
+indisposed. I should not have the heart to knock at the door unless I
+really believed you would do that. Still saying this and providing
+against the other does not amount, I well know, to the generosity, or
+justice rather, of staying away for a day or two altogether. But--what
+'a day or two' may not bring forth! Change to you, change to me--
+
+Not all of me, however, can change, thank God--
+
+                                                  Yours ever
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+Or, write, as last night, if needs be: Monday, Tuesday is not so long
+to wait. Will you write?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Friday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 28, 1845.]
+
+You are very kind and always--but really _that_ does not seem a good
+reason against your coming to-morrow--so come, if it should not rain.
+If it rains, it _concludes_ for Monday ... or Tuesday; whichever may
+be clear of rain. I was tired on Wednesday by the confounding
+confusion of more voices than usual in this room; but the effect
+passed off, and though Miss Mitford was with me for hours yesterday I
+am not unwell to-day. And pray speak _bona verba_ about the awful
+things which are possible between this now and Wednesday. You continue
+to be better, I do hope? I am forced to the brevity you see, by the
+post on one side, and my friends on the other, who have so long
+overstayed the coming of your note--but it is enough to assure you
+that you will do no harm by coming--only give pleasure.
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                            Monday.
+                                            [June 30, 1845.]
+
+I send back the prize poems which have been kept far too long even if
+I do not make excuses for the keeping--but our sins are not always to
+be measured by our repentance for them. Then I am well enough this
+morning to have thought of going out till they told me it was not at
+all a right day for it ... too windy ... soft and delightful as the
+air seems to be--particularly after yesterday, when we had some winter
+back again in an episode. And the roses do not die; which is quite
+magnanimous of them considering their reverses; and their buds are
+coming out in most exemplary resignation--like birds singing in a
+cage. Now that the windows may be open, the flowers take heart to live
+a little in this room.
+
+And think of my forgetting to tell you on Saturday that I had known of
+a letter being received by somebody from Miss Martineau, who is at
+Ambleside at this time and so entranced with the lakes and mountains
+as to be dreaming of taking or making a house among them, to live in
+for the rest of her life. Mrs. Trollope, you may have heard, had
+something of the same nympholepsy--no, her daughter was 'settled' in
+the neighbourhood--_that_ is the more likely reason for Mrs. Trollope!
+and the spirits of the hills conspired against her the first winter
+and almost slew her with a fog and drove her away to your Italy where
+the Oreadocracy has gentler manners. And Miss Martineau is practising
+mesmerism and miracles on all sides she says, and counts on Archbishop
+Whately as a new adherent. I even fancy that he has been to see her in
+the character of a convert. All this from Mr. Kenyon.
+
+There's a strange wild book called the Autobiography of Heinrich
+Stilling ... one of those true devout deep-hearted Germans who believe
+everything, and so are nearer the truth, I am sure, than the wise who
+believe nothing; but rather over-German sometimes, and redolent of
+sauerkraut--and _he_ gives a tradition ... somewhere between mesmerism
+and mysticism, ... of a little spirit with gold shoebuckles, who was
+his familiar spirit and appeared only in the sunshine I think ...
+mottling it over with its feet, perhaps, as a child might snow. Take
+away the shoebuckles and I believe in the little spirit--don't _you_?
+But these English mesmerists make the shoebuckles quite conspicuous
+and insist on them broadly; and the Archbishops Whately may be drawn
+by _them_ (who can tell?) more than by the little spirit itself. How
+is your head to-day? now really, and nothing extenuating? I will not
+ask of poems, till the 'quite well' is _authentic_. May God bless you
+always! my dear friend!
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+After all the book must go another day. I live in chaos do you know?
+and I am too hurried at this moment ... yes it is here.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                            Tuesday Morning.
+
+How are you--may I hope to hear soon?
+
+I don't know exactly what possessed me to set my next day so far off
+as Saturday--as it was said, however, so let it be. And I will bring
+the rest of the 'Duchess'--four or five hundred lines,--'heu, herba
+mala crescit'--(as I once saw mournfully pencilled on a white wall at
+Asolo)--but will you tell me if you quite remember the main of the
+_first_ part--(_parts_ there are none except in the necessary process
+of chopping up to suit the limits of a magazine--and I gave them as
+much as I could transcribe at a sudden warning)--because, if you
+please, I can bring the whole, of course.
+
+After seeing _you_, that Saturday, I was caught up by a friend and
+carried to see Vidocq--who did the honours of his museum of knives and
+nails and hooks that have helped great murderers to their purposes--he
+scarcely admits, I observe, an implement with only one attestation to
+its efficacy; but the one or two exceptions rather justify his
+latitude in their favour--thus one little sort of dessert knife _did_
+only take _one_ life.... 'But then,' says Vidocq, 'it was the man's
+own mother's life, with fifty-two blows, and all for' (I think)
+'fifteen francs she had got?' So prattles good-naturedly Vidocq--one
+of his best stories of that Lacénaire--'jeune homme d'un caractère
+fort avenant--mais c'était un poète,' quoth he, turning sharp on _me_
+out of two or three other people round him.
+
+Here your letter breaks in, and sunshine too.
+
+Why do you send me that book--not let me take it? What trouble for
+nothing!
+
+An old French friend of mine, a dear foolish, very French heart and
+soul, is coming presently--his poor brains are whirling with mesmerism
+in which he believes, as in all other unbelief. He and I are to dine
+alone (I have not seen him these two years)--and I shall never be able
+to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast and
+descending lower, from riveting his two foolish legs to the wintry
+chasm; for I that stammer and answer hap-hazard with you, get
+proportionately valiant and voluble with a mere cupful of Diderot's
+rinsings, and a man into the bargain.
+
+If you were prevented from leaving the house yesterday, assuredly
+to-day you will never attempt such a thing--the wind, rain--all is
+against it: I trust you will not make the first experiment except
+under really favourable auspices ... for by its success you will
+naturally be induced to go on or leave off--Still you are _better_! I
+fully believe, dare to believe, _that_ will continue. As for me, since
+you ask--find me but something _to do_, and see if I shall not be
+well!--Though I _am_ well now almost.
+
+How good you are to my roses--they are not of my making, to be sure.
+Never, by the way, did Miss Martineau work such a miracle as I now
+witness in the garden--I gathered at Rome, close to the fountain of
+Egeria, a handful of _fennel_-seeds from the most indisputable plant
+of fennel I ever chanced upon--and, lo, they are come up ... hemlock,
+or something akin! In two places, moreover. Wherein does hemlock
+resemble fennel? How could I mistake? No wonder that a stone's cast
+off from that Egeria's fountain is the Temple of the God Ridiculus.
+
+Well, on Saturday then--at three: and I will certainly bring the
+verses you mention--and trust to find you still better.
+
+Vivi felice--my dear friend, God bless you!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Wednesday-Thursday Evening
+                                  [Post-mark, July 4, 1845.]
+
+Yes--I know the first part of the 'Duchess' and have it here--and for
+the rest of the poem, don't mind about being very legible, or even
+legible in the usual sense; and remember how it is my boast to be able
+to read all such manuscript writing as never is read by people who
+don't like caviare. Now you won't mind? really I rather like blots
+than otherwise--being a sort of patron-saint of all manner of
+untidyness ... if Mr. Kenyon's reproaches (of which there's a
+stereotyped edition) are justified by the fact--and he has a great
+organ of order, and knows 'disorderly persons' at a glance, I suppose.
+But you won't be particular with _me_ in the matter of transcription?
+_that_ is what I want to make sure of. And even if you are not
+particular, I am afraid you are not well enough to be troubled by
+writing, and writing and the thinking that comes with it--it would be
+wiser to wait till you are quite well--now wouldn't it?--and my fear
+is that the 'almost well' means 'very little better.' And why, when
+there is no motive for hurrying, run any risk? Don't think that I will
+help you to make yourself ill. That I refuse to do even so much work
+as the 'little dessert-knife' in the way of murder, ... _do_ think! So
+upon the whole, I expect nothing on Saturday from this distance--and
+if it comes unexpectedly (I mean the Duchess and not Saturday) _let_
+it be at no cost, or at the least cost possible, will you? I am
+delighted in the meanwhile to hear of the quantity of 'mala herba';
+and hemlock does not come up from every seed you sow, though you call
+it by ever such bad names.
+
+Talking of poetry, I had a newspaper 'in help of social and political
+progress' sent to me yesterday from America--addressed to--just my
+name ... _poetess, London_! Think of the simplicity of those wild
+Americans in 'calculating' that 'people in general' here in England
+know what a poetess is!--Well--the post office authorities, after
+deep meditation, I do not doubt, on all probable varieties of the
+chimpanzee, and a glance to the Surrey Gardens on one side, and the
+Zoological department of Regent's Park on the other, thought of
+'Poet's Corner,' perhaps, and wrote at the top of the parcel, 'Enquire
+at Paternoster Row'! whereupon the Paternoster Row people wrote again,
+'Go to Mr. Moxon'--and I received my newspaper.
+
+And talking of poetesses, I had a note yesterday (again) which quite
+touched me ... from Mr. Hemans--Charles, the son of Felicia--written
+with so much feeling, that it was with difficulty I could say my
+perpetual 'no' to his wish about coming to see me. His mother's memory
+is surrounded to him, he says, 'with almost a divine lustre'--and 'as
+it cannot be to those who knew the writer alone and not the woman.' Do
+you not like to hear such things said? and is it not better than your
+tradition about Shelley's son? and is it not pleasant to know that
+that poor noble pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our
+country, should be so loved and comprehended by some ... by one at
+least ... of her own house? Not that, in naming Shelley, I meant for a
+moment to make a comparison--there is not equal ground for it.
+Vittoria Colonna does not walk near Dante--no. And if you promised
+never to tell Mrs. Jameson ... nor Miss Martineau ... I would confide
+to you perhaps my secret profession of faith--which is ... which is
+... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there _is_ a
+natural inferiority of mind in women--of the intellect ... not by any
+means, of the moral nature--and that the history of Art and of genius
+testifies to this fact openly. Oh--I would not say so to Mrs. Jameson
+for the world. I believe I was a coward to her altogether--for when
+she denounced carpet work as 'injurious to the mind,' because it led
+the workers into 'fatal habits of reverie,' I defended the carpet work
+as if I were striving _pro aris et focis_, (_I_, who am so innocent of
+all that knowledge!) and said not a word for the poor reveries which
+have frayed away so much of silken time for me ... and let her go
+away repeating again and again ... 'Oh, but _you_ may do carpet work
+with impunity--yes! _because_ you can be writing poems all the
+while.'!
+
+Think of people making poems and rugs at once. There's complex
+machinery for you!
+
+I told you that I had a sensation of cold blue steel from her
+eyes!--And yet I really liked and like and shall like her. She is very
+kind I believe--and it was my mistake--and I correct my impressions of
+her more and more to perfection, as _you_ tell me who know more of her
+than I.
+
+Only I should not dare, ... _ever_, I think ... to tell her that I
+believe women ... all of us in a mass ... to have minds of quicker
+movement, but less power and depth ... and that we are under your
+feet, because we can't stand upon our own. Not that we should either
+be quite under your feet! so you are not to be too proud, if you
+please--and there is certainly some amount of wrong--: but it never
+will be righted in the manner and to the extent contemplated by
+certain of our own prophetesses ... nor ought to be, I hold in
+intimate persuasion. One woman indeed now alive ... and only _that_
+one down all the ages of the world--seems to me to justify for a
+moment an opposite opinion--that wonderful woman George Sand; who has
+something monstrous in combination with her genius, there is no
+denying at moments (for she has written one book, Leila, which I could
+not read, though I am not easily turned back,) but whom, in her good
+and evil together, I regard with infinitely more admiration than all
+other women of genius who are or have been. Such a colossal nature in
+every way,--with all that breadth and scope of faculty which women
+want--magnanimous, and loving the truth and loving the people--and
+with that 'hate of hate' too, which you extol--so eloquent, and yet
+earnest as if she were dumb--so full of a living sense of beauty, and
+of noble blind instincts towards an ideal purity--and so proving a
+right even in her wrong. By the way, what you say of the Vidocq museum
+reminds me of one of the chamber of masonic trial scenes in
+'Consuelo.' Could you like to see those knives?
+
+I began with the best intentions of writing six lines--and see what is
+written! And all because I kept my letter back ... from a _doubt about
+Saturday_--but it has worn away, and the appointment stands good ...
+for me: I have nothing to say against it.
+
+But belief in mesmerism is not the same thing as general unbelief--to
+do it justice--now is it? It may be super-belief as well. Not that
+there is not something ghastly and repelling to me in the thought of
+Dr. Elliotson's great bony fingers seeming to 'touch the stops' of a
+whole soul's harmonies--as in phreno-magnetism. And I should have
+liked far better than hearing and seeing _that_, to have heard _you_
+pour the 'cupful of Diderot's rinsings,' out,--and indeed I can fancy
+a little that you and how you could do it--and break the cup too
+afterwards!
+
+Another sheet--and for what?
+
+What is written already, if you read, you do so meritoriously--and
+it's an example of bad writing, if you want one in the poems. I am
+ashamed, you may see, of having written too much, (besides)--which is
+_much_ worse--but one writes and writes: _I_ do at least--for _you_
+are irreproachable. Ever yours my dear friend, as if I had not written
+... or _had_!
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                   Monday Afternoon.
+                                   [Post-mark July 7, 1845.]
+
+While I write this,--3 o'clock you may be going out, I will hope, for
+the day is very fine, perhaps all the better for the wind: yet I got
+up this morning sure of bad weather. I shall not try to tell you how
+anxious I am for the result and to know it. You will of course feel
+fatigued at first--but persevering, as you mean to do, do you
+not?--persevering, the event must be happy.
+
+I thought, and still think, to write to you about George Sand, and
+the vexed question, a very Bermoothes of the 'Mental Claims of the
+Sexes Relatively Considered' (so was called the, ... I do believe, ...
+worst poem I ever read in my life), and Mrs. Hemans, and all and some
+of the points referred to in your letter--but 'by my fay, I cannot
+reason,' to-day: and, by a consequence, I feel the more--so I say how
+I want news of you ... which, when they arrive, I shall read
+'meritoriously'--do you think? My friend, what ought I to tell you on
+that head (or the reverse rather)--of your discourse? I should like to
+match you at a fancy-flight; if I could, give you nearly as pleasant
+an assurance that 'there's no merit in the case,' but the hot weather
+and lack of wit get the better of my good will--besides, I remember
+once to have admired a certain enticing simplicity in the avowal of
+the Treasurer of a Charitable Institution at a Dinner got up in its
+behalf--the Funds being at lowest, Debt at highest ... in fact, this
+Dinner was the last chance of the Charity, and this Treasurer's speech
+the main feature in the chance--and our friend, inspired by the
+emergency, went so far as to say, with a bland smile--'Do not let it
+be supposed that we--_despise_ annual contributors,--we
+_rather_--solicit their assistance.' All which means, do not think
+that I take any 'merit' for making myself supremely happy, I rather
+&c. &c.
+
+Always rather mean to deserve it a little better--but never shall: so
+it should be, for you and me--and as it was in the beginning so it is
+still. You are the--But you know and why should I tease myself with
+words?
+
+Let me send this off now--and to-morrow some more, because I trust to
+hear you have made the first effort and with success.
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Monday.
+                                  [Post-mark, July 8, 1845.]
+
+Well--I have really been out; and am really alive after it--which is
+more surprising still--alive enough I mean, to write even _so_,
+to-night. But perhaps I say so with more emphasis, to console myself
+for failing in my great ambition of getting into the Park and of
+reaching Mr. Kenyon's door just to leave a card there vaingloriously,
+... all which I did fail in, and was forced to turn back from the
+gates of Devonshire Place. The next time it will be better
+perhaps--and this time there was no fainting nor anything very wrong
+... not even cowardice on the part of the victim (be it recorded!) for
+one of my sisters was as usual in authority and ordered the turning
+back just according to her own prudence and not my selfwill. Only you
+will not, any of you, ask me to admit that it was all
+delightful--pleasanter work than what you wanted to spare me in taking
+care of your roses on Saturday! don't ask _that_, and I will try it
+again presently.
+
+I ought to be ashamed of writing this I and me-ism--but since your
+kindness made it worth while asking about I must not be over-wise and
+silent on my side.
+
+_Tuesday._--Was it fair to tell me to write though, and be silent of
+the 'Duchess,' and when I was sure to be so delighted--and _you knew
+it_? _I_ think not indeed. And, to make the obedience possible, I go
+on fast to say that I heard from Mr. Horne a few days since and that
+_he_ said--'your envelope reminds me of'--_you_, he said ... and so,
+asked if you were in England still, and meant to write to you. To
+which I have answered that I believe you to be in England--thinking it
+strange about the envelope; which, as far as I remember, was one of
+those long ones, used, the more conveniently to enclose to him back
+again a MS. of his own I had offered with another of his, by his
+desire, to _Colburn's Magazine_, as the productions of a friend of
+mine, when he was in Germany and afraid of his proper fatal
+onymousness, yet in difficulty how to approach the magazines as a
+nameless writer (you will not mention this of course). And when he was
+in Germany, I remember, ... writing just as your first letter came ...
+that I mentioned it to him, and was a little frankly proud of it! but
+since, your name has not occurred once--not once, certainly!--and it
+is strange.... Only he _can't_ have heard of your having been here,
+and it _must_ have been a chance-remark--altogether! taking an
+imaginary emphasis from my evil conscience perhaps. Talking of evils,
+how wrong of you to make that book for me! and how ill I thanked you
+after all! Also, I couldn't help feeling more grateful still for the
+Duchess ... who is under ban: and for how long I wonder?
+
+                            My dear friend, I am ever yours,
+
+                                 E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Wednesday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, July 9, 1845.]
+
+You are all that is good and kind: I am happy and thankful the
+beginning (and worst of it) is over and so well. The Park and Mr.
+Kenyon's all in good time--and your sister was most prudent--and you
+mean to try again: God bless you, all to be said or done--but, as I
+say it, no vain word. No doubt it was a mere chance-thought, and _à
+propos de bottes_ of Horne--neither he or any other _can_ know or even
+fancy how it is. Indeed, though on other grounds I should be all so
+proud of being known for your friend by everybody, yet there's no
+denying the deep delight of playing the Eastern Jew's part here in
+this London--they go about, you know by travel-books, with the tokens
+of extreme destitution and misery, and steal by blind ways and
+by-paths to some blank dreary house, one obscure door in it--which
+being well shut behind them, they grope on through a dark corridor or
+so, and then, a blaze follows the lifting a curtain or the like, for
+they are in a palace-hall with fountains and light, and marble and
+gold, of which the envious are never to dream! And I, too, love to
+have few friends, and to live alone, and to see you from week to week.
+Do you not suppose I am grateful?
+
+And you do like the 'Duchess,' as much as you have got of it? that
+delights me, too--for every reason. But I fear I shall not be able to
+bring you the rest to-morrow--Thursday, my day--because I have been
+broken in upon more than one morning; nor, though much better in my
+head, can I do anything at night just now. All will come right
+eventually, I hope, and I shall transcribe the other things you are to
+judge.
+
+To-morrow then--only (and that is why I would write) do, do _know_ me
+for what I am and treat me as I deserve in that _one_ respect, and _go
+out_, without a moment's thought or care, if to-morrow should suit
+you--leave word to that effect and I shall be as glad as if I saw you
+or more--_reasoned_ gladness, you know. Or you can write--though that
+is not necessary at all,--do think of all this!
+
+                               I am yours ever, dear friend,
+
+                                    R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 12, 1845.]
+
+You understand that it was not a resolution passed in favour of
+formality, when I said what I did yesterday about not going out at the
+time you were coming--surely you do; whatever you might signify to a
+different effect. If it were necessary for me to go out every day, or
+most days even, it would be otherwise; but as it is, I may certainly
+keep the day you come, free from the fear of carriages, let the sun
+shine its best or worst, without doing despite to you or injury to
+me--and that's all I meant to insist upon indeed and indeed. You see,
+Jupiter Tonans was good enough to come to-day on purpose to deliver
+me--one evil for another! for I confess with shame and contrition,
+that I never wait to enquire whether it thunders to the left or the
+right, to be frightened most ingloriously. Isn't it a disgrace to
+anyone with a pretension to poetry? Dr. Chambers, a part of whose
+office it is, Papa says, 'to reconcile foolish women to their
+follies,' used to take the side of my vanity, and discourse at length
+on the passive obedience of some nervous systems to electrical
+influences; but perhaps my faint-heartedness is besides traceable to a
+half-reasonable terror of a great storm in Herefordshire, where great
+storms most do congregate, (such storms!) round the Malvern Hills,
+those mountains of England. We lived four miles from their roots,
+through all my childhood and early youth, in a Turkish house my father
+built himself, crowded with minarets and domes, and crowned with metal
+spires and crescents, to the provocation (as people used to observe)
+of every lightning of heaven. Once a storm of storms happened, and we
+all thought the house was struck--and a tree was so really, within two
+hundred yards of the windows while I looked out--the bark, rent from
+the top to the bottom ... torn into long ribbons by the dreadful fiery
+hands, and dashed out into the air, over the heads of other trees, or
+left twisted in their branches--torn into shreds in a moment, as a
+flower might be, by a child! Did you ever see a tree after it has been
+struck by lightning? The whole trunk of that tree was bare and
+peeled--and up that new whiteness of it, ran the finger-mark of the
+lightning in a bright beautiful rose-colour (none of your roses
+brighter or more beautiful!) the fever-sign of the certain
+death--though the branches themselves were for the most part
+untouched, and spread from the peeled trunk in their full summer
+foliage; and birds singing in them three hours afterwards! And, in
+that same storm, two young women belonging to a festive party were
+killed on the Malvern Hills--each sealed to death in a moment with a
+sign on the chest which a common seal would cover--only the sign on
+them was not rose-coloured as on our tree, but black as charred wood.
+So I get 'possessed' sometimes with the effects of these impressions,
+and so does one, at least, of my sisters, in a lower degree--and
+oh!--how amusing and instructive all this is to you! When my father
+came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the
+lightning, he was quite angry and called 'it disgraceful to anybody
+who had ever learnt the alphabet'--to which I answered humbly that 'I
+knew it was'--but if I had been impertinent, I _might_ have added that
+wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it? Don't you
+think so in a measure? _non obstantibus_ Bradbury and Evans? There's a
+profane question--and ungrateful too ... after the Duchess--I except
+the Duchess and her peers--and be sure she will be the world's Duchess
+and received as one of your most striking poems. Full of various power
+the poem is.... I cannot say how deeply it has impressed me--but
+though I want the conclusion, I don't _wish_ for it; and in this, am
+reasonable for once! You will not write and make yourself ill--will
+you? or read 'Sybil' at unlawful hours even? Are you better at all?
+What a letter! and how very foolishly to-day
+
+                                                 I am yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Sunday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]
+
+Very well--I shall say no more on the subject--though it was not any
+piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your
+over-kindness exactly--I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind,
+and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you
+must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest
+obligation. I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom
+your well-being is of deeper interest than to me. Well, if that be
+so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of
+proving serviceable to you; nor _set yourself against_ any little
+irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the
+beginning; and you may say, if you like, 'how I shall delight those
+friends, if I can make this newest one grateful'--and, as from the
+known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be
+one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips
+and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen
+'Duchesses': why ought I not to say this when it is so true? Besides,
+people profess as much to their merest friends--for I have been
+looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of
+Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die
+too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so on. I wonder
+whether they have since wanted to borrow money of him on the strength
+of his professions. But you must remember we are in July; the 13th it
+is, and summer will go and cold weather stay ('_come_' forsooth!)--and
+now is the time of times. Still I feared the rain would hinder you on
+Friday--but the thunder did not frighten me--for you: your father must
+pardon me for holding most firmly with Dr. Chambers--his theory is
+quite borne out by my own experience, for I have seen a man it were
+foolish to call a coward, a great fellow too, all but die away in a
+thunderstorm, though he had quite science enough to explain why there
+was no immediate danger at all--whereupon his younger brother
+suggested that he should just go out and treat us to a repetition of
+Franklin's experiment with the cloud and the kite--a well-timed
+proposition which sent the Explainer down with a white face into the
+cellar. What a grand sight your tree was--_is_, for I see it. My
+father has a print of a tree so struck--torn to ribbons, as you
+describe--but the rose-mark is striking and new to me. We had a good
+storm on our last voyage, but I went to bed at the end, as I
+thought--and only found there had been lightning next day by the bare
+poles under which we were riding: but the finest mountain fit of the
+kind I ever saw has an unfortunately ludicrous association. It was at
+Possagno, among the Euganean Hills, and I was at a poor house in the
+town--an old woman was before a little picture of the Virgin, and at
+every fresh clap she lighted, with the oddest sputtering muttering
+mouthful of prayer imaginable, an inch of guttery candle, which, the
+instant the last echo had rolled away, she as constantly blew out
+again for saving's sake--having, of course, to _light the smoke_ of
+it, about an instant after that: the expenditure in wax at which the
+elements might be propitiated, you see, was a matter for curious
+calculation. I suppose I ought to have bought the whole taper for some
+four or five centesimi (100 of which make 8d. English) and so kept the
+countryside safe for about a century of bad weather. Leigh Hunt tells
+you a story he had from Byron, of kindred philosophy in a Jew who was
+surprised by a thunderstorm while he was dining on bacon--he tried to
+eat between-whiles, but the flashes were as pertinacious as he, so at
+last he pushed his plate away, just remarking with a compassionate
+shrug, 'all this fuss about a piece of pork!' By the way, what a
+characteristic of an Italian _late_ evening is Summer-lightning--it
+hangs in broad slow sheets, dropping from cloud to cloud, so long in
+dropping and dying off. The 'bora,' which you only get at Trieste,
+brings wonderful lightning--you are in glorious June-weather, fancy,
+of an evening, under green shock-headed acacias, so thick and green,
+with the cicalas stunning you above, and all about you men, women,
+rich and poor, sitting standing and coming and going--and through all
+the laughter and screaming and singing, the loud clink of the spoons
+against the glasses, the way of calling for fresh 'sorbetti'--for all
+the world is at open-coffee-house at such an hour--when suddenly there
+is a stop in the sunshine, a blackness drops down, then a great white
+column of dust drives straight on like a wedge, and you see the acacia
+heads snap off, now one, then another--and all the people scream 'la
+bora, la bora!' and you are caught up in their whirl and landed in
+some interior, the man with the guitar on one side of you, and the boy
+with a cageful of little brown owls for sale, on the other--meanwhile,
+the thunder claps, claps, with such a persistence, and the rain, for a
+finale, falls in a mass, as if you had knocked out the whole bottom of
+a huge tank at once--then there is a second stop--out comes the
+sun--somebody clinks at his glass, all the world bursts out laughing,
+and prepares to pour out again,--but _you_, the stranger, _do_ make
+the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you
+infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really
+that, of rainwater--that's a _Bora_ (and that comment of yours, a
+justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better,
+the best of all things you do not (_I_ do not) get those. And I shall
+see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the
+poem--that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to
+say, but then, do not you be tempted by that pleasure of pleasing
+which I think is your besetting sin--may it not be?--and so cut me off
+from the other pleasure of being profited. As I told you, I like so
+much to fancy that you see, and will see, what I do as _I_ see it,
+while it is doing, as nobody else in the world should, certainly, even
+if they thought it worth while to want--but when I try and build a
+great building I shall want you to come with me and judge it and
+counsel me before the scaffolding is taken down, and while you have to
+make your way over hods and mortar and heaps of lime, and trembling
+tubs of size, and those thin broad whitewashing brushes I always had a
+desire to take up and bespatter with. And now goodbye--I am to see you
+on Wednesday I trust--and to hear you say you are better, still
+better, much better? God grant that, and all else good for you, dear
+friend, and so for R.B.
+
+                                                 ever yours.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 18, 1845.]
+
+I suppose nobody is ever expected to acknowledge his or her 'besetting
+sin'--it would be unnatural--and therefore you will not be surprised
+to hear me deny the one imputed to me for mine. I deny it quite and
+directly. And if my denial goes for nothing, which is but reasonable,
+I might call in a great cloud of witnesses, ... a thundercloud, ...
+(talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a
+first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me
+see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold
+hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women always are when
+men grow humble' ... there's a charge against all possible and
+probable petticoats beyond mine and through it! Not that either they
+or mine deserve the charge--we do not; to the lowest hem of us! for I
+don't pass to the other extreme, mind, and adopt besetting sins 'over
+the way' and in antithesis. It's an undeserved charge, and unprovoked!
+and in fact, the very flower of self-love self-tormented into ill
+temper; and shall remain unanswered, for _me_, ... and _should_, ...
+even if I could write mortal epigrams, as your Lamia speaks them. Only
+it serves to help my assertion that people in general who know
+something of me, my dear friend, are not inclined to agree with you in
+particular, about my having an 'over-pleasure in pleasing,' for a
+besetting sin. If you had spoken of my sister Henrietta indeed, you
+would have been right--_so_ right! but for _me_, alas, my sins are not
+half as amiable, nor given to lean to virtue's side with half such a
+grace. And then I have a pretension to speak the truth like a Roman,
+even in matters of literature, where Mr. Kenyon says falseness is a
+fashion--and really and honestly I should not be afraid ... I should
+have no reason to be afraid, ... if all the notes and letters written
+by my hand for years and years about presentation copies of poems and
+other sorts of books were brought together and 'conferred,' as they
+say of manuscripts, before my face--I should not shrink and be
+ashamed. Not that I always tell the truth as I see it--_but_ I _never
+do_ speak falsely with intention and consciousness--never--and I do
+not find that people of letters are sooner offended than others are,
+by the truth told in gentleness;--I do not remember to have offended
+anyone in this relation, and by these means. Well!--but _from me to
+you_; it is all different, you know--you must know how different it
+is. I can tell you truly what I think of this thing and of that thing
+in your 'Duchess'--but I must of a necessity hesitate and fall into
+misgiving of the adequacy of my truth, so called. To judge at all of a
+work of yours, I must _look up to it_, and _far up_--because whatever
+faculty _I_ have is included in your faculty, and with a great rim all
+round it besides! And thus, it is not at all from an over-pleasure in
+pleasing _you_, not at all from an inclination to depreciate myself,
+that I speak and feel as I do and must on some occasions; it is simply
+the consequence of a true comprehension of you and of me--and apart
+from it, I should not be abler, I think, but less able, to assist you
+in anything. I do wish you would consider all this reasonably, and
+understand it as a third person would in a moment, and consent not to
+spoil the real pleasure I have and am about to have in your poetry, by
+nailing me up into a false position with your gold-headed nails of
+chivalry, which won't hold to the wall through this summer. Now you
+will not answer this?--you will only understand it and me--and that I
+am not servile but sincere, but earnest, but meaning what I say--and
+when I say I am afraid, you will believe that I am afraid; and when I
+say I have misgivings, you will believe that I have misgivings--you
+will _trust_ me so far, and give me liberty to breathe and feel
+naturally ... according to my own nature. Probably, or certainly
+rather, I have one advantage over you, ... one, of which women are not
+fond of boasting--that of _being older by years_--for the 'Essay on
+Mind,' which was the first poem published by me (and rather more
+printed than published after all), the work of my earliest youth, half
+childhood, half womanhood, was published in 1826 I see. And if I told
+Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but
+because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's
+exercise'; because it is just _that_ and no more, ... no expression
+whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things
+pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I
+would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are
+never like their writers, you know--and those under-age books are
+generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to _get into
+expression_, though I began rhyming from my very infancy, much as you
+did (and this, with no sympathy near to me--I have had to do without
+sympathy in the full sense--), and even in my 'Seraphim' days, my
+tongue clove to the roof of my mouth,--from leading so conventual
+recluse a life, perhaps--and all my better poems were written last
+year, the very best thing to come, if there should be any life or
+courage to come; I scarcely know. Sometimes--it is the real truth--I
+have haste to be done with it all. It is the real truth; however to
+say so may be an ungrateful return for your kind and generous words,
+... which I _do_ feel gratefully, let me otherwise feel as I will, ...
+or must. But then you know you are liable to such prodigious mistakes
+about besetting sins and even besetting virtues--to such a set of
+small delusions, that are sure to break one by one, like other
+bubbles, as you draw in your breath, ... as I see by the law of my own
+star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star
+_Wormwood_, ... on the opposite side of the heavens from the
+constellations of 'the Lyre and the Crown.' In the meantime, it is
+difficult to thank you, or _not_ to thank you, for all your
+kindnesses--[Greek: algos de sigan]. Only Mrs. Jameson told me of Lady
+Byron's saying 'that she knows she is burnt every day in effigy by
+half the world, but that the effigy is so unlike herself as to be
+inoffensive to her,' and just so, or rather just in the converse of
+_so_, is it with me and your kindnesses. They are meant for quite
+another than I, and are too far to be so near. The comfort is ... in
+seeing you throw all those ducats out of the window, (and how many
+ducats go in a figure to a 'dozen Duchesses,' it is profane to
+calculate) the comfort is that you will not be the poorer for it in
+the end; since the people beneath, are honest enough to push them back
+under the door. Rather a bleak comfort and occupation though!--and you
+may find better work for your friends, who are (some of them) weary
+even unto death of the uses of this life. And now, you who are
+generous, _be_ generous, and take no notice of all this. I speak of
+myself, not of you so there is nothing for you to contradict or
+discuss--and if there were, you would be really kind and give me my
+way in it. Also you may take courage; for I promise not to vex you by
+thanking you against _your_ will,--more than may be helped.
+
+Some of this letter was written before yesterday and in reply of
+course to yours--so it is to pass for two letters, being long enough
+for just six. Yesterday you must have wondered at me for being in such
+a maze altogether about the poems--and so now I rise to explain that
+it was assuredly the wine song and no other which I read of yours in
+_Hood's_. And then, what did I say of the Dante and Beatrice? Because
+what I referred to was the exquisite page or two or three on that
+subject in the 'Pentameron.' I do not remember anything else of
+Landor's with the same bearing--do you? As to Montaigne, with the
+threads of my thoughts smoothly disentangled, I can see nothing
+coloured by him ... nothing. Do bring all the _Hood_ poems of your
+own--inclusive of the 'Tokay,' because I read it in such haste as to
+whirl up all the dust you saw, from the wheels of my chariot. The
+'Duchess' is past speaking of here--but you will see how I am
+delighted. And we must make speed--only taking care of your head--for
+I heard to-day that Papa and my aunt are discussing the question of
+sending me off either to Alexandria or Malta for the winter. Oh--it
+is quite a passing talk and thought, I dare say! and it would not _be_
+in any case, until September or October; though in every case, I
+suppose, _I_ should not be much consulted ... and all cases and places
+would seem better to me (if I were) than Madeira which the physicians
+used to threaten me with long ago. So take care of your headache and
+let us have the 'Bells' rung out clear before the summer ends ... and
+pray don't say again anything about clear consciences or unclear ones,
+in granting me the privilege of reading your manuscripts--which is all
+clear privilege to me, with pride and gladness waiting on it. May God
+bless you always my dear friend!
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+You left behind your sister's little basket--but I hope you did not
+forget to thank her for my carnations.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                                   [no date]
+
+I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours
+_ever_, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath
+breaks bubbles,--ought you to write thus having restricted me as you
+once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a
+stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my
+head it goes--I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly
+the same horror once before. 'I was to see you--and you were to
+understand'--_Do_ you? do you understand--my own friend--with that
+superiority in years, too! For I confess to that--you need not throw
+that in my teeth ... as soon as I read your 'Essay on Mind'--(which of
+course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K's positive refusal
+to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the 'Vision
+of Fame' at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time,
+1826--I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in
+years--what then? I have got nearer you considerably--(if only
+nearer)--since then--and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable
+times--such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to
+see--written some time ago--which advises nobody who thinks nobly of
+the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the
+materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it
+is born to make and which--(in its determining, as it must, the whole
+future course and impulses of that soul)--which must endure for ever,
+even though the object that induced the choice should
+disappear--owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically
+determined and produced, at any operator's pleasure, by a definite
+number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent
+&c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of
+operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel
+filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul
+than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does _that_, is
+for this world's immediate uses; and were this world _all, all_ in us
+would be producible and available for use, as it _is_ with the body
+now--but with the soul, what is to be developed _afterward_ is the
+main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights--so that when you
+hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain 'why' ('You' is the
+ordinary creature enough of my poem--_he_ might not be so able.)
+
+There, I will write no more. You will never drop _me_ off the golden
+hooks, I dare believe--and the rest is with God--whose finger I see
+every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask
+leave to come 'to-morrow at the Muezzin' as next Wednesday at three?
+
+God bless you--do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it
+costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as
+truthfuller--this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not
+have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of
+commission with _Hood_,--blame _them_, tell me about them, and
+meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]
+
+But I never _did_ strike you or touch you--and you are not in earnest
+in the complaint you make--and this is really all I am going to say
+to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part,
+while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go
+deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to
+bear without deprecation:--as when, for instance, you talk of being
+'grateful' to _me_!!--Well! I will try that there shall be no more of
+it--no more provocation of generosities--and so, (this once) as you
+express it, I 'will not have the heart to blame' you--except for
+reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr.
+Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook
+literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was
+roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember
+he asked me ... 'Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?'; to which I answered
+that nobody was to be excepted--and thus he was quite right in
+resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were
+quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious?
+Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins
+and yours gladly, to get into the _Hood_ poems which have delighted me
+so--and first to the St. Praxed's which is of course the finest and
+most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of
+death. It has impressed me very much. Then the 'Angel and Child,' with
+all its beauty and significance!--and the 'Garden Fancies' ... some of
+the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in
+them, and grace of every kind--and with that beautiful and musical use
+of the word 'meandering,' which I never remember having seen used in
+relation to _sound_ before. It does to mate with your '_simmering_
+quiet' in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure
+as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much!--you
+have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things
+through and through it. And the 'Laboratory' is hideous as you meant
+to make it:--only I object a little to your tendency ... which is
+almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think, ... of
+making lines difficult for the reader to read ... see the opening
+lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in
+_them_ certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the
+reader's mind off the _rail_ ... and interrupts his progress with you
+and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from
+rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the
+changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to _forget it
+altogether_; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps--but you see how
+I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my
+sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing
+ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of
+them--never!--except the 'Tokay,' which is inferior to all; and that I
+was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood--or at all,
+except this 'Tokay,' and this 'Duchess'! The world is very deaf and
+dumb, I think--but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not
+learning its lesson.
+
+Could you come--for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay
+to write of your poems even, any more to-day--could you come on
+Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on
+Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so--it is not a caprice.
+And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria
+seems discredited just now for Malta--and 'anything but Madeira,' I go
+on saying to myself. These _Hood_ poems are all to be in the next
+'Bells' of course--of necessity?
+
+May God bless you my dear friend, my ever dear friend!--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 22, 1845.]
+
+I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything
+else without your leave).
+
+The temptation of reading the 'Essay' was more than I could bear: and
+a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their
+music--wonderful!
+
+And you go out still--so continue better!
+
+I cannot write this morning--I should say too much and have to be
+sorry and afraid--let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+I am but too proud of your praise--when will the blame come--at Malta?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
+
+Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and
+not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm--nor of the
+reading even, which may do harm--and something does harm to you, you
+see--and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm
+... now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you
+did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think
+that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I
+will not indeed--and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous
+queries yesterday ... and to have omitted to say in relation to them,
+too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just passing thoughts
+of mine for _your_ passing thoughts, ... some right, it may be ...
+some wrong, it must be ... and none, insisted on even by the thinker!
+just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments--now
+_will_ you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to
+strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you--so
+_whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be
+what I meant to strike out_--(there's ingenuity for you!). The poem
+did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very
+greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways ... by the
+versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful
+evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the
+sin of the boar-pinner--successfully evolved, without softening one
+hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now--you will
+not write any more--no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the
+roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help
+thinking it must--and you were not well yesterday morning, you
+admitted. You _will_ take care? And if there should be a wisdom in
+going away...!
+
+Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very
+imprudent, I am afraid--but I never knew how to be prudent--and then,
+there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable
+measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the
+thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker, ... just as I might give
+away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I
+did not do--and would not have done, ... one of those papers singly.
+It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a
+writing of notes ... of slips of paper ... now on one subject, and now
+on another ... which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up
+with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed
+a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed
+at--except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and
+were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx--or ever betrayed;
+because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the
+editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being
+silent and secret. And nothing _is mine_ ... if something is _of me_
+... or _from_ me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see
+plainly--wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against
+time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature
+of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the
+booksellers were barking distraction on every side!--I had some of the
+mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was
+consulted about--or in _one particular way_ it would have been
+better,--as easily it might have been. May God bless you, my dear
+friend,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Friday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
+
+You would let me _now_, I dare say, call myself grateful to you--yet
+such is my jealousy in these matters--so do I hate the material when
+it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship;
+that I could almost tell you I was _not_ grateful, and try if that way
+I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you
+refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not
+admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw
+none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this
+_also_--this last kindness. And you know its value, too--how if there
+were another _you_ in the world, who had done all you have done and
+whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a
+criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you
+know how I would have told you, my _you_ I saw yesterday, all about
+it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:--but the two in one!
+
+For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating--all
+the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so
+thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this
+beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I
+could coöperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the
+effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed--_that_
+would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,--so
+that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute
+one point. All is for best.
+
+So much for this 'Duchess'--which I shall ever rejoice in--wherever
+was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs
+now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and
+then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places
+where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact,
+yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that
+of _the poem_, the real conception of an evening (two years ago,
+fully)--of _that_, not a line is written,--though perhaps after all,
+what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though
+indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly
+enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as
+I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy's description
+of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover--a _real_
+life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to
+write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the
+insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only--as
+the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing,
+for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.--
+
+Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as
+not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I
+_think_ before writing--or just after writing--such a sentence--but
+reflection only justifies my first feeling; I _would_ rather go
+without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged
+you--my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now--surely I
+might dare say you may if you please get well through God's
+goodness--with persevering patience, surely--and this next winter
+abroad--which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you
+not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the
+cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that 'there was a tide
+in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.' led on to the
+fortune of
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4
+o'clock--that clock I enquired about--and that, ... no, I shall never
+say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that
+you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the
+East you give a beggar something for a few days running--then you miss
+him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and
+murmurs--'And, for yesterday?'--Do I stay too long, I _want_ to
+know,--too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may
+not so soon tire,--knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.
+
+God bless you--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Saturday.
+                                  [Post-mark, July 28, 1845]
+
+You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine--and
+particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to
+know and want to know ... _how you are_--for you must observe, if you
+please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written
+after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my
+'Prometheus' (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for
+me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there
+can be gratitude from you to me!--or rather, do not judge--but listen
+when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I
+wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single
+wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look
+again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is
+the suggestion about the line
+
+    Was it singing, was it saying,
+
+which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate
+'or.' Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were
+right, and that there should be and must be no 'or' to disturb the
+listening pause. Now _should_ there? And there was something else,
+which I forget at this moment--and something more than the something
+else. Your account of the production of the poem interests me very
+much--and proves just what I wanted to make out from your statements
+the other day, and they refused, I thought, to let me, ... that you
+are more faithful to your first _Idea_ than to your first _plan_. Is
+it so? or not? 'Orange' is orange--but _which half_ of the orange is
+not predestinated from all eternity--: is it _so_?
+
+_Sunday._--I wrote so much yesterday and then went out, not knowing
+very well how to speak or how to be silent (is it better to-day?) of
+some expressions of yours ... and of your interest in me--which are
+deeply affecting to my feelings--whatever else remains to be said of
+them. And you know that you make great mistakes, ... of fennel for
+hemlock, of four o'clocks for five o'clocks, and of other things of
+more consequence, one for another; and may not be quite right besides
+as to my getting well '_if I please_!' ... which reminds me a little
+of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly
+and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily
+that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition,
+and that if I _pleased_ to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I
+should be as well as ever I was, in a month!... But where is the need
+of talking of it? What I wished to say was this--that if I get better
+or worse ... as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall
+remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the
+generous interest and feeling you have spent on me--_wasted_ on me I
+was going to write--but I would not provoke any answering--and in one
+obvious sense, it need not be so. I never shall forget these things,
+my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly. God's goodness!--I
+believe in it, as in His sunshine here--which makes my head ache a
+little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people
+gayer--it does _me_ good too in a different way. And so, may God bless
+you! and me in this ... just this, ... that I may never have the
+sense, ... intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it ... of
+being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your
+smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones!--In the meantime you
+do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do
+not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if
+the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most
+grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+How could you think that I should speak to Mr. Kenyon of the book? All
+I ever said to him has been that you had looked through my
+'Prometheus' for me--and that I was _not disappointed in you_, these
+two things on two occasions. I do trust that your head is better.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 28, 1845.]
+
+How must I feel, and what can, or could I say even if you let me say
+all? I am most grateful, most happy--most happy, come what will!
+
+Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow--before Wednesday
+when I am to see you? I will not hide from you that my head aches now;
+and I have let the hours go by one after one--I am better all the
+same, and will write as I say--'Am I better' you ask!
+
+                  Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Thursday.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 31, 1845.]
+
+In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to
+your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human
+capacity--but as I began, so I shall end. I shall believe you remember
+what I am forced to remember--you who do me the superabundant justice
+on every possible occasion,--you will never do me injustice when I sit
+by you and talk about Italy and the rest.
+
+--To-day I cannot write--though I am very well otherwise--but I shall
+soon get into my old self-command and write with as much 'ineffectual
+fire' as before: but meantime, _you_ will write to me, I hope--telling
+me how you are? I have but one greater delight in the world than in
+hearing from you.
+
+God bless you, my best, dearest friend--think what I would speak--
+
+                                                  Ever yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Thursday.
+                                [Post-mark, August 2, 1845.]
+
+Let me write one word ... not to have it off my mind ... because it is
+by no means heavily _on_ it; but lest I should forget to write it at
+all by not writing it at once. What could you mean, ... I have been
+thinking since you went away ... by applying such a grave expression
+as having a thing 'off your mind' to that foolish subject of the
+stupid book (mine), and by making it worth your while to account
+logically for your wish about my not mentioning it to Mr. Kenyon? You
+could not fancy for one moment that I was vexed in the matter of the
+book? or in the other matter of your wish? Now just hear me. I
+explained to you that I had been silent to Mr. Kenyon, first because
+the fact was so; and next and a little, because I wanted to show how I
+anticipated your wish by a wish of my own ... though from a different
+motive. _Your_ motive I really did take to be (never suspecting my
+dear kind cousin of treason) to be a natural reluctancy of being
+convicted (forgive me!) of such an arch-womanly curiosity. For my own
+motive ... motives ... they are more than one ... you must trust me;
+and refrain as far as you can from accusing me of an over-love of
+Eleusinian mysteries when I ask you to say just as little about your
+visits here and of me as you find possible ... _even to Mr. Kenyon_
+... as _to every other person whatever_. As you know ... and yet more
+than you know ... I am in a peculiar position--and it does not follow
+that you should be ashamed of my friendship or that I should not be
+proud of yours, if we avoid making it a subject of conversation in
+high places, or low places. There! _that_ is my request to you--or
+commentary on what you put 'off your mind' yesterday--probably quite
+unnecessary as either request or commentary; yet said on the chance of
+its not being so, because you seemed to mistake my remark about Mr.
+Kenyon.
+
+And your head, how is it? And do consider if it would not be wise and
+right on that account of your health, to go with Mr. Chorley? You can
+neither work nor enjoy while you are subject to attacks of the
+kind--and besides, and without reference to your present suffering and
+inconvenience, you _ought not_ to let them master you and gather
+strength from time and habit; I am sure you ought not. Worse last week
+than ever, you see!--and no prospect, perhaps, of bringing out your
+"Bells" this autumn, without paying a cost too heavy!--Therefore ...
+the _therefore_ is quite plain and obvious!--
+
+_Friday._--Just as it is how anxious Flush and I are, to be delivered
+from you; by these sixteen heads of the discourse of one of us,
+written before your letter came. Ah, but I am serious--and you will
+consider--will you not? what is best to be done? and do it. You could
+write to me, you know, from the end of the world; if you could take
+the thought of me so far.
+
+And _for_ me, no, and yet yes,--I _will_ say this much; that I am not
+inclined to do you injustice, but justice, when you come here--the
+justice of wondering to myself how you can possibly, possibly, care to
+come. Which is true enough to be _unanswerable_, if you please--or I
+should not say it. '_As I began, so I shall end_--' Did you, as I hope
+you did, thank your sister for Flush and for me? When you were gone,
+he graciously signified his intention of eating the cakes--brought the
+bag to me and emptied it without a drawback, from my hand, cake after
+cake. And I forgot the basket once again.
+
+And talking of Italy and the cardinals, and thinking of some cardinal
+points you are ignorant of, did you ever hear that I was one of
+
+          'those schismatiques
+    of Amsterdam'
+
+whom your Dr. Donne would have put into the dykes? unless he meant the
+Baptists, instead of the Independents, the holders of the Independent
+church principle. No--not '_schismatical_,' I hope, hating as I do
+from the roots of my heart all that rending of the garment of Christ,
+which Christians are so apt to make the daily week-day of this
+Christianity so called--and caring very little for most dogmas and
+doxies in themselves--too little, as people say to me sometimes, (when
+they send me 'New Testaments' to learn from, with very kind
+intentions)--and believing that there is only one church in heaven and
+earth, with one divine High Priest to it; let exclusive religionists
+build what walls they please and bring out what chrisms. But I used to
+go with my father always, when I was able, to the nearest dissenting
+chapel of the Congregationalists--from liking the simplicity of that
+praying and speaking without books--and a little too from disliking
+the theory of state churches. There is a narrowness among the
+dissenters which is wonderful; an arid, grey Puritanism in the clefts
+of their souls: but it seems to me clear that they know what the
+'liberty of Christ' _means_, far better than those do who call
+themselves 'churchmen'; and stand altogether, as a body, on higher
+ground. And so, you see, when I talked of the sixteen points of my
+discourse, it was the foreshadowing of a coming event, and you have
+had it at last in the whole length and breadth of it. But it is not my
+fault if the wind began to blow so that I could not go out--as I
+intended--as I shall do to-morrow; and that you have received my
+dulness in a full libation of it, in consequence. My sisters said of
+the roses you blasphemed, yesterday, that they 'never saw such flowers
+anywhere--anywhere here in London--' and therefore if I had thought so
+myself before, it was not so wrong of me. I put your roses, you see,
+against my letter, to make it seem less dull--and yet I do not forget
+what you say about caring to hear from me--I mean, I do not _affect_
+to forget it.
+
+May God bless you, far longer than I can say so.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Sunday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, August 4, 1845.]
+
+I said what you comment on, about Mr. Kenyon, because I feel I _must_
+always tell you the simple truth--and not being quite at liberty to
+communicate the whole story (though it would at once clear me from the
+charge of over-curiosity ... if I much cared for _that_!)--I made my
+first request in order to prevent your getting at any part of it from
+_him_ which should make my withholding seem disingenuous for the
+moment--that is, till my explanation came, if it had an opportunity of
+coming. And then, when I fancied you were misunderstanding the reason
+of that request--and supposing I was ambitious of making a higher
+figure in _his_ eyes than your own,--I then felt it 'on my mind' and
+so spoke ... a natural mode of relief surely! For, dear friend, I have
+_once_ been _untrue_ to you--when, and how, and why, you know--but I
+thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their
+fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it
+now because if you should ever make _that_ a precedent, and put any
+least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would
+wrong me as you never wronged human being:--and that is done with. For
+the other matter,--the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any
+hint of them can ooze out of the only three persons in the world to
+whom I ever speak of them--my father, mother and sister--to whom my
+appreciation of your works is no novelty since some years, and whom I
+made comprehend exactly your position and the necessity for the
+absolute silence I enjoined respecting the permission to see you. You
+may depend on them,--and Miss Mitford is in your keeping, mind,--and
+dear Mr. Kenyon, if there should be never so gentle a touch of
+'garrulous God-innocence' about those kind lips of his. Come, let me
+snatch at _that_ clue out of the maze, and say how perfect, absolutely
+perfect, are those three or four pages in the 'Vision' which present
+the Poets--a line, a few words, and the man there,--one twang of the
+bow and the arrowhead in the white--Shelley's 'white ideal all
+statue-blind' is--perfect,--how can I coin words? And dear deaf old
+Hesiod--and--all, all are perfect, perfect! But 'the Moon's regality
+will hear no praise'--well then, will she hear blame? Can it be you,
+my own you past putting away, _you_ are a schismatic and frequenter of
+Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to _me_--whose
+father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel
+where they took me, all those years back, to be baptised--and where
+they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who
+officiated on that other occasion! Now will you be particularly
+encouraged by this successful instance to bring forward any other
+point of disunion between us that may occur to you? Please do not--for
+so sure as you begin proving that there is a gulf fixed between us, so
+sure shall I end proving that ... Anne Radcliffe avert it!... that you
+are just my sister: not that I am much frightened, but there are such
+surprises in novels!--Blame the next,--yes, now this _is_ to be real
+blame!--And I meant to call your attention to it before. Why, why, do
+you blot out, in that unutterably provoking manner, whole lines, not
+to say words, in your letters--(and in the criticism on the
+'Duchess')--if it is a fact that you have a second thought, does it
+cease to be as genuine a fact, that first thought you please to
+efface? Why give a thing and take a thing? Is there no significance in
+putting on record that your first impression was to a certain effect
+and your next to a certain other, perhaps completely opposite one? If
+any proceeding of yours could go near to deserve that harsh word
+'impertinent' which you have twice, in speech and writing, been
+pleased to apply to your observations on me; certainly _this_ does go
+as near as can be--as there is but one step to take from Southampton
+pier to New York quay, for travellers Westward. Now will you lay this
+to heart and perpend--lest in my righteous indignation I [some words
+effaced here]! For my own health--it improves, thank you! And I shall
+go abroad all in good time, never fear. For my 'Bells,' Mr. Chorley
+tells me there is no use in the world of printing them before November
+at earliest--and by that time I shall get done with these Romances and
+certainly one Tragedy (_that_ could go to press next week)--in proof
+of which I will bring you, if you let me, a few more hundreds of lines
+next Wednesday. But, 'my poet,' if I would, as is true, sacrifice all
+my works to do your fingers, even, good--what would I not offer up to
+prevent you staying ... perhaps to correct my very verses ... perhaps
+read and answer my very letters ... staying the production of more
+'Berthas' and 'Caterinas' and 'Geraldines,' more great and beautiful
+poems of which I shall be--how proud! Do not be punctual in paying
+tithes of thyme, mint, anise and cummin, and leaving unpaid the real
+weighty dues of the Law; nor affect a scrupulous acknowledgment of
+'what you owe me' in petty manners, while you leave me to settle such
+a charge, as accessory to the hiding the Talent, as best I can! I have
+thought of this again and again, and would have spoken of it to you,
+had I ever felt myself fit to speak of any subject nearer home and me
+and you than Rome and Cardinal Acton. For, observe, you have not done
+... yes, the 'Prometheus,' no doubt ... but with that exception _have_
+you written much lately, as much as last year when 'you wrote all your
+best things' you said, I think? Yet you are better now than then.
+Dearest friend, _I_ intend to write more, and very likely be praised
+more, now I care less than ever for it, but still more do I look to
+have you ever before me, in your place, and with more poetry and more
+praise still, and my own heartfelt praise ever on the top, like a
+flower on the water. I have said nothing of yesterday's storm ...
+_thunder_ ... may you not have been out in it! The evening draws in,
+and I will walk out. May God bless you, and let you hold me by the
+hand till the end--Yes, dearest friend!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+
+Just to show what may be lost by my crossings out, I will tell you the
+story of the one in the 'Duchess'--and in fact it is almost worth
+telling to a metaphysician like you, on other grounds, that you may
+draw perhaps some psychological good from the absurdity of it. Hear,
+then. When I had done writing the sheet of annotations and reflections
+on your poem I took up my pencil to correct the passages reflected on
+with the reflections, by the crosses you may observe, just glancing
+over the writing as I did so. Well! and, where that erasure is, I
+found a line purporting to be extracted from your 'Duchess,' with
+sundry acute criticisms and objections quite undeniably strong,
+following after it; only, to my amazement, as I looked and looked, the
+line so acutely objected to and purporting, as I say, to, be taken
+from the 'Duchess,' was by no means to be found in the 'Duchess,' ...
+nor anything like it, ... and I am certain indeed that, in the
+'Duchess' or out of it, you never wrote such a bad line in your life.
+And so it became a proved thing to me that I had been enacting, in a
+mystery, both poet and critic together--and one so neutralizing the
+other, that I took all that pains you remark upon to cross myself out
+in my double capacity, ... and am now telling the story of it
+notwithstanding. And there's an obvious moral to the myth, isn't
+there? for critics who bark the loudest, commonly bark at their own
+shadow in the glass, as my Flush used to do long and loud, before he
+gained experience and learnt the [Greek: gnôthi seauton] in the
+apparition of the brown dog with the glittering dilating eyes, ... and
+as _I_ did, under the erasure. And another moral springs up of itself
+in this productive ground; for, you see, ... '_quand je m'efface il
+n'ya pas grand mal_.'
+
+And I am to be made to work very hard, am I? But you should remember
+that if I did as much writing as last summer, I should not be able to
+do much else, ... I mean, to go out and walk about ... for really I
+think I _could_ manage to read your poems and write as I am writing
+now, with ever so much head-work of my own going on at the same time.
+But the bodily exercise is different, and I do confess that the
+novelty of living more in the outer life for the last few months than
+I have done for years before, make me idle and inclined to be
+idle--and everybody is idle sometimes--even _you_ perhaps--are you
+not? For me, you know, I do carpet-work--ask Mrs. Jameson--and I never
+pretend to be in a perpetual motion of mental industry. Still it may
+not be quite as bad as you think: I have done some work since
+'Prometheus'--only it is nothing worth speaking of and not a part of
+the romance-poem which is to be some day if I live for it--lyrics for
+the most part, which lie written illegibly in pure Egyptian--oh, there
+is time enough, and too much perhaps! and so let me be idle a little
+now, and enjoy your poems while I can. It is pure enjoyment and must
+be--but you do not know how much, or you would not talk as you do
+sometimes ... so wide of any possible application.
+
+And do _not_ talk again of what you would 'sacrifice' for _me_. If you
+affect me by it, which is true, you cast me from you farther than ever
+in the next thought. _That_ is true.
+
+The poems ... yours ... which you left with me,--are full of various
+power and beauty and character, and you must let me have my own
+gladness from them in my own way.
+
+Now I must end this letter. Did you go to Chelsea and hear the divine
+philosophy?
+
+_Tell me the truth always_ ... will you? I mean such truths as may be
+painful to me _though_ truths....
+
+                        May God bless you, ever dear friend.
+
+                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Friday Afternoon.
+                                [Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+
+Then there is one more thing 'off my mind': I thought it might be with
+you as with _me_--not remembering how different are the causes that
+operate against us; different in kind as in degree:--_so_ much reading
+hurts me, for instance,--whether the reading be light or heavy,
+fiction or fact, and _so_ much writing, whether my own, such as you
+have seen, or the merest compliment-returning to the weary tribe that
+exact it of one. But your health--that before all!... as assuring all
+eventually ... and on the other accounts you must know! Never, pray,
+_pray_, never lose one sunny day or propitious hour to 'go out or walk
+about.' But do not surprise _me_, one of these mornings, by 'walking'
+up to me when I am introduced' ... or I shall infallibly, in spite of
+all the after repentance and begging pardon--I shall [words effaced].
+So here you learn the first 'painful truth' I have it in my power to
+tell you!
+
+I sent you the last of our poor roses this morning--considering that I
+fairly owed that kindness to them.
+
+Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone--his wife is in
+the country where he will join her as soon as his book's last sheet
+returns corrected and fit for press--which will be at the month's end
+about. He was all kindness and talked like his own self while he made
+me tea--and, afterward, brought chairs into the little yard, rather
+than garden, and smoked his pipe with apparent relish; at night he
+would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge on my way home.
+
+If I used the word 'sacrifice,' you do well to object--I can imagine
+nothing ever to be done by me worthy such a name.
+
+God bless you, dearest friend--shall I hear from you before Tuesday?
+
+                                               Ever your own
+
+                                                    R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Friday.
+                                [Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+
+It is very kind to send these flowers--too kind--why are they sent?
+and without one single word ... which is not too kind certainly. I
+looked down into the heart of the roses and turned the carnations over
+and over to the peril of their leaves, and in vain! Not a word do I
+deserve to-day, I suppose! And yet if I don't, I don't deserve the
+flowers either. There should have been an equal justice done to my
+demerits, O Zeus with the scales!
+
+After all I do thank you for these flowers--and they are
+beautiful--and they came just in a right current of time, just when I
+wanted them, or something like them--so I confess _that_ humbly, and
+do thank you, at last, rather as I ought to do. Only you ought not to
+give away all the flowers of your garden to _me_; and your sister
+thinks so, be sure--if as silently as you sent them. Now I shall not
+write any more, not having been written to. What with the Wednesday's
+flowers and these, you may think how I in this room, look down on the
+gardens of Damascus, let _your Jew_[1] say what he pleases of
+_them_--and the Wednesday's flowers are as fresh and beautiful, I must
+explain, as the new ones. They were quite supererogatory ... the new
+ones ... in the sense of being flowers. Now, the sense of what I am
+writing seems questionable, does it not?--at least, more so, than the
+nonsense of it.
+
+Not a word, even under the little blue flowers!!!--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'R. Benjamin of Tudela' added in Robert Browning's
+handwriting.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Sunday Afternoon.
+                               [Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
+
+How good you are to the smallest thing I try and do--(to show I
+_would_ please you for an instant if I could, rather than from any
+hope such poor efforts as I am restricted to, can please you or
+ought.) And that you should care for the note that was not there!--But
+I was surprised by the summons to seal and deliver, since time and the
+carrier were peremptory--and so, I dared divine, almost, I should hear
+from you by our mid-day post--which happened--and the answer to
+_that_, you received on Friday night, did you not? I had to go to
+Holborn, of all places,--not to pluck strawberries in the Bishop's
+Garden like Richard Crouchback, but to get a book--and there I carried
+my note, thinking to expedite its delivery: this notelet of yours,
+quite as little in its kind as my blue flowers,--this came last
+evening--and here are my thanks, dear E.B.B.--dear friend.
+
+In the former note there is a phrase I must not forget to call on you
+to account for--that where it confesses to having done 'some
+work--only nothing worth speaking of.' Just see,--will you be first
+and only compact-breaker? Nor misunderstand me here, please, ... as I
+said, I am quite rejoiced that you go out now, 'walk about' now, and
+put off the writing that will follow thrice as abundantly, all because
+of the stopping to gather strength ... so I want no new word, not to
+say poem, not to say the romance-poem--let the 'finches in the
+shrubberies grow restless in the dark'--_I_ am inside with the lights
+and music: but what is done, is done, _pas vrai_? And 'worth' is, dear
+my friend, pardon me, not in your arbitration quite.
+
+Let me tell you an odd thing that happened at Chorley's the other
+night. I must have mentioned to you that I forget my own verses so
+surely after they are once on paper, that I ought, without
+affectation, to mend them infinitely better, able as I am to bring
+fresh eyes to bear on them--(when I say 'once on paper' that is just
+what I mean and no more, for after the sad revising begins they do
+leave their mark, distinctly or less so according to circumstances).
+Well, Miss Cushman, the new American actress (clever and
+truthful-looking) was talking of a new novel by the Dane Andersen, he
+of the 'Improvisatore,' which will reach us, it should seem, in
+translation, _viâ_ America--she had looked over two or three proofs of
+the work in the press, and Chorley was anxious to know something about
+its character. The title, she said, was capital--'Only a
+Fiddler!'--and she enlarged on that word, 'Only,' and its
+significance, so put: and I quite agreed with her for several minutes,
+till first one reminiscence flitted to me, then another and at last I
+was obliged to stop my praises and say 'but, now I think of it, _I_
+seem to have written something with a similar title--nay, a play, I
+believe--yes, and in five acts--'Only an Actress'--and from that
+time, some two years or more ago to this, I have been every way
+relieved of it'!--And when I got home, next morning, I made a dark
+pocket in my russet horror of a portfolio give up its dead, and there
+fronted me 'Only a Player-girl' (the real title) and the sayings and
+doings of her, and the others--such others! So I made haste and just
+tore out one sample-page, being Scene the First, and sent it to our
+friend as earnest and proof I had not been purely dreaming, as might
+seem to be the case. And what makes me recall it now is, that it was
+Russian, and about a fair on the Neva, and booths and droshkies and
+fish-pies and so forth, with the Palaces in the back ground. And in
+Chorley's _Athenæum_ of yesterday you may read a paper of _very_
+simple moony stuff about the death of Alexander, and that Sir James
+Wylie I have seen at St. Petersburg (where he chose to mistake me for
+an Italian--'M. l'Italien' he said another time, looking up from his
+cards).... So I think to tell you.
+
+Now I may leave off--I shall see you start, on Tuesday--hear perhaps
+something definite about your travelling.
+
+Do you know, 'Consuelo' wearies me--oh, wearies--and the fourth volume
+I have all but stopped at--there lie the three following, but who
+cares about Consuelo after that horrible evening with the Venetian
+scamp, (where he bullies her, and it does answer, after all she says)
+as we say? And Albert wearies too--it seems all false, all
+writing--not the first part, though. And what easy work these
+novelists have of it! a Dramatic poet has to _make_ you love or admire
+his men and women,--they must _do_ and _say_ all that you are to see
+and hear--really do it in your face, say it in your ears, and it is
+wholly for _you_, in _your_ power, to _name_, characterize and so
+praise or blame, _what_ is so said and done ... if you don't perceive
+of yourself, there is no standing by, for the Author, and telling you.
+But with these novelists, a scrape of the pen--out blurting of a
+phrase, and the miracle is achieved--'Consuelo possessed to perfection
+this and the other gift'--what would you more? Or, to leave dear
+George Sand, pray think of Bulwer's beginning a 'character' by
+informing you that lone, or somebody in 'Pompeii,' 'was endowed with
+_perfect_ genius'--'genius'! What though the obliging informer might
+write his fingers off before he gave the pitifullest proof that the
+poorest spark of that same, that genius, had ever visited _him_?
+_Ione_ has it '_perfectly_'--perfectly--and that is enough! Zeus with
+the scales? with the false weights!
+
+And now--till Tuesday good-bye, and be willing to get well as (letting
+me send _porter_ instead of flowers--and beefsteaks too!) soon as may
+be! and may God bless you, ever dear friend.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
+
+But if it 'hurts' you to read and write ever so little, why should I
+be asked to write ... for instance ... 'before Tuesday?' And I did
+mean to say before to-day, that I wish you never would write to me
+when you are not _quite well_, as once or twice you have done if not
+much oftener; because there is not a necessity, ... and I do not
+choose that there should ever be, or _seem_ a necessity, ... do you
+understand? And as a matter of personal preference, it is natural for
+me to like the silence that does not hurt you, better than the speech
+that does. And so, remember.
+
+And talking of what may 'hurt' you and me, you would smile, as I have
+often done in the midst of my vexation, if you knew the persecution I
+have been subjected to by the people who call themselves (_lucus a non
+lucendo_) 'the faculty,' and set themselves against the exercise of
+other people's faculties, as a sure way to death and destruction. The
+modesty and simplicity with which one's physicians tell one not to
+think or feel, just as they would tell one not to walk out in the dew,
+would be quite amusing, if it were not too tryingly stupid sometimes.
+I had a doctor once who thought he had done everything because he had
+carried the inkstand out of the room--'Now,' he said, 'you will have
+such a pulse to-morrow.' He gravely thought poetry a sort of
+disease--a sort of fungus of the brain--and held as a serious opinion,
+that nobody could be properly well who exercised it as an art--which
+was true (he maintained) even of men--he had studied the physiology of
+poets, 'quotha'--but that for women, it was a mortal malady and
+incompatible with any common show of health under any circumstances.
+And then came the damnatory clause in his experience ... that he had
+never known 'a system' approaching mine in 'excitability' ... except
+Miss Garrow's ... a young lady who wrote verses for Lady Blessington's
+annuals ... and who was the only other female rhymer he had had the
+misfortune of attending. And she was to die in two years, though she
+was dancing quadrilles then (and has lived to do the same by the
+polka), and _I_, of course, much sooner, if I did not ponder these
+things, and amend my ways, and take to reading 'a course of history'!!
+Indeed I do not exaggerate. And just so, for a long while I was
+persecuted and pestered ... vexed thoroughly sometimes ... my own
+family, instructed to sing the burden out all day long--until the time
+when the subject was suddenly changed by my heart being broken by that
+great stone that fell out of Heaven. Afterwards I was let do anything
+I could best ... which was very little, until last year--and the
+working, last year, did much for me in giving me stronger roots down
+into life, ... much. But think of that absurd reasoning that went
+before!--the _niaiserie_ of it! For, granting all the premises all
+round, it is not the _utterance_ of a thought that _can_ hurt anybody;
+while only the utterance is dependent on the will; and so, what can
+the taking away of an inkstand do? Those physicians are such
+metaphysicians! It's curious to listen to them. And it's wise to leave
+off listening: though I have met with excessive kindness among them,
+... and do not refer to Dr. Chambers in any of this, of course.
+
+I am very glad you went to Chelsea--and it seemed finer afterwards, on
+purpose to make room for the divine philosophy. Which reminds me (the
+going to Chelsea) that my brother Henry confessed to me yesterday,
+with shame and confusion of face, to having mistaken and taken your
+umbrella for another belonging to a cousin of ours then in the house.
+He saw you ... without conjecturing, just at the moment, who you were.
+Do _you_ conjecture sometimes that I live all alone here like Mariana
+in the moated Grange? It is not quite so--: but where there are many,
+as with us, every one is apt to follow his own devices--and my father
+is out all day and my brothers and sisters are in and out, and with
+too large a public of noisy friends for me to bear, ... and I see them
+only at certain hours, ... except, of course, my sisters. And then as
+you have 'a reputation' and are opined to talk generally in blank
+verse, it is not likely that there should be much irreverent rushing
+into this room when you are known to be in it.
+
+The flowers are ... so beautiful! Indeed it was wrong, though, to send
+me the last. It was not just to the lawful possessors and enjoyers of
+them. That it was kind to _me_ I do not forget.
+
+You are too teachable a pupil in the art of obliterating--and _omne
+ignotum pro terrifico_ ... and therefore I won't frighten you by
+walking to meet you for fear of being frightened myself.
+
+So good-bye until Tuesday. I ought not to make you read all this, I
+know, whether you like to read it or not: and I ought not to have
+written it, having no better reason than because I like to write on
+and on. _You_ have better reasons for thinking me very weak--and I,
+too good ones for not being able to reproach you for that natural and
+necessary opinion.
+
+                        May God bless you my dearest friend.
+
+                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Tuesday Evening.
+                               [Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]
+
+What can I say, or hope to say to you when I see what you do for me?
+
+_This_--for myself, (nothing for _you_!)--_this_, that I think the
+great, great good I get by your kindness strikes me less than that
+kindness.
+
+All is right, too--
+
+Come, I WILL have my fault-finding at last! So you can decypher my
+_utterest_ hieroglyphic? Now droop the eyes while I triumph: the
+plains cower, cower beneath the mountains their masters--and the
+Priests stomp over the clay ridges, (a palpable plagiarism from two
+lines of a legend that delighted my infancy, and now instruct my
+maturer years in pretty nearly all they boast of the semi-mythologic
+era referred to--'In London town, when reigned King Lud, His lords
+went stomping thro' the mud'--would all historic records were half as
+picturesque!)
+
+But you know, yes, _you_ know you are too indulgent by far--and treat
+these roughnesses as if they were advanced to many a stage! Meantime
+the pure gain is mine, and better, the kind generous spirit is mine,
+(mine to profit by)--and best--best--best, the dearest friend is mine,
+
+                                                 So be happy
+
+                                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]
+
+Yes, I admit that it was stupid to read that word so wrong. I thought
+there was a mistake somewhere, but that it was _yours_, who had
+written one word, meaning to write another. 'Cower' puts it all right
+of course. But is there an English word of a significance different
+from 'stamp,' in 'stomp?' Does not the old word King Lud's men
+stomped withal, claim identity with our 'stamping.' The _a_ and _o_
+used to 'change about,' you know, in the old English writers--see
+Chaucer for it. Still the 'stomp' with the peculiar significance, is
+better of course than the 'stamp' even with a rhyme ready for it, and
+I dare say you are justified in daring to put this old wine into the
+new bottle; and we will drink to the health of the poem in it. It _is_
+'Italy in England'--isn't it? But I understand and understood
+perfectly, through it all, that it is _unfinished_, and in a rough
+state round the edges. I could not help seeing _that_, even if I were
+still blinder than when I read 'Lower' for 'Cower.'
+
+But do not, I ask of you, speak of my 'kindness' ... my
+kindness!--mine! It is 'wasteful and ridiculous excess' and
+mis-application to use such words of me. And therefore, talking of
+'compacts' and the 'fas' and 'nefas' of them, I entreat you to know
+for the future that whatever I write of your poetry, if it isn't to be
+called 'impertinence,' isn't to be called 'kindness,' any more, ... _a
+fortiori_, as people say when they are sure of an argument. Now, will
+you try to understand?
+
+And talking still of compacts, how and where did I break any compact?
+I do not see.
+
+It was very curious, the phenomenon about your 'Only a Player-Girl.'
+What an un-godlike indifference to your creatures though--your worlds,
+breathed away from you like soap bubbles, and dropping and breaking
+into russet portfolios unobserved! Only a god for the Epicurean, at
+best, can you be? That Miss Cushman went to Three Mile Cross the other
+day, and visited Miss Mitford, and pleased her a good deal, I fancied
+from what she said, ... and with reason, from what _you_ say. And
+'Only a Fiddler,' as I forgot to tell you yesterday, is announced, you
+may see in any newspaper, as about to issue from the English press by
+Mary Howitt's editorship. So we need not go to America for it. But if
+you complain of George Sand for want of art, how could you bear
+Andersen, who can see a thing under his eyes and place it under yours,
+and take a thought separately into his soul and express it insularly,
+but has no sort of instinct towards wholeness and unity; and writes a
+book by putting so many pages together, ... just so!--For the rest,
+there can be no disagreeing with you about the comparative difficulty
+of novel-writing and drama-writing. I disagree a little, lower down in
+your letter, because I could not deny (in my own convictions) a
+certain proportion of genius to the author of 'Ernest Maltravers,' and
+'Alice' (did you ever read those books?), even if he had more
+impotently tried (supposing it to be possible) for the dramatic
+laurel. In fact his poetry, dramatic or otherwise, is 'nought'; but
+for the prose romances, and for 'Ernest Maltravers' above all, I must
+lift up my voice and cry. And I read the _Athenæum_ about your Sir
+James Wylie who took you for an Italian....
+
+    'Poi vi dirò Signor, che ne fu causa
+    Ch' avio fatto al scriver debita pausa.'--
+
+                                                 Ever your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Friday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, August 15, 1845.]
+
+Do you know, dear friend, it is no good policy to stop up all the
+vents of my feeling, nor leave one for safety's sake, as you will do,
+let me caution you never so repeatedly. I know, quite well enough,
+that your 'kindness' is not _so_ apparent, even, in this instance of
+correcting my verses, as in many other points--but on such points, you
+lift a finger to me and I am dumb.... Am I not to be allowed a word
+here neither?
+
+I remember, in the first season of German Opera here, when 'Fidelio's'
+effects were going, going up to the gallery in order to get the best
+of the last chorus--get its oneness which you do--and, while perched
+there an inch under the ceiling, I was amused with the enormous
+enthusiasm of an elderly German (we thought,--I and a cousin of
+mine)--whose whole body broke out in billow, heaved and swayed in the
+perfection of his delight, hands, head, feet, all tossing and striving
+to utter what possessed him. Well--next week, we went again to the
+Opera, and again mounted at the proper time, but the crowd was
+_greater_, and our mild great faced white haired red cheeked German
+was not to be seen, not at first--for as the glory was at its full, my
+cousin twisted me round and made me see an arm, only an arm, all the
+body of its owner being amalgamated with a dense crowd on each side,
+before, and--not behind, because they, the crowd, occupied the last
+benches, over which we looked--and this arm waved and exulted as if
+'for the dignity of the whole body,'--relieved it of its dangerous
+accumulation of repressed excitability. When the crowd broke up all
+the rest of the man disengaged itself by slow endeavours, and there
+stood our friend confessed--as we were sure!
+
+--Now, you would have bade him keep his arm quiet? 'Lady Geraldine,
+you _would_!'
+
+I have read those novels--but I must keep that word of words,
+'genius'--for something different--'talent' will do here surely.
+
+There lies 'Consuelo'--done with!
+
+I shall tell you frankly that it strikes me as precisely what in
+conventional language with the customary silliness is styled a
+_woman's_ book, in its merits and defects,--and supremely timid in all
+the points where one wants, and has a right to expect, some _fruit_ of
+all the pretence and George Sand_ism_. These are occasions when one
+does say, in the phrase of her school, 'que la Femme parle!' or what
+is better, let her act! and how does Consuelo comfort herself on such
+an emergency? Why, she bravely lets the uninspired people throw down
+one by one their dearest prejudices at her feet, and then, like a
+very actress, picks them up, like so many flowers, returning them to
+the breast of the owners with a smile and a courtesy and trips off the
+stage with a glance at the Pit. Count Christian, Baron Frederic,
+Baroness--what is her name--all open their arms, and Consuelo will not
+consent to entail disgrace &c. &c. No, you say--she leaves them in
+order to solve the problem of her true feeling, whether she can really
+love Albert; but remember that this is done, (that is, so much of it
+as ever _is_ done, and as determines her to accept his hand at the
+very last)--this is solved sometime about the next morning--or
+earlier--I forget--and in the meantime, Albert gets that 'benefit of
+the doubt' of which chapter the last informs you. As for the
+hesitation and self examination on the matter of that Anzoleto--the
+writer is turning over the leaves of a wrong dictionary, seeking help
+from Psychology, and pretending to forget there is such a thing as
+Physiology. Then, that horrible Porpora:--if George Sand gives _him_
+to a Consuelo for an absolute master, in consideration of his services
+specified, and is of opinion that _they_ warrant his conduct, or at
+least, oblige submission to it,--then, I find her objections to the
+fatherly rule of Frederic perfectly impertinent--he having a few
+claims upon the gratitude of Prussia also, in his way, I believe! If
+the strong ones _will make_ the weak ones lead them--then, for
+Heaven's sake, let this dear old all-abused world keep on its course
+without these outcries and tearings of hair, and don't be for ever
+goading the Karls and other trodden-down creatures till they get their
+carbines in order (very rationally) to abate the nuisance--when you
+make the man a long speech against some enormity he is about to
+commit, and adjure and beseech and so forth, till he throws down the
+aforesaid carbine, falls on his knees, and lets the Frederic go
+quietly on his way to keep on killing his thousands after the fashion
+that moved your previous indignation. Now is that right,
+consequential--that is, _inferential_; logically deduced, going
+straight to the end--_manly_?
+
+The accessories are not the Principal, the adjuncts--the essence, nor
+the ornamental incidents the book's self, so what matters it if the
+portraits are admirable, the descriptions eloquent, (eloquent, there
+it is--that is her characteristic--what she _has_ to speak, she
+_speaks out_, speaks volubly _forth_, too well, inasmuch as you say,
+advancing a step or two, 'And now speak as completely _here_'--and she
+says nothing)--but all _that_, another could do, as others have
+done--but 'la femme qui parle'--Ah, that, is _this_ all? So I am not
+George Sand's--she teaches me nothing--I look to her for nothing.
+
+I am ever yours, dearest friend. How I write to you--page on page! But
+Tuesday--who could wait till then! Shall I not hear from you?
+
+                                          God bless you ever
+
+                                               R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Saturday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 16, 1845.]
+
+But what likeness is there between opposites; and what has 'M.
+l'Italien' to do with the said 'elderly German'? See how little! For
+to bring your case into point, somebody should have been playing on a
+Jew's harp for the whole of the orchestra; and the elderly German
+should have quoted something about 'Harp of Judah' to the Venetian
+behind him! And there, you would have proved your analogy!--Because
+you see, my dear friend, it was not the expression, but the thing
+expressed, I cried out against--the exaggeration in your mind. I am
+sorry when I write what you do not like--but I have instincts and
+impulses too strong for me when you say things which put me into such
+a miserably false position in respect to you--as for instance, when in
+this very last letter (oh, I _must_ tell you!) you talk of my
+'correcting your verses'! My correcting your verses!!!--Now is _that_
+a thing for you to say?--And do you really imagine that if I kept that
+happily imagined phrase in my thoughts, I should be able to tell you
+one word of my impressions from your poetry, ever, ever again? Do you
+not see at once what a disqualifying and paralysing phrase it must be,
+of simple necessity? So it is _I_ who have reason to complain, ... it
+appears to _me_, ... and by no means _you_--and in your 'second
+consideration' you become aware of it, I do not at all doubt.
+
+As to 'Consuelo' I agree with nearly all that you say of it--though
+George Sand, we are to remember, is greater than 'Consuelo,' and not
+to be depreciated according to the defects of that book, nor
+classified as 'femme qui parle' ... she who is man and woman together,
+... judging her by the standard of even that book in the nobler
+portions of it. For the inconsequency of much in the book, I admit it
+of course--and _you_ will admit that it is the rarest of phenomena
+when men ... men of logic ... follow their own opinions into their
+obvious results--nobody, you know, ever thinks of doing such a thing:
+to pursue one's own inferences is to rush in where angels ... perhaps
+... do _not_ fear to tread, ... but where there will not be much other
+company. So the want of practical logic shall be a human fault rather
+than a womanly one, if you please: and you must please also to
+remember that 'Consuelo' is only 'half the orange'; and that when you
+complain of its not being a whole one, you overlook that hand which is
+holding to you the 'Comtesse de Rudolstadt' in three volumes! Not that
+I, who have read the whole, profess a full satisfaction about Albert
+and the rest--and Consuelo is made to be happy by a mere clap-trap at
+last: and Mme. Dudevant has her specialities,--in which, other women,
+I fancy, have neither part nor lot, ... even _here_!--Altogether, the
+book is a sort of rambling 'Odyssey,' a female 'Odyssey,' if you like,
+but full of beauty and nobleness, let the faults be where they may.
+And then, I like those long, long books, one can live away into ...
+leaving the world and above all oneself, quite at the end of the
+avenue of palms--quite out of sight and out of hearing!--Oh, I have
+felt something like _that_ so often--so often! and _you_ never felt
+it, and never will, I hope.
+
+But if Bulwer had written nothing but the 'Ernest Maltravers' books,
+you would think perhaps more highly of him. Do you _not_ think it
+possible now? It is his most impotent struggling into poetry, which
+sets about proving a negative of genius on him--_that_, which the
+_Athenæum praises_ as 'respectable attainment in various walks of
+literature'--! _like_ the _Athenæum_, isn't it? and worthy praise, to
+be administered by professed judges of art? What is to be expected of
+the public, when the teachers of the public teach _so_?--
+
+When you come on Tuesday, do not forget the MS. if any is done--only
+don't let it be done so as to tire and hurt you--mind! And good-bye
+until Tuesday, from
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Sunday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 18, 1845.]
+
+I am going to propose to you to give up Tuesday, and to take your
+choice of two or three other days, say Friday, or Saturday, or
+to-morrow ... Monday. Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and talked of leaving
+London on Friday, and of visiting me again on 'Tuesday' ... he said,
+... but that is an uncertainty, and it may be Tuesday or Wednesday or
+Thursday. So I thought (wrong or right) that out of the three
+remaining days you would not mind choosing one. And if you do choose
+the Monday, there will be no need to write--nor time indeed--; but if
+the Friday or Saturday, I shall hear from you, perhaps. Above all
+things remember, my dear friend, that I shall not expect you
+to-morrow, except as by a _bare possibility_. In great haste, signed
+and sealed this Sunday evening by
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Monday, 7 P.M.
+                               [Post-mark, August 19, 1845.]
+
+I this moment get your note--having been out since the early
+morning--and I must write just to catch the post. You are pure
+kindness and considerateness, _no_ thanks to you!--(since you will
+have it so--). I choose Friday, then,--but I shall hear from you
+before Thursday, I dare hope? I have all but passed your house
+to-day--with an Italian friend, from Rome, whom I must go about with a
+little on weariful sight seeing, so I shall earn Friday.
+
+                                                   Bless you
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Tuesday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
+
+I fancied it was just _so_--as I did not hear and did not see you on
+Monday. Not that you were expected particularly--but that you would
+have written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the
+day, if you had received my note in time. It happened well too,
+altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not
+come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at
+the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any
+visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases,
+go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at
+that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you
+before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not,
+should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn
+to write, ... did you think it was?
+
+Not a word of Malta! except from Mr. Kenyon who talked homilies of it
+last Sunday and wanted to speak them to Papa--but it would not do in
+any way--now especially--and in a little time there will be a
+decision for or against; and I am afraid of _both_ ... which is a
+happy state of preparation. Did I not tell you that early in the
+summer I did some translations for Miss Thomson's 'Classical Album,'
+from Bion and Theocritus, and Nonnus the author of that large (not
+great) poem in some forty books of the 'Dionysiaca' ... and the
+paraphrases from Apuleius? Well--I had a letter from her the other
+day, full of compunction and ejaculation, and declaring the fact that
+Mr. Burges had been correcting all the proofs of the poems; leaving
+out and emending generally, according to his own particular idea of
+the pattern in the mount--is it not amusing? I have been wicked enough
+to write in reply that it is happy for her and all readers ... _sua si
+bona norint_ ... if during some half hour which otherwise might have
+been dedicated by Mr. Burges to patting out the lights of Sophocles
+and his peers, he was satisfied with the humbler devastation of E.B.B.
+upon Nonnus. You know it is impossible to help being amused. This
+correcting is a mania with that man! And then I, who wrote what I did
+from the 'Dionysiaca,' with no respect for 'my author,' and an
+arbitrary will to 'put the case' of Bacchus and Ariadne as well as I
+could, for the sake of the art-illustrations, ... those subjects Miss
+Thomson sent me, ... and did it all with full liberty and persuasion
+of soul that nobody would think it worth while to compare English with
+Greek and refer me back to Nonnus and detect my wanderings from the
+text!! But the critic was not to be cheated so! And I do not doubt
+that he has set me all 'to rights' from beginning to end; and combed
+Ariadne's hair close to her cheeks for me. Have _you_ known Nonnus,
+... _you_ who forget nothing? and have known everything, I think? For
+it is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and
+humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts of
+experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of the world and
+the arts of it; curious knowledge as well as general knowledge ... and
+deep thinking as well as wide acquisition, ... and you, looking none
+the older for it all!--yes, and being besides a man of genius and
+working your faculty and not wasting yourself over a surface or away
+from an end. Dugald Stewart said that genius made naturally a
+lop-sided mind--did he not? He ought to have known _you_. And _I_ who
+do ... a little ... (for I grow more loth than I was to assume the
+knowledge of you, my dear friend)--_I_ do not mean to use that word
+'humiliation' in the sense of having felt the thing myself in any
+_painful_ way, ... because I never for a moment did, or _could_, you
+know,--never could ... never did ... except indeed when you have over
+praised me, which forced another personal feeling in. Otherwise it has
+always been quite pleasant to me to be 'startled and humiliated'--and
+more so perhaps than to be startled and exalted, if I might choose....
+
+Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to
+you. But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring
+on ... and you must endure as you can or will. Also ... as you have a
+friend with you 'from Italy' ... 'from Rome,' and commended me for my
+'kindness and considerateness' in changing Tuesday to Friday ...
+(wasn't it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the
+visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to
+be--I mean, as is most convenient 'for the nonce' to you and your
+friend--because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience,
+to your other friend of this ilk,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
+
+Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that
+your 'kindness and considerateness' consisted, not in putting off
+Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my
+coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and _I_ might
+call another time! And you are NOT, NOT my 'other friend,' any more
+than this head of mine is my _other_ head, seeing that I have got a
+violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told
+in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my
+Romans--who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have
+left the house for a few minutes with my sister--but are not 'with
+me,' as you seem to understand it,--in the house to stay. They were
+kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what
+use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and
+praying you to cry 'hands off' to that dreadful Burgess; have not I
+got a ... but I will tell you to-night--or on Friday which is my day,
+please--Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,
+
+Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings--what have I
+done? God bless you ever dearest friend.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Thursday, 7 o'clock.
+                               [Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]
+
+I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write
+(or, _speak_, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those
+'other friends'--dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve,
+and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a
+few more hours of 'social joy,' 'kindly intercourse,' &c., fall to my
+portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw
+her, not yesterday) by asking 'if I had got as much money as I
+expected by any works published of late?'--to which I answered, of
+course, 'exactly as much'--_è grazioso_! (All the same, if you were to
+ask her, or the like of her, 'how much the stone-work of the Coliseum
+would fetch, properly burned down to lime?'--she would shudder from
+head to foot and call you 'barbaro' with good Trojan heart.) Now you
+suppose--(watch my rhetorical figure here)--you suppose I am going to
+congratulate myself on being so much for the better, _en pays de
+connaissance_, with my 'other friend,' E.B.B., number 2--or 200, why
+not?--whereas I mean to 'fulmine over Greece,' since thunder frightens
+you, for all the laurels,--and to have reason for your taking my own
+part and lot to yourself--I do, will, must, and _will_, again, wonder
+at _you_ and admire _you_, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed,
+immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But
+if to talk you once begin, 'the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly)
+his own again'--I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or
+Panoplite, as I think you call Nonnus, nor ever, like Leigh Hunt's
+'Johnny, ever blythe and bonny, went singing Nonny, nonny' and see
+to-morrow, what a vengeance I will take for your 'mere suspicion in
+that kind'! But to the serious matter ... nay, I said yesterday, I
+believe--keep off that Burgess--he is stark staring mad--mad, do you
+know? The last time I met him he told me he had recovered I forget how
+many of the lost books of Thucydides--found them imbedded in Suidas (I
+think), and had disengaged them from _his_ Greek, without loss of a
+letter, 'by an instinct he, Burgess, had'--(I spell his name wrongly
+to help the proper _hiss_ at the end). Then, once on a time, he found
+in the 'Christus Patiens,' an odd dozen of lines, clearly dropped out
+of the 'Prometheus,' and proving that Æschylus was aware of the
+invention of gunpowder. He wanted to help Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in his
+'Museum'--and scared him, as Schmitz told me. What business has he,
+Burges, with English verse--and what on earth, or under it, has Miss
+Thomson to do with _him_. If she must displease one of two, why is Mr.
+B. not to be thanked and 'sent to feed,' as the French say prettily?
+At all events, do pray see what he has presumed to alter ... you can
+alter at sufficient warrant, profit by suggestion, I should think! But
+it is all Miss Thomson's shame and fault: because she is quite in her
+propriety, saying to such intermeddlers, gently for the sake of their
+poor weak heads, 'very good, I dare say, very desirable emendations,
+only the work is not mine, you know, but my friend's, and you must no
+more alter it without her leave, than alter this sketch, this
+illustration, because you think you could mend Ariadne's face or
+figure,--Fecit Tizianus, scripsit E.B.B.' Dear friend, you will tell
+Miss Thomson to stop further proceedings, will you not? There! only,
+do mind what I say?
+
+And now--till to-morrow! It seems an age since I saw you. I want to
+catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped--I
+need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I
+trust. 'Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the
+door!'
+
+God bless you,--my one friend, without an 'other'--bless you ever--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 25, 1845.]
+
+But what have _I_ done that you should ask what have _you_ done? I
+have not brought any accusation, have I ... no, nor _thought_ any, I
+am sure--and it was only the 'kindness and considerateness'--argument
+that was irresistible as a thing to be retorted, when your thanks came
+so naturally and just at the corner of an application. And then, you
+know, it is gravely true, seriously true, sadly true, that I am always
+expecting to hear or to see how tired you are at last of me!--sooner
+or later, you know!--But I did not mean any seriousness in that
+letter. No, nor did I mean ... (to pass to another question ...) to
+provoke you to the
+
+    Mister Hayley ... so are _you_....
+
+reply complimentary. All I observed concerning yourself, was the
+_combination_--which not an idiom in chivalry could treat
+grammatically as a thing common to _me_ and you, inasmuch as everyone
+who has known me for half a day, may know that, if there is anything
+peculiar in me, it lies for the most part in an extraordinary
+deficiency in this and this and this, ... there is no need to describe
+what. Only nuns of the strictest sect of the nunneries are rather
+wiser in some points, and have led less restricted lives than I have
+in others. And if it had not been for my 'carpet-work'--
+
+Well--and do you know that I have, for the last few years, taken quite
+to despise book-knowledge and its effect on the mind--I mean when
+people _live by it_ as most readers by profession do, ... cloistering
+their souls under these roofs made with heads, when they might be
+under the sky. Such people grow dark and narrow and low, with all
+their pains.
+
+_Friday._--I was writing you see before you came--and now I go on in
+haste to speak 'off my mind' some things which are on it. First ... of
+yourself; how can it be that you are unwell again, ... and that you
+should talk (now did you not?--did I not hear you say so?) of being
+'weary in your soul' ... _you_? What should make _you_, dearest
+friend, weary in your soul; or out of spirits in any way?--Do ... tell
+me.... I was going to write without a pause--and almost I might,
+perhaps, ... even as one of the two hundred of your friends, ...
+almost I might say out that 'Do tell me.' Or is it (which I am
+inclined to think most probable) that you are tired of a same life and
+want change? It may happen to anyone sometimes, and is independent of
+your will and choice, you know--and I know, and the whole world knows:
+and would it not therefore be wise of you, in that case, to fold your
+life new again and go abroad at once? What can make you weary in your
+soul, is a problem to me. You are the last from whom I should have
+expected such a word. And you did say so, I _think_. I _think_ that it
+was not a mistake of mine. And _you_, ... with a full liberty, and the
+world in your hand for every purpose and pleasure of it!--Or is it
+that, being unwell, your spirits are affected by _that_? But then you
+might be more unwell than you like to admit--. And I am teasing you
+with talking of it ... am I not?--and being disagreeable is only one
+third of the way towards being useful, it is good to remember in time.
+
+And then the next thing to write off my mind is ... that you must not,
+you must not, make an unjust opinion out of what I said to-day. I have
+been uncomfortable since, lest you should--and perhaps it would have
+been better if I had not said it apart from all context in that way;
+only that you could not long be a friend of mine without knowing and
+seeing what so lies on the surface. But then, ... as far as I am
+concerned, ... no one cares less for a 'will' than I do (and this
+though I never had one, ... in clear opposition to your theory which
+holds generally nevertheless) for a will in the common things of life.
+Every now and then there must of course be a crossing and
+vexation--but in one's mere pleasures and fantasies, one would rather
+be crossed and vexed a little than vex a person one loves ... and it
+is possible to get used to the harness and run easily in it at last;
+and there is a side-world to hide one's thoughts in, and 'carpet-work'
+to be immoral on in spite of Mrs. Jameson, ... and the word
+'literature' has, with me, covered a good deal of liberty as you must
+see ... real liberty which is never enquired into--and it has happened
+throughout my life by an accident (as far as anything is accident)
+that my own sense of right and happiness on any important point of
+overt action, has never run contrariwise to the way of obedience
+required of me ... while in things not exactly _overt_, I and all of
+us are apt to act sometimes up to the limit of our means of acting,
+with shut doors and windows, and no waiting for cognisance or
+permission. Ah--and that last is the worst of it all perhaps! to be
+forced into concealments from the heart naturally nearest to us; and
+forced away from the natural source of counsel and strength!--and
+then, the disingenuousness--the cowardice--the 'vices of
+slaves'!--and everyone you see ... all my brothers, ... constrained
+_bodily_ into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that
+worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of _living_,
+everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters
+on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do _not_ see, what
+you _cannot_ see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all
+those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children 'in the way
+they _must_ go!' and there never was (under the strata) a truer
+affection in a father's heart ... no, nor a worthier heart in itself
+... a heart loyaller and purer, and more compelling to gratitude and
+reverence, than his, as I see it! The evil is in the system--and he
+simply takes it to be his duty to rule, and to make happy according to
+his own views of the propriety of happiness--he takes it to be his
+duty to rule like the Kings of Christendom, by divine right. But he
+loves us through and through it--and _I_, for one, love _him_! and
+when, five years ago, I lost what I loved best in the world beyond
+comparison and rivalship ... far better than himself as he knew ...
+for everyone who knew _me_ could not choose but know what was my first
+and chiefest affection ... when I lost _that_, ... I felt that he
+stood the nearest to me on the closed grave ... or by the unclosing
+sea ... I do not know which nor could ask. And I will tell you that
+not only he has been kind and patient and forbearing to me through the
+tedious trial of this illness (far more trying to standers by than you
+have an idea of perhaps) but that he was generous and forbearing in
+that hour of bitter trial, and never reproached me as he might have
+done and as my own soul has not spared--never once said to me then or
+since, that if it had not been for _me_, the crown of his house would
+not have fallen. He _never did_ ... and he might have said it, and
+more--and I could have answered nothing. Nothing, except that I had
+paid my own price--and that the price I paid was greater than his
+_loss_ ... his!! For see how it was; and how, 'not with my hand but
+heart,' I was the cause or occasion of that misery--and though not
+with the intention of my heart but with its weakness, yet the
+_occasion_, any way!
+
+They sent me down you know to Torquay--Dr. Chambers saying that I
+could not live a winter in London. The worst--what people call the
+worst--was apprehended for me at that time. So I was sent down with my
+sister to my aunt there--and he, my brother whom I loved so, was sent
+too, to take us there and return. And when the time came for him to
+leave me, _I_, to whom he was the dearest of friends and brothers in
+one ... the only one of my family who ... well, but I cannot write of
+these things; and it is enough to tell you that he was above us all,
+better than us all, and kindest and noblest and dearest to _me_,
+beyond comparison, any comparison, as I said--and when the time came
+for him to leave me _I_, weakened by illness, could not master my
+spirits or drive back my tears--and my aunt kissed them away instead
+of reproving me as she should have done; and said that _she_ would
+take care that I should not be grieved ... _she_! ... and so she sate
+down and wrote a letter to Papa to tell him that he would 'break my
+heart' if he persisted in calling away my brother--As if hearts were
+broken _so_! I have thought bitterly since that my heart did not break
+for a good deal more than _that_! And Papa's answer was--burnt into
+me, as with fire, it is--that 'under such circumstances he did not
+refuse to suspend his purpose, but that he considered it to be _very
+wrong in me to exact such a thing_.' So there was no separation
+_then_: and month after month passed--and sometimes I was better and
+sometimes worse--and the medical men continued to say that they would
+not answer for my life ... they! if I were agitated--and so there was
+no more talk of a separation. And once _he_ held my hand, ... how I
+remember! and said that he 'loved me better than them all and that he
+_would not_ leave me ... till I was well,' he said! how I remember
+_that_! And ten days from that day the boat had left the shore which
+never returned; never--and he _had_ left me! gone! For three days we
+waited--and I hoped while I could--oh--that awful agony of three days!
+And the sun shone as it shines to-day, and there was no more wind than
+now; and the sea under the windows was like this paper for
+smoothness--and my sisters drew the curtains back that I might see for
+myself how smooth the sea was, and how it could hurt nobody--and other
+boats came back one by one.
+
+Remember how you wrote in your 'Gismond'
+
+    What says the body when they spring
+    Some monstrous torture-engine's whole
+    Strength on it? No more says the soul,
+
+and you never wrote anything which _lived_ with me more than _that_.
+It is such a dreadful truth. But you knew it for truth, I hope, by
+your genius, and not by such proof as mine--I, who could not speak or
+shed a tear, but lay for weeks and months half conscious, half
+unconscious, with a wandering mind, and too near to God under the
+crushing of His hand, to pray at all. I expiated all my weak tears
+before, by not being able to shed then one tear--and yet they were
+forbearing--and no voice said 'You have done this.'
+
+Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have
+never said so much to a living being--I never _could_ speak or write
+of it. I asked no question from the moment when my last hope went: and
+since then, it has been impossible for me to speak what was in me. I
+have borne to do it to-day and to you, but perhaps if you were to
+write--so do not let this be noticed between us again--_do not_! And
+besides there is no need! I do not reproach myself with such acrid
+thoughts as I had once--I _know_ that I would have died ten times over
+for _him_, and that therefore though it was wrong of me to be weak,
+and I have suffered for it and shall learn by it I hope; _remorse_ is
+not precisely the word for me--not at least in its full sense. Still
+you will comprehend from what I have told you how the spring of life
+must have seemed to break within me _then_; and how natural it has
+been for me to loathe the living on--and to lose faith (even without
+the loathing), to lose faith in myself ... which I have done on some
+points utterly. It is not from the cause of illness--no. And you will
+comprehend too that I have strong reasons for being grateful to the
+forbearance.... It would have been _cruel_, you think, to reproach me.
+Perhaps so! yet the kindness and patience of the desisting from
+reproach, are positive things all the same.
+
+Shall I be too late for the post, I wonder? Wilson tells me that you
+were followed up-stairs yesterday (I write on Saturday this latter
+part) by somebody whom you probably took for my father. Which is
+Wilson's idea--and I hope not yours. No--it was neither father nor
+other relative of mine, but an old friend in rather an ill temper.
+
+And so good-bye until Tuesday. Perhaps I shall ... not ... hear from
+you to-night. Don't let the tragedy or aught else do you harm--will
+you? and try not to be 'weary in your soul' any more--and forgive me
+this gloomy letter I half shrink from sending you, yet will send.
+
+                                          May God bless you.
+
+                                               E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Morning,
+                               [Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]
+
+On the subject of your letter--quite irrespective of the injunction in
+it--I would not have dared speak; now, at least. But I may permit
+myself, perhaps, to say I am _most_ grateful, _most grateful_, dearest
+friend, for this admission to participate, in my degree, in these
+feelings. There is a better thing than being happy in your happiness;
+I feel, now that you teach me, it is so. I will write no more now;
+though that sentence of 'what you are _expecting_,--that I shall be
+tired of you &c.,'--though I _could_ blot that out of your mind for
+ever by a very few words _now_,--for you _would believe_ me at this
+moment, close on the other subject:--but I will take no such
+advantage--I will wait.
+
+I have many things (indifferent things, after those) to say; will you
+write, if but a few lines, to change the associations for that
+purpose? Then I will write too.--
+
+May God bless you,--in what is past and to come! I pray that from my
+heart, being yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Morning,
+                               [Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]
+
+But your 'Saul' is unobjectionable as far as I can see, my dear
+friend. He was tormented by an evil spirit--but how, we are not told
+... and the consolation is not obliged to be definite, ... is it? A
+singer was sent for as a singer--and all that you are called upon to
+be true to, are the general characteristics of David the chosen,
+standing between his sheep and his dawning hereafter, between
+innocence and holiness, and with what you speak of as the 'gracious
+gold locks' besides the chrism of the prophet, on his own head--and
+surely you have been happy in the tone and spirit of these lyrics ...
+broken as you have left them. Where is the wrong in all this? For the
+right and beauty, they are more obvious--and I cannot tell you how the
+poem holds me and will not let me go until it blesses me ... and so,
+where are the 'sixty lines' thrown away? I do beseech you ... you who
+forget nothing, ... to remember them directly, and to go on with the
+rest ... _as_ directly (be it understood) as is not injurious to your
+health. The whole conception of the poem, I like ... and the execution
+is exquisite up to this point--and the sight of Saul in the tent, just
+struck out of the dark by that sunbeam, 'a thing to see,' ... not to
+say that afterwards when he is visibly 'caught in his fangs' like the
+king serpent, ... the sight is grander still. How could you doubt
+about this poem....
+
+At the moment of writing which, I receive your note. Do _you_ receive
+my assurances from the deepest of my heart that I never did otherwise
+than _'believe' you_ ... never did nor shall do ... and that you
+completely misinterpreted my words if you drew another meaning from
+them. Believe _me_ in this--will you? I could not believe _you_ any
+more for anything you could say, now or hereafter--and so do not
+avenge yourself on my unwary sentences by remembering them against me
+for evil. I did not mean to vex you ... still less to suspect
+you--indeed I did not! and moreover it was quite your fault that I did
+not blot it out after it was written, whatever the meaning was. So you
+forgive me (altogether) for your own sins: you must:--
+
+For my part, though I have been sorry since to have written you such a
+gloomy letter, the sorrow unmakes itself in hearing you speak so
+kindly. Your sympathy is precious to me, I may say. May God bless you.
+Write and tell me among the 'indifferent things' something not
+indifferent, how you are yourself, I mean ... for I fear you are not
+well and thought you were not looking so yesterday.
+
+                             Dearest friend, I remain yours,
+
+                                  E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Friday Evening.
+                               [Post-mark, August 30, 1845].
+
+I do not hear; and come to you to ask the alms of just one line,
+having taken it into my head that something is the matter. It is not
+so much exactingness on my part, as that you spoke of meaning to write
+as soon as you received a note of mine ... which went to you five
+minutes afterwards ... which is three days ago, or will be when you
+read this. Are you not well--or what? Though I have tried and _wished_
+to remember having written in the last note something very or even a
+little offensive to you, I failed in it and go back to the worse fear.
+For you could not be vexed with me for talking of what was 'your
+fault' ... 'your own fault,' viz. in having to read sentences which,
+but for your commands, would have been blotted out. You could not very
+well take _that_ for serious blame! from _me_ too, who have so much
+reason and provocation for blaming the archangel Gabriel.--No--you
+could not misinterpret so,--and if you could not, and if you are not
+displeased with me, you must be unwell, I think. I took for granted
+yesterday that you had gone out as before--but to-night it is
+different--and so I come to ask you to be kind enough to write one
+word for me by some post to-morrow. Now remember ... I am not asking
+for a letter--but for a _word_ ... or line strictly speaking.
+
+                                    Ever yours, dear friend,
+
+                                         E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]
+
+This sweet Autumn Evening, Friday, comes all golden into the room and
+makes me write to you--not think of you--yet what shall I write?
+
+It must be for another time ... after Monday, when I am to see you,
+you know, and hear if the headache be gone, since your note would not
+round to the perfection of kindness and comfort, and tell me so.
+
+                                God bless my dearest friend.
+
+                                     R.B.
+
+I am much better--well, indeed--thank you.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]
+
+Can you understand me _so_, dearest friend, after all? Do you see
+me--when I am away, or with you--'taking offence' at words, 'being
+vexed' at words, or deeds of yours, even if I could not immediately
+trace them to their source of entire, pure kindness; as I have
+hitherto done in every smallest instance?
+
+I believe in _you_ absolutely, utterly--I believe that when you bade
+me, that time, be silent--that such was your bidding, and I was
+silent--dare I say I think you did not know at that time the power I
+have over myself, that I could sit and speak and listen as I have done
+since? Let me say now--_this only once_--that I loved you from my
+soul, and gave you my life, so much of it as you would take,--and all
+that is _done_, not to be altered now: it was, in the nature of the
+proceeding, wholly independent of any return on your part. I will not
+think on extremes you might have resorted to; as it is, the assurance
+of your friendship, the intimacy to which you admit me, _now_, make
+the truest, deepest joy of my life--a joy I can never think fugitive
+while we are in life, because I KNOW, as to me, I _could_ not
+willingly displease you,--while, as to you, your goodness and
+understanding will always see to the bottom of involuntary or ignorant
+faults--always help me to correct them. I have done now. If I thought
+you were like other women I have known, I should say so
+much!--but--(my first and last word--I _believe_ in you!)--what you
+could and would give me, of your affection, you would give nobly and
+simply and as a giver--you would not need that I tell you--(_tell_
+you!)--what would be supreme happiness to me in the event--however
+distant--
+
+I repeat ... I call on your justice to remember, on your intelligence
+to believe ... that this is merely a more precise stating the _first_
+subject; to put an end to any possible misunderstanding--to prevent
+your henceforth believing that because I _do not write_, from thinking
+too deeply of you, I am offended, vexed &c. &c. I will never recur to
+this, nor shall you see the least difference in my manner next Monday:
+it is indeed, always before me ... how I know nothing of you and
+yours. But I think I ought to have spoken when I did--and to speak
+clearly ... or more clearly what I do, as it is my pride and duty to
+fall back, now, on the feeling with which I have been in the
+meantime--Yours--God bless you--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+Let me write a few words to lead into Monday--and say, you have
+probably received my note. I am much better--with a little headache,
+which is all, and fast going this morning. Of yours you say nothing--I
+trust you see your ... dare I say your _duty_ in the Pisa affair, as
+all else _must_ see it--shall I hear on Monday? And my 'Saul' that you
+are so lenient to.
+
+                                            Bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                          Sunday.
+                                          [August 31, 1845.]
+
+I did not think you were angry--I never said so. But you might
+reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of
+blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the
+amount of my fear--or rather hope ... since I conjectured most that
+you were not well. And after all you did think ... do think ... that
+in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you,
+distrusted you--or why this letter? How have I provoked this letter?
+Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and
+will you believe me that if for the past's sake you sent it, it was
+unnecessary, and if for the future's, irrelevant? Which I say from no
+want of sensibility to the words of it--your words always make
+themselves felt--but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold
+to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be
+holden by them. Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to
+me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to
+choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a
+probability, in my sight and yours? Can you help my sitting with the
+doors all open if I think it right? I do attest to you--while I trust
+you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that
+no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than
+you do in mine,--that you would still stand high and remain
+unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact,
+as now at this moment. And this I must say, since you have said other
+things: and this alone, which _I_ have said, concerns the future, I
+remind you earnestly.
+
+My dearest friend--you have followed the most _generous_ of impulses
+in your whole bearing to me--and I have recognised and called by its
+name, in my heart, each one of them. Yet I cannot help adding that, of
+us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part ... I mean, to a
+generous nature like your own, to which every sort of nobleness comes
+easily. Mine has been more difficult--and I have sunk under it again
+and again: and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a
+lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and
+lightness, unworthy at least of _you_, and perhaps of both of us.
+Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of
+you, to believe in me--in my truth--because I have never failed to you
+in it, nor been capable of _such_ failure: the thing I have said, I
+have meant ... always: and in things I have not said, the silence has
+had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it.
+And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in
+me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I
+required of you on one occasion--and that if I had 'known your power
+over yourself,' I should not have minded ... no! In other words you
+believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall I call it
+for a motive base and small enough?) my own scrupulousness ... freedom
+from embarrassment! of myself in the least of me; in the tying of my
+shoestrings, say!--so much and no more! Now this is so wrong, as to
+make me impatient sometimes in feeling it to be your impression: I
+asked for silence--but _also_ and chiefly for the putting away of ...
+you know very well what I asked for. And this was sincerely done, I
+attest to you. You wrote once to me ... oh, long before May and the
+day we met: that you 'had been so happy, you should be now justified
+to yourself in taking any step most hazardous to the happiness of your
+life'--but if you were justified, could _I_ be therefore justified in
+abetting such a step,--the step of wasting, in a sense, your best
+feelings ... of emptying your water gourds into the sand? What I
+thought then I think now--just what any third person, knowing you,
+would think, I think and feel. I thought too, at first, that the
+feeling on your part was a mere generous impulse, likely to expand
+itself in a week perhaps. It affects me and has affected me, very
+deeply, more than I dare attempt to say, that you should persist
+_so_--and if sometimes I have felt, by a sort of instinct, that after
+all you would not go on to persist, and that (being a man, you know)
+you might mistake, a little unconsciously, the strength of your own
+feeling; you ought not to be surprised; when I felt it was more
+advantageous and happier for you that it should be so. _In any case_,
+I shall never regret my own share in the events of this summer, and
+your friendship will be dear to me to the last. You know I told you
+so--not long since. And as to what you say otherwise, you are right in
+thinking that I would not hold by unworthy motives in avoiding to
+speak what you had any claim to hear. But what could I speak that
+would not be unjust to you? Your life! if you gave it to me and I put
+my whole heart into it; what should I put but anxiety, and more
+sadness than you were born to? What could I give you, which it would
+not be ungenerous to give? Therefore we must leave this subject--and I
+must trust you to leave it without one word more; (too many have been
+said already--but I could not let your letter pass quite silently ...
+as if I had nothing to do but to receive all as matter of course
+_so_!) while you may well trust _me_ to remember to my life's end, as
+the grateful remember; and to feel, as those do who have felt sorrow
+(for where these pits are dug, the water will stand), the full price
+of your regard. May God bless you, my dearest friend. I shall send
+this letter after I have seen you, and hope you may not have expected
+to hear sooner.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+_Monday, 6 p.m._--I send in _dis_obedience to your commands, Mrs.
+Shelley's book--but when books accumulate and when besides, I want to
+let you have the American edition of my poems ... famous for all
+manner of blunders, you know; what is to be done but have recourse to
+the parcel-medium? You were in jest about being at Pisa _before or as
+soon as we were_?--oh no--that must not be indeed--we must wait a
+little!--even if you determine to go at all, which is a question of
+doubtful expediency. Do take more exercise, this week, and make war
+against those dreadful sensations in the head--now, will you?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, September 3, 1845.]
+
+I rather hoped ... with no right at all ... to hear from you this
+morning or afternoon--to know how you are--that, 'how are you,' there
+is no use disguising, is,--vary it how one may--my own life's
+question.--
+
+I had better write no more, now. Will you not tell me something about
+you--the head; and that too, _too_ warm hand ... or was it my fancy?
+Surely the report of Dr. Chambers is most satisfactory,--all seems to
+rest with yourself: you know, in justice to me, you _do_ know that _I_
+know the all but mockery, the absurdity of anyone's counsel 'to be
+composed,' &c. &c. But try, dearest friend!
+
+                                             God bless you--
+
+                                                  I am yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, September 3, 1845.]
+
+Before you leave London, I will answer your letter--all my attempts
+end in nothing now--
+
+                             Dearest friend--I am yours ever
+
+                                  R.B.
+
+But meantime, you will tell me about yourself, will you not? The
+parcel came a few minutes after my note left--Well, I can thank you
+for _that_; for the Poems,--though I cannot wear them round my
+neck--and for the too great trouble. My heart's friend! Bless you--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, September 4, 1845.]
+
+Indeed my headaches are not worth enquiring about--I mean, they are
+not of the slightest consequence, and seldom survive the remedy of a
+cup of coffee. I only wish it were the same with everybody--I mean,
+with every _head_! Also there is nothing the matter otherwise--and I
+am going to prove my right to a 'clean bill of health' by going into
+the park in ten minutes. Twice round the inner enclosure is what I can
+compass now--which is equal to once round the world--is it not?
+
+I had just time to be afraid that the parcel had not reached you. The
+reason why I sent you the poems was that I had a few copies to give to
+my personal friends, and so, wished you to have one; and it was quite
+to please myself and not to please _you_ that I made you have it; and
+if you put it into the 'plum-tree' to hide the errata, I shall be
+pleased still, if not rather more. Only let me remember to tell you
+this time in relation to those books and the question asked of
+yourself by your noble Romans, that just as I was enclosing my
+sixty-pounds debt to Mr. Moxon, I did actually and miraculously
+receive a remittance of fourteen pounds from the selfsame bookseller
+of New York who agreed last year to print my poems at his own risk and
+give me 'ten per cent on the profit.' Not that I ever asked for such a
+thing! They were the terms offered. And I always considered the 'per
+centage' as quite visionary ... put in for the sake of effect, to make
+the agreement look better! But no--you see! One's poetry has a real
+'commercial value,' if you do but take it far away enough from the
+'civilization of Europe.' When you get near the backwoods and the red
+Indians, it turns out to be nearly as good for something as
+'cabbages,' after all! Do you remember what you said to me of cabbages
+_versus_ poems, in one of the first letters you ever wrote to me?--of
+selling cabbages and buying _Punches_?
+
+People complain of Dr. Chambers and call him rough and
+unfeeling--neither of which _I_ ever found him for a moment--and I
+like him for his truthfulness, which is the nature of the man, though
+it is essential to medical morality never to let a patient think
+himself mortal while it is possible to prevent it, and even Dr.
+Chambers may incline to this on occasion. Still he need not have said
+all the good he said to me on Saturday--he _used_ not to say any of
+it; and he must have thought some of it: and, any way, the Pisa-case
+is strengthened all round by his opinion and injunction, so that all
+my horror and terror at the thoughts of his visit, (and it's really
+true that I would rather _suffer_ to a certain extent than be _cured_
+by means of those doctors!) had some compensation. How are you? do not
+forget to say! I found among some papers to-day, a note of yours which
+I asked Mr. Kenyon to give me for an autograph, two years ago.
+
+May God bless you, dearest friend. And I have a dispensation from
+'beef and porter' [Greek: eis tous aiônas]. 'On no account' was the
+answer!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Afternoon.
+                             [Post-mark, September 5, 1845.]
+
+What you tell me of Dr. Chambers, 'all the good of you' he said, and
+all I venture to infer; this makes me most happy and thankful. Do you
+use to attach our old [Greek: tuphlas elpidas] (and the practice of
+instilling them) to that medical science in which Prometheus boasted
+himself proficient? I had thought the 'faculty' dealt in fears, on the
+contrary, and scared you into obedience: but I know most about the
+doctors in Molière. However the joyous truth is--must be, that you are
+better, and if one could transport you quietly to Pisa, save you all
+worry,--what might one not expect!
+
+When I know your own intentions--measures, I should say, respecting
+your journey--mine will of course be submitted to you--it will just be
+'which day next--month'?--Not week, alas.
+
+I can thank you now for this edition of your poems--I have not yet
+taken to read it, though--for it does not, each volume of it, open
+obediently to a thought, here, and here, and here, like my green books
+... no, my Sister's they are; so these you give me are really mine.
+And America, with its ten per cent., shall have my better word
+henceforth and for ever ... for when you calculate, there must have
+been a really extraordinary circulation; and in a few months: it is
+what newspapers call 'a great fact.' Have they reprinted the
+'Seraphim'? Quietly, perhaps!
+
+I shall see you on Monday, then--
+
+And my all-important headaches are tolerably kept under--headaches
+proper they are not--but the noise and slight turning are less
+troublesome--will soon go altogether.
+
+                        Bless you ever--ever dearest friend.
+
+                             R.B.
+
+_Oh, oh, oh!_ As many thanks for that precious card-box and jewel of
+a flower-holder as are consistent with my dismay at finding you _only_
+return _them_ ... and not the costly brown paper wrappages also ... to
+say nothing of the inestimable pins with which my sister uses to
+fasten the same!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, September 8, 1845.]
+
+I am in the greatest difficulty about the steamers. Will you think a
+little for me and tell me what is best to do? It appears that the
+direct Leghorn steamer will not sail on the third, and may not until
+the middle of October, and if forced to still further delay, which is
+possible, will not at all. One of my brothers has been to Mr. Andrews
+of St. Mary Axe and heard as much as this. What shall I do? The middle
+of October, say my sisters ... and I half fear that it may prove so
+... is too late for me--to say nothing for the uncertainty which
+completes the difficulty.
+
+On the 20th of September (on the other hand) sails the Malta vessel;
+and I hear that I may go in it to Gibraltar and find a French steamer
+there to proceed by. Is there an objection to this--except the change
+of steamers ... repeated ... for I must get down to Southampton--and
+the leaving England so soon? Is any better to be done? Do think for me
+a little. And now that the doing comes so near ... and in this dead
+silence of Papa's ... it all seems impossible, ... and I seem to see
+the stars _constellating_ against me, and give it as my serious
+opinion to you that I shall not go. Now, mark.
+
+But I have had the kindest of letters from dear Mr. Kenyon, urging
+it--.
+
+Well--I have no time for writing any more--and this is only a note of
+business to bespeak your thoughts about the steamers. My wisdom looks
+back regretfully ... only rather too late ... on the Leghorn vessel
+of the third of September. It would have been wise if I had gone
+_then_.
+
+                          May God bless you, dearest friend.
+
+                               E.B.B.
+
+But if your head turns still, ... _do_ you walk enough? Is there not
+fault in your not walking, by your own confession? Think of this
+first--and then, if you please, of the steamers.
+
+So, till Monday!--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, September 9, 1845.]
+
+One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well
+enough for the necessary work connected with them, ... a sure reason
+and strong ... nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work
+now--and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them
+through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so,
+why you will not do it--will you?--you will wait for another year,--or
+at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old
+size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no
+retouching. 'Saul' for instance, you might leave--! You will not let
+me hear when I am gone, of your being ill--you will take care ... will
+you not? Because you see ... or rather _I_ see ... you are _not_
+looking well at all--no, you are not! and even if you do not care for
+that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be
+for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute
+hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck
+down before the gate ... should you lose the physical power while
+keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and
+sufficient things in your case--but after all we carry a barrow-full
+of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we
+mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the
+garden. A figure which reminds me ... and I wanted no figure to remind
+me ... to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her
+kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not.
+When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week,
+and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very
+kind--and I take the liberty of saying so moreover ... _as I am not
+thanking you_. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you
+disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when
+they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to
+just _so_. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July ...
+or November ... two months before or after: and that this journey were
+thrown behind or in front ... anywhere to be out of sight. You do not
+know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through
+what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me
+only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn.
+Well!--but I want you to see. George's letter, and how he and Mrs.
+Hedley, when she saw Papa's note of consent to me, give unhesitating
+counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me ...
+which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps ... seeing that it
+goes [Greek: ba ... rbarizôn]. We are famous in this house for what
+are called nick-names ... though a few of us have escaped rather by a
+caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at
+all) except by the nom de _paix_ which you find written in the
+letter:--proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just 'half a Ba-by' ...
+no more nor less;--and in fact the name has that precise definition.
+Burn the note when you have read it.
+
+And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters,
+you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in
+these enclosed 'sonnets' which were written a few weeks ago, and
+though only pretending to be 'sketches,' pretend to be like, as far as
+they go, and _are_ like--my brothers thought--when I 'showed them
+against' a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I
+was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his--and
+he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting--and you
+who are in 'high art,' must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the
+elder, and the one who brought you into this room first--and Arabel,
+who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my
+illness and is the least wanted in the house here, ... and perhaps ...
+perhaps--is my favourite--though my heart smites me while I write that
+unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all
+things, and good and lovable in their own beings--very unlike, for the
+rest; one, most caring for the Polka, ... and the other for the sermon
+preached at Paddington Chapel, ... _that_ is Arabel ... so if ever you
+happen to know her you must try not to say before her how 'much you
+hate &c.' Henrietta always 'managed' everything in the house even
+before I was ill, ... because she liked it and I didn't, and I waived
+my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.
+
+I have been thinking much of your 'Sordello' since you spoke of
+it--and even, I _had_ thought much of it before you spoke of it
+yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your
+hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble
+picture with its face to the wall just now--or at least, in the
+shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all
+through: you have _made_ even the darkness of it! And such a work as
+it might become if you chose ... if you put your will to it! What I
+meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses
+than the 'ten per cent' you spoke of ... though it does perhaps ... so
+much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in
+the connections and associations ... which hang as loosely every here
+and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists
+in thinking himself awake.
+
+How do you mean that I am 'lenient'? Do you not believe that I tell
+you what I think, and as I think it? I may _think wrong_, to be
+sure--but _that_ is not my fault:--and so there is no use reproaching
+me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same
+time:--is there, now?
+
+And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and
+receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly
+_himself always_--which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps.
+And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see--and what he
+expects from you--notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to
+write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle's letter--thank you
+for letting me see it. I admire _that_ too! It is as ingenious 'a
+case' against poor Keats, as could well be drawn--but nobody who knew
+very deeply what poetry _is_, _could_, you know, draw any case against
+him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says--but
+then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a 'store-room'
+would ever be like the 'Eve of St. Agnes,' unless dreamed by some
+'animosus infans,' like Keats himself. Still it is all true ... isn't
+it?... what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a
+_seer_ strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions--(to go back to
+Carlyle's letters) ... he writes to the things you were speaking of
+yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton's picture for
+convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men
+of our day and 'the giants which were on the earth,' less ... far less
+... in the faculty ... in the gift, ... or in the general intellect,
+... than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in
+what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton
+if [we] lived them like Milton.
+
+I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as
+you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be ...
+packing trunks perhaps ... or what else in the way of 'active
+usefulness.'
+
+Say how you are--will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is
+good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh,
+this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Thursday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
+
+Here are your beautiful, and I am sure _true_ sonnets; they look
+true--I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares
+exhibit, E.B.B.'s self? And surely 'Alfred's' pencil has not foregone
+its best privilege, not left _the_ face unsketched? Italians call such
+an 'effect defective'--'l'andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.' He must
+have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and ... _he_ will not trust
+me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are
+strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the
+proper price for it--but _you_ would lend it to me, I think, nor need
+I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent
+way--for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do
+you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all
+my pride is gone, pride in that sense--and I mean to take of you for
+ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would,
+you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever
+since I knew you if nothing in the way of _good_ portrait existed--and
+this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you
+have also quieted--have you not?--another old obstinate and very
+likely impertinent questioning of mine--as to the little name which
+was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is
+never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and
+write it--'Ba'--and thank you, and your brother George, and only
+burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by
+wish, one gets one's wishes--at least I do--for one instance, you will
+go to Italy
+
+[Illustration: Music followed by ?]
+
+Why, 'lean and harken after it' as Donne says--
+
+Don't expect Neapolitan Scenery at Pisa, quite in the North, remember.
+Mrs. Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy, at Sorrento,
+she says. Oh that book--does one wake or sleep? The 'Mary dear' with
+the brown eyes, and Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and who
+surely was something better once upon a time--and to go through Rome
+and Florence and the rest, after what I suppose to be Lady
+Londonderry's fashion: the intrepidity of the commonplace quite
+astounds me. And then that way, when she and the like of her are put
+in a new place, with new flowers, new stones, faces, walls, all
+new--of looking wisely up at the sun, clouds, evening star, or
+mountain top and wisely saying 'who shall describe _that_ sight!'--Not
+_you_, we very well see--but why don't you tell us that at Rome they
+eat roasted chestnuts, and put the shells into their aprons, the women
+do, and calmly empty the whole on the heads of the passengers in the
+street below; and that at Padua when a man drives his waggon up to a
+house and stops, all the mouse-coloured oxen that pull it from a beam
+against their foreheads sit down in a heap and rest. But once she
+travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, Rogers in
+hand--to such things and uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art,
+once she lets go of Rio's skirts, are amazing--Fra Angelico, for
+instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &c., she had no eyes for the
+divine _bon-bourgeoisie_ of his pictures; the dear common folk of his
+crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a
+comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint--and the
+children, and women,--divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the
+streets and market place--but she is wrong every where, that is, not
+right, not seeing what is to see, speaking what one expects to hear--I
+quarrel with her, for ever, I think.
+
+I am much better, and mean to be well as you desire--shall correct the
+verses you have seen, and make them do for the present.
+
+Saturday, then! And one other time only, do you say?
+
+God bless you, my own, best friend.
+
+                                                  Yours ever
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Thursday.
+                            [Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
+
+Will you come on Friday ... to-morrow ... instead of Saturday--will it
+be the same thing? Because I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who is to be
+in London on Friday evening he says, and therefore may mean to visit
+me on Saturday I imagine. So let it be Friday--if you should not, for
+any reason, prove Monday to be better still.
+
+                                         May God bless you--
+
+                                              Ever yours,
+
+                                                   E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Saturday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 13, 1845.]
+
+Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in
+reply to your letter of last week--and first of all I have to entreat
+you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words
+the feelings behind them--(should _speak_ rather more easily, I
+think--but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be
+just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and
+again. I will tell you--no, not _you_, but any imaginary other person,
+who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most
+sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that
+avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I
+never dreamed of winning your _love_. I can hardly write this word, so
+incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places
+does it imply--nor, next to that, though long after, _would_ I, if I
+_could_, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have
+taken root in you--_that_ great and solemn one, for instance. I feel
+that if I could get myself _remade_, as if turned to gold, I WOULD not
+even then desire to become more than the mere setting to _that_
+diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me,
+in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is
+all I can take and all too embarrassing, using _all_ my gratitude. And
+yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it
+is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all
+the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand
+the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is
+recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I
+would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which
+your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak
+presently)--I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it
+there, surely there. I could no more 'bind _you_ by words,' than you
+have bound me, as you say--but if I misunderstand you, one assurance
+to that effect will be but too intelligible to me--but, as it _is_, I
+have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which
+I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily
+conceives; while _any one_ of those reasons would impose silence on me
+_for ever_ (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and _would_
+not remove one affection that is already part of you,)--_would_ you,
+being able to speak _so_, only say _that you_ desire not to put 'more
+sadness than I was born to,' into my life?--that you 'could give me
+only what it were ungenerous to give'?
+
+Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that
+you bid me 'leave this subject'? I think if it were so, I would for
+once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous
+self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out--but it is
+not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to
+look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would
+turn to its good or its loss--and I _know_, if one may know anything,
+that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours,
+would render me _supremely happy_, as I said, and say, and feel. My
+whole suit to you is, in that sense, _selfish_--not that I am ignorant
+that _your_ nature would most surely attain happiness in being
+conscious that it made another happy--but _that best, best end of
+all_, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of
+your own gift.
+
+Dearest, I will end here--words, persuasion, arguments, if they were
+at my service I would not use them--I believe in you, altogether have
+faith in you--in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to
+reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might
+at first glance seem to imply--you do not understand me to be living
+and labouring and writing (and _not_ writing) in order to be
+successful in the world's sense? I even convinced the people _here_
+what was my true 'honourable position in society,' &c. &c. therefore I
+shall not have to inform _you_ that I desire to be very rich, very
+great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil
+Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;--much less--enough of
+this nonsense.
+
+'Tell me what I have a claim to hear': I can hear it, and be as
+grateful as I was before and am now--your friendship is my pride and
+happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that
+it was in my power to serve you _there_, to serve you there would
+still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of
+my love, it is all _on_wards--and all possible forms of unkindness ...
+I quite laugh to think how they are _behind_ ... cannot be encountered
+in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you
+implicitly--obey what I am able to conceive of your least desire, much
+more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal,
+among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My
+whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely
+cut down) was long ago calculated--and it supposed _you_, the finding
+such an one as you, utterly impossible--because in calculating one
+goes upon _chances_, not on providence--how could I expect you? So for
+my own future way in the world I have always refused to care--any one
+who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did
+once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I
+now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and
+who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events
+would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the
+Solicitor-Generalship,--such an one need not very much concern himself
+beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near
+this life, all changes--and at a word, I will do all that ought to be
+done, that every one used to say could be done, and let 'all my powers
+find sweet employ' as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be
+got--not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away,
+and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news--at Pisa where
+one may live for some £100 a year--while, lo, I seem to remember, I
+_do_ remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those
+pounds for any play that might suit him--to say nothing of Mr. Colburn
+saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner 'a novel on
+the subject of _Napoleon_'! So may one make money, if one does not
+live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess's
+Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one's faculty.
+
+Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest--all you shall say
+will be best--I am yours--
+
+Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and
+will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 16, 1845.]
+
+I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it
+is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain--and you are
+waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am
+happy--but ungrateful nowhere--and I thank you from my
+heart--profoundly from the depths of my heart ... which is nearly all
+I can do.
+
+One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to
+speak at all if '_from the beginning and at this moment you never
+dreamed of_' ... and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I
+felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a
+moment's advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering
+branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the
+fence of a woman's caution and reserve. You will not say that you have
+not acted as if you 'dreamed'--and I will answer therefore to the
+general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once
+that I _did_ state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself
+... though not all ... and that if I had been worthier of you I should
+have been proportionably less in haste to 'bid you leave that
+subject.' I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to
+have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I
+may not have felt a preference for another ... which you are ready
+'to serve,' you say. Which is generous in you--but in _me_, where were
+the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you
+think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for
+me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall
+I shrink from telling you besides ... you, who have been generous to
+me and have a right to hear it ... and have spoken to me in the name
+of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same
+letter ... that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my
+feelings what you are ... and that if I were different in some
+respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept
+the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully;
+and give away my own life and soul to that end. I _would_ do it ...
+_not, I do_ ... observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only
+meaning that I am not all stone--only proving that I am not likely to
+consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is
+not:--_that_, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you
+... _that_ I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a
+strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to
+the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that
+you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own
+unworthiness between you and me--not being heroic, you know, nor
+pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of
+unworthiness, _God_ has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat
+your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but
+pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you ...
+judge! The present is here to be seen ... speaking for itself! and the
+best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be
+... a thing for making burdens out of ... only not for your carrying,
+as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day
+in his smiling kindness ... 'In ten years you may be strong
+perhaps'--or 'almost strong'! that being the encouragement of my best
+friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or
+guess...! what _could_ he say but that you were ... a poet!--and I ...
+still worse! _Never_ let him know or guess!
+
+And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent
+practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave
+me--these thoughts of me, I mean ... for if we might not be true
+friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth.
+But we may be friends always ... and cannot be so separated, that your
+happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you
+will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded _thus_ ...
+and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into
+another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which
+you tell me 'would silence you for ever.' I might certainly tell you
+that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me _so_, and
+that I had answered you--_so_, even, would not forgive me at the end
+of ten years--and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here
+and in no disrespect to your name and your position ... though he does
+not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the
+world's measures of the means of life ... but for the singular reason
+that he never _does_ tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the
+development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not
+bring to you of my own will--it rang hollow in my ears--perhaps I
+thought even too little of it:--and I brought to you what I thought
+much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts,
+these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the
+heart with any such:--and I will say, in reply to some words of yours,
+that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I
+do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I _wished_ to
+be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I _could not_, with
+three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess
+me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the
+need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.
+
+The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for
+being so. Believe that I am grateful to you--_how_ grateful, cannot be
+shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in
+all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you--but I would
+not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the
+earnestness with which I tell the other truths--of you ... and of this
+subject. The subject will not bear consideration--it breaks in our
+hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to
+you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be
+anyone's, be only yours.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
+
+I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on
+me--very likely you do, and write it just for that--for I conceive
+_all_ from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect,
+let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any
+fear--though only for a moment and on the outset--that you have been
+misunderstood, that the goodness _outside_, and round and over all,
+hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you
+see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that--can I speak
+it--entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above
+my hopes--and wishes, even, so it seems to me ... and yet could not
+but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out
+of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this
+Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on
+the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, _the_ prize,
+the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at
+present you believe this gift impossible--and I acquiesce entirely--I
+submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am
+capable. Those obstacles are solely for _you_ to see and to declare
+... had _I_ seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or
+myself by affecting to pass them over ... what _were_ obstacles, I
+mean: but you _do_ see them, I must think,--and perhaps they strike me
+the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they
+are,--not that I shall endeavour. After what you _also_ apprise me of,
+I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what
+you now consider them, you who see now _for me_, whom I implicitly
+trust in to see for me; you will _then_, too, see and remember me, and
+how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see,
+and so inform me, I shall never utter a word--for that would involve
+the vilest of implications. I thank God--I _do_ thank him, that in
+this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy
+of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in
+the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my
+mind to the impossibility of loving any woman ... having wondered at
+this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having
+acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and
+become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry ... I say, when
+real love, making itself at once recognized as such, _did_ reveal
+itself to me at last, I _did_ open my heart to it with a cry--nor care
+for its overturning all my theory--nor mistrust its effect upon a mind
+set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more--nor
+apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was
+already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of
+the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the
+pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when
+_it_ did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or
+_should_ speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after
+all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. _Here_
+for instance, _now_ ... 'one' should despair; but 'try again' first,
+and work blindly at removing those obstacles (--if I saw them, I
+should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence,
+I could bid you look where they _were_)--and 'one' would do all this,
+not for the _play-acting's_ sake, or to 'look the character' ...
+(_that_ would be something quite different from folly ...) but from a
+not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an
+acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and
+unabatedness ... the _truth_, in fact, of what had already been
+professed, should get to be questioned--But I believe that you believe
+me--And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will
+hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented
+... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go--) I accept what you
+give me, what those words deliver to me, as--not all I asked for ...
+as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,--_all_, in the best
+sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to,
+and the other--may stand, too--I never attempted to declare, describe
+my feeling for you--one word of course stood for it all ... but having
+to put down some one _point_, so to speak, of it--you could not wonder
+if I took any extreme one _first_ ... never minding all the untold
+portion that _led_ up to it, made it possible and natural--it is true,
+'I could not dream of _that_'--that I was eager to get the horrible
+notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus
+and thus to me _on condition_ of my proving just the same to you--just
+as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we
+ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth
+happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said
+it:--now you have declared what I should never have presumed to
+hope--and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God,
+am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which
+is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see
+clearly. Your regard for me is _all_ success--let the rest come, or
+not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would
+promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would _not_ do
+that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere
+&c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the
+practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher
+motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no
+words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I
+renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them,
+that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an
+apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our
+hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!
+And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream of that'--, now it is
+mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole
+consolation of it at once, _now_--I will be confident that, if I obey
+you, I shall get no wrong for it--if, endeavouring to spare you
+fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed
+'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you;
+you will never say to yourself--so I said--'the "generous impulse"
+_has_ worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work--this was to be
+expected' &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle
+has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to _you_, one
+_you_ may try and overcome'--and I shall be there, and ready--ten
+years hence as now--if alive.
+
+One final word on the other matters--the 'worldly matters'--I shall
+own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because--because _that
+would be_ the _one_ poor sacrifice I could make you--one I would
+cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless
+'sweet habitude of living'--this absolute independence of mine, which,
+if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which
+I have fought so many good battles to preserve--for that has
+happened, too--this light rational life I lead, and know so well that
+I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than--what you know--but
+I _would_ give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose
+disappointment might re-act on you--and I should break no promise to
+myself--the money getting would not be for the sake of _it_; 'the
+labour not for that which is nought'--indeed the necessity of doing
+this, if at all, _now_, was one of the reasons which make me go on to
+that _last request of all_--at once; one must not be too old, they
+say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure
+that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to
+spare--because along with what you have thought _genius_ in me, is
+certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried
+it in various ways, just to be sure that I _was_ a little magnanimous
+in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews
+and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago--in
+the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most
+laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I
+'_did_' for my old French master, and he published--'_that_ was really
+an useful work'!--So that when the only obstacle is only that there is
+so much _per annum_ to be producible, you will tell me. After all it
+would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to
+be _my_ own single stipulation--'an objection' which I could see,
+certainly,--but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of
+removing.
+
+So, now, dearest--let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my
+dearest--this once--dearest, I have done with words for the present. I
+will wait. God bless you and reward you--I kiss your hands _now_. This
+is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but _un_expressed
+now, more and more will become spoken--or understood, that is--we both
+live on--you will know better _what_ it was, how much and manifold,
+what one little word had to give out.
+
+                                             God bless you--
+
+                                                  Your R.B.
+
+On Thursday,--you remember?
+
+This is Tuesday Night--
+
+I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe--all uncertainty
+about the vessel's sailing again for Leghorn--it could not sail before
+the middle of the month--and only then _if_ &c. But if I would leave
+my card &c. &c.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Wednesday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
+
+I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was
+a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the
+beginning--being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it
+has all happened--_only do not blame me_, for I have kept my ground to
+the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that
+there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much
+earnestness into a personal matter--and I spoke face to face and quite
+firmly--so as to pass with my sisters for the 'bravest person in the
+house' without contestation.
+
+Sometimes it seems to me as if it _could not_ end so--I mean, that the
+responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered ... and you see
+how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies, ... no Pisa!
+And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail,
+such as they have been from the beginning.
+
+If you wish to come, it must not be until Saturday at soonest. I have
+a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation--and besides
+there is no haste now: and when you do come, _if you do_, I will trust
+to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell ...
+must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had
+forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you ... the
+_Hood_ poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see
+them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at
+once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of
+it--and more than think.
+
+For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little
+with the last week's turmoil, were impossible--and Mr. Kenyon said to
+me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do
+anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending
+letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If
+anything changes, you shall hear from--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in
+the case.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Wednesday Evening.
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it
+finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in
+obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in
+my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an
+absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at
+all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is
+involved in that, except as an 'idiosyncrasy' is a mystery. But the
+'insurmountable' difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for
+me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a
+confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were
+going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet
+remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of
+my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of 'faith'; but a plain
+fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But
+_don't_ let us speak of it.
+
+I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and
+repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you--and which are _not_
+'ostentatious' though unnecessary words--for, if I were in a position
+to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept _such_ a sacrifice
+... amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease
+and satisfaction ... to an exchange of higher work for lower work ...
+and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for
+anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what
+you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generalships to the
+Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the
+little right, (_over_ the _over_-right you are always doing me) of
+believing that I would not bear or dare to do _you_ so much wrong, if
+I were in the position to do it.
+
+And for all the rest I thank you--believe that I thank you ... and
+that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That _you_ should care at
+all for _me_ has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the
+first hour until now--and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in
+thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known
+me. May God turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot
+expect you ... just at this moment, ... to say more than you say, ...
+and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as
+accessible to the 'unicorn' now as you ever could be at any former
+period of your life. And here I have done. I had done _living_, I
+thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end?
+_That_, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for
+you--which were a sufficient end. If you come on Saturday I trust you
+to leave this subject untouched,--as it must be indeed henceforth.
+
+                                                 I am yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+No word more of Pisa--I shall not go, I think.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+Words!--it was written I should hate and never use them to any
+purpose. I will not say one word here--very well knowing neither word
+nor deed avails--from me.
+
+My letter will have reassured you on the point you seem undecided
+about--whether I would speak &c.
+
+I will come whenever you shall signify that I may ... whenever, acting
+in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in
+any way) to see me--but I fear that on Saturday I must be
+otherwhere--I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but
+melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my
+sister in time. Will you tell me?
+
+It is dark--but I want to save the post--
+
+                                                  Ever yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Wednesday.
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+Of course you cannot do otherwise than go with your sister--or it will
+be 'Every man _out_ of his humour' perhaps--and you are not so very
+'savage' after all.
+
+On Monday then, if you do not hear--to the contrary.
+
+Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully
+and talking leisurely--and every moment I have expected I confess,
+some word (that did not come) about Pisa. Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot
+end so--and I do sometimes--and in the meantime I do confess to a
+little 'savageness' also--at heart! All I asked him to say the other
+day, was that he was not displeased with me--_and he wouldn't_; and
+for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the
+door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a
+thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal
+advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible! So poor
+Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now--if he would but care for
+_that_!
+
+May God bless you. Amuse yourself well on Saturday. I could not see
+you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day ... staying
+in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant
+kindness.... On Monday then.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Thursday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature,
+_my_ explanation--without which all that I have said and done would be
+pure madness, I think. It _is_ just 'what I see' that I _do_ see,--or
+rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was
+infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the
+writing of _that first letter_, on my first visit, I believed--through
+some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too--that
+your complaint was of quite another nature--a spinal injury
+irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been _so_--now speak for
+_me_, for what you hope I am, and say how _that_ should affect or
+neutralize what you _were_, what I wished to associate with myself in
+you? But _as you now are_:--then if I had married you seven years ago,
+and this visitation came now first, I should be 'fulfilling a pious
+duty,' I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended--a pattern to
+good people in not running away ... for where were _now_ the use and
+the good and the profit and--
+
+I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too
+weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me,
+and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to
+'live among lions' as you once said--but I should best do this if I
+lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like
+Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan--nor that I might
+(beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get,
+over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and
+unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather
+occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I
+might be otherwise addicted to--_this_, also, does not constitute an
+obstacle, as I see obstacles.
+
+But _you_ see them--and I see _you_, and know my first duty and do it
+resolutely if not cheerfully.
+
+As for referring again, till leave by word or letter--you will see--
+
+And very likely, the tone of this letter even will be
+misunderstood--because I studiously cut out all vain words, protesting
+&c.:--No--will it?
+
+I said, unadvisedly, that Saturday was taken from me ... but it was
+dark and I had not looked at the tickets: the hour of the performance
+is later than I thought. If to-morrow does not suit you, as I infer,
+let it be Saturday--at 3--and I will leave earlier, a little, and all
+will be quite right here. One hint will apprise me.
+
+                              God bless you, dearest friend.
+
+                                   R.B.
+
+Something else just heard, makes me reluctantly strike out
+_Saturday_--
+
+_Monday_ then?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Friday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 19, 1845.]
+
+It is not 'misunderstanding' you to know you to be the most generous
+and loyal of all in the world--you overwhelm me with your
+generosity--only while you see from above and I from below, we cannot
+see the same thing in the same light. Moreover, if we _did_, I should
+be more beneath you in one sense, than I am. Do me the justice of
+remembering this whenever you recur in thought to the subject which
+ends here in the words of it.
+
+I began to write last Saturday to thank you for all the delight I had
+had in Shelley, though you beguiled me about the pencil-marks, which
+are few. Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not
+in my copy and were, so, quite new to me. 'Marianne's Dream' I had
+been anxious about to no end--I only know it now.--
+
+On Monday at the usual hour. As to coming twice into town on Saturday,
+that would have been quite foolish if it had been possible.
+
+                                            Dearest friend,
+
+                                                 I am yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 24, 1845.]
+
+I have nothing to say about Pisa, ... but a great deal (if I could say
+it) about _you_, who do what is wrong by your own confession and are
+ill because of it and make people uneasy--now _is_ it right
+altogether? is it right to do wrong?... for it comes to _that_:--and
+is it kind to do so much wrong?... for it comes almost to _that_
+besides. Ah--you should not indeed! I seem to see quite plainly that
+you will be ill in a serious way, if you do not take care and take
+exercise; and so you must consent to be teazed a little into taking
+both. And if you will not take them here ... or not so effectually as
+in other places; _why not go with your Italian friends_? Have you
+thought of it at all? _I_ have been thinking since yesterday that it
+might be best for you to go at once, now that the probability has
+turned quite against me. If I were going, I should ask you not to do
+so immediately ... but you see how unlikely it is!--although I mean
+still to speak my whole thoughts--I _will do that_ ... even though
+for the mere purpose of self-satisfaction. George came last night--but
+there is an adverse star this morning, and neither of us has the
+opportunity necessary. Only both he and I _will speak_--that is
+certain. And Arabel had the kindness to say yesterday that if I liked
+to go, she would go with me at whatever hazard--which is very
+kind--but you know I could not--it would not be right of me. And
+perhaps after all we may gain the point lawfully; and if not ... at
+the worst ... the winter may be warm (it is better to fall into the
+hands of God, as the Jew said) and I may lose less strength than
+usual, ... having more than usual to lose ... and altogether it may
+not be so bad an alternative. As to being the cause of any anger
+against my sister, you would not advise me into such a position, I am
+sure--it would be untenable for one moment.
+
+But _you_ ... in that case, ... would it not be good for your head if
+you went at once? I praise myself for saying so to you--yet if it
+really is good for you, I don't deserve the praising at all. And how
+was it on Saturday--that question I did not ask yesterday--with Ben
+Jonson and the amateurs? I thought of you at the time--I mean, on that
+Saturday evening, nevertheless.
+
+You shall hear when there is any more to say. May God bless you,
+dearest friend! I am ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Wednesday Evening.
+                            [Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+
+I walked to town, this morning, and back again--so that when I found
+your note on my return, and knew what you had been enjoining me in the
+way of exercise, I seemed as if I knew, too, why that energetic fit
+had possessed me and why I succumbed to it so readily. You shall never
+have to intimate twice to me that such an insignificant thing, even,
+as the taking exercise should be done. Besides, I have many motives
+now for wishing to continue well. But Italy _just now_--Oh, no! My
+friends would go through Pisa, too.
+
+On that subject I must not speak. And you have 'more strength to
+lose,' and are so well, evidently so well; that is, so much better, so
+sure to be still better--can it be that you will not go!
+
+Here are your new notes on my verses. Where are my words for the
+thanks? But you know what I feel, and shall feel--ever feel--for these
+and for all. The notes would be beyond price to me if they came from
+some dear Phemius of a teacher--but from you!
+
+The Theatricals 'went off' with great éclat, and the performance was
+really good, really clever or better. Forster's 'Kitely' was very
+emphatic and earnest, and grew into great interest, quite up to the
+poet's allotted tether, which is none of the longest. He pitched the
+character's key note too gravely, I thought; _beginning_ with
+certainty, rather than mere suspicion, of evil. Dickens' 'Bobadil'
+_was_ capital--with perhaps a little too much of the consciousness of
+entire cowardice ... which I don't so willingly attribute to the noble
+would-be pacificator of Europe, besieger of Strigonium &c.--but the
+end of it all was really pathetic, as it should be, for Bobadil is
+only too clever for the company of fools he makes wonderment for:
+having once the misfortune to relish their society, and to need but
+too pressingly their 'tobacco-money,' what can he do but suit himself
+to their capacities?--And D. Jerrold was very amusing and clever in
+his 'Country Gull'--And Mr. Leech superb in the Town Master Mathew.
+All were good, indeed, and were voted good, and called on, and cheered
+off, and praised heartily behind their backs and before the curtain.
+Stanfield's function had exercise solely in the touching up (very
+effectively) sundry 'Scenes'--painted scenes--and the dresses, which
+were perfect, had the advantage of Mr. Maclise's experience. And--all
+is told!
+
+And now; I shall hear, you promise me, if anything occurs--with what
+feeling, I wait and hope, you know. If there is _no_ best of reasons
+against it, Saturday, you remember, is my day--This fine weather, too!
+
+                           May God bless my dearest friend--
+
+                                Ever yours
+
+                                     R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+
+I have spoken again, and the result is that we are in precisely the
+same position; only with bitterer feelings on one side. If I go or
+stay they _must_ be bitter: words have been said that I cannot easily
+forget, nor remember without pain; and yet I really do almost smile in
+the midst of it all, to think how I was treated this morning as an
+undutiful daughter because I tried to put on my gloves ... for there
+was no worse provocation. At least he complained of the undutifulness
+and rebellion (!!!) of everyone in the house--and when I asked if he
+meant that reproach for _me_, the answer was that he meant it for all
+of us, one with another. And I could not get an answer. He would not
+even grant me the consolation of thinking that I sacrificed what I
+supposed to be good, to _him_. I told him that my prospects of health
+seemed to me to depend on taking this step, but that through my
+affection for him, I was ready to sacrifice those to his pleasure if
+he exacted it--only it was necessary to my self-satisfaction in future
+years, to understand definitely that the sacrifice _was_ exacted by
+him and _was_ made to him, ... and not thrown away blindly and by a
+misapprehension. And he would not answer _that_. I might do my own
+way, he said--_he_ would not speak--_he_ would not say that he was not
+displeased with me, nor the contrary:--I had better do what I
+liked:--for his part, he washed his hands of me altogether.
+
+And so I have been very wise--witness how my eyes are swelled with
+annotations and reflections on all this! The best of it is that now
+George himself admits I can do no more in the way of speaking, ... I
+have no spell for charming the dragons, ... and allows me to be
+passive and enjoins me to be tranquil, and not 'make up my mind' to
+any dreadful exertion for the future. Moreover he advises me to go on
+with the preparations for the voyage, and promises to state the case
+himself at the last hour to the 'highest authority'; and judge finally
+whether it be possible for me to go with the necessary companionship.
+And it seems best to go to Malta on the 3rd of October--if at all ...
+from steam-packet reasons ... without excluding Pisa ... remember ...
+by any means.
+
+Well!--and what do you think? Might it be desirable for me to give up
+the whole? Tell me. I feel aggrieved of course and wounded--and
+whether I go or stay that feeling must last--I cannot help it. But my
+spirits sink altogether at the thought of leaving England _so_--and
+then I doubt about Arabel and Stormie ... and it seems to me that I
+_ought not_ to mix them up in a business of this kind where the
+advantage is merely personal to myself. On the other side, George
+holds that if I give up and stay even, there will be displeasure just
+the same, ... and that, when once gone, the irritation will exhaust
+and smooth itself away--which however does not touch my chief
+objection. Would it be better ... more _right_ ... to give it up?
+Think for me. Even if I hold on to the last, at the last I shall be
+thrown off--_that_ is my conviction. But ... shall I give up _at
+once_? Do think for me.
+
+And I have thought that if you like to come on Friday instead of
+Saturday ... as there is the uncertainty about next week, ... it would
+divide the time more equally: but let it be as you like and according
+to circumstances as you see them. Perhaps you have decided to go at
+once with your friends--who knows? I wish I could know that you were
+better to-day. May God bless you
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+
+You have said to me more than once that you wished I might never know
+certain feelings _you_ had been forced to endure. I suppose all of us
+have the proper place where a blow should fall to be felt most--and I
+truly wish _you_ may never feel what I have to bear in looking on,
+quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this
+treatment, which I refuse to characterize--so blind is it _for_
+blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and
+a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love's
+caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying
+source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections--you
+remember what--to myself, my own happiness,--did I once allude to,
+much less argue against, or refuse to acknowledge those objections?
+For I wholly sympathize, however it go against me, with the highest,
+wariest, pride and love for you, and the proper jealousy and vigilance
+they entail--but now, and here, the jewel is not being over guarded,
+but ruined, cast away. And whoever is privileged to interfere should
+do so in the possessor's own interest--all common sense
+interferes--all rationality against absolute no-reason at all. And you
+ask whether you ought to obey this no-reason? I will tell you: all
+passive obedience and implicit submission of will and intellect is by
+far too easy, if well considered, to be the course prescribed by God
+to Man in this life of probation--for they _evade_ probation
+altogether, though foolish people think otherwise. Chop off your legs,
+you will never go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will
+find it is difficult to reason ill. 'It is hard to make these
+sacrifices!'--not so hard as to lose the reward or incur the penalty
+of an Eternity to come; 'hard to effect them, then, and go through
+with them'--_not_ hard, when the leg is to be _cut off_--that it is
+rather harder to keep it quiet on a stool, I know very well. The
+partial indulgence, the proper exercise of one's faculties, there is
+the difficulty and problem for solution, set by that Providence which
+might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as those of
+vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as certainly as that
+condition, for instance, by which we breathe so many times in a minute
+to support life. But there is no reward proposed for the feat of
+breathing, and a great one for that of believing--consequently there
+must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is
+implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the
+direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another--for
+all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief,
+and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the
+less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to
+yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine
+the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in
+requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your
+conduct should have its utmost claims considered--your father's in the
+first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few
+days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in
+its whole extent ... the _hereafter_ which all momentary passion
+prevents him seeing ... indeed, the _present_ on either side which
+everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever
+earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion
+you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed ...
+_difficult_, or how were it a duty? Will it _not_ be infinitely harder
+to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who
+can _not_ do that?
+
+I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will
+fall--knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain
+or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better
+light. The hard thing ... this is all I want to say ... is to act on
+one's own best conviction--not to abjure it and accept another will,
+and say '_there_ is my plain duty'--easy it is, whether plain or no!
+
+How 'all changes!' When I first knew you--you know what followed. I
+supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint--and, of course,
+to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest
+alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached
+myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any
+proposition I might then have made--for though I have never been at
+all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with
+it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet
+I could not but feel the consideration, of _what_ failure would _now_
+be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that
+'you could never be poor'--all my solicitude was at an end--I had but
+myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe,
+that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could
+cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing _that_ obstacle. Now
+again the circumstances shift--and you are in what I should wonder at
+as the veriest slavery--and I who _could_ free you from it, I am here
+scarcely daring to write ... though I know you must feel for me and
+forgive what forces itself from me ... what retires so mutely into my
+heart at your least word ... what _shall not_ be again written or
+spoken, if you so will ... that I should be made happy beyond all hope
+of expression by. Now while I _dream_, let me once dream! I would
+marry you now and thus--I would come when you let me, and go when you
+bade me--I would be no more than one of your brothers--'_no
+more_'--that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should
+get Saturday as well--two hours for one--when your head ached I
+should be _here_. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream
+(--of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any
+other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I
+know--And it will continue but a dream.
+
+                                 God bless my dearest E.B.B.
+
+                                      R.B.
+
+You understand that I see you to-morrow, Friday, as you propose.
+
+I am better--thank you--and will go out to-day.
+
+You know what I am, what I would speak, and all I would do.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Friday Evening.
+                            [Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]
+
+I had your letter late last night, everyone almost, being out of the
+house by an accident, so that it was left in the letter-box, and if I
+had wished to answer it before I saw you, it had scarcely been
+possible.
+
+But it will be the same thing--for you know as well as if you saw my
+answer, what it must be, what it cannot choose but be, on pain of
+sinking me so infinitely below not merely your level but my own, that
+the depth cannot bear a glance down. Yet, though I am not made of such
+clay as to admit of my taking a base advantage of certain noble
+extravagances, (and that I am not I thank God for your sake) I will
+say, I must say, that your words in this letter have done me good and
+made me happy, ... that I thank and bless you for them, ... and that
+to receive such a proof of attachment from _you_, not only overpowers
+every present evil, but seems to me a full and abundant amends for the
+merely personal sufferings of my whole life. When I had read that
+letter last night I _did_ think so. I looked round and round for the
+small bitternesses which for several days had been bitter to me, and I
+could not find one of them. The tear-marks went away in the moisture
+of new, happy tears. Why, how else could I have felt? how else do you
+think I could? How would any woman have felt ... who could feel at all
+... hearing such words said (though 'in a dream' indeed) by such a
+speaker?
+
+And now listen to me in turn. You have touched me more profoundly than
+I thought even _you_ could have touched me--my heart was full when you
+came here to-day. Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you
+harm--and I am yours too much, in my heart, ever to consent to do you
+harm in that way. If I could consent to do it, not only should I be
+less loyal ... but in one sense, less yours. I say this to you without
+drawback and reserve, because it is all I am able to say, and perhaps
+all I _shall_ be able to say. However this may be, a promise goes to
+you in it that none, except God and your will, shall interpose between
+you and me, ... I mean, that if He should free me within a moderate
+time from the trailing chain of this weakness, I will then be to you
+whatever at that hour you shall choose ... whether friend or more than
+friend ... a friend to the last in any case. So it rests with God and
+with you--only in the meanwhile you are most absolutely free ...
+'unentangled' (as they call it) by the breadth of a thread--and if I
+did not know that you considered yourself so, I would not see you any
+more, let the effort cost me what it might. You may force me _feel_:
+... but you cannot force me to _think_ contrary to my first thought
+... that it were better for you to forget me at once in one relation.
+And if better for _you_, can it be bad for _me_? which flings me down
+on the stone-pavement of the logicians.
+
+And now if I ask a boon of you, will you forget afterwards that it
+ever was asked? I have hesitated a great deal; but my face is down on
+the stone-pavement--no--I will not ask to-day--It shall be for another
+day--and may God bless you on this and on those that come after, my
+dearest friend.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]
+
+Think for me, speak for me, my dearest, _my own_! You that are all
+great-heartedness and generosity, do that one more generous thing?
+
+                                           God bless you for
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+What can it be you ask of me!--'a boon'--once my answer to _that_ had
+been the plain one--but now ... when I have better experience of--No,
+now I have BEST experience of how you understand my interests; that at
+last we _both_ know what is my true good--so ask, ask! _My own_, now!
+For there it is!--oh, do not fear I am '_entangled_'--my crown is
+loose on my head, not nailed there--my pearl lies in my hand--I may
+return it to the sea, if I will!
+
+What is it you ask of me, this first asking?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 29, 1845.]
+
+Then _first_, ... first, I ask you not to misunderstand. Because we do
+not ... no, we do not ... agree (but disagree) as to 'what is your
+true good' ... but disagree, and as widely as ever indeed.
+
+The other asking shall come in its season ... some day before I go, if
+I go. It only relates to a restitution--and you cannot guess it if you
+try ... so don't try!--and perhaps you can't grant it if you try--and
+I cannot guess.
+
+Cabins and berths all taken in the Malta steamer for both third and
+twentieth of October! see what dark lanterns the stars hold out, and
+how I shall stay in England after all as I think! And thus we are
+thrown back on the old Gibraltar scheme with its shifting of steamers
+... unless we take the dreary alternative of Madeira!--or Cadiz! Even
+suppose Madeira, ... why it were for a few months alone--and there
+would be no temptation to loiter as in Italy.
+
+_Don't_ think too hardly of poor Papa. You have his wrong side ... his
+side of peculiar wrongness ... to you just now. When you have walked
+round him you will have other thoughts of him.
+
+Are you better, I wonder? and taking exercise and trying to be better?
+May God bless you! Tuesday need not be the last day if you like to
+take one more besides--for there is no going until the fourth or
+seventh, ... and the seventh is the more probable of those two. But
+now you have done with me until Tuesday.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 1, 1845.]
+
+I have read to the last line of your 'Rosicrucian'; and my scepticism
+grew and grew through Hume's process of doubtful doubts, and at last
+rose to the full stature of incredulity ... for I never could believe
+Shelley capable of such a book (call it a book!), not even with a
+flood of boarding-school idiocy dashed in by way of dilution.
+Altogether it roused me to deny myself so far as to look at the date
+of the book, and to get up and travel to the other end of the room to
+confront it with other dates in the 'Letters from Abroad' ... (I, who
+never think of a date except the 'A.D.,' and am inclined every now and
+then to write _that_ down as 1548 ...) well! and on comparing these
+dates in these two volumes before my eyes, I find that your
+Rosicrucian was 'printed for Stockdale' in _1822_, and that Shelley
+_died in the July of the same year_!!--There, is a vindicating fact
+for you! And unless the 'Rosicrucian' went into more editions than
+one, and dates here from a later one, ... which is not ascertainable
+from this fragment of a titlepage, ... the innocence of the great poet
+stands proved--now doesn't it? For nobody will say that he published
+such a book in the last year of his life, in the maturity of his
+genius, and that Godwin's daughter helped him in it! That 'dripping
+dew' from the skeleton is the only living word in the book!--which
+really amused me notwithstanding, from the intense absurdity of the
+whole composition ... descriptions ... sentiments ... and morals.
+
+Judge yourself if I had not better say 'No' about the cloak! I would
+take it if you wished such a kindness to me--and although you might
+find it very useful to yourself ... or to your mother or sister ...
+still if you _wished_ me to take it I should like to have it, and the
+mantle of the prophet might bring me down something of his spirit! but
+do you remember ... do you consider ... how many talkers there are in
+this house, and what would be talked--or that it is not worth while to
+provoke it all? And Papa, knowing it, would not like it--and
+altogether it is far better, believe me, that you should keep your own
+cloak, and I, the thought of the kindness you meditated in respect to
+it. I have heard nothing more--nothing.
+
+I was asked the other day by a very young friend of mine ... the
+daughter of an older friend who once followed you up-stairs in this
+house ... Mr. Hunter, an Independent minister ... for 'Mr. Browning's
+autograph.' She wants it for a collection ... for her album--and so,
+will you write out a verse or two on one side of note paper ... not as
+you write for the printers ... and let me keep my promise and send it
+to her? I forgot to ask you before. Or one verse will do ... anything
+will do ... and don't let me be bringing you into vexation. It need
+not be of MS. rarity.
+
+You are not better ... really ... I fear. And your mother's being ill
+affects you more than you like to admit, I fear besides. Will you,
+when you write, say how _both_ are ... nothing extenuating, you know.
+May God bless you, my dearest friend.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Thursday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 2, 1845.]
+
+Well, let us hope against hope in the sad matter of the novel--yet,
+yet,--it _is_ by Shelley, if you will have the truth--as I happen to
+_know_--proof _last_ being that Leigh Hunt told me he unearthed it in
+Shelley's own library at Marlow once, to the writer's horror and
+shame--'He snatched it out of my hands'--said H. Yet I thrust it into
+yours ... so much for the subtle fence of friends who reach your heart
+by a side-thrust, as I told you on Tuesday, after the enemy has fallen
+back breathless and baffled. As for the date, that Stockdale was a
+notorious pirate and raker-up of rash publications ... and, do you
+know, I suspect the _title-page_ is all that boasts such novelty,--see
+if the _book_, the inside leaves, be not older evidently!--a common
+trick of the 'trade' to this day. The history of this and 'Justrozzi,'
+as it is spelt,--the other novel,--may be read in Medwin's
+'Conversations'--and, as I have been told, in Lady Ch. Bury's
+'Reminiscences' or whatever she calls them ... the 'Guistrozzi' was
+_certainly_ 'written in concert with'--somebody or other ... for I
+confess the whole story grows monstrous and even the froth of wine
+strings itself in bright bubbles,--ah, but this was the scum of the
+fermenting vat, do you see? I am happy to say I forget the novel
+entirely, or almost--and only keep the exact impression which you have
+gained ... through me! 'The fair cross of gold _he dashed on the
+floor_'--(_that_ is my pet-line ... because the 'chill dew' of a place
+not commonly supposed to favour humidity is a plagiarism from Lewis's
+'Monk,' it now flashes on me! Yes, Lewis, too, puts the phrase into
+intense italics.) And now, please read a chorus in the 'Prometheus
+Unbound' or a scene from the 'Cenci'--and join company with Shelley
+again!
+
+--From 'chill dew' I come to the _cloak_--you are quite right--and I
+give up that fancy. Will you, then, take one more precaution when
+_all_ proper safe-guards have been adopted; and, when _everything_ is
+sure, contrive some one sureness besides, against cold or wind or
+sea-air; and say '_this_--for the cloak which is not here, and to help
+the heart's wish which is,'--so I shall be there _palpably_. Will you
+do this? Tell me you will, to-morrow--and tell me all good news.
+
+My Mother suffers still.... I hope she is no worse--but a little
+better--certainly better. I am better too, in my unimportant way.
+
+Now I will write you the verses ... some easy ones out of a paper-full
+meant to go between poem and poem in my next number, and break the
+shock of collision.
+
+Let me kiss your hand--dearest! My heart and life--all is yours, and
+forever--God make you happy as I am through you--Bless you
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Saturday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 6, 1845.]
+
+Tuesday is given up in full council. The thing is beyond doubting of,
+as George says and as you thought yesterday. And then George has it in
+his head to beguile the Duke of Palmella out of a smaller cabin, so
+that I might sail from the Thames on the twentieth--and whether he
+succeeds or not, I humbly confess that one of the chief advantages of
+the new plan if not the very chief (as _I_ see it) is just in the
+_delay_.
+
+Your spring-song is full of beauty as you know very well--and 'that's
+the wise thrush,' so characteristic of you (and of the thrush too)
+that I was sorely tempted to ask you to write it 'twice over,' ... and
+not send the first copy to Mary Hunter notwithstanding my promise to
+her. And now when you come to print these fragments, would it not be
+well if you were to stoop to the vulgarism of prefixing some word of
+introduction, as other people do, you know, ... a title ... a name?
+You perplex your readers often by casting yourself on their
+intelligence in these things--and although it is true that readers in
+general are stupid and can't understand, it is still more true that
+they are lazy and won't understand ... and they don't catch your point
+of sight at first unless you think it worth while to push them by the
+shoulders and force them into the right place. Now these fragments ...
+you mean to print them with a line between ... and not one word at the
+top of it ... now don't you! And then people will read
+
+    Oh, to be in England
+
+and say to themselves ... 'Why who is this? ... who's out of England?'
+Which is an extreme case of course; but you will see what I mean ...
+and often I have observed how some of the very most beautiful of your
+lyrics have suffered just from your disdain of the usual tactics of
+writers in this one respect.
+
+And you are not better, still--you are worse instead of better ... are
+you not? Tell me--And what can you mean about 'unimportance,' when you
+were worse last week ... this expiring week ... than ever before, by
+your own confession? And now?--And your mother?
+
+Yes--I promise! And so, ... _Elijah_ will be missed instead of his
+mantle ... which will be a losing contract after all. But it shall be
+as you say. May you be able to say that you are better! God bless you.
+
+                                                 Ever yours.
+
+Never think of the 'White Slave.' I had just taken it up. The trash of
+it is prodigious--far beyond Mr. Smythe. Not that I can settle upon a
+book just now, in all this wind, to judge of it fairly.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Monday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, October 6, 1845.]
+
+I should certainly think that the Duke of Palmella may be induced, and
+with no great difficulty, to give up a cabin under the
+circumstances--and _then_ the plan becomes really objection-proof, so
+far as mortal plans go. But now you must think all the boldlier about
+whatever difficulties remain, just because they are so much the fewer.
+It _is_ cold already in the mornings and evenings--cold and (this
+morning) foggy--I did not ask if you continue to go out from time to
+time.... I am sure you _should_,--you would so prepare yourself
+properly for the fatigue and change--yesterday it was very warm and
+fine in the afternoon, nor is this noontime so bad, if the requisite
+precautions are taken. And do make 'journeys across the room,' and out
+of it, meanwhile, and _stand_ when possible--get all the strength
+ready, now that so much is to be spent. Oh, if I were by you!
+
+Thank you, thank you--I will devise titles--I quite see what you say,
+now you do say it. I am (this Monday morning, the prescribed day for
+efforts and beginnings) looking over and correcting what you read--to
+press they shall go, and then the plays can follow gently, and then
+... 'Oh to be in Pisa. Now that E.B.B. is there!'--And I _shall_ be
+there!... I am much better to-day; and my mother better--and to-morrow
+I shall see you--So come good things together!
+
+Dearest--till to-morrow and ever I am yours, wholly yours--May God
+bless you!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+You do not ask me that 'boon'--why is that?--Besides, I have my own
+_real_ boons to ask too, as you will inevitably find, and I shall
+perhaps get heart by your example.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, October 7, 1845.]
+
+Ah but the good things do _not_ come together--for just as your letter
+comes I am driven to asking you to leave Tuesday for Wednesday.
+
+On Tuesday Mr. Kenyon is to be here or not to be here, he
+says--there's a doubt; and you would rather go to a clear day. So if
+you do not hear from me again I shall expect you on _Wednesday_ unless
+I hear to the contrary from you:--and if anything happens to Wednesday
+you shall hear. Mr. Kenyon is in town for only two days, or three. I
+never could grumble against him, so good and kind as he is--but he may
+not come after all to-morrow--so it is not grudging the obolus to
+Belisarius, but the squandering of the last golden days at the bottom
+of the purse.
+
+Do I 'stand'--Do I walk? Yes--most uprightly. I 'walk upright every
+day.' Do I go out? no, never. And I am not to be scolded for _that_,
+because when you were looking at the sun to-day, I was marking the
+east wind; and perhaps if I had breathed a breath of it ... farewell
+Pisa. People who can walk don't always walk into the lion's den as a
+consequence--do they? should they? Are you 'sure that they should?' I
+write in great haste. So Wednesday then ... perhaps!
+
+                                        And yours every day.
+
+You understand. Wednesday--if nothing to the contrary.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               12--Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]
+
+Well, dearest, at all events I get up with the assurance I shall see
+you, and go on till the fatal 11-1/4 p.m. believing in the same, and
+_then_, if after all there _does_ come such a note as this with its
+instructions, why, first, it _is_ such a note and such a gain, and
+next it makes a great day out of to-morrow that was to have been so
+little of a day, that is all. Only, only, I am suspicious, now, of a
+real loss to me in the end; for, _putting_ off yesterday, I dared put
+off (on your part) Friday to Saturday ... while _now_ ... what shall
+be said to that?
+
+Dear Mr. Kenyon to be the smiling inconscious obstacle to any pleasure
+of mine, if it were merely pleasure!
+
+But I want to catch our next post--to-morrow, then, excepting what is
+to be excepted!
+
+                                     Bless you, my dearest--
+
+                                          Your own
+
+                                               R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Evening.
+                               [Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]
+
+Mr. Kenyon never came. My sisters met him in the street, and he had
+been 'detained all day in the city and would certainly be here
+to-morrow,' Wednesday! And so you see what has happened to Wednesday!
+Moreover he may come besides on Thursday, ... I can answer for
+nothing. Only if I do not write and if you find Thursday admissible,
+will you come then? In the case of an obstacle, you shall hear. And it
+is not (in the meantime) my fault--now is it? I have been quite enough
+vexed about it, indeed.
+
+Did the Monday work work harm to the head, I wonder? I do fear so that
+you won't get through those papers with impunity--especially if the
+plays are to come after ... though ever so 'gently.' And if you are to
+suffer, it would be right to tongue-tie that silver Bell, and leave
+the congregations to their selling of cabbages. Which is
+unphilanthropic of me perhaps, ... [Greek: ô philtate].
+
+Be sure that I shall be 'bold' when the time for going comes--and both
+bold and capable of the effort. I am desired to keep to the respirator
+and the cabin for a day or two, while the cold can reach us; and
+midway in the bay of Biscay some change of climate may be felt, they
+say. There is no sort of danger for me; except that I shall _stay in
+England_. And why is it that I feel to-night more than ever almost, as
+if I should stay in England? Who can tell? _I_ can tell one thing.
+_If_ I stay, it will not be from a failure in my resolution--_that
+will_ not be--_shall_ not be. Yes--and Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the
+other day that there was something of the tigress-nature very
+distinctly cognisable under what he is pleased to call my
+'Ba-lambishness.'
+
+Then, on Thursday!... unless something happens to _Thursday_ ... and I
+shall write in that case. And I trust to you (as always) to attend to
+your own convenience--just as you may trust to me to remember my own
+'boon.' Ah--you are curious, I think! Which is scarcely wise of
+you--because it _may_, you know, be the roc's egg after all. But no,
+it _isn't_--I will say just so much. And besides I _did_ say that it
+was a 'restitution,' which limits the guesses if it does not put an
+end to them. Unguessable, I choose it to be.
+
+And now I feel as if I should _not_ stay in England. Which is the
+difference between one five minutes and another. May God bless you.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 11, 1845.]
+
+Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here again, and talking so (in his kindness
+too) about the probabilities as to Pisa being against me ... about all
+depending 'on one throw' and the 'dice being loaded' &c. ... that I
+looked at him aghast as if he looked at the future through the folded
+curtain and was licensed to speak oracles:--and ever since I have been
+out of spirits ... oh, out of spirits--and must write myself back
+again, or try. After all he may be wrong like another--and I should
+tell you that he reasons altogether from the delay ... and that 'the
+cabins will therefore be taken' and the 'circular bills' out of reach!
+He _said_ that one of his purposes in staying in town, was to
+'_knout_' me every day--didn't he?
+
+Well--George will probably speak before _he_ leaves town, which will
+be on Monday! and now that the hour approaches, I do feel as if the
+house stood upon gunpowder, and as if I held Guy Fawkes's lantern in
+my right hand. And no: I shall not go. The obstacles will not be those
+of Mr. Kenyon's finding--and what their precise character will be I do
+not see distinctly. Only that they will be sufficient, and thrown by
+one hand just where the wheel should turn, ... _that_, I see--and you
+will, in a few days.
+
+Did you go to Moxon's and settle the printing matter? Tell me. And
+what was the use of telling Mr. Kenyon that you were 'quite well' when
+you know you are not? Will you say to me how you are, saying the
+truth? and also how your mother is?
+
+To show the significance of the omission of those evening or rather
+night visits of Papa's--for they came sometimes at eleven, and
+sometimes at twelve--I will tell you that he used to sit and talk in
+them, and then _always_ kneel and pray with me and for me--which I
+used of course to feel as a proof of very kind and affectionate
+sympathy on his part, and which has proportionably pained me in the
+withdrawing. They were no ordinary visits, you observe, ... and he
+could not well throw me further from him than by ceasing to pay
+them--the thing is quite expressively significant. Not that I pretend
+to complain, nor to have reason to complain. One should not be
+grateful for kindness, only while it lasts: _that_ would be a
+short-breathed gratitude. I just tell you the fact, proving that it
+cannot be accidental.
+
+Did you ever, ever tire me? Indeed no--you never did. And do
+understand that I am not to be tired 'in that way,' though as Mr. Boyd
+said once of his daughter, one may be so 'far too effeminate.' No--if
+I were put into a crowd I should be tired soon--or, apart from the
+crowd, if you made me discourse orations De Coronâ ... concerning your
+bag even ... I should be tired soon--though peradventure not very much
+sooner than you who heard. But on the smooth ground of quiet
+conversation (particularly when three people don't talk at once as my
+brothers do ... to say the least!) I last for a long while:--not to
+say that I have the pretension of being as good and inexhaustible a
+listener to your own speaking as you could find in the world. So
+please not to accuse me of being tired again. I can't be tired, and
+won't be tired, you see.
+
+And now, since I began to write this, there is a new evil and
+anxiety--a worse anxiety than any--for one of my brothers is ill; had
+been unwell for some days and we thought nothing of it, till to-day
+Saturday: and the doctors call it a fever of the typhoid character ...
+not typhus yet ... but we are very uneasy. You must not come on
+Wednesday if an infectious fever be in the house--_that_ must be out
+of the question. May God bless you--I am quite heavy-hearted to-day,
+but never less yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 13, 1845].
+
+These are bad news, dearest--all bad, except the enduring comfort of
+your regard; the illness of your brother is worst ... that _would_
+stay you, and is the first proper obstacle. I shall not attempt to
+speak and prove my feelings,--you know what even Flush is to me
+through you: I wait in anxiety for the next account.
+
+If after all you do _not_ go to Pisa; why, we must be cheerful and
+wise, and take courage and hope. I cannot but see with your eyes and
+from your place, you know,--and will let this all be one surprizing
+and deplorable mistake of mere love and care ... but no such another
+mistake ought to be suffered, if you escape the effects of this. I
+will not cease to believe in a better event, till the very last,
+however, and it is a deep satisfaction that all has been made plain
+and straight up to this strange and sad interposition like a bar. You
+have done _your_ part, at least--with all that forethought and counsel
+from friends and adequate judges of the case--so, if the bar _will_
+not move, you will consider--will you not, dearest?--where one may
+best encamp in the unforbidden country, and wait the spring and fine
+weather. Would it be advisable to go where Mr. Kenyon suggested, or
+elsewhere? Oh, these vain wishes ... the will here, and no means!
+
+My life is bound up with yours--my own, first and last love. What
+wonder if I feared to tire you--I who, knowing you as I do, admiring
+what is so admirable (let me speak), loving what must needs be loved,
+fain to learn what you only can teach; proud of so much, happy in so
+much of you; I, who, for all this, neither come to admire, nor feel
+proud, nor be taught,--but only, only to live with you and be by
+you--that is love--for I _know_ the rest, as I say. I know those
+qualities are in you ... but at them I could get in so many ways.... I
+have your books, here are my letters you give me; you would answer my
+questions were _I_ in Pisa--well, and it all would amount to nothing,
+infinitely much as I know it is; to nothing if I could not sit by you
+and see you.... I can stop at that, but not before. And it seems
+strange to me how little ... less than little I have laid open of my
+feelings, the nature of them to you--I smile to think how if all this
+while I had been acting with the profoundest policy in intention, so
+as to pledge myself to nothing I could not afterwards perform with the
+most perfect ease and security, I should have done not much unlike
+what I _have_ done--to be sure, one word includes many or all ... but
+I have not said ... what I will not even now say ... you will
+_know_--in God's time to which I trust.
+
+I will answer your note now--the questions. I did go--(it may amuse
+you to write on)--to Moxon's. First let me tell you that when I called
+there the Saturday before, his brother (in his absence) informed me,
+replying to the question when it came naturally in turn with a round
+of like enquiries, that your poems continued to sell 'singularly
+well'--they would 'end in bringing a clear profit,' he said. I thought
+to catch him, and asked if they _had_ done so ... 'Oh; not at the
+beginning ... it takes more time--he answered. On Thursday I saw
+Moxon--he spoke rather encouragingly of my own prospects. I send him a
+sheetful to-morrow, I believe, and we are 'out' on the 1st of next
+month. Tennyson, by the way, has got his pension, £200 per annum--by
+the other way, Moxon has bought the MSS. of Keats in the possession of
+Taylor the publisher, and is going to bring out a complete edition;
+which is pleasant to hear.
+
+After settling with Moxon I went to Mrs. Carlyle's--who told me
+characteristic quaintnesses of Carlyle's father and mother over the
+tea she gave me. And all yesterday, you are to know, I was in a
+permanent mortal fright--for my uncle came in the morning to intreat
+me to go to Paris in _the evening_ about some urgent business of
+his,--a five-minutes matter with his brother there,--and the affair
+being really urgent and material to his and the brother's interest,
+and no substitute being to be thought of, I was forced to promise to
+go--in case a letter, which would arrive in Town at noon, should not
+prove satisfactory. So I calculated times, and found I could be at
+Paris to-morrow, and back again, _certainly_ by Wednesday--and so not
+lose you on that day--oh, the fear I had!--but I was sure then and
+now, that the 17th would not see you depart. But night came, and the
+last Dover train left, and I drew breath freely--this morning I find
+the letter was all right--so may it be with all worse apprehensions!
+What you fear, precisely that, never happens, as Napoleon observed and
+thereon grew bold. I had stipulated for an hour's notice, if go I
+must--and that was to be wholly spent in writing to you--for in quiet
+consternation my mother cared for my carpet bag.
+
+And so, I shall hear from you to-morrow ... that is, you will write
+_then_, telling me _all_ about your brother. As for what you say, with
+the kindest intentions, 'of fever-contagion' and keeping away on
+Wednesday on _that_ account, it is indeed 'out of the question,'--for
+a first reason (which dispenses with any second) because I disbelieve
+altogether in contagion from fevers, and especially from typhus
+fevers--as do much better-informed men than myself--I speak quite
+advisedly. If there should be only _that_ reason, therefore, you will
+not deprive me of the happiness of seeing you next Wednesday.
+
+I am not well--have a cold, influenza or some unpleasant thing, but am
+better than yesterday--My mother is much better, I think (she and my
+sister are resolute non-contagionists, mind you that!)
+
+God bless you and all you love! dearest, I am your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]
+
+It was the merest foolishness in me to write about fevers and the rest
+as I did to-day, just as if it could do any good, all the wringing of
+hands in the world. And there is no typhus _yet_ ... and no danger of
+any sort I hope and trust!--and how weak it is that habit of spreading
+the cloud which is in you all around you, how weak and selfish ... and
+unlike what _you_ would do ... just as you are unlike Mr. Kenyon. And
+you _are_ unlike him--and you were right on Thursday when you said
+so, and I was wrong in setting up a phrase on the other side ... only
+what I said came by an instinct because you seemed to be giving him
+all the sunshine to use and carry, which should not be after all. But
+you are unlike him and must be ... seeing that the producers must
+differ from the 'nati consumere fruges' in the intellectual as in the
+material. You create and he enjoys, and the work makes you pale and
+the pleasure makes him ruddy, and it is so of a necessity. So differs
+the man of genius from the man of letters--and then dear Mr. Kenyon is
+not even a man of letters in a full sense ... he is rather a Sybarite
+of letters. Do you think he ever knew what mental labour is? I fancy
+not. Not more than he has known what mental inspiration is! And not
+more than he has known what the strife of the heart is ... with all
+his tenderness and sensibility. He seems to me to _evade_ pain, and
+where he suffers at all to do so rather negatively than positively ...
+if you understand what I mean by that ... rather by a want than by a
+blow: the secret of all being that he has a certain latitudinarianism
+(not indifferentism) in his life and affections, and has no capacity
+for concentration and intensity. Partly by temperament and partly by
+philosophy he contrives to keep the sunny side of the street--though
+never inclined to forget the blind man at the corner. Ah, dear Mr.
+Kenyon: he is magnanimous in toleration, and excellent in
+sympathy--and he has the love of beauty and the reverence of
+genius--but the faculty of _worship_ he has not: he will not worship
+aright either your heroes or your gods ... and while you do it he only
+'tolerates' the act in you. Once he said ... not to me ... but I heard
+of it: 'What, if genius should be nothing but scrofula?' and he doubts
+(I very much fear) whether the world is not governed by a throw of
+those very same 'loaded dice,' and no otherwise. Yet he reveres genius
+in the acting of it, and recognizes a God in creation--only it is but
+'so far,' and not farther. At least I think not--and I have a right to
+think what I please of him, holding him as I do, in such true
+affection. One of the kindest and most indulgent of human beings has
+he been to me, and I am happy to be grateful to him.
+
+_Sunday._--The Duke of Palmella takes the whole vessel for the 20th
+and therefore if I go it must be on the 17th. Therefore (besides) as
+George must be on sessions to-morrow, he will settle the question with
+Papa to-night. In the meantime our poor Occy is not much better,
+though a little, and is ordered leeches on his head, and is confined
+to his bed and attended by physician and surgeon. It is not decided
+typhus, but they will not answer for its not being infectious; and
+although he is quite at the top of the house, two stories above me, I
+shall not like you to come indeed. And then there will be only room
+for a farewell, and I who am a coward shrink from the saying of it.
+No--not being able to see you to-morrow, (Mr. Kenyon is to be here
+to-morrow, he says) let us agree to throw away Wednesday. I will
+write, ... you will write perhaps--and above all things you will
+promise to write by the 'Star' on Monday, that the captain may give me
+your letter at Gibraltar. You promise? But I shall hear from you
+before then, and oftener than once, and you will acquiesce about
+Wednesday and grant at once that there can be no gain, no good, in
+that miserable good-bye-ing. I do not want the pain of it to remember
+you by--I shall remember very well without it, be sure. Still it shall
+be as you like--as you shall chose--and if you are _disappointed_
+about Wednesday (if it is not vain in me to talk of disappointments)
+why do with Wednesday as you think best ... always understanding that
+there's no risk of infection.
+
+_Monday._--All this I had written yesterday--and to-day it all is
+worse than vain. Do not be angry with me--do not think it my
+fault--but _I do not go to Italy_ ... it has ended as I feared. What
+passed between George and Papa there is no need of telling: only the
+latter said that I 'might go if I pleased, but that going it would be
+under his heaviest displeasure.' George, in great indignation,
+pressed the question fully: but all was vain ... and I am left in this
+position ... to go, if I please, with his displeasure over me, (which
+after what you have said and after what Mr. Kenyon has said, and after
+what my own conscience and deepest moral convictions say aloud, I
+would unhesitatingly do at this hour!) and necessarily run the risk of
+exposing my sister and brother to that same displeasure ... from which
+risk I shrink and fall back and feel that to incur it, is impossible.
+Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here and we have been talking--and he sees
+what I see ... that I am justified in going myself, but not in
+bringing others into difficulty. The very kindness and goodness with
+which they desire me (both my sisters) 'not to think of them,'
+naturally makes me think more of them. And so, tell me that I am not
+wrong in taking up my chain again and acquiescing in this hard
+necessity. The bitterest 'fact' of all is, that I had believed Papa to
+have loved me more than he obviously does: but I never regret
+knowledge ... I mean I never would _un_know anything ... even were it
+the taste of the apples by the Dead sea--and this must be accepted
+like the rest. In the meantime your letter comes--and if I could seem
+to be very unhappy after reading it ... why it would be 'all pretence'
+on my part, believe me. Can you care for me so much ... _you_? Then
+_that_ is light enough to account for all the shadows, and to make
+them almost unregarded--the shadows of the life behind. Moreover dear
+Occy is somewhat better--with a pulse only at ninety: and the doctors
+declare that visitors may come to the house without any manner of
+danger. Or I should not trust to your theories--no, indeed: it was not
+that I expected you to be afraid, but that _I_ was afraid--and if I am
+not ashamed for _that_, why at least I am, for being _lâche_ about
+Wednesday, when you thought of hurrying back from Paris only for it!
+You _could_ think _that_!--You _can_ care for me so much!--(I come to
+it again!) When I hold some words to my eyes ... such as these in
+this letter ... I can see nothing beyond them ... no evil, no want.
+There _is_ no evil and no want. Am I wrong in the decision about
+Italy? Could I do otherwise? I had courage and to spare--but the
+question, you see, did not regard myself wholly. For the rest, the
+'unforbidden country' lies within these four walls. Madeira was
+proposed in vain--and any part of England would be as objectionable as
+Italy, and not more advantageous to _me_ than Wimpole Street. To take
+courage and be cheerful, as you say, is left as an alternative--and
+(the winter may be mild!) to fall into the hands of God rather than of
+man: _and I shall be here for your November, remember_.
+
+And now that you are not well, will you take care? and not come on
+Wednesday unless you are better? and never again bring me _wet
+flowers_, which probably did all the harm on Thursday? I was afraid
+for you then, though I said nothing. May God bless you.
+
+                                  Ever yours I am--your own.
+
+Ninety is not a high pulse ... for a fever of this kind--is it? and
+the heat diminishes, and his spirits are better--and we are all much
+easier ... have been both to-day and yesterday indeed.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Morning,
+                              [Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]
+
+Be sure, my own, dearest love, that this is for the best; will be seen
+for the best in the end. It is hard to bear now--but _you_ have to
+bear it; any other person could not, and you will, I know, knowing
+you--_will_ be well this one winter if you can, and then--since I am
+_not_ selfish in this love to you, my own conscience tells me,--I
+desire, more earnestly than I ever knew what desiring was, to be yours
+and with you and, as far as may be in this life and world, YOU--and
+no hindrance to that, but one, gives me a moment's care or fear; but
+that one is just your little hand, as I could fancy it raised in any
+least interest of yours--and before that, I am, and would ever be,
+still silent. But now--what is to make you raise that hand? I will not
+speak _now_; not seem to take advantage of your present feelings,--we
+will be rational, and all-considering and weighing consequences, and
+foreseeing them--but first I will prove ... if _that_ has to be done,
+why--but I begin speaking, and I should not, I know.
+
+                                            Bless you, love!
+
+                                                 R.B.
+
+To-morrow I see you, without fail. I am rejoiced as you can imagine,
+at your brother's improved state.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Tuesday,
+                              [Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
+
+Will this note reach you at the 'fatal hour' ... or sooner? At any
+rate it is forced to ask you to take Thursday for Wednesday, inasmuch
+as Mr. Kenyon in his exceeding kindness has put off his journey just
+for _me_, he says, because he saw me depressed about the decision, and
+wished to come and see me again to-morrow and talk the spirits up, I
+suppose. It is all so kind and good, that I cannot find a voice to
+grumble about the obligation it brings of writing thus. And then, if
+you suffer from cold and influenza, it will be better for you not to
+come for another day, ... I think _that_, for comfort. Shall I hear
+how you are to-night, I wonder? Dear Occy 'turned the corner,' the
+physician said, yesterday evening, and, although a little fluctuating
+to-day, remains on the whole considerably better. They were just in
+time to keep the fever from turning to typhus.
+
+How fast you print your book, for it is to be out on the first of
+November! Why it comes out suddenly like the sun. Mr. Kenyon asked me
+if I had seen anything you were going to print; and when I mentioned
+the second part of the 'Duchess' and described how your perfect
+rhymes, perfectly new, and all clashing together as by natural
+attraction, had put me at once to shame and admiration, he began to
+praise the first part of the same poem (which I had heard him do
+before, by the way) and extolled it as one of your most striking
+productions.
+
+And so until Thursday! May God bless you--
+
+                          and as the heart goes, ever yours.
+
+I am glad for Tennyson, and glad for Keats. It is well to be able to
+be glad about something--is is it not? about something out of
+ourselves. And (_in_ myself) I shall be most glad, if I have a letter
+to-night. Shall I?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
+
+Thanks, my dearest, for the good news--of the fever's abatement--it is
+good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole: what is it to _me_
+that you write is of _me_ ... I shall never say _that_! Mr. Kenyon is
+all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a
+thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs
+to,--well! On Thursday, then,--to-morrow! Did you not get a note of
+mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon's
+delivery?
+
+Mr. Forster came yesterday and was very profuse of graciosities: he
+may have, or must have meant well, so we will go on again with the
+friendship, as the snail repairs his battered shell.
+
+My poems went duly to press on Monday night--there is not much
+_correctable_ in them,--you make, or you spoil, one of these things;
+that is, _I_ do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in
+lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write
+plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop
+interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I
+am to receive a _proof_ at the end of the week--will you help me and
+over-look it. ('Yes'--she says ... my thanks I do not say!--)
+
+While writing this, the _Times_ catches my eye (it just came in) and
+something from the _Lancet_ is extracted, a long article against
+quackery--and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I
+read--'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of
+some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted.
+We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into
+the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets,
+touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a
+poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style
+worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and
+Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her
+physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand
+God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer
+Hall.'--Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus
+is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!
+
+What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me--could you
+not go out on such days?
+
+I am quite well now--cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle
+arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would--so my travel
+would have been to great purpose!
+
+Bless my dearest--my own!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 16, 1845.]
+
+Your letter which should have reached me in the morning of yesterday,
+I did not receive until nearly midnight--partly through the
+eccentricity of our new postman whose good pleasure it is to make use
+of the letter-box without knocking; and partly from the confusion in
+the house, of illness in different ways ... the very servants being
+ill, ... one of them breaking a blood-vessel--for there is no new case
+of fever; ... and for dear Occy, he grows better slowly day by day.
+And just so late last night, five letters were found in the
+letter-box, and mine ... yours ... among them--which accounts for my
+beginning to answer it only now.
+
+What am I to say but this ... that I know what you are ... and that I
+know also what you are to _me_,--and that I should accept that
+knowledge as more than sufficient recompense for worse vexations than
+these late ones. Therefore let no more be said of them: and no more
+_need_ be said, even if they were not likely to prove their own end
+good, as I believe with you. You may be quite sure that I shall be
+well this winter, if in any way it should be possible, and that I
+_will not_ be beaten down, if the will can do anything. I admire how,
+if all had happened so but a year ago, (yet it could not have happened
+quite _so_!), I should certainly have been beaten down--and how it is
+different now, ... and how it is only gratitude to you, to _say_ that
+it is different now. My cage is not worse but better since you brought
+the green groundsel to it--and to dash oneself against the wires of it
+will not open the door. We shall see ... and God will oversee. And in
+the meantime you will not talk of extravagances; and then nobody need
+hold up the hand--because, as I said and say, I am yours, your
+own--only not to _hurt you_. So now let us talk of the first of
+November and of the poems which are to come out then, and of the poems
+which are to come after then--and of the new avatar of 'Sordello,' for
+instance, which you taught me to look for. And let us both be busy and
+cheerful--and you will come and see me throughout the winter, ... if
+you do not decide rather on going abroad, which may be better ...
+better for your health's sake?--in which case I shall have your
+letters.
+
+And here is another ... just arrived. How I thank you. Think of the
+_Times_! Still it was very well of them to recognise your
+principality. Oh yes--do let me see the proof--I understand too about
+the 'making and spoiling.'
+
+Almost you forced me to smile by thinking it worth while to say that
+you are '_not selfish_.' Did Sir Percival say so to Sir Gawaine across
+the Round Table, in those times of chivalry to which you belong by the
+soul? Certainly you are not selfish! May God bless you.
+
+                                                   Ever your
+
+                                                        E.B.B.
+
+The fever may last, they say, for a week longer, or even a
+fortnight--but it _decreases_. Yet he is hot still, and very weak.
+
+To to-morrow!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]
+
+Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates'
+title. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly
+garment--but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your
+reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And
+yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you
+should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses
+of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a
+solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?
+
+Occy continues to make progress--with a pulse at only eighty-four this
+morning. Are you learned in the pulse that I should talk as if you
+were? _I_, who have had my lessons? He takes scarcely anything yet but
+water, and his head is very hot still--but the progress is quite
+sure, though it may be a lingering case.
+
+Your beautiful flowers!--none the less beautiful for waiting for water
+yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them
+into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other
+thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on
+the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have
+said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run
+faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself
+bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another;--and
+that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world;
+is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against _myself_,
+to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For _me_ ...
+though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a 'third
+person,' ... it would be monstrous to assume it to be necessary to
+vindicate my trust of you--_I trust you implicitly_--and am not too
+proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this
+winter does or undoes--while God does His part for good, as we know. I
+will never fail to you from any human influence whatever--_that_ I
+have promised--but you must let it be different from the other sort of
+promise which it would be a wrong to make. May God bless you--you,
+whose fault it is, to be too generous. You _are_ not like other men,
+as I could see from the beginning--no.
+
+Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.
+
+And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see
+why there should be a 'no' to that. Judge from your own convenience.
+Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too
+frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Cassandra you know,
+and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference
+in fact; but in comfort, much.
+
+                                             Ever your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 18, 1845.]
+
+I must not go on tearing these poor sheets one after the other,--the
+proper phrases _will not_ come,--so let them stay, while you care for
+my best interests in their best, only way, and say for _me_ what I
+would say if I could--dearest,--say it, as I feel it!
+
+I am thankful to hear of the continued improvement of your brother. So
+may it continue with him! Pulses I know very little about--I go by
+your own impressions which are evidently favourable.
+
+I will make a note as you suggest--or, perhaps, keep it for the
+closing number (the next), when it will come fitly in with two or
+three parting words I shall have to say. The Rabbis make Bells and
+Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the gay and the grave,
+the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonizing--such a mixture of
+effects as in the original hour (that is quarter of an hour) of
+confidence and creation. I meant the whole should prove at last. Well,
+it _has_ succeeded beyond my most adventurous wishes in one
+respect--'Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, if--' if there was any
+sweetness in the tongue or flavour in the seeds to _her_. But I shall
+do quite other and better things, or shame on me! The proof has not
+yet come.... I should go, I suppose, and enquire this afternoon--and
+probably I will.
+
+I weigh all the words in your permission to come on Monday ... do not
+think _I_ have not seen _that_ contingency from the first! Let it be
+Tuesday--no sooner! Meanwhile you are never away--never from your
+place here.
+
+                                       God bless my dearest.
+
+                                            Ever yours
+
+                                                 R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+           Monday Morning.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+This arrived on Saturday night--I just correct it in time for this our
+first post--will it do, the new matter? I can take it to-morrow--when
+I am to see you--if you are able to glance through it by then.
+
+The 'Inscription,' how does that read?
+
+There is strange temptation, by the way, in the space they please to
+leave for the presumable 'motto'--'they but remind me of mine own
+conception' ... but one must give no clue, of a silk's breadth, to the
+'_Bower_,' _yet_, One day!
+
+--Which God send you, dearest, and your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 22, 1845.]
+
+Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that
+there may be no misunderstanding between us--and this, before I sleep
+to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of
+receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had
+sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were
+ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my
+sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago.
+I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing
+in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it
+unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too
+often and it was _observed_, difficulties and vexations would follow
+as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk.
+That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one
+visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please--and
+there is no objection to your coming twice a week _now_ and _then_ ...
+if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand?
+I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps--and certainly everybody in the
+house is not equally prudent!--but I did shrink from running any risk
+with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And
+was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it?
+anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or
+old, what it _involves_ may well be unpleasant to you--and that
+(however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new
+increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps,
+by late events and impulses--but it is never too late to come back to
+a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my
+dearest friend, first, _not to answer this_, and next, to weigh and
+consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you
+plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify
+so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the
+excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of
+self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... _you_.... When I
+told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence should' &c.
+&c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you--and now that I
+turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ...
+_there_. I ask you therefore to consider 'that contingency' well--not
+forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa
+has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we
+see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable
+for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ...
+now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I
+leave it to you. In any case _I entreat you not to answer
+this_--neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may
+call perhaps vacillation--only that I stand excused (I do not say
+justified) before my own moral sense. May God bless you. If you go, I
+shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the
+meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I
+ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our
+sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I
+shall understand _that_ by your not going ... or you may say '_no_' in
+a word ... for I require no '_protestations_' indeed--and _you_ may
+trust to _me_ ... it shall be as you choose. _You will consider my
+happiness most by considering your own_ ... and that is my last word.
+
+_Wednesday morning._--I did not say half I thought about the poems
+yesterday--and their various power and beauty will be striking and
+surprising to your most accustomed readers. 'St. Praxed'--'Pictor
+Ignotus'--'The Ride'--'The Duchess'!--Of the new poems I like
+supremely the first and last ... that 'Lost Leader' which strikes so
+broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget--and which is worth
+all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world!--and then, the
+last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments
+... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these
+fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but
+one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The
+end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ...
+just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to
+the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more
+than ever a new-minted golden coin--the rhythm of it answering to your
+own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have
+right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not
+cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?
+
+May God bless you always--send me the next proof _in any case_.
+
+                                                 Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]
+
+But I _must_ answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to
+begin at the beginning) surely not '_startled_' ... only properly
+aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not
+disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so
+treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation
+from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the
+quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In
+this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of
+displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of
+it too soon--so I spoke--so _you_ have spoken--and so now you get
+'excused'? No--wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the
+strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for
+all, I _will_ not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite
+understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a
+given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of
+mine, none in the least. I love you because I _love_ you; I see you
+'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you
+all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an
+hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense)
+in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to
+suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once,
+think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I
+must talk your own language, so I shall say--) hindering any scheme of
+mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think
+that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I
+might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do
+you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me,
+with my life I am hardened in--considering the rational chances; how
+the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or
+by 'success,' 'happiness' &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a
+moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that?
+Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are
+hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?
+
+_I_ know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his
+heart--the person most concerned--_I_, dearest, who cannot play the
+disinterested part of bidding _you_ forget your 'protestation' ...
+what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through
+this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, _sure_ that
+the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,'
+you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my
+life to _any_ imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your
+life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.
+
+For your friends ... whatever can be 'got over,' whatever opposition
+may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I
+spoke lately about the 'selfishness' I dared believe I was free from,
+I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different
+organization to mine--which has vices in plenty, but not those.
+Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an
+apparent angel of light, from the lawyer's parchment; and Doctors'
+Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is
+one which a good many women, and men too, call 'real passion'--under
+the influence of which, I ought to say 'be mine, what ever happens to
+_you_'--but I know better, and you know best--and you know me, for all
+this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness
+and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not--and now
+you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life,
+love my love.
+
+When I am, praying God to bless her ever,
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]
+
+'_And be forgiven_' ... yes! and be thanked besides--if I knew how to
+thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and
+cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you--oh no--that made
+me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely
+noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me
+detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud
+must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite
+enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess
+to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you
+have your way'--you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me
+not to think of you so and so!--as if I could help thinking of you
+_so_, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think
+of you just so. 'Let me be'--Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you
+perhaps in everything except one thing--and _that_, you cannot guess.
+May God bless you--
+
+                                            Ever I am yours.
+
+The proof does not come!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]
+
+I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it;
+and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it
+... must--for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about
+squares being not round, and of _you_ being not 'selfish'! You know it
+is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.
+
+I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my
+understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much
+less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to _me_ who
+never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never
+dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to
+say so again--now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when
+really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own
+infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your
+chivalry touched them with a silver sound--and that, without them, you
+would pass by on the other side:--why twenty times I have thought
+_that_ and been vexed--ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too
+frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent
+promise--no, but first I will say another thing.
+
+First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my
+falling under displeasure through your visits--there is no sort of
+risk of it _for the present_--and if I ran the risk of making you
+uncomfortable about _that_, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do
+was different. I wish you also to understand that _even if you came
+here every day_, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if
+I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:--the caution referred to
+one person alone. In relation to _whom_, however, there will be no
+'getting over'--you might as well think to sweep off a third of the
+stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes--this, for matter of
+fact and certainty--and this, as I said before, the keeping of a
+general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great
+peculiarity _in the individual_ of course. But ... though I have been
+a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake
+... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he
+loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes--yet
+I have reserved for myself _always_ that right over my own affections
+which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves
+principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope--even
+though I _never_ thought (except perhaps when the door of life was
+just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or
+possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without
+and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends,
+I can look any way ... round, and _down_ even--the merest thread of a
+sympathy will draw me sometimes--or even the least look of kind eyes
+over a dyspathy--'Cela se peut facilement.' But for another
+relation--it was all different--and rightly so--and so very
+different--'Cela ne se peut nullement'--as in Malherbe.
+
+And now we must agree to 'let all this be,', and set ourselves to get
+as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at
+Pisa!) as we can--and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not
+going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green
+leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will
+come the tragedies--and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy
+winter after all ... _I_ shall at least; and if Pisa had been better,
+London might be worse: and for _me_ to grow pretentious and fastidious
+and critical about various sorts of _purple_ ... I, who have been used
+to the _brun foncé_ of Mme. de Sévigné, (_foncé_ and _enfoncé_
+...)--would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this
+time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.
+
+I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago
+(the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those
+prose papers of mine in the _Athenæum_, with additional matter on
+American literature, in a volume by itself--to be published at the
+same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo
+Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I
+do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not
+inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must
+give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not
+poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well!--and if I do
+not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave
+... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do?
+All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed
+for an answer by return of packet--and now it is past six ... eight
+weeks; and I must say something.
+
+Am I not 'femme qui parle' to-day? And let me talk on ever so, the
+proof won't come. May God bless you--and me as I am
+
+                                                 Yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+And the silent promise I would have you make is this--that if ever you
+should leave me, it shall be (though you are not 'selfish') for your
+sake--and not for mine: for your good, and not for mine. I ask it--not
+because I am disinterested; but because one class of motives would be
+valid, and the other void--simply for that reason.
+
+Then the _femme qui parle_ (looking back over the parlance) did not
+mean to say on the first page of this letter that she was ever for a
+moment _vexed in her pride_ that she should owe anything to her
+adversities. It was only because adversities are accidents and not
+essentials. If it had been prosperities, it would have been the same
+thing--no, not the same thing!--but far worse.
+
+Occy is up to-day and doing well.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 27, 1845.]
+
+How does one make 'silent promises' ... or, rather, how does the maker
+of them communicate that fact to whomsoever it may concern? I know,
+there have been many, very many unutterable vows and promises
+made,--that is, _thought_ down upon--the white slip at the top of my
+notes,--such as of this note; and not trusted to the pen, that always
+comes in for the shame,--but given up, and replaced by the poor forms
+to which a pen is equal; and a glad minute I should account _that_, in
+which you collected and accepted _those_ 'promises'--because they
+would not be all so unworthy of me--much less you! I would receive, in
+virtue of _them_, the ascription of whatever worthiness is supposed to
+lie in deep, truest love, and gratitude--
+
+     Read my silent answer there too!
+
+All your letter is one comfort: we will be happy this winter, and
+after, do not fear. I am most happy, to begin, that your brother is so
+much better: he must be weak and susceptible of cold, remember.
+
+It was on my lip, I do think, _last_ visit, or the last but one, to
+beg you to detach those papers from the _Athenæum's gâchis_. Certainly
+this opportunity is _most_ favourable, for every reason: you cannot
+hesitate, surely. At present those papers are lost--_lost_ for
+practical purposes. Do pray reply without fail to the proposers; no,
+no harm of these really fine fellows, who _could_ do harm (by printing
+incorrect copies, and perhaps eking out the column by suppositious
+matter ... ex-gr. they strengthened and lengthened a book of Dickens',
+in Paris, by adding quant. suff. of Thackeray's 'Yellowplush Papers'
+... as I discovered by a Parisian somebody praising the latter to me
+as Dickens' best work!)--and who _do_ really a good straightforward
+un-American thing. You will encourage 'the day of small
+things'--though this is not small, nor likely to have small results. I
+shall be impatient to hear that you have decided. I like the progress
+of these Americans in taste, their amazing leaps, like grasshoppers up
+to the sun--from ... what is the '_from_,' what depth, do you
+remember, say, ten or twelve years back?--_to_--Carlyle, and Tennyson,
+and you! So children leave off Jack of Cornwall and go on just to
+Homer.
+
+I can't conceive why my proof does not come--I must go to-morrow and
+see. In the other, I have corrected all the points you noted, to their
+evident improvement. Yesterday I took out 'Luria' and read it
+through--the skeleton--I shall hope to finish it soon now. It is for a
+purely imaginary stage,--very simple and straightforward. Would you
+... no, Act by Act, as I was about to propose that you should read it;
+that process would affect the oneness I most wish to preserve.
+
+On Tuesday--at last, I am with you. Till when be with me ever,
+dearest--God bless you ever--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+           Tuesday 9 a.m.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+I got this on coming home last night--have just run through it this
+morning, and send it that time may not be lost. Faults, faults; but I
+don't know how I have got tired of this. The Tragedies will be better,
+at least the second--
+
+At 3 this day! Bless you--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+I write in haste, not to lose time about the proof. You will see on
+the papers here my doubtfulnesses such as they are--but silence
+swallows up the admirations ... and there is no time. 'Theocrite'
+overtakes that wish of mine which ran on so fast--and the 'Duchess'
+grows and grows the more I look--and 'Saul' is noble and must have his
+full royalty some day. Would it not be well, by the way, to print it
+in the meanwhile as a fragment confessed ... sowing asterisks at the
+end. Because as a poem of yours it stands there and wants unity, and
+people can't be expected to understand the difference between
+incompleteness and defect, unless you make a sign. For the new
+poems--they are full of beauty. You throw largesses out on all sides
+without counting the coins: how beautiful that 'Night and Morning' ...
+and the 'Earth's Immortalities' ... and the 'Song' too. And for your
+'Glove,' all women should be grateful,--and Ronsard, honoured, in
+this fresh shower of music on his old grave ... though the chivalry of
+the interpretation, as well as much beside, is so plainly yours, ...
+could only be yours perhaps. And even _you_ are forced to let in a
+third person ... close to the doorway ... before you can do any good.
+What a noble lion you give us too, with the 'flash on his forehead,'
+and 'leagues in the desert already' as we look on him! And then, with
+what a 'curious felicity' you turn the subject 'glove' to another use
+and strike De Lorge's blow back on him with it, in the last paragraph
+of your story! And the versification! And the lady's speech--(to
+return!) so calm, and proud--yet a little bitter!
+
+Am I not to thank you for all the pleasure and pride in these poems?
+while you stand by and try to talk them down, perhaps.
+
+Tell me how your mother is--tell me how you are ... you who never were
+to be told twice about walking. Gone the way of all promises, is that
+promise?
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Wednesday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, October 30, 1845.]
+
+Like your kindness--too, far too generous kindness,--all this trouble
+and correcting,--and it is my proper office now, by this time, to sit
+still and receive, by right _Human_ (as opposed to Divine). When you
+see the pamphlet's self, you will find your own doing,--but where will
+you find the proofs of the best of all helping and counselling and
+inciting, unless in new works which shall justify the
+_unsatisfaction_, if I may not say shame, at these, these written
+before your time, my best love?
+
+Are you doing well to-day? For I feel well, have walked some eight or
+nine miles--and my mother is very much better ... is singularly
+better. You know whether you rejoiced me or no by that information
+about the exercise _you_ had taken yesterday. Think what telling one
+that you grow stronger would mean!
+
+'Vexatious' with you! Ah, prudence is all very right, and one ought,
+no doubt, to say, 'of course, we shall not expect a life exempt from
+the usual proportion of &c. &c.--' but truth is still more right, and
+includes the highest prudence besides, and I do believe that we shall
+be happy; that is, that _you_ will be happy: you see I dare
+confidently expect _the_ end to it all ... so it has always been with
+me in my life of wonders--absolute wonders, with God's hand over
+all.... And this last and best of all would never have begun so, and
+gone on so, to break off abruptly even here, in this world, for the
+little time.
+
+So try, try, dearest, every method, take every measure of hastening
+such a consummation. Why, we shall see Italy together! I could, would,
+_will_ shut myself in four walls of a room with you and never leave
+you and be most of all _then_ 'a lord of infinite space'--but, to
+travel with you to Italy, or Greece. Very vain, I know that, all such
+day dreaming! And ungrateful, too; with the real sufficing happiness
+here of being, and knowing that you know me to be, and suffer me to
+tell you I am yours, ever your own.
+
+                                 God bless you, my dearest--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]
+
+All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and
+went away at seven--and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour
+speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so
+tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and
+herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer
+once every ten minutes at least--and Flush, my usual companion, does
+not exact so much--and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this
+paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good
+fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I
+pushed the conversation up the next--because I was afraid of questions
+such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind
+them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his
+spectacles. So your name was not once spoken--not thought of, I do not
+say--perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her
+suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have
+wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she passed
+gradually from that to this--I am not sure of the contrary. And
+Isidore, they say, reads Béranger, and is supposed to be the most
+literary person at court--and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs
+think.
+
+One must needs write nonsense rather--for I have written it there. The
+sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my
+heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and
+through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what _is_ not
+dreaming is this and this--this reading of these words--this proof of
+this regard--all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot
+guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ...
+since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ...
+and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your
+wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own
+being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by
+an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into
+the sunshine where I was not--feeling nothing of the light which fell
+on them even--making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that
+factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be
+all far on the outside of _me_ ... _myself_ ... not seeming to touch
+it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a
+bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another.
+Morbid it was if you like it--perhaps very morbid--but all these heaps
+of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which,
+because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to
+the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of
+it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could
+it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds
+on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in
+the shadow? It was not for _me_ ... _me_ ... in any way: it was not
+within my reach--I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came
+nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being
+tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when
+he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs.
+Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not
+letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I
+to feel when you tell me what you have told me--and what you 'could
+would and will' do, and _shall not_ do?... but when you tell me?
+
+Only remember that such words make you freer and freer--if you can be
+freer than free--just as every one makes me happier and richer--too
+rich by you, to claim any debt. May God bless you always. When I wrote
+that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran
+down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere
+nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as
+other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse
+you as I did them.
+
+When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+I trust that you go on to take exercise--and that your mother is still
+better. Occy's worst symptom now is too great an appetite ... a
+monster-appetite indeed.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday.
+                              [Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]
+
+Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow,
+Wednesday--so towards evening yours will reach you--'parve liber, sine
+me ibis' ... would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know,
+and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you _now_,
+as we are now;--from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed
+every other, greater or smaller--but as one cannot well,--or should
+not,--sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what
+chances--while you are in my thought.
+
+But when I have you ... so it seems ... _in_ my very heart; when you
+are entirely with me--oh, the day--then it will all go better, talk
+and writing too.
+
+Love me, my own love; not as I love you--not for--but I cannot write
+that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the
+luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, November 6, 1845.]
+
+I had your note last night, and am waiting for the book to-day; a true
+living breathing book, let the writer say of it what he will. Also
+when it comes it won't certainly come 'sine te.' Which is my comfort.
+
+And now--not to make any more fuss about a matter of simple
+restitution--may I have my letter back?... I mean the letter which if
+you did not destroy ... did not punish for its sins long and long ago
+... belongs to me--which, if destroyed, I must lose for my sins, ...
+but, if undestroyed, which I may have back; may I not? is it not my
+own? must I not?--that letter I was made to return and now turn to ask
+for again in further expiation. Now do I ask humbly enough? And send
+it at once, if undestroyed--do not wait till Saturday.
+
+I have considered about Mr. Kenyon and it seems best, in the event of
+a question or of a remark equivalent to a question, to confess to the
+visits 'generally once a week' ... because he may hear, one, two,
+three different ways, ... not to say the other reasons and Chaucer's
+charge against 'doubleness.' I fear ... I fear that he (not Chaucer)
+will wonder a little--and he has looked at me with scanning spectacles
+already and talked of its being a mystery to him how you made your way
+here; and _I_, who though I can _bespeak_ self-command, have no sort
+of presence of mind (not so much as one would use to play at Jack
+straws) did not help the case at all. Well--it cannot be helped. Did I
+ever tell you what he said of you once--'_that you deserved to be a
+poet_--being one in your heart and life:' he said _that_ of you to me,
+and I thought it a noble encomium and deserving its application.
+
+For the rest ... yes: you know I do--God knows I do. Whatever I can
+feel is for you--and perhaps it is not less, for not being simmered
+away in too much sunshine as with women accounted happier. _I_ am
+happy besides now--happy enough to die now.
+
+                          May God bless you, dear--dearest--
+
+                             Ever I am yours--
+
+The book does not come--so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead,
+and comes again on _Friday_ he says, and Saturday seems to be clear
+still.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+_Just_ arrived!--(mind, the _silent writing_ overflows the page, and
+laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)--But your note
+arrived earlier--more of that, when I write after this dreadful
+dispatching-business that falls on me--friend A. and B. and C. must
+get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!--
+
+Could you think _that_ that untoward letter lived one _moment_ after
+it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor
+letter,--yet I should have been vexed and offended _then_ to be told I
+_could_ love you better than I did already. 'Live and _learn_!' Live
+and love you--dearest, as loves you
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other
+reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two
+instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they _are_ so,
+by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one
+of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'--see! (Can you give me
+Horne's address--I would send then.)
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Thursday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]
+
+I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by
+my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and
+power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling
+more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this--or
+'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand
+which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading
+everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in
+inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr.
+Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what
+contradiction!) the _British Quarterly_ has been abusing me so at
+large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very
+particular friend indeed,--of someone who positively never reviewed
+before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I
+suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are friends 'with a
+difference.' Not that you are to fancy me pained--oh no!--merely
+surprised. I was prepared for anything almost from the quarter in
+question, but scarcely for being hung 'to the crows' so publicly ...
+though within the bounds of legitimate criticisms, mind. But oh--the
+creatures of your sex are not always magnanimous--_that_ is true. And
+to put _you_ between me and all ... the thought of _you_ ... in a
+great eclipse of the world ... _that_ is happy ... only, too happy for
+such as I am; as my own heart warns me hour by hour.
+
+'Serve _me_ right'--I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety
+of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the
+probability of it: but 'serve _me_ right' quite clearly. And yet--but
+no more 'and yets' about it. 'And yets' fray the silk.
+
+I see how the 'turret' stands in the new reading, triumphing over the
+'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that
+nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for
+attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number--there are lights
+enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by.
+One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does
+still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I
+saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach
+it--but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one
+exception I _am quite_ sure that people who shall complain of darkness
+are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed
+everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible
+by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your
+writings--but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from _that_
+cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,'
+you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid
+them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of
+critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!--'Let them
+rave.' You will live when all _those_ are under the willows. In the
+meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your
+poetry--as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the
+creature, and _you_ than _yours_. Yes--_you_ than _yours_.... (I did
+not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the 'bona
+verba,' and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as _you_ are
+better than _yours_; even when so much yours as your own
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+May I see the first act first? Let me!--And you walk?
+
+Mr. Horne's address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.
+
+There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes
+to-morrow, Friday, and therefore--!--and if Saturday should become
+impracticable, I will write again.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]
+
+When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never
+is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to
+return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and
+fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that
+does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is
+no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of
+mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on,
+patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and
+I will console myself, to the full extent, with your
+knowledge--penetration, intuition--_somehow_ I must believe you can
+get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or
+writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no
+reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the
+less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I
+can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to
+explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I
+feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt
+by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might
+be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to _me_. Dearest,
+I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from
+the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was
+MY star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back
+from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I _do_ feel, with
+you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few
+rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree
+with that power of yours--that you might easily make one so happy and
+yet go on writing 'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'--but--how can I, dearest,
+leave my heart's treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and
+when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the
+traces of you ... _will_ it do--tell me--to trust all that as a light
+effort, an easy matter?
+
+Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to
+crown you--there is queenliness in _that_, too!
+
+Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you
+determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of
+yourself! It is all ME you help, me you do good to ... and I take it
+all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had _every_ love-luxury, I
+now find out ... where is the proper, rationally
+to-be-expected--'_lovers' quarrel_'? _Here_, as you will find! 'Iræ;
+amantium'.... I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter
+Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be _reintegratio amoris_--and to get
+back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it ...
+trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The
+consistent inference ... the 'self-denying ordinance'? Why--do you
+doubt? even this,--you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the
+Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid
+to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and
+walking, and working for my sake towards _the time_--informing me,
+moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day--.
+
+May God bless you, my own love.
+
+I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play ... for this serpent's
+reason, in addition to the others ... that--No, I will _tell_ you
+that--I can tell you now more than even lately!
+
+                                               Ever your own
+
+                                                    R.B.
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ROBERT BROWNING
+
+(See Vol. I., p. 270)]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 11, 1845.]
+
+If it were possible that you could do me harm in the way of work, (but
+it isn't) it would be possible, not through writing letters and
+reading manuscripts, but because of a reason to be drawn from your own
+great line
+
+    What man is strong until he stands alone?
+
+What man ... what woman? For have I not felt twenty times the desolate
+advantage of being insulated here and of not minding anybody when I
+made my poems?--of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and
+caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing
+in the pane?--_That_ made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls
+'insolent,'--untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much
+by strength, you see, as by separation. _You_ touch your greater ends
+by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads
+which, in your position would have hampered _me_.
+
+Still ... when all is changed for me now, and different, it is not
+possible, ... for all the changing, nor for all your line and my
+speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being
+within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in
+other ways. We shall see--you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I
+confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of
+Indolence and watching the new sunrise--as why not?--Do I mean to be
+idle always?--no!--and am I not an industrious worker on the average
+of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think
+perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like
+trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York
+people, and the something rather better besides we may hope ... may
+_I_ not hope, if _you_ wish it? Only there is no 'crown' for me, be
+sure, except what grows from this letter and such letters ... this
+sense of being anything to _one_! there is no room for another crown.
+Have I a great head like Goethe's that there should be room? and mine
+is bent down already by the unused weight--and as to bearing it, ...
+'Will it do,--tell me; to treat _that_ as a light effort, an easy
+matter?'
+
+Now let me remember to tell you that the line of yours I have just
+quoted, and which has been present with me since you wrote it, Mr.
+Chorley has quoted too in his new novel of 'Pomfret.' You were right
+in your identifying of servant and waistcoat--and Wilson waited only
+till you had gone on Saturday, to give me a parcel and note; the novel
+itself in fact, which Mr. Chorley had the kindness to send me 'some
+days or weeks,' said the note, 'previous to the publication.' Very
+goodnatured of him certainly: and the book seems to me his best work
+in point of sustainment and vigour, and I am in process of being
+interested in it. Not that he is a _maker_, even for this prose. A
+feeler ... an observer ... a thinker even, in a certain sphere--but a
+maker ... no, as it seems to me--and if I were he, I would rather herd
+with the essayists than the novelists where he is too good to take
+inferior rank and not strong enough to 'go up higher.' Only it would
+be more right in me to be grateful than to talk so--now wouldn't it?
+
+And here is Mr. Kenyon's letter back again--a kind good letter ... a
+letter I have liked to read (so it was kind and good in you to let
+me!)--and he was with me to-day and praising the 'Ride to Ghent,' and
+praising the 'Duchess,' and praising you altogether as I liked to hear
+him. The Ghent-ride was 'very fine'--and the
+
+    Into the midnight they galloped abreast
+
+drew us out into the night as witnesses. And then, the 'Duchess' ...
+the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most
+characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh,
+some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears--but the
+incantation-scene, 'just trenching on the supernatural,' _that_ was
+taken to be 'wonderful,' ... 'showing extraordinary power, ... as
+indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of
+such various faculty!'--Am I not tired of writing your praises as he
+said then? So I shall tell you, instead of any more, that I went down
+to the drawing-room yesterday (because it was warm enough) by an act
+of supererogatory virtue for which you may praise _me_ in turn. What
+weather it is! and how the year seems to have forgotten itself into
+April.
+
+But after all, how have I answered your letter? and how _are_ such
+letters to be answered? Do we answer the sun when he shines? May God
+bless you ... it is my answer--with one word besides ... that I am
+wholly and ever your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+On Thursday as far as I know yet--and you shall hear if there should
+be an obstacle. _Will you walk?_ If you will not, you know, you must
+be forgetting me a little. Will you remember me too in the act of the
+play?--but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not
+overworking the head. And this for no serpent's reason.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Two letters in one--Wednesday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]
+
+I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to
+read perhaps. When you spoke of 'stars' and 'geniuses' in that letter,
+I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter
+which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could
+be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh
+such pure extravagance about 'glorious geniuses'--) I can't help
+telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.
+
+Shall I tell you besides?--The first moment in which I seemed to admit
+to myself in a flash of lightning the _possibility_ of your affection
+for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was _that_ when
+you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for
+me not for a reason, but because you cared for me. Now such a
+'parceque' which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was
+just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the
+particular question we were upon ... just the 'woman's reason'
+suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as
+you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you
+see? If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for
+ever--one of 'earth's immortalities'--_as long as it includes it_.
+
+And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising state
+of things, we may both admit, and proves what it would be as well not
+too curiously to enquire into. But then ... to look at it in a
+brighter aspect, ... I do remember how, years ago, when talking the
+foolishnesses which women will talk when they are by themselves, and
+not forced to be sensible, ... one of my friends thought it 'safest to
+begin with a little aversion,' and another, wisest to begin with a
+great deal of esteem, and how the best attachments were produced so
+and so, ... I took it into my head to say that the best was where
+there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable,
+the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and
+not in the object of it--and that the affection which could (if it
+could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goître would be more
+admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone
+thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly
+that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I
+meant to act out my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I
+replied quite gravely that I had not virtue enough--and so, people
+laughed as it is fair to laugh when other people are esteemed to talk
+nonsense. And all this came back to me in the south wind of your
+'parceque,' and I tell it as it came ... now.
+
+Which proves, if it proves anything, ... while I have every sort of
+natural pleasure in your praises and like you to like my poetry just
+as I should, and perhaps more than I should; yet _why_ it is all
+behind ... and in its place--and _why_ I have a tendency moreover to
+sift and measure any praise of yours and to separate it from the
+superfluities, far more than with any other person's praise in the
+world.
+
+_Friday evening._--Shall I send this letter or not? I have been 'tra
+'l si e 'l no,' and writing a new beginning on a new sheet even--but
+after all you ought to hear the remote echo of your last letter ...
+far out among the hills, ... as well as the immediate reverberation,
+and so I will send it,--and what I send is not to be answered,
+remember!
+
+I read Luria's first act twice through before I slept last night, and
+feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but
+because shot into the air and suddenly arrested and suspended. It
+('Luria') is all life, and we know (that is, the reader knows) that
+there must be results here and here. How fine that sight of Luria is
+upon the lynx hides--how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse
+you have by the eyes of another--and that laugh when the horse drops
+the forage, what wonderful truth and character you have in
+_that_!--And then, when _he_ is in the scene--: 'Golden-hearted Luria'
+you called him once to me, and his heart shines already ... wide open
+to the morning sun. The construction seems to me very clear
+everywhere--and the rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where
+you invert a little artificially--but that shall be set down on a
+separate strip of paper: and in the meantime I am snatched up into
+'Luria' and feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a
+reader should.
+
+But _you_ are not driven on to any ends? so as to be tired, I mean?
+You will not suffer yourself to be overworked because you are
+'interested' in this work. I am so certain that the sensations in your
+head _demand_ repose; and it must be so injurious to you to be
+perpetually calling, calling these new creations, one after another,
+that you must consent to be called _to_, and not hurry the next act,
+no, nor any act--let the people have time to learn the last number by
+heart. And how glad I am that Mr. Fox should say what he did of it ...
+though it wasn't true, you know ... not exactly. Still, I do hold that
+as far as construction goes, you never put together so much
+unquestionable, smooth glory before, ... not a single entanglement for
+the understanding ... unless 'the snowdrops' make an exception--while
+for the undeniableness of genius it never stood out before your
+readers more plainly than in that same number! Also you have extended
+your sweep of power--the sea-weed is thrown farther (if not higher)
+than it was found before; and one may calculate surely now how a few
+more waves will cover the brown stones and float the sight up away
+through the fissure of the rocks. The rhythm (to touch one of the
+various things) the rhythm of that 'Duchess' does more and more strike
+me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks
+called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult
+rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the
+general measure. Then 'The Ride'--with that touch of natural feeling
+at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the
+poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that
+one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and resolution and
+exalts both, instead of weakening anything, as might have been
+expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And then 'Saul'--and in
+a first place 'St. Praxed'--and for pure description, 'Fortú' and the
+deep 'Pictor Ignotus'--and the noble, serene 'Italy in England,' which
+grows on you the more you know of it--and that delightful 'Glove'--and
+the short lyrics ... for one comes to _'select' everything_ at last,
+and certainly I do like these poems better and better, as your poems
+are made to be liked. But you will be tired to hear it said over and
+over so, ... and I am going to 'Luria,' besides.
+
+When you write will you say exactly how you are? and will you write?
+And I want to explain to you that although I don't make a profession
+of equable spirits, (as a matter of temperament, my spirits were
+always given to rock a little, up and down) yet that I did not mean to
+be so ungrateful and wicked as to complain of low spirits now and to
+you. It would not be true either: and I said 'low' to express a merely
+bodily state. My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and
+fainting ... to give the right composure and point of balance to the
+nervous system. I don't take it for 'my spirits' in the usual sense;
+you must not think such a thing. The medical man who came to see me
+made me take it the other day when he was in the room, before the
+right hour and when I was talking quite cheerfully, just for the need
+he observed in the pulse. 'It was a necessity of my position,' he
+said. Also I do not suffer from it in any way, as people usually do
+who take opium. I am not even subject to an opium-headache. As to the
+low spirits I will not say that mine _have not_ been low enough and
+with cause enough; but _even then_, ... why if you were to ask the
+nearest witnesses, ... say, even my own sisters, ... everybody would
+tell you, I think, that the 'cheerfulness' even _then_, was the
+remarkable thing in me--certainly it has been remarked about me again
+and again. Nobody has known that it was an effort (a habit of effort)
+to throw the light on the outside,--I do abhor so that ignoble
+groaning aloud of the 'groans of Testy and Sensitude'--yet I may say
+that for three years I never was conscious of one movement of pleasure
+in anything. Think if I could mean to complain of 'low spirits' now,
+and to you. Why it would be like complaining of not being able to see
+at noon--which would simply prove that I was very blind. And you, who
+are not blind, cannot make out what is written--so you _need not try_.
+May God bless you long after you have done blessing me!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         E.B.B.
+
+Now I am half tempted to tear this letter in two (and it is long
+enough for three) and to send you only the latter half. But you will
+understand--you will not think that there is a contradiction between
+the first and last ... you _cannot_. One is a truth of me--and the
+other a truth of you--and we two are different, you know.
+
+You are not over-working in 'Luria'? That you _should not_, is a
+truth, too.
+
+I observed that Mr. Kenyon put in '_Junior_' to your address. Ought
+that to be done? or does my fashion of directing find you without
+hesitation?
+
+Mr. Kenyon asked me for Mr. Chorley's book, or you should have it.
+Shall I send it to you presently?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, November 17, 1845.]
+
+At last your letter comes--and the deep joy--(I know and use to
+analyse my own feelings, and be sober in giving distinctive names to
+their varieties; this is _deep_ joy,)--the true love with which I
+take this much of you into my heart, ... _that_ proves what it is I
+wanted so long, and find at last, and am happy for ever. I must have
+more than 'intimated'--I must have spoken plainly out the truth, if I
+do myself the barest justice, and told you long ago that the
+admiration at your works went _away_, quite another way and afar from
+the love of you. If I could fancy some method of what I shall say
+happening without all the obvious stumbling-blocks of falseness, &c.
+which no foolish fancy dares associate with you ... if you COULD tell
+me when I next sit by you--'I will undeceive you,--I am not _the_ Miss
+B.--she is up-stairs and you shall see her--I only wrote those
+letters, and am what you see, that is all now left you' (all the
+misapprehension having arisen from _me_, in some inexplicable way) ...
+I should not begin by _saying_ anything, dear, dearest--but _after
+that_, I should assure you--soon make you believe that I did not much
+wonder at the event, for I have been all my life asking what
+connection there is between the satisfaction at the display of power,
+and the sympathy with--ever-increasing sympathy with--all imaginable
+weakness? Look now: Coleridge writes on and on,--at last he writes a
+note to his 'War-Eclogue,' in which he avers himself to have been
+actuated by a really--on the whole--_benevolent_ feeling to Mr. Pitt
+when he wrote that stanza in which 'Fire' means to 'cling to him
+everlastingly'--where is the long line of admiration now that the end
+snaps? And now--here I refuse to fancy--you KNOW whether, if you never
+write another line, speak another intelligible word, recognize me by a
+look again--whether I shall love you less or _more_ ... MORE; having a
+right to expect more strength with the strange emergency. And it is
+because I know this, build upon this entirely, that as a reasonable
+creature, I am bound to look first to what hangs farthest and most
+loosely from me ... what _might_ go from you to your loss, and so to
+mine, to say the least ... because I want ALL of you, not just so much
+as I could not live without--and because I see the danger of your
+entirely generous disposition and cannot quite, yet, bring myself to
+profit by it in the quiet way you recommend. Always remember, I never
+wrote to you, all the years, on the strength of your poetry, though I
+constantly heard of you through Mr. K. and was near seeing you once,
+and might have easily availed myself of his intervention to commend
+any letter to your notice, so as to reach you out of the foolish crowd
+of rushers-in upon genius ... who come and eat their bread and cheese
+on the high-altar, and talk of reverence without one of its surest
+instincts--never quiet till they cut their initials on the cheek of
+the Medicean Venus to prove they worship her. My admiration, as I
+said, went its natural way in silence--but when on my return to
+England in December, late in the month, Mr. K. sent those Poems to my
+sister, and I read my name there--and when, a day or two after, I met
+him and, beginning to speak my mind on them, and getting on no better
+than I should now, said quite naturally--'if I were to _write_ this,
+now?'--and he assured me with his perfect kindness, you would be even
+'pleased' to hear from me under those circumstances ... nay,--for I
+will tell you all, in this, in everything--when he wrote me a note
+soon after to reassure me on that point ... THEN I _did_ write, on
+_account of my purely personal obligation_, though of course taking
+that occasion to allude to the general and customary delight in your
+works: I did write, on the whole, UNWILLINGLY ... with consciousness
+of having to _speak_ on a subject which I _felt_ thoroughly
+concerning, and could not be satisfied with an imperfect expression
+of. As for expecting THEN what has followed ... I shall only say I was
+scheming how to get done with England and go to my heart in Italy. And
+now, my love--I am round you ... my whole life is wound up and down
+and over you.... I feel you stir everywhere. I am not conscious of
+thinking or feeling but _about_ you, with some reference to you--so I
+will live, so may I die! And you have blessed me _beyond_ the _bond_,
+in more than in giving me yourself to love; inasmuch as you believed
+me from the first ... what you call 'dream-work' _was_ real of its
+kind, did you not think? and now you believe me, _I_ believe and am
+happy, in what I write with my heart full of love for you. Why do you
+tell me of a doubt, as now, and bid me not clear it up, 'not answer
+you?' Have I done wrong in thus answering? Never, never do _me_ direct
+_wrong_ and hide for a moment from me what a word can explain as now.
+You see, you thought, if but for a moment, I loved your intellect--or
+what predominates in your poetry and is most distinct from your
+heart--better, or as well as you--did you not? and I have told you
+every thing,--explained everything ... have I not? And now I will dare
+... yes, dearest, kiss you back to my heart again; my own. There--and
+there!
+
+And since I wrote what is above, I have been reading among other poems
+that sonnet--'Past and Future'--which affects me more than any poem I
+ever read. How can I put your poetry away from you, even in these
+ineffectual attempts to concentrate myself upon, and better apply
+myself to what remains?--poor, poor work it is; for is not that sonnet
+to be loved as a true utterance of yours? I cannot attempt to put down
+the thoughts that rise; may God bless me, as you pray, by letting that
+beloved hand shake the less ... I will only ask, _the less_ ... for
+being laid on mine through this life! And, indeed, you write down, for
+me to calmly read, that I make you happy! Then it is--as with all
+power--God through the weakest instrumentality ... and I am past
+expression proud and grateful--My love,
+
+                                                   I am your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+I must answer your questions: I am better--and will certainly have
+your injunction before my eyes and work quite moderately. Your letters
+come _straight_ to me--my father's go to Town, except on extraordinary
+occasions, so that _all_ come for my first looking-over. I saw Mr. K.
+last night at the Amateur Comedy--and heaps of old acquaintances--and
+came home tired and savage--and _yearned_ literally, for a letter this
+morning, and so it came and I was well again. So, I am not even to
+have your low spirits leaning on mine? It was just because I always
+find you alike, and _ever_ like yourself, that I seemed to discern a
+depth, when you spoke of 'some days' and what they made uneven where
+all is agreeable to _me_. Do not, now, deprive me of a right--a right
+... to find you as you _are_; get no habit of being cheerful with
+me--I have universal sympathy and can show you a SIDE of me, a true
+face, turn as you may. If you _are_ cheerful ... so will I be ... if
+sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while _behind_, and propping up,
+any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary. As for my
+question about the opium ... you do not misunderstand _that_ neither:
+I trust in the eventual consummation of my--shall I not say,
+_our_--hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or
+prospectively, affects me--how it affects me! Will you write again?
+_Wednesday_, remember! Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three
+next days after. I will bring you some letters ... one from Landor.
+Why should I trouble you about 'Pomfret.'
+
+And Luria ... does it so interest you? Better is to come of it. How
+you lift me up!--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 18, 1845.]
+
+How you overcome me as always you do--and where is the answer to
+anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers?
+But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake
+you as far even as you say here and even 'for a moment.' I did not
+write any of that letter in a 'doubt' of you--not a word.... I was
+simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking
+back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I
+should not have looked back)--and so coming to tell you, by a natural
+association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise
+was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your
+reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours. Of course I acknowledge it to
+be yours, ... that high reason of no reason--I acknowledged it to be
+yours (didn't I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me.
+And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told
+them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather
+be cared for in _that_ unreasonable way, than for the best reason in
+the world. But all _that_ was history and philosophy simply--was it
+not?--and not _doubt of you_.
+
+The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ...
+that I never have doubted you--ah, you _know_!--I felt from the
+beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would
+have trusted you to make a path for my soul--_that_, you _know_. I
+felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or
+wrote--and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it
+was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the
+nature of your own feelings. If you could turn over every page of my
+heart like the pages of a book, you would see nothing there offensive
+to the least of your feelings ... not even to the outside fringes of
+your man's vanity ... should you have any vanity like a man; which I
+_do_ doubt. I never wronged you in the least of things--never ... I
+thank God for it. But 'self-deceived,' it was so easy for you to be:
+see how on every side and day by day, men are--and women too--in this
+sort of feelings. 'Self-deceived,' it was so possible for you to be,
+and while I thought it possible, could I help thinking it _best_ for
+you that it should be so--and was it not right in me to persist in
+thinking it possible? It was my reverence for you that made me
+persist! What was _I_ that I should think otherwise? I had been shut
+up here too long face to face with my own spirit, not to know myself,
+and, so, to have lost the common illusions of vanity. All the men I
+had ever known could not make your stature among them. So it was not
+distrust, but reverence rather. I sate by while the angel stirred the
+water, and I called it _Miracle_. Do not blame me now, ... _my_ angel!
+
+Nor say, that I 'do not lean' on you with all the weight of my 'past'
+... because I do! You cannot guess what you are to me--you cannot--it
+is not possible:--and though I have said _that_ before, I must say it
+again ... for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between
+dream and miracle, all of it--as if some dream of my earliest
+brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to
+steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light. _Can_ it be,
+I say to myself, that _you_ feel for me _so_? can it be meant for me?
+this from _you_?
+
+If it is your 'right' that I should be gloomy at will with you, you
+exercise it, I do think--for although I cannot promise to be very
+sorrowful when you come, (how could that be?) yet from different
+motives it seems to me that I have written to you quite superfluities
+about my 'abomination of desolation,'--yes indeed, and blamed myself
+afterwards. And now I must say this besides. When grief came upon
+grief, I never was tempted to ask 'How have I deserved this of God,'
+as sufferers sometimes do: I always felt that there must be cause
+enough ... corruption enough, needing purification ... weakness
+enough, needing strengthening ... _nothing_ of the chastisement could
+come to me without cause and need. But in this different hour, when
+joy follows joy, and God makes me happy, as you say, _through_ you ...
+I cannot repress the ... 'How have I deserved _this_ of Him?'--I know
+I have not--I know I do not.
+
+Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for
+you?--If so, it was well done,--dearest! They leave the ground fallow
+before the wheat.
+
+'Were you wrong in answering?' Surely not ... unless it is wrong to
+show all this goodness ... and too much, it may be for _me_. When the
+plants droop for drought and the copious showers fall suddenly, silver
+upon silver, they die sometimes of the reverse of their adversities.
+But no--_that_, even, shall not be a danger! And if I said 'Do not
+answer,' I did not mean that I would not have a doubt removed--(having
+_no_ doubt!--) but I was simply unwilling to seem to be asking for
+golden words ... going down the aisles with that large silken purse,
+as _quêteuse_. Try to understand.
+
+On Wednesday then!--George is invited to meet you on Thursday at Mr.
+Kenyon's.
+
+The _Examiner_ speaks well, upon the whole, and with allowances ...
+oh, that absurdity about metaphysics apart from poetry!--'Can such
+things be' in one of the best reviews of the day? Mr. Kenyon was here
+on Sunday and talking of the poems with real living tears in his eyes
+and on his cheeks. But I will tell you. 'Luria' is to climb to the
+place of a great work, I see. And if I write too long letters, is it
+not because you spoil me, and because (being spoilt) I cannot help
+it?--May God bless you always--
+
+                                                 Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                           Thursday Morning.
+
+Here is the copy of Landor's verses.
+
+You know thoroughly, do you not, why I brought all those good-natured
+letters, desperate praise and all? Not, _not_ out of the least vanity
+in the world--nor to help myself in your sight with such testimony:
+would it seem very extravagant, on the contrary, if I said that
+perhaps I laid them before your eyes in a real fit of compunction at
+not being, in my heart, thankful enough for the evident motive of the
+writers,--and so was determined to give them the 'last honours' if
+not the first, and not make them miss _you_ because, through my fault,
+they had missed _me_? Does this sound too fantastical? Because it is
+strictly true: the most laudatory of all, I _skimmed_ once over with
+my flesh _creeping_--it seemed such a death-struggle, that of good
+nature over--well, it is fresh ingratitude of me, so here it shall
+end.
+
+I am not ungrateful to _you_--but you must wait to know that:--I can
+speak less than nothing with my living lips.
+
+I mean to ask your brother how you are to-night ... so quietly!
+
+God bless you, my dearest, and reward you.
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+Mrs. Shelley--with the 'Ricordi.'
+
+Of course, Landor's praise is altogether a different gift; a gold vase
+from King Hiram; beside he has plenty of conscious rejoicing in his
+own riches, and is not left painfully poor by what he sends away.
+_That_ is the unpleasant point with some others--they spread you a
+board and want to gird up their loins and wait on you there. Landor
+says 'come up higher and let us sit and eat together.' Is it not that?
+
+Now--you are not to turn on me because the first is my proper feeling
+to _you_, ... for poetry is not the thing given or taken between
+us--it is heart and life and _my_self, not _mine_, I give--give? That
+you glorify and change and, in returning then, give _me_!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 21, 1845.]
+
+Thank you! and will you, if your sister made the copy of Landor's
+verses for _me_ as well as for you, thank _her_ from me for another
+kindness, ... not the second nor the third? For my own part, be sure
+that if I did not fall on the right subtle interpretation about the
+letters, at least I did not 'think it vain' of you! vain: when,
+supposing you really to have been over-gratified by such letters, it
+could have proved only an excess of humility!--But ... besides the
+subtlety,--you meant to be kind to _me_, you know,--and I had a
+pleasure and an interest in reading them--only that ... mind. Sir John
+Hanmer's, I was half angry with! Now _is_ he not cold?--and is it not
+easy to see _why_ he is forced to write his own scenes five times over
+and over? He might have mentioned the 'Duchess' I think; and he a
+poet! Mr. Chorley speaks some things very well--but what does he mean
+about 'execution,' _en revanche_? but I liked his letter and his
+candour in the last page of it. Will Mr. Warburton review you? does he
+mean _that_? Now do let me see any other letters you receive. _May_ I?
+Of course Landor's 'dwells apart' from all: and besides the reason you
+give for being gratified by it, it is well that one prophet should
+open his mouth and prophesy and give his witness to the inspiration of
+another. See what he says in the letter.... '_You may stand quite
+alone if you will--and I think you will.' That_ is a noble testimony
+to a _truth_. And he discriminates--he understands and discerns--they
+are not words thrown out into the air. The 'profusion of imagery
+covering the depth of thought' is a true description. And, in the
+verses, he lays his finger just on your characteristics--just on those
+which, when you were only a poet to me, (only a poet: does it sound
+irreverent? almost, I think!) which, when you were only a poet to me,
+I used to study, characteristic by characteristic, and turn myself
+round and round in despair of being ever able to approach, taking them
+to be so essentially and intensely masculine that like effects were
+unattainable, even in a lower degree, by any female hand. Did I not
+tell you so once before? or oftener than once? And must not these
+verses of Landor's be printed somewhere--in the _Examiner_? and again
+in the _Athenæum_? if in the _Examiner_, certainly again in the
+_Athenæum_--it would be a matter of course. Oh those verses: how they
+have pleased me! It was an act worthy of him--and of _you_.
+
+George has been properly 'indoctrinated,' and, we must hope, will do
+credit to my instructions. Just now ... just as I was writing ... he
+came in to say good-morning and good-night (he goes to chambers
+earlier than I receive visitors generally), and to ask with a smile,
+if I had 'a message for my friend' ... _that_ was you ... and so he
+was indoctrinated. He is good and true, honest and kind, but a little
+over-grave and reasonable, as I and my sisters complain continually.
+The great Law lime-kiln dries human souls all to one colour--and he is
+an industrious reader among law books and knows a good deal about
+them, I have heard from persons who can judge; but with a sacrifice of
+impulsiveness and liberty of spirit, which _I_ should regret for him
+if he sate on the Woolsack even. Oh--that law! how I do detest it! I
+hate it and think ill of it--I tell George so sometimes--and he is
+good-natured and only thinks to himself (a little audibly now and
+then) that I am a woman and talking nonsense. But the morals of it,
+and the philosophy of it! And the manners of it! in which the whole
+host of barristers looks down on the attorneys and the rest of the
+world!--how long are these things to last!
+
+Theodosia Garrow, I have seen face to face once or twice. She is very
+clever--very accomplished--with talents and tastes of various kinds--a
+musician and linguist, in most modern languages I believe--and a
+writer of fluent graceful melodious verses, ... you cannot say any
+more. At least _I_ cannot--and though I have not seen this last poem
+in the 'Book of Beauty,' I have no more trust ready for it than for
+its predecessors, of which Mr. Landor said as much. It is the personal
+feeling which speaks in him, I fancy--simply the personal
+feeling--and, _that_ being the case, it does not spoil the
+discriminating appreciation on the other page of this letter. I might
+have the modesty to admit besides that I may be wrong and he, right,
+all through. But ... 'more intense than Sappho'!--more intense than
+intensity itself!--to think of _that_!--Also the word 'poetry' has a
+clear meaning to me, and all the fluency and facility and quick
+ear-catching of a tune which one can find in the world, do not answer
+to it--no.
+
+How is the head? will you tell me? I have written all this without a
+word of it, and yet ever since yesterday I have been uneasy, ... I
+cannot help it. You see you are not better but worse. 'Since you were
+in Italy'--Then is it England that disagrees with you? and is it
+change away from England that you want? ... _require_, I mean. If
+so--why what follows and ought to follow? You must not be ill
+indeed--_that_ is the first necessity. Tell me how you are, exactly
+how you are; and remember to walk, and not to work too much--for my
+sake--if you care for me--if it is not too bold of me to say so. I had
+fancied you were looking better rather than otherwise: but those
+sensations in the head are frightful and ought to be stopped by
+whatever means; even by the worst, as they would seem to _me_.
+Well--it was bad news to hear of the increase of pain; for the
+amendment was a 'passing show' I fear, and not caused even by thoughts
+of mine or it would have appeared before; while on the other side (the
+sunny side of the way) I heard on that same yesterday, what made me
+glad as good news, a whole gospel of good news, and from _you_ too who
+profess to say 'less than nothing,' and _that_ was that '_the times
+seemed longer to you_':--do you remember saying it? And it made me
+glad ... happy--perhaps too glad and happy--and surprised: yes,
+surprised!--for if you had told me (but you would not have told me) if
+you had let me guess ... just the contrary, ... '_that the times
+seemed shorter_,' ... why it would have seemed to _me_ as natural as
+nature--oh, believe me it would, and I could not have thought hardly
+of you for it in the most secret or silent of my thoughts. How am I
+to feel towards you, do you imagine, ... who have the world round you
+and yet make me this to you? I never can tell you how, and you never
+can know it without having my heart in you with all its experiences:
+we measure by those weights. May God bless you! and save _me_ from
+being the cause to you of any harm or grief!... I choose it for _my_
+blessing instead of another. What should I be if I could fail
+willingly to you in the least thing? But I _never will_, and you know
+it. I will not move, nor speak, nor breathe, so as willingly and
+consciously to touch, with one shade of wrong, that precious deposit
+of 'heart and life' ... which may yet be recalled.
+
+And, so, may God bless you and your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Remember to say how you are.
+
+I sent 'Pomfret'--and Shelley is returned, and the letters, in the
+same parcel--but my letter goes by the post as you see. Is there
+contrast enough between the two rival female personages of 'Pomfret.'
+_I_ fancy not. Helena should have been more 'demonstrative' than she
+appeared in Italy, to secure the 'new modulation' with Walter. But you
+will not think it a strong book, I am sure, with all the good and pure
+intention of it. The best character ... most life-like ... as
+conventional life goes ... seems to _me_ 'Mr. Rose' ... beyond all
+comparison--and the best point, the noiseless, unaffected manner in
+which the acting out of the 'private judgment' in Pomfret himself is
+made no heroic virtue but simply an integral part of the love of
+truth. As to Grace she is too good to be interesting, I am afraid--and
+people say of her more than she expresses--and as to 'generosity,' she
+could not do otherwise in the last scenes.
+
+But I will not tell you the story after all.
+
+At the beginning of this letter I meant to write just one page; but my
+generosity is like Grace's, and could not help itself. There were the
+letters to write of, and the verses! and then, you know, 'femme qui
+parle' never has done. _Let_ me hear! and I will be as brisk as a
+monument next time for variety.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
+
+How good and kind to send me these books! (The letter I say nothing
+of, according to convention: if I wrote down 'best and kindest' ...
+oh, what poorest words!) I shall tell you all about 'Pomfret,' be
+sure. Chorley talked of it, as we walked homewards together last
+night,--modestly and well, and spoke of having given away two copies
+only ... to his mother one, and the other to--Miss Barrett, and 'she
+seemed interested in the life of it, entered into his purpose in it,'
+and I listened to it all, loving Chorley for his loveability which is
+considerable at other times, and saying to myself what might run
+better in the child's couplet--'Not more than others I deserve, Though
+God has given me more'!--Given me the letter which expresses surprise
+that I shall feel these blanks between the days when I see you longer
+and longer! So am _I_ surprised--that I should have mentioned so
+obvious a matter at all; or leave unmentioned a hundred others its
+correlatives which I cannot conceive you to be ignorant of, you! When
+I spread out my riches before me, and think _what_ the hour and more
+means that you endow one with, I _do_--not to say _could_--I _do_ form
+resolutions, and say to myself--'If next time I am bidden stay away a
+FORTNIGHT, I will not reply by a word beyond the grateful assent.' I
+_do_, God knows, lay up in my heart these priceless treasures,--shall
+I tell you? I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights,
+or fancies, or feelings; in my last travel I put down on a slip of
+paper a few dates, that I might remember in England, on such a day I
+was on Vesuvius, in Pompeii, at Shelley's grave; all that should be
+kept in memory is, with _me_, best left to the brain's own process.
+But I have, from the first, recorded the date and the duration of
+every visit to you; the numbers of minutes you have given me ... and I
+put them together till they make ... nearly two days now;
+four-and-twenty-hour-long-days, that I have been _by you_--and I enter
+the room determining to get up and go sooner ... and I go away into
+the light street repenting that I went so soon by I don't know how
+many minutes--for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an
+earnest desiring to include you in myself, if that might be; to feel
+you in my very heart and hold you there for ever, through all chance
+and earthly changes!
+
+There, I had better leave off; the words!
+
+I was very glad to find myself with your brother yesterday; I like him
+very much and mean to get a friend in him--(to supply the loss of my
+friend ... Miss Barrett--which is gone, the friendship, so gone!) But
+I did not ask after you because I heard Moxon do it. Now of Landor's
+verses: I got a note from Forster yesterday telling me that he, too,
+had received a copy ... so that there is no injunction to be secret.
+So I got a copy for dear Mr. Kenyon, and, lo! what comes! I send the
+note to make you smile! I shall reply that I felt in duty bound to
+apprise you; as I did. You will observe that I go to that too facile
+gate of his on Tuesday, _my day_ ... from your house directly. The
+worst is that I have got entangled with invitations already, and must
+go out again, _hating_ it, to more than one place.
+
+I am _very_ well--quite well; yes, dearest! The pain is quite gone;
+and the inconvenience, hard on its trace. You will write to me again,
+will you not? And be as brief as your heart lets you, to me who hoard
+up your words and get remote and imperfect ideas of what ... shall it
+be written?... anger at you could mean, when I see a line blotted out;
+a _second-thoughted_ finger-tip rapidly put forth upon one of my gold
+pieces!
+
+I rather think if Warburton reviews me it will be in the _Quarterly_,
+which I know he writes for. Hanmer is a very sculpturesque passionless
+high-minded and amiable man ... this coldness, as you see it, is part
+of him. I like his poems, I think, better than you--'the Sonnets,' do
+you know them? Not 'Fra Cipolla.' See what is here, since you will not
+let me have only you to look at--this is Landor's first
+opinion--expressed to Forster--see the date! and last of all, see me
+and know me, beloved! May God bless you!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
+
+Mr. Kenyon came yesterday--and do you know when he took out those
+verses and spoke his preface and I understood what was to follow, I
+had a temptation from my familiar Devil not to say I had read them
+before--I had the temptation strong and clear. For he (Mr. K.) told me
+that your sister let him see them--.
+
+But no--My 'vade retro' prevailed, and I spoke the truth and shamed
+the devil and surprised Mr. Kenyon besides, as I could observe. Not an
+observation did he make till he was just going away half an hour
+afterwards, and then he said rather dryly ... 'And now may I ask how
+long ago it was when you first read these verses?--was it a fortnight
+ago?' It was better, I think, that I should not have made a mystery of
+such a simple thing, ... and yet I felt half vexed with myself and
+with him besides. But the verses,--how he praised them! more than I
+thought of doing ... as verses--though there is beauty and music and
+all that ought to be. Do you see clearly now that the latter lines
+refer to the combination in you,--the qualities over and above those
+held in common with Chaucer? And I have heard this morning from two or
+three of the early readers of the _Chronicle_ (I never care to see it
+till the evening) that the verses are there--so that my wishes have
+fulfilled themselves _there_ at least--strangely, for wishes of mine
+... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of
+dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and
+how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours _then_ ... _written then_,
+I mean ... or written _now_?
+
+Mr. Kenyon told me that you were to dine with him on Tuesday, and I
+took for granted, at first hearing, that you would come on Wednesday
+perhaps to me--and afterwards I saw the possibility of the two ends
+being joined without much difficulty. Still, I was not sure, before
+your letter came, how it might be.
+
+That you really are better is the best news of all--thank you for
+telling me. It will be wise not to go out _too_ much--'aequam servare
+mentem' as Landor quotes, ... in this as in the rest. Perhaps that
+worst pain was a sort of crisis ... the sharp turn of the road about
+to end ... oh, I do trust it may be so.
+
+Mr. K. wrote to Landor to the effect that it was not because he (Mr.
+K.) held you in affection, nor because the verses expressed critically
+the opinion entertained of you by all who could judge, nor because
+they praised a book with which his own name was associated ... but for
+the abstract beauty of those verses ... for _that_ reason he could not
+help naming them to Mr. Landor. All of which was repeated to me
+yesterday.
+
+Also I heard of you from George, who admired you--admired you ... as
+if you were a chancellor in _posse_, a great lawyer in _esse_--and
+then he thought you ... what he never could think a lawyer ...
+'_unassuming_.' And _you_ ... you are so kind! Only _that_ makes me
+think bitterly what I have thought before, but cannot write to-day.
+
+It was good-natured of Mr. Chorley to send me a copy of his book, and
+he sending so few--very! George who admires _you_, does not tolerate
+Mr. Chorley ... (did I tell ever?) declares that the affectation is
+'bad,' and that there is a dash of vulgarity ... which I positively
+refuse to believe, and _should_, I fancy, though face to face with the
+most vainglorious of waistcoats. How can there be vulgarity even of
+manners, with so much mental refinement? I never could believe in
+those combinations of contradictions.
+
+'An obvious matter,' you think! as obvious, as your 'green hill' ...
+which I cannot see. For the rest ... my thought upon your 'great
+_fact_' of the 'two days,' is quite different from yours ... for I
+think directly, 'So little'! so dreadfully little! What shallow earth
+for a deep root! What can be known of me in that time? 'So _there_, is
+the only good, you see, that comes from making calculations on a slip
+of paper! It is not and it cannot come to good.' I would rather look
+at my seventy-five letters--there is room to breathe in them. And this
+is my idea (_ecce_!) of monumental brevity--and _hic jacet_ at last
+
+                                                 Your E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
+
+But a word to-night, my love--for my head aches a little,--I had to
+write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit
+and think of you and get well--but I must not quite lose the word I
+counted on.
+
+So, _that_ way you will take my two days and turn them against me?
+_Oh, you!_ Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather,
+that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, _they_ had
+been planted then--and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns
+enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,--when the very rook,
+say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to
+be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do--I am not going
+to prove what _may_ be, when here it _is_, to my everlasting
+happiness.
+
+--And 'I am kind'--there again! Do I not know what you mean by that?
+Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and
+take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my
+protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you
+admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to
+give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you,
+benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to
+feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ...
+but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do?
+... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you,
+which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's
+end,--should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the
+real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and
+affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness
+does....
+
+Now, I'll tell you what it _does_ deserve, and what it shall get. Give
+me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I
+would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait--for your own sake,
+not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for
+your own sense of justice, and to _say_, so as my heart shall hear,
+that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you--all
+precious that you are--as may be given in a lock of your hair--I will
+live and die with it, and with the memory of you--this _at_ the
+_worst_! If you give me what I beg,--shall I say next Tuesday ... when
+I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think
+you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and
+remember me one day--when the power to deserve more may be greater ...
+never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So
+I can but pray, kissing your hand.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel,
+for the love's sake that it grew from.
+
+The _Chronicle_ was through Moxon, I believe--Landor had sent the
+verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I
+never in my life less cared about people's praise or blame for myself,
+and never more for its influence on _other people_ than now--I would
+stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you--yet not, after
+all, at poor Chorley's expense whom your brother, I am sure,
+unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my
+own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I
+corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother,
+differently trained, looking different ways--and for some of the
+peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good
+reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For 'Vulgarity'--NO!
+But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further
+acquaintance ... and,--woe's me--will find that 'assumption's' pertest
+self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr.
+K.'s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped
+onward far too readily.
+
+Good night, now. Am I not yours--are you not mine? And can that make
+_you_ happy too?
+
+Bless you once more and for ever.
+
+That scrap of Landor's being for no other eye than mine--I made the
+foolish comment, that there was no blotting out--made it some four or
+five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my
+idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go--but there used
+to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew
+characters--the noble languages!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
+
+But what unlawful things have I said about 'kindness'? I did not mean
+any harm--no, indeed! And as to thinking ... as to having ever
+thought, that you could 'imitate' (can this word be 'imitate'?) an
+unfelt feeling or a feeling unsupposed to be felt ... I may solemnly
+assure you that I never, never did so. 'Get up'--'imitate'!! But it
+was the contrary ... _all_ the contrary! From the beginning, now _did_
+I not believe you too much? Did I not believe you even in your
+contradiction of yourself ... in your _yes_ and _no_ on the same
+subject, ... and take the world to be turning round backwards and
+myself to have been shut up here till I grew mad, ... rather than
+disbelieve you either way? Well!--You know it as well as I can tell
+you, and I will not, any more. If I have been 'wrong,' it was not _so_
+... nor indeed _then_ ... it is not _so_, though it is _now_, perhaps.
+
+Therefore ... but wait! I never gave away what you ask me to give
+_you_, to a human being, except my nearest relatives and once or twice
+or thrice to female friends, ... never, though reproached for it; and
+it is just three weeks since I said last to an asker that I was 'too
+great a prude for such a thing'! it was best to anticipate the
+accusation!--And, prude or not, I could not--I never
+could--_something_ would not let me. And now ... what am I to do ...
+'for my own sake and not yours?' Should you have it, or not? Why I
+suppose ... _yes_. I suppose that 'for my own sense of justice and in
+order to show that I was wrong' (which is wrong--you wrote a wrong
+word there ... 'right,' you meant!) 'to show that I was _right_ and am
+no longer so,' ... I suppose you must have it, 'Oh, _You_,' ... who
+have your way in everything! Which does not mean ... Oh, vous, qui
+avez toujours raison--far from it.
+
+Also ... which does not mean that I shall give you what you ask for,
+_to-morrow_,--because I shall not--and one of my conditions is (with
+others to follow) that _not a word be said to-morrow_, you understand.
+Some day I will send it perhaps ... as you _knew_ I should ... ah, as
+you knew I should ... notwithstanding that 'getting up' ... that
+'imitation' ... of humility: as you knew _too_ well I should!
+
+Only I will not teaze you as I might perhaps; and now that your
+headache has begun again--the headache again: the worse than headache!
+See what good my wishes do! And try to understand that if I speak of
+my being 'wrong' now in relation to you ... of my being right before,
+and wrong now, ... I mean wrong for your sake, and not for mine ...
+wrong in letting you come out into the desert here to me, you whose
+place is by the waters of Damascus. But I need not tell you over
+again--you _know_. May God bless you till to-morrow and past it for
+ever. Mr. Kenyon brought me your note yesterday to read about the
+'order in the button-hole'--ah!--or 'oh, _you_,' may I not re-echo? It
+enrages me to think of Mr. Forster; publishing too as he does, at a
+moment, the very sweepings of Landor's desk! Is the motive of the
+reticence to be looked for somewhere among the cinders?--Too bad it
+is. So, till to-morrow! and you shall not be 'kind' any more.
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+But how, 'a _foolish_ comment'? Good and true rather! And I admired
+the _writing_[1] ... worthy of the reeds of Jordan!
+
+[Footnote 1: Mr. Browning's letter is written in an unusually bold
+hand.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Thursday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
+
+How are you? and Miss Bayley's visit yesterday, and Mr. K.'s
+to-day--(He told me he should see you this morning--and _I_ shall pass
+close by, having to be in town and near you,--but only the thought
+will reach you and be with you--) tell me all this, dearest.
+
+How kind Mr. Kenyon was last night and the day before! He neither
+wonders nor is much vexed, I dare believe--and I write now these few
+words to say so--My heart is set on next Thursday, remember ... and
+the prize of Saturday! Oh, dearest, believe for truth's sake, that I
+WOULD most frankly own to any fault, any imperfection in the beginning
+of my love of you; in the pride and security of this present stage it
+has reached--I _would_ gladly learn, by the full lights now, what an
+insufficient glimmer it grew from, ... but there _never has been
+change_, only development and increased knowledge and strengthened
+feeling--I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and
+become yours for ever. God bless you, and make me thankful!
+
+And you _will_ give me _that_? What shall save me from wreck: but
+truly? How must I feel to you!
+
+                                                  Yours R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
+
+Now you must not blame me--you must not. To make a promise is one
+thing, and to keep it, quite another: and the conclusion you see 'as
+from a tower.' Suppose I had an oath in heaven somewhere ... near to
+'coma Berenices,' ... never to give you what you ask for! ... would
+not such an oath be stronger than a mere half promise such as I sent
+you a few hours ago? Admit that it would--and that I am not to blame
+for saying now ... (listen!) that I _never can_ nor _will give you
+this thing_;--only that I will, if you please, exchange it for another
+thing--you understand. _I_ too will avoid being 'assuming'; I will not
+pretend to be generous, no, nor 'kind.' It shall be pure merchandise
+or nothing at all. Therefore determine!--remembering always how our
+'ars poetica,' after Horace, recommends 'dare et petere
+vicissim'--which is making a clatter of pedantry to take advantage of
+the noise ... because perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say this to
+you, and perhaps I _am_! ... yet say it none the less.
+
+And ... less lightly ... if you have right and reason on your side,
+may I not have a little on mine too? And shall I not care, do you
+think?... Think!
+
+Then there is another reason for me, entirely mine. You have come to
+me as a dream comes, as the best dreams come ... dearest--and so there
+is need to me of 'a sign' to know the difference between dream and
+vision--and _that_ is my completest reason, my own reason--you have
+none like it; none. A ticket to know the horn-gate from the ivory, ...
+ought I not to have it? Therefore send it to me before I send you
+anything, and if possible by that Lewisham post which was the most
+frequent bringer of your letters until these last few came, and which
+reaches me at eight in the evening when all the world is at dinner and
+my solitude most certain. Everything is so still then, that I have
+heard the footsteps of a letter of yours ten doors off ... or more,
+perhaps. Now beware of imagining from this which I say, that there is
+a strict police for my correspondence ... (it is not so--) nor that I
+do not like hearing from you at any and every hour: it _is_ so. Only I
+would make the smoothest and sweetest of roads for ... and you
+_understand_, and do not _imagine_ beyond.
+
+_Tuesday evening._--What is written is written, ... all the above: and
+it is forbidden to me to write a word of what I could write down here
+... forbidden for good reasons. So I am silent on _conditions_ ...
+those being ... first ... that you never do such things again ... no,
+you must not and shall not.... I _will not let it be_: and secondly,
+that you try to hear the unspoken words, and understand how your gift
+will remain with me while _I_ remain ... they need not be said--just
+as _it_ need not have been so beautiful, for that. The beauty drops
+'full fathom five' into the deep thought which covers it. So I study
+my Machiavelli to contrive the possibility of wearing it, without
+being put to the question violently by all the curiosity of all my
+brothers;--the questions 'how' ... 'what' ... 'why' ... put round and
+edgeways. They are famous, some of them, for asking questions. I say
+to them--'well: how many more questions?' And now ... for _me_--_have_
+I said a word?--_have_ I not been obedient? And by rights and in
+justice, there should have been a reproach ... if there could!
+Because, friendship or more than friendship, Pisa or no Pisa, it was
+unnecessary altogether from you to me ... but I have done, and you
+shall not be teazed.
+
+_Wednesday._--Only ... I persist in the view of the _other_ question.
+This will not do for the '_sign_,' ... this, which, so far from being
+qualified for disproving a dream, is the beautiful image of a dream in
+itself ... _so_ beautiful: and with the very shut eyelids, and the
+"little folding of the hands to sleep." You see at a glance it will
+not do. And so--
+
+Just as one might be interrupted while telling a fairy-tale, ... in
+the midst of the "and so's" ... just _so_, I have been interrupted by
+the coming in of Miss Bayley, and here she has been sitting for nearly
+two hours, from twelve to two nearly, and I like her, do you know. Not
+only she talks well, which was only a thing to expect, but she seems
+to _feel_ ... to have great sensibility--_and_ her kindness to me ...
+kindness of manner and words and expression, all together ... quite
+touched me.--I did not think of her being so loveable a person. Yet it
+was kind and generous, her proposition about Italy; (did I tell you
+how she made it to me through Mr. Kenyon long ago--when I was a mere
+stranger to her?) the proposition to go there with me herself. It was
+quite a grave, earnest proposal of hers--which was one of the reasons
+why I could not even _wish_ not to see her to-day. Because you see, it
+was a tremendous degree of experimental generosity, to think of going
+to Italy by sea with an invalid stranger, "seule _à_ seule." And she
+was wholly in earnest, wholly. Is there not good in the world after
+all?
+
+Tell me how you are, for I am not at ease about you--You were not well
+even yesterday, I thought. If this goes on ... but it mustn't go
+on--oh, it must not. May God bless us more!
+
+Do not fancy, in the meantime, that you stay here 'too long' for any
+observation that can be made. In the first place there is nobody to
+'observe'--everybody is out till seven, except the one or two who will
+not observe if I tell them not. My sisters are glad when you come,
+because it is a gladness of mine, ... they observe. I have a great
+deal of liberty, to have so many chains; we all have, in this house:
+and though the liberty has melancholy motives, it saves some daily
+torment, and _I_ do not complain of it for one.
+
+May God bless you! Do not forget me. Say how you are. What good can I
+do you with all my thoughts, when you keep unwell? See!--Facts are
+against fancies. As when I would not have the lamp lighted yesterday
+because it seemed to make it later, and you proved directly that it
+would not make it _earlier_, by getting up and going away!
+
+                                        Wholly and ever your
+
+                                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                          [Post-mark, November 28, 1845.][1]
+
+Take it, dearest; what I am forced to think you mean--and take _no
+more_ with it--for I gave all to give long ago--I am all yours--and
+now, _mine_; give me _mine_ to be happy with!
+
+You will have received my note of yesterday.--I am glad you are
+satisfied with Miss Bayley, whom I, too, thank ... that is, sympathize
+with, ... (not wonder at, though)--for her intention.... Well, may it
+all be for best--here or at Pisa, you are my blessing and life.
+
+... How all considerate you are, _you_ that are the kind, kind one!
+The post arrangement I will remember--to-day, for instance, will this
+reach you at 8? I shall be with you then, in thought. 'Forget
+you!'--_What_ does that mean, dearest?
+
+And I might have stayed longer and you let me go. What does _that_
+mean, also tell me? Why, I make up my mind to go, always, like a man,
+and praise myself as I get through it--as when one plunges into the
+cold water--ONLY ... ah, _that_ too is no more a merit than any other
+thing I do ... there is the reward, the last and best! Or is it the
+'lure'?
+
+I would not be ashamed of my soul if it might be shown you,--it is
+wholly grateful, conscious of you.
+
+But another time, do not let me wrong myself _so_! Say, 'one minute
+more.'
+
+On Monday?--I am _much_ better--and, having got free from an
+engagement for Saturday, shall stay quietly here and think the post
+never intending to come--for you will not let me wait longer?
+
+Shall I dare write down a grievance of my heart, and not offend you?
+Yes, trusting in the right of my love--you tell me, sweet, here in the
+letter, 'I do not look so well'--and sometimes, I 'look better' ...
+_how do you know_? When I first saw you--_I saw your eyes_--since
+then, _you_, it should appear, see mine--but I only _know_ yours are
+there, and have to use that memory as if one carried dried flowers
+about when fairly inside the garden-enclosure. And while I resolve,
+and hesitate, and resolve again to complain of this--(kissing your
+foot ... not boldly complaining, nor rudely)--while I have this on my
+mind, on my heart, ever since that May morning ... can it be?
+
+--No, nothing _can be_ wrong now--you will never call me 'kind' again,
+in that sense, you promise! Nor think 'bitterly' of my kindness, that
+word!
+
+Shall I _see_ you on Monday?
+
+God bless you my dearest--I see her now--and _here_ and _now_ the eyes
+open, wide _enough_, and I will kiss them--_how_ gratefully!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         R.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: Envelope endorsed by E.B.B. 'hair.']
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, December 1, 1845.]
+
+It comes at eight o'clock--the post says eight ... _I_ say nearer half
+past eight ... it _comes_--and I thank you, thank you, as I can. Do
+you remember the purple lock of a king on which hung the fate of a
+city? _I_ do! And I need not in conscience--because this one here did
+not come to me by treason--'ego et rex meus,' on the contrary, do
+fairly give and take.
+
+I meant at first only to send you what is in the ring ... which, by
+the way, will not fit you I know--(not certainly in the finger which
+it was meant for ...) as it would not Napoleon before you--but can
+easily be altered to the right size.... I meant at first to send you
+only what was in the ring: but your fashion is best so you shall have
+it both ways. Now don't say a word on Monday ... nor at all. As for
+the ring, recollect that I am forced to feel blindfold into the outer
+world, and take what is nearest ... by chance, not choice ... or it
+might have been better--a little better--perhaps. The _best_ of it is
+that it's the colour of your blue flowers. Now you will not say a
+word--I trust to you.
+
+It is enough that you should have said these others, I think. Now _is_
+it just of you? isn't it hard upon me? And if the charge is true,
+whose fault is it, pray? I have been ashamed and vexed with myself
+fifty times for being so like a little girl, ... for seeming to have
+'affectations'; and all in vain: 'it was stronger than I,' as the
+French say. And for _you_ to complain! As if Haroun Alraschid after
+cutting off a head, should complain of the want of an
+obeisance!--Well!--I smile notwithstanding. Nobody can help
+smiling--both for my foolishness which is great, I confess, though
+somewhat exaggerated in your statement--(because if it was quite as
+bad as you say, you know, I never should have _seen you_ ... and _I
+have_!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very
+preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you
+know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No--it has not
+been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with
+both eyes wide open--only that by a supernatural influence they won't
+stay open with _you_ as they are used to do with other people ... so
+now I tell you. And for the rest I promise nothing at all--as how can
+I, when it is quite beyond my control--and you have not improved my
+capabilities ... do you think you have? Why what nonsense we have come
+to--we, who ought to be 'talking Greek!' said Mr. Kenyon.
+
+Yes--he came and talked of you, and told me how you had been speaking
+of ... me; and I have been thinking how I should have been proud of it
+a year ago, and how I could half scold you for it now. Ah yes--and Mr.
+Kenyon told me that you had spoken exaggerations--such
+exaggerations!--Now should there not be some scolding ... some?
+
+But how did you expect Mr. Kenyon to 'wonder' at _you_, or be 'vexed'
+with _you_? That would have been strange surely. You are and always
+have been a chief favourite in that quarter ... appreciated, praised,
+loved, I think.
+
+While I write, a letter from America is put into my hands, and having
+read it through with shame and confusion of face ... not able to help
+a smile though notwithstanding, ... I send it to you to show how you
+have made me behave!--to say nothing of my other offences to the kind
+people at Boston--and to a stray gentleman in Philadelphia who is to
+perform a pilgrimage next year, he says, ... to visit the Holy Land
+and your E.B.B. I was naughty enough to take _that_ letter to be a
+circular ... for the address of various 'Europ_a_ians.' In any case
+... just see how I have behaved! and if it has not been worse than ...
+not opening one's eyes!--Judge. Really and gravely I am ashamed--I
+mean as to Mr. Mathews, who has been an earnest, kind friend to
+me--and I do mean to behave better. I say _that_ to prevent your
+scolding, you know. And think of Mr. Poe, with that great Roman
+justice of his (if not rather American!), dedicating a book to one and
+abusing one in the preface of the same. He wrote a review of me in
+just that spirit--the two extremes of laudation and reprehension,
+folded in on one another. You would have thought that it had been
+written by a friend and foe, each stark mad with love and hate, and
+writing the alternate paragraphs--a most curious production indeed.
+
+And here I shall end. I have been waiting ... waiting for what does
+not come ... the ring ... sent to have the hair put in; but it won't
+come (now) until too late for the post, and you must hear from me
+before Monday ... you ought to have heard to-day. It has not been my
+fault--I have waited. Oh these people--who won't remember that it is
+possible to be out of patience! So I send you my letter now ... and
+what is in the paper now ... and the rest, you shall have after
+Monday. And you _will not say a word_ ... not then ... not at all!--I
+trust you. And may God bless you.
+
+If ever you care less for me--I do not say it in distrust of you ... I
+trust you wholly--but you are a man, and free to care less, ... and if
+ever you _do_ ... why in that case you will destroy, burn, ... do all
+but send back ... enough is said for you to understand.
+
+May God bless you. You are _best_ to me--best ... as I see ... in the
+world--and so, dearest aright to
+
+                                                 Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Finished on Saturday evening. Oh--this thread of silk--And to post!!
+After all you must wait till Tuesday. I have no silk within reach and
+shall miss the post. Do forgive me.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                           Saturday Evening.
+
+This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a
+few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ...
+and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk
+if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks
+meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ...
+fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of
+my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper
+fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after
+unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!)--and now I have
+silk to tie fast with ... to tie a 'nodus' ... 'dignus' of the
+celestial interposition--and a new packet shall be ready to go to you
+directly.
+
+At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me
+this week, was forgotten, (not by _me_) forgotten, and detained, so,
+from the post--a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to
+me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.
+
+For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to
+stay. In the first place you were keeping your father 'in a maze,' as
+you said yourself--and then, even without that, I never know what
+o'clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a
+dream--which I do--time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go
+forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I
+leave it in the drawer--and the clocks all round strike out of
+hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another
+in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.
+
+Till Monday then! I send the 'Ricordi' to take care of the rest ... of
+mine. It is a touching story--and there is an impracticable nobleness
+from end to end in the spirit of it. How _slow_ (to the ear and mind)
+that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet
+Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli's prose can walk and strike
+as well as float and faint.
+
+The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps--
+
+Now you will not say a word. My excuse is that you had nothing to
+remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how
+much too much!
+
+                                      If I could be too much
+
+                                           Your
+
+                                                E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday.
+                              [Post-mark, December 2, 1845.]
+
+I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My
+love--no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to
+the end of it the vibration now struck will extend--I will live and
+die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair--comforting me,
+blessing me.
+
+Let me write to-morrow--when I think on all you have been and are to
+me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper
+words that come seem vainer than ever--To-morrow I will write.
+
+May God bless you, my own, my precious--
+
+                                           I am all your own
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger
+_you_ intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one
+is less liable to observation and comment.
+
+Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say
+anything?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]
+
+See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a
+good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it
+well done, or badly--there are you, leading me up and onward, in his
+review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go
+together--be read together. In itself this is nothing to _you_, dear
+poet--but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has
+pleased me very much--_does_ it not please you?--I thought I was to
+figure in that cold _Quarterly_ all by myself, (for he writes for
+it)--but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has
+no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are
+pleased!
+
+There was no writing yesterday for me--nor will there be much to-day.
+In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what
+you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise--at others, I
+rest on you, and feel _all_ well, all _best_ ... now, for one
+instance, even that phrase of the _possibility_ 'and what is to
+follow,'--even _that_ I cannot except against--I am happy, contented;
+too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just
+sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping
+of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'Yes--I do promise
+you'--yet it is some solace to--No--I will _not_ even couple the
+promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they
+care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts:
+yet I feel so sure of _you_, so safe and confident in you! If any of
+it had been _my_ work, my own ... distrust and foreboding had pursued
+me from the beginning; but all is _yours_--you crust me round with
+gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you
+transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first
+instance, but the choice once made!... So I rest on you, for life, for
+death, beloved--beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct
+miraculous gift of God to me--that is my solemn belief; may I be
+thankful!
+
+I am anxious to hear from you ... when am I not?--but _not_ before the
+American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the
+visitor on Monday--and if &c. _what_ did he remark?--And what is
+right or wrong with Saturday--is it to be mine?
+
+Bless you, dearest--now and for ever--words cannot say how much I am
+your own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
+
+No Mr. Kenyon after all--not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at
+the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter
+from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come--but she
+won't come on Saturday.... I shall 'provide'--she may as well (and
+better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr.
+Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to
+dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up
+suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter
+_our_ arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by,
+remember, and there's a Saturday to follow Monday ... and I should
+understand at a word, or apart from a word.
+
+Just as _you_ understand how to 'take me with guile,' when you tell me
+that anything in me can have any part in making you happy ... you, who
+can say such words and call them 'vain words.' Ah, well! If I only
+knew certainly, ... more certainly than the thing may be known by
+either me or you, ... that nothing in me could have any part in making
+you _un_happy, ... ah, would it not be enough ... _that_ knowledge ...
+to content me, to overjoy me? but _that_ lies too high and out of
+reach, you see, and one can't hope to get at it except by the ladder
+Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate
+of Heaven afterwards.
+
+_Wednesday._--In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and
+am promised another to-day. How ... I was going to say 'kind' and
+pull down the thunders ... how _un_kind ... will _that_ do? ... how
+good you are to me--how dear you must be! Dear--dearest--if I feel
+that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain
+knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman,
+can I help it? no--certainly.
+
+I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand
+you, ... comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and
+combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better
+otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the ... I mean that to
+understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own
+favour ... mine.
+
+Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold,
+you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by
+the roadside [Greek: apedilos] like the startled sea nymph in
+Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a
+certain tract of ground--never takes a step there unled! and never (I
+write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of
+your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the
+possibility of your caring _more_ for me ... never! That you should
+_continue_ to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction.
+So, when you spoke of a 'strengthened feeling,' judge how I listened
+with my heart--judge!
+
+'Luria' is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the
+world; that, I foresee.... And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which
+grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its
+own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with
+Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more
+pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be
+chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the
+versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a
+few lines here and there. But I shall write more of 'Luria,'--and
+well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.
+
+May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly.
+Yes,--I thought of the greater safety from 'comment'--it is best in
+every way.
+
+I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to
+me,
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
+
+Why of course I am pleased--I should have been pleased last year, for
+the vanity's sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as
+that vice of vanity goes ... shall I tell you?... I would infinitely
+prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude,
+and supremacy, apart from me or any one else, ... this, as far as my
+vice of vanity goes, ... and because, vainer I am of my poet than of
+my poems ... _pour cause_. But since, according to the _Quarterly_
+régime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am
+glad, pleased, that it should be with myself:--and since I was to be
+there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with
+_you_,--oh, of course I am pleased!--I am pleased that the 'names
+should be read together' as you say, ... and am happily safe from the
+apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about 'my leading _you_'
+&c. ... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea's
+occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I
+'find fault' with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an
+ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!)
+_can_ it be 'to your surprise?' _can_ it? Ought you to say such
+things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and
+inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The
+qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what
+you take it to be--we had better not examine it too nearly. You never
+will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those
+words--and not any in their likeness.
+
+Also ... nothing is _my_ work ... if you please! What an omen you take
+in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it--for
+everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God's work and
+yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope--and indeed I exclaim to
+myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems
+to me (as I say over and over ... I say it to my own thoughts
+oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, ...
+the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and
+only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.
+
+Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it
+was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and
+took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before
+he went. I answered with my usual 'no,' like a wild Indian--whereupon
+he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation ...
+'mortification' was one of the words used, I remember, ... that I grew
+ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or
+six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well!--he never came.
+Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and
+had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and
+quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me
+for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the
+punishment effective, ... for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt
+my danger to be passed--and now of course, I have no scruples.... I
+may be as capricious as I please, ... may I not? Not that I ask you.
+It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with
+Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world
+with those two. Only the miracle is that _you_ should be behind the
+enclosure--within it ... and so!--
+
+_That_ is _my_ side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder, ...
+as _I_ see it!--But there are greater things than these.
+
+Speaking of the portrait of you in the 'Spirit of the Age' ... which
+is not like ... no!--which has not your character, in a line of it ...
+something in just the forehead and eyes and hair, ... but even _that_,
+thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you...!
+speaking of that portrait ... shall I tell you?--Mr. Horne had the
+goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads
+which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed
+after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau's
+... because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some
+kind letters--and for the rest, Wordsworth's, Carlyle's, Tennyson's
+and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of
+shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed
+at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ...
+(there is the nail, under Wordsworth--) and then pulled down
+Tennyson's in a fit of justice,--because I would not have his hung up
+and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the
+drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find
+and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my
+'absurdity' to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being
+obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening
+the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like--and I
+knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, 'Rather
+like!'
+
+By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not
+come: when he told me that he could not see me 'for a week or a
+fortnight,' he meant it, I suppose.
+
+So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America--the
+letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.
+
+It is not so much a look of 'ferocity,' ... as you say, ... in that
+head, as of _expression by intention_. Several people have said of it
+what nobody would say of you ... 'How affected-looking.' Which is too
+strong--but it is not like you, in any way, and there's the truth.
+
+So until Saturday. I read 'Luria' and feel the life in him. But _walk_
+and do not _work_! do you?
+
+                                                 Wholly your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
+
+Well, I did see your brother last night ... and very wisely neither
+spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that 'I hoped
+you were well'--from the sudden feeling that I must say _something_ of
+you--not pretend indifference about you _now_ ... and from the
+impossibility of saying the _full_ of what I might; because other
+people were by--and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied
+the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So,
+you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But
+it all hangs together; speaking of you,--to you,--writing to you--all
+is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to
+say and to write--or is it not the natural consequence? If these
+vehicles of feelings sufficed--_there_ would be the end!--And that my
+feeling for you should end!... For the rest, the headache which kept
+away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is
+unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable
+endeavours, all my power of face went _à qui de droit_--
+
+Did your brother tell you ... yes, I think ... of the portentous book,
+lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on
+the appearance of 'Ion'?--But how under the B's in the Index came
+'Miss Barrett' and, woe's me, 'R.B.'! I don't know when I have had so
+ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly _forgotten_ letter, in the
+as thoroughly disused hand-writing, in the ... I fear ... still as
+completely obsolete feeling--no, not so bad as that--but at first
+there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend--it is
+truly not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold
+them up clean and dry as if they came _so_ from all you now see, which
+is nothing at all ... like the Chinese Air-plant! Do you understand
+this? And surely 'Ion' is a _very_, very beautiful and noble
+conception, and finely executed,--a beautiful work--what has come
+after, has lowered it down by grade after grade ... it don't stand
+apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is _built up_ to by other
+attempts; but the great difference is in myself. Another maker of
+another 'Ion,' finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not
+find _that me_, so to be behaved to, so to be honoured--though he
+should have all the good will! Ten years ago!
+
+And ten years hence!
+
+Always understand that you do _not_ take me as I was at the beginning
+... with a crowd of loves to give to _something_ and so get rid of
+their pain and burden. I have _known_ what that ends in--a handful of
+anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach
+you its nature, as well as whole heaps--and I know what most of the
+pleasures of this world are--so that I _can_ be surer of myself, and
+make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of
+objects of admiration or ambition _yet_ to become acquainted with. You
+say, 'I am a man and may change'--I answer, yes--but, while I hold my
+senses, only change for the _presumable_ better ... not for the
+_experienced worst_.
+
+Here is my Uncle's foot on the stair ... his knock hurried the last
+sentence--here he is by me!--Understand what this would have led to,
+how you would have been _proved logically_ my own, best, extreme want,
+my life's end--YES; dearest! Bless you ever--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
+
+Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for
+the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered
+how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the
+lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the
+going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together,
+which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose.
+Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be
+unnecessarily 'perplext in the extreme' where to spend the time before
+... _five_, ... shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I
+can easily explain if an observation should be made ... only it will
+not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the
+head of the house, not until seven ... as I told you. George thought
+it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd's yesterday, just to see the
+author of 'Paracelsus' dance the Polka ... should I not tell you?
+
+I am vexed by another thing which he tells _me_--vexed, if amused a
+little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the
+'Autography'--now _isn't_ it absurd? And for neither you nor George to
+have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd
+too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now,
+I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately
+repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when
+I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr.
+Serjeant Talfourd sent then his 'Ion' to _me_, he did it in mere
+good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my
+'Prometheus' at the moment, and of course caring no more for my
+'opinion' than for the rest of me--and it was excessively bad taste in
+me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I
+had been competent to say it. Ah well!--you see how it is, and that I
+am vexed _you_ should have read it, ... as George says you did ... he
+laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by
+crying aloud against the editor of the 'Autography'! Surely such a
+thing was never done before ... even by an author in the last stage of
+a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of
+conventional flatteries, ... lettered in so many volumes, bound in
+green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one's own
+particular private public,--is it not a miracle of vanity ... neither
+more nor less?
+
+I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity
+... _mine_!) to send Landor's verses to America ... yours--so they
+will be in the American papers.... I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking
+to him of your last number of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' and the verses
+came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first
+time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of
+you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure
+disinterestedness, ... purely because your name belonged to my country
+and to her literature, ... and how I have a sort of reward at this
+present, in being able to write what I please without anyone's saying
+'it is a new fancy.' As for the Americans, they have 'a zeal without
+knowledge' for poetry. There is more love for _verse_ among them than
+among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their
+choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is
+said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep
+down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to
+understand _you_ sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the
+critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort
+in these questions is, that there can be _no_ question, except between
+the sooner and the later--a little sooner, and a little later: but
+when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to
+ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his
+waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question ... and I like that--do
+not _you_?
+
+_Monday._--Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a
+finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in
+disavowing our own letters of old on 'Ion'--Mr. Talfourd's collection
+goes to prove too much, I think--and you, a little too much, when you
+draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes--I
+perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards
+a 'presumably better' thing--but I do not so well understand how any
+presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, ... I do not
+indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you
+seen the 'unicorns'?--Which is only a pebble thrown down into your
+smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of
+it. And as to the 'Ion' letters, I am delighted that you have anything
+to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play--there
+is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, ... and
+if he had never written another to show what was _not_ in him, this
+might have been 'predicated' of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a
+noble work--and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your
+letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances,
+would have been less noble yourself not to have done so--only, how I
+agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry
+roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste--now isn't it? ...
+though you do not use that word.
+
+I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have
+something to tell you, of him at least.
+
+And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me,
+and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not
+been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment,
+inasmuch as _he knew perfectly that you had just left me_. My sisters
+told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off
+on Saturday, with a, ... '_So_ I am to meet Mr. Browning?' But he made
+no observation afterwards--none: and if he heard what you said at all
+(which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on
+'Yorick's' part when the 'last chapter' was too much with him.
+
+I have written about 'Luria' in another place--you shall have the
+papers when I have read through the play. How different this living
+poetry is from the polished rhetoric of 'Ion.' The man and the statue
+are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing--it is
+here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of '_taste_,' but of
+sight and feeling.
+
+As to the 'Venice' it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical
+sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say
+more?--of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception.
+Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and
+the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.
+
+Do not write 'Luria' if your head is uneasy--and you cannot say that
+it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do
+what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be
+tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the
+necessary exercise ... this, you will do--I entreat you to do it.
+
+May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I
+say ... as I am yours--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]
+
+Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did _not_ read _either_ of
+your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read
+one word of them--and hear why. When your brother and I took the book
+between us in wonderment at the notion--we turned to the index, in
+large text-hand, and stopped at 'Miss B.'--and _he_ indeed read them,
+or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my
+short-sighted eye--all _I_ saw was the _faint_ small characters--and,
+do you know ... I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor
+a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said
+was most unfairly exposed to view!--so I was silent, and lost you (in
+that)--then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of
+vexation it would give you. _All_ I know of the notes, that _one_ is
+addressed to Talfourd in the third person--and when I had run through
+my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR)--I was sick of the book altogether.
+You are generous to me--but, to say the truth, I might have remembered
+the most justifying circumstance in my case ... which was, that my own
+'Paracelsus,' printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure
+as 'Ion' a brilliant success--for, until just before.... Ah, really I
+forget!--but I know that until Forster's notice in the _Examiner_
+appeared, _every_ journal that thought worth while to allude to the
+poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think,
+with the _Athenæum_ which _then_ made haste to say, a few days after
+its publication, 'that it was not without talent but spoiled by
+obscurity and only an imitation of--Shelley'!--something to this
+effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their 'Library
+Table' notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of
+what the 'craft' had in store for me--since my publisher and I had
+fairly to laugh at _his_ 'Book'--(quite of another kind than the
+Serjeant's)--in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers
+and the like--seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied
+with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went:
+but Forster's notice altered a good deal--which I have to recollect
+for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so
+_utter_--you remember the world's-wonder 'Ion' made,--that I was
+determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I
+really _was not_--and so!--
+
+But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing
+me good for another than yours?
+
+Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily
+over it? _Why_ must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else
+did or could, to do well--concern yourself with what might be done by
+any good, kind ministrant _only_ fit for such offices? Not that I
+_feel_, even, more bound to you for them--they have their weight, I
+_know_ ... but _what_ weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do
+not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: _you_ know me!--and
+_they_ know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of
+what _you_ are to me--if you ... well, but that _will_ follow; if I do
+greater things one day--what shall they serve for, what range
+themselves under of right?--
+
+Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems--and, I believe, a
+newspaper, 'when time was,' about the 'Blot in the Scutcheon'--and
+also, through Moxon--(I _believe_ it was Mr. M.)--a proposition for
+reprinting--to which I assented of course--and there was an end to the
+matter.
+
+And might I have stayed _till five_?--dearest, I will never ask for
+more than you give--but I feel every single sand of the gold showers
+... spite of what I say above! I _have_ an invitation for Thursday
+which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such
+liberty)--but _now_....
+
+Something I will _say_! 'Polka,' forsooth!--one lady whose _head_
+could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!--But I talked a
+little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that
+he is yours.
+
+So, _Thursday_,--thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go
+out. This week I have done nothing to 'Luria'--is it that my _ring_ is
+gone? There surely _is_ something to forgive in me--for that shameful
+business--or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you _did_
+forgive me.
+
+                         God bless my own, only love--ever--
+
+                              Yours wholly
+
+                                   R.B.
+
+N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript
+wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in
+shape--cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did
+my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly
+_compartmented_, to have always about him, so that the _next such coin
+he picked_ up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place
+of safety ... his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the
+same. I saw the box--and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.
+
+_Parallel._ R.B. having found an unicorn....
+
+Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for
+more--having exhausted my stock.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Evening
+                             [Post-mark, December 10, 1845.]
+
+It was right of you to write ... (now see what jangling comes of not
+using the fit words.... I said 'right,' not to say 'kind') ... right
+of you to write to me to-day--and I had begun to be disappointed
+already because the post _seemed_ to be past, when suddenly the knock
+brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not 'kind' ...
+then _kindest_ ... will that do better? Perhaps.
+
+Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again--and
+I, I answered at random ... 'at the end of the week--Thursday or
+Friday'--which did not prevent another question about 'what we were
+consulting about.' He said that he 'must have you,' and had written to
+beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring
+something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days
+with him. Oh, my disingenuousness!--Then he talked again of 'Saul.' A
+true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he
+says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his
+dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it
+reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl
+and life. Quite ill he took it of me the 'not expecting him to like it
+so much' and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt
+it), that I 'never understood anybody to have any sensibility except
+myself.' Wasn't it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has
+caught some sort of evil spirit from your 'Saul' perhaps; though
+admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do _you_
+remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and
+that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a
+great lyrical work--now remember. And forget 'Luria' ... if you are
+better forgetting. And forget _me_ ... _when_ you are happier
+forgetting. I say _that_ too.
+
+So your idea of an unicorn is--one horn broken off. And you a
+poet!--one horn broken off--or hid in the blackthorn hedge!--
+
+Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when
+they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the
+thunder-cloud! I don't remember the _Athenæum_, but can well believe
+that it said what you say. The _Athenæum_ admires only what gods, men
+and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity--mark it, as a
+general rule! The good, they see--the great escapes them. Dare to
+breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and
+you are 'put down' and instructed how to be like other people. By the
+way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write
+'peoples,' on pain of writing what is obsolete--and these the teachers
+of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of
+it? An imitation of Shelley!--when if 'Paracelsus' was anything it was
+the expression of a new mind, as all might see--as _I_ saw, let me be
+proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by 'Ion.'
+
+Ah, indeed if I could 'rake and hoe' ... or even pick up weeds along
+the walk, ... which is the work of the most helpless children, ... if
+I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for
+'shining' ... shining ... when there is not so much light in me as to
+do 'carpet work' by, why let anyone in the world, _except you_, tell
+me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied
+astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a
+dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so.--
+
+And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will
+not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having
+come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do
+not hear from her, and my precautions are 'watched out,' May God bless
+you always.
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+But no--I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except
+in _me_, for not being right in my meaning?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 12, 1845.]
+
+And now, my heart's love, I am waiting to hear from you; my heart is
+_full_ of you. When I try to remember what I said yesterday, _that_
+thought, of what fills my heart--only _that_ makes me bear with the
+memory.... I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words _must_
+have come _from_ thence if not bearing up to you all that is
+there--and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and
+forgive, and _wait_ for the one day which I will never say to myself
+cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel--more of it--or _some_ of
+it--for now nothing is spoken.
+
+My all-beloved--
+
+Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I
+spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly
+_expect_ of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as
+was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name _any_ conditions
+possible for a human will to submit to--there is no imaginable
+condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully
+bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this--but so, also
+do you know _more_ ... and yet 'I may tire of you'--'may forget you'!
+
+I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the
+things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride
+in you--that nothing _but_ that love could balance that pride--and
+that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as
+well; yes, my own--I shall follow your fame,--and, better than fame,
+the good you do--in the world--and, if you please, it shall all be
+mine--as your hand, as your eyes--
+
+I will write and pray it from you into a promise ... and your promises
+I live upon.
+
+May God bless you! your R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Friday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 13, 1845.]
+
+Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a
+day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when
+I cannot help it ... always when I cannot help it--you could not
+blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is
+distrust, it is not of _you_, dearest of all!--but of myself
+rather:--it is not doubt _of_ you, but _for_ you. From the beginning I
+have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits
+fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having
+known me:--it is for _you_ I fear, whenever I fear:--and if you were
+less to me, ... _should_ I fear do you think?--if you were to me only
+what I am to myself for instance, ... if your happiness were only as
+precious as my own in my own eyes, ... should I fear, do you think,
+_then_? Think, and do not blame me.
+
+To tell you to 'forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you,'
+... (was it not _that_, I said?) proved more affection than might go
+in smoother words.... I could prove the truth of _that_ out of my
+heart.
+
+And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine--my fear will not
+cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all
+to me ... all: more than I used to take for all when I looked round
+the world, ... almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams.
+You stand in between me and not merely the living who stood closest,
+but between me and the closer graves, ... and I reproach myself for
+this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different
+thing.
+
+As to unfavourable influences, ... I can speak of them quietly, having
+foreseen them from the first, ... and it is true, I have been thinking
+since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here,
+and _should_, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power
+would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two
+affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties,
+I feel, ... since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all.
+For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil,--ah, you
+do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the
+side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder--and
+I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with--it is
+impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing
+and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved
+enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the
+meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so
+many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors,
+but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure:--and then, the
+one person, by a curious anomaly, _never_ draws an inference of this
+order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand,
+point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours--and so it is,
+at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.
+
+I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with
+your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I
+cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be
+grateful to you.--
+
+But for the paper--no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a
+prepared apology for something wrong. And besides--the apology would
+be nothing but the offence in another form--unless you said it was all
+a mistake--(_will_ you, again?)--that it was all a mistake and you
+were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said _that_, it would
+be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than
+nothing: and would not save me--which you were thinking of, I
+know--would not save me the least of the stripes. For
+'conditions'--now I will tell you what I said once in a jest....
+
+'If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal
+descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of
+good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other'--?
+
+'Why even _then_,' said my sister Arabel, 'it would not _do_.' And she
+was right, and we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of
+the will--and one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor
+Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible
+natures, which hers is indeed; beginning with implicit obedience, and
+ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where
+money is wanted, and where the dependence is total--see! And when
+once, in the case of the one dearest to me; when just at the last he
+was involved in the same grief, and I attempted to make over my
+advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know--_I_ did not
+want the money, and could buy nothing with it so good as his
+happiness,--) why then, my hands were seized and tied--and then and
+there, in the midst of the trouble, came the end of all! I tell you
+all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you
+before? But there is no danger at present--and why ruffle this present
+with disquieting thoughts? Why not leave that future to itself? For
+me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly ... so calmly as
+to surprise myself at intervals--and yet I know the reason of the
+calmness well.
+
+For Mr. Kenyon--dear Mr. Kenyon--he will speak the softest of words,
+if any--only he will think privately that you are foolish and that I
+am ungenerous, but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.
+
+There is another thing, of more consequence than _his_ thoughts, which
+is often in my mind to ask you of--but there will be time for such
+questions--let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be
+ill again you will be reasonable and we both must submit to God's
+necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being
+ill, if I can help it--and in the case of a tolerably mild winter, and
+with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me--and
+then I have sunshine from _you_, which is better than Pisa's.
+
+And what more would you say? Do I not hear and understand! It seems to
+me that I do both, or why all this wonder and gratitude? If the
+devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear, ...
+would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps--but not gift enough.
+
+May God bless you always.
+
+I have put _some_ of the hair into a little locket which was given to
+me when I was a child by my favourite uncle, Papa's only brother, who
+used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, and
+was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am
+richer than my sisters--through him and his mother--and a great grief
+it was and trial, when he died a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by
+his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once
+said to me: 'Do you beware of ever loving!--If you do, you will not do
+it half: it will be for life and death.'
+
+So I put the hair into his locket, which I wear habitually, and which
+never had hair before--the natural use of it being for perfume:--and
+this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a
+prophecy.
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Monday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, December 15, 1845.]
+
+Every word you write goes to my heart and lives there: let us live so,
+and die so, if God will. I trust many years hence to begin telling you
+what I feel now;--that the beam of the light will have _reached_
+you!--meantime it _is_ here. Let me kiss your forehead, my sweetest,
+dearest.
+
+Wednesday I am waiting for--how waiting for!
+
+After all, it seems probable that there was no intentional mischief in
+that jeweller's management of the ring. The divided gold must have
+been exposed to fire--heated thoroughly, perhaps,--and what became of
+the contents then! Well, all is safe now, and I go to work again of
+course. My next act is just done--that is, _being_ done--but, what I
+did not foresee, I cannot bring it, copied, by Wednesday, as my sister
+went this morning on a visit for the week.
+
+On the matters, the others, I will not think, as you bid me,--if I can
+help, at least. But your kind, gentle, good sisters! and the provoking
+sorrow of the _right_ meaning at bottom of the wrong doing--wrong to
+itself and its plain purpose--and meanwhile, the real tragedy and
+sacrifice of a life!
+
+If you should see Mr. Kenyon, and can find if he will be disengaged on
+Wednesday evening, I shall be glad to go in that case.
+
+But I have been writing, as I say, and will leave off this, for the
+better communing with you. Don't imagine I am unwell; I feel quite
+well, but a little tired, and the thought of you waits in such
+readiness! So, may God bless you, beloved!
+
+                                           I am all your own
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 16, 1845.]
+
+Mr. Kenyon has not come--he does not come so often, I think. Did he
+_know_ from _you_ that you were to see me last Thursday? If he did it
+might be as well, do you not think? to go to him next week. Will it
+not seem frequent, otherwise? But if you did _not_ tell him of
+Thursday distinctly (_I_ did not--remember!), he might take the
+Wednesday's visit to be the substitute for rather than the successor
+of Thursday's: and in that case, why not write a word to him yourself
+to propose dining with him as he suggested? He really wishes to see
+you--of that, I am sure. But you will know what is best to do, and he
+may come here to-morrow perhaps, and ask a whole set of questions
+about you; so my right hand may forget its cunning for any good it
+does. Only don't send messages by _me_, please!
+
+How happy I am with your letter to-night.
+
+When I had sent away my last letter I began to remember, and could not
+help smiling to do so, that I had totally forgotten the great subject
+of my 'fame,' and the oath you administered about it--totally! Now how
+do you read that omen? If I forget myself, who is to remember me, do
+you think?--except _you_?--which brings me where I would stay.
+Yes--'yours' it must be, but _you_, it had better be! But, to leave
+the vain superstitions, let me go on to assure you that I did mean to
+answer that part of your former letter, and do mean to behave well and
+be obedient. Your wish would be enough, even if there could be
+likelihood without it of my doing nothing ever again. Oh, certainly I
+have been idle--it comes of lotus-eating--and, besides, of sitting too
+long in the sun. Yet 'idle' may not be the word! silent I have been,
+through too many thoughts to speak just _that_!--As to writing letters
+and reading manuscripts' filling all my time, why I must lack 'vital
+energy' indeed--you do not mean seriously to fancy such a thing of me!
+For the rest.... Tell me--Is it your opinion that when the apostle
+Paul saw the unspeakable things, being snatched up into the third
+Heavens 'whether in the body or out of the body he could not
+tell,'--is it your opinion that, all the week after, he worked
+particularly hard at the tent-making? For my part, I doubt it.
+
+I would not speak profanely or extravagantly--it is not the best way
+to thank God. But to say only that I was in the desert and that I am
+among the palm-trees, is to say nothing ... because it is easy to
+_understand how_, after walking straight on ... on ... furlong after
+furlong ... dreary day after dreary day, ... one may come to the end
+of the sand and within sight of the fountain:--there is nothing
+miraculous in _that_, you know!
+
+Yet even in that case, to doubt whether it may not all be _mirage_,
+would be the natural first thought, the recurring dream-fear! now
+would it not? And you can reproach me for _my_ thoughts, as if _they_
+were unnatural!
+
+Never mind about the third act--the advantage is that you will not
+tire yourself perhaps the next week. What gladness it is that you
+should really seem better, and how much better _that_ is than even
+'Luria.'
+
+Mrs. Jameson came to-day--but I will tell you.
+
+May God bless you now and always.
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, December 17, 1845.]
+
+Henrietta had a note from Mr. Kenyon to the effect that he was 'coming
+to see _Ba_' to-day if in any way he found it possible. Now he has not
+come--and the inference is that he will come to-morrow--in which case
+you will be convicted of not wishing to be with him perhaps. So ...
+would it not be advisable for you to call at his door for a
+moment--and _before_ you come here? Think of it. You know it would not
+do to vex him--would it?
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, December 19, 1845.]
+
+I ought to have written yesterday: so to-day when I need a letter and
+get none, there is my own fault besides, and the less consolation. A
+letter from you would light up this sad day. Shall I fancy how, if a
+letter lay _there_ where I look, rain might fall and winds blow while
+I listened to you, long after the _words_ had been laid to heart? But
+here you are in your place--with me who am your own--your own--and so
+the rhyme joins on,
+
+    She shall speak to me in places lone
+    With a low and holy tone--
+    Ay: when I have lit my lamp at night
+    She shall be present with my sprite:
+    And I will say, whate'er it be,
+    Every word she telleth me!
+
+Now, is that taken from your book? No--but from _my_ book, which holds
+my verses as I write them; and as I open it, I read that.
+
+And speaking of verse--somebody gave me a few days ago that Mr.
+Lowell's book you once mentioned to me. Anyone who 'admires' _you_
+shall have my sympathy at once--even though he _do_ change the
+laughing wine-_mark_ into a 'stain' in that perfectly beautiful
+triplet--nor am I to be indifferent to his good word for myself
+(though not very happily connected with the criticism on the epithet
+in that 'Yorkshire Tragedy'--which has better things, by the
+way--seeing that 'white boy,' in old language, meant just 'good boy,'
+a general epithet, as Johnson notices in the life of Dryden, whom the
+schoolmaster Busby was used to class with his 'white boys'--this is
+hypercriticism, however). But these American books should not be
+reprinted here--one asks, what and where is the class to which they
+address themselves? for, no doubt, we have our congregations of
+ignoramuses that enjoy the profoundest ignorance imaginable on the
+subjects treated of; but _these_ are evidently not the audience Mr.
+Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting
+to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be
+found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there
+resting--vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a
+knot--which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man
+brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or
+a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all the old stocks go
+on growing again--but here, with us, whoever _wanted_ Chaucer, or
+Chapman, or Ford, got him long ago--what else have Lamb, and
+Coleridge, and Hazlitt and Hunt and so on to the end of their
+generations ... what else been doing this many a year? What one
+passage of all these, cited with the very air of a Columbus, but has
+been known to all who know anything of poetry this many, many a year?
+The others, who don't know anything, are the stocks that have got to
+_shoot_, not climb higher--_compost_, they want in the first place!
+Ford's and Crashaw's rival Nightingales--why they have been
+dissertated on by Wordsworth and Coleridge, then by Lamb and Hazlitt,
+then worked to death by Hunt, who printed them entire and quoted them
+to pieces again, in every periodical he was ever engaged upon; and yet
+after all, here 'Philip'--'must read' (out of a roll of dropping
+papers with yellow ink tracings, so old!) something at which 'John'
+claps his hands and says 'Really--that these ancients should own so
+much wit &c.'! The _passage_ no longer looks its fresh self after this
+veritable passage from hand to hand: as when, in old dances, the belle
+began the figure with her own partner, and by him was transferred to
+the next, and so to the next--_they_ ever _beginning_ with all the old
+alacrity and spirit; but she bearing a still-accumulating weight of
+tokens of gallantry, and none the better for every fresh pushing and
+shoving and pulling and hauling--till, at the bottom of the room--
+
+To which Mr. Lowell might say, that--No, I will say the true thing
+against myself--and it is, that when I turn from what is in my mind,
+and determine to write about anybody's book to avoid writing that I
+love and love and love again my own, dearest love--because of the
+cuckoo-song of it,--_then_, I shall be in no better humour with that
+book than with Mr. Lowell's!
+
+But I _have_ a new thing to say or sing--you never before heard me
+love and bless and send my heart after--'Ba'--did you? Ba ... and
+that is you! I TRIED ... (more than _wanted_) to call you _that_, on
+Wednesday! I have a flower here--rather, a tree, a mimosa, which must
+be turned and turned, the side to the light changing in a little time
+to the _leafy_ side, where all the fans lean and spread ... so I turn
+your name to me, that side I have not last seen: you cannot tell how I
+feel glad that you will not part with the name--Barrett--seeing you
+have two of the same--and must always, moreover, remain my EBB!
+
+Dearest 'E.B.C.'--no, no! and so it will never be!
+
+Have you seen Mr. Kenyon? I did not write ... knowing that such a
+procedure would draw the kind sure letter in return, with the
+invitation &c., as if I had asked for it! I had perhaps better call on
+him some morning very early.
+
+Bless you, my own sweetest. You will write to me, I know in my heart!
+
+                                     Ever may God bless you!
+
+                                          R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+
+Dearest, you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never
+think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it
+either; I simply understand that you _are_ my happiness, and that
+therefore you could not make another happiness for me, such as would
+be worth having--not even _you_! Why, how could you? _That_ was in my
+mind to speak yesterday, but I could not speak it--to write it, is
+easier.
+
+Talking of happiness--shall I tell you? Promise not to be angry and I
+will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered myself
+wholly, I should choose to die this winter--now--before I had
+disappointed you in anything. But because you are better and dearer
+and more to be considered than I, I do _not_ choose it. I _cannot_
+choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of its being a less
+pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps (who can say?), if I
+should prove the burden of your life.
+
+For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with
+others--as with the extravagance yesterday--and seriously--_too_
+seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past--I am
+frightened, I tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know
+myself, what can save me, do you think, from disappointing and
+displeasing you? I ask the question, and find no answer.
+
+It is a poor answer, to say that I can do one thing well ... that I
+have one capacity largely. On points of the general affections, I have
+in thought applied to myself the words of Mme. de Stael, not
+fretfully, I hope, not complainingly, I am sure (I can thank God for
+most affectionate friends!) not complainingly, yet mournfully and in
+profound conviction--those words--'_jamais je n'ai pas été aimée comme
+j'aime_.' The capacity of loving is the largest of my powers I
+think--I thought so before knowing you--and one form of feeling. And
+although any woman might love you--_every_ woman,--with understanding
+enough to discern you by--(oh, do not fancy that I am unduly
+magnifying mine office) yet I persist in persuading myself that!
+Because I have the capacity, as I said--and besides I owe more to you
+than others could, it seems to me: let me boast of it. To many, you
+might be better than all things while one of all things: to me you are
+instead of all--to many, a crowning happiness--to me, the happiness
+itself. From out of the deep dark pits men see the stars more
+gloriously--and _de profundis amavi_--
+
+It is a very poor answer! Almost as poor an answer as yours could be
+if I were to ask you to teach me to please you always; or rather, how
+not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you--what if all those
+things were in my fate?
+
+And--(to begin!)--_I_ am disappointed to-night. I expected a letter
+which does not come--and I had felt so sure of having a letter
+to-night ... unreasonably sure perhaps, which means doubly sure.
+
+_Friday._--Remember you have had two notes of mine, and that it is
+certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.
+
+Scarcely you had gone on Wednesday when Mr. Kenyon came. It seemed
+best to me, you know, that you should go--I had the presentiment of
+his footsteps--and so near they were, that if you had looked up the
+street in leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told
+him of your having been here and also at his house; whereupon he
+enquired eagerly if you meant to dine with him, seeming disappointed
+by my negative. 'Now I had told him,' he said ... and murmured on to
+himself loud enough for me to hear, that 'it would have been a
+peculiar pleasure &c.' The reason I have not seen him lately is the
+eternal 'business,' just as you thought, and he means to come 'oftener
+now,' so nothing is wrong as I half thought.
+
+As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking what
+sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most
+particularly admire--sulkiness?--the divine gift of sitting aloof in a
+cloud like any god for three weeks together perhaps--pettishness? ...
+which will get you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one
+either? obstinacy?--which is an agreeable form of temper I can assure
+you, and describes itself--or the good open passion which lies on the
+floor and kicks, like one of my cousins?--Certainly I prefer the last,
+and should, I think, prefer it (as an evil), even if it were not the
+born weakness of my own nature--though I humbly confess (to _you_, who
+seem to think differently of these things) that never since I was a
+child have I upset all the chairs and tables and thrown the books
+about the room in a fury--I am afraid I do not even 'kick,' like my
+cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the 'light of other
+days'--not a very full light, I used to be accustomed to think:--but
+_you_,--_you_ think otherwise, _you_ take a fury to be the opposite of
+'indifference,' as if there could be no such thing as self-control!
+Now for my part, I do believe that the worst-tempered persons in the
+world are less so through sensibility than selfishness--they spare
+nobody's heart, on the ground of being themselves pricked by a straw.
+Now see if it isn't so. What, after all, is a good temper but
+generosity in trifles--and what, without it, is the happiness of life?
+We have only to look round us. I _saw_ a woman, once, burst into
+tears, because her husband cut the bread and butter too thick. I saw
+_that_ with my own eyes. Was it _sensibility_, I wonder! They were at
+least real tears and ran down her cheeks. 'You _always_ do it'! she
+said.
+
+Why how you must sympathize with the heroes and heroines of the French
+romances (_do_ you sympathize with them very much?) when at the
+slightest provocation they break up the tables and chairs, (a degree
+beyond the deeds of my childhood!--_I_ only used to upset them) break
+up the tables and chairs and chiffoniers, and dash the china to atoms.
+The men _do_ the furniture, and the women the porcelain: and pray
+observe that they always set about this as a matter of course! When
+they have broken everything in the room, they sink down quite (and
+very naturally) _abattus_. I remember a particular case of a hero of
+Frederic Soulié's, who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a
+chair _unconsciously_, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then
+proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!--the clearest idea this excites in
+_me_, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of
+upholstery. Because--just consider for yourself--how _you_ would
+succeed in breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were
+properly put together--as stools are in England--just yourself,
+without a hammer and a screw! You might work at it _comme quatre_, and
+find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then as a demonstration, a
+child of six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) and
+be whipped accordingly.
+
+How I go on writing!--and you, who do not write at all!--two extremes,
+one set against the other.
+
+But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know is
+just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that
+I am glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I
+never was called Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, and I
+accept the omen. So little it seems my name that if a voice said
+suddenly 'Elizabeth,' I should as soon turn round as my sisters would
+... no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want
+of euphony ... _Ba_ ... now and then it has--and Mr. Boyd makes a
+compromise and calls me _Elibet_, because nothing could induce him to
+desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a _Ba_. So I
+am glad, and accept the omen.
+
+But I give you no credit for not thinking that I may forget you ... I!
+As if you did not see the difference! Why, _I_ could not even forget
+to _write_ to _you_, observe!--
+
+Whenever you write, say how you are. Were you wet on Wednesday?
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+
+I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever 'making you happy'--I
+can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to
+my own truest, only true happiness--yet in every such effort there is
+implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of
+it at all? _You_ it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be:
+YOU--dearest!
+
+But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert
+to _that_ frightful wish. 'Disappoint me?' 'I speak what I know and
+testify what I have seen'--you shall 'mystery' again and again--I do
+not dispute that, but do not _you_ dispute, neither, that mysteries
+are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part
+of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that
+fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and
+esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops
+short of accounting for _that_, whatever else it would account for,
+because I do this, in pure logical justice--_you_ are able to turn and
+wonder (if you _do ... now_) what causes it all! My love, only wait,
+only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little,
+become known to you--after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I
+_would_ say _this_ now--but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my
+sweetest--ever, love, I am your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+But my letter came last night, did it not?
+
+Another thing--no, _to-morrow_--for time presses, and, in all cases,
+_Tuesday_--remember!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+
+I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote
+that you had 'forgotten to write,' I did not mean it; not a word! If I
+had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been
+better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before
+writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes
+people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots
+tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.
+
+How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is
+graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he
+knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has
+merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading
+in that direction is an article in the _Retrospective Review_ which
+contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the
+quotations, and, 'a pede Herculem,' from the foot infers the man, or
+rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul
+of the man--it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative
+conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up
+his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious
+proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why
+a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a 'Young Ladies' academy'
+here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better
+information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review!
+And then, Mr. Lowell's naïveté in showing his authority,--as if the
+Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible manuscript somewhere
+below the lowest deep of Shakespeare's grave,--is curious beyond the
+rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of
+America. As you say, their books do not suit us:--Mrs. Markham might
+as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If
+they _knew_ more they could not give parsley crowns to their own
+native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs.
+Sigourney has just sent me--just this morning--her 'Scenes in my
+Native Land' and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet
+Hillhouse, of 'sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,' standing in 'the
+temple of Fame' as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he
+is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as
+flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as
+transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if
+not a poet--and certainly this little book we are talking of is
+grateful enough in some ways--you would call it a _pretty book_--would
+you not? Two or three letters I have had from him ... all very
+kind!--and _that_ reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingratitude on
+my own part! When one's conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing
+for it but to throw it away!--
+
+Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how
+you would not let me?
+
+Mr. Mathews said of _him_, having met him once in society, that he was
+the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then
+they seem to be on better terms.
+
+Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B._C._? _your_ meaning, I mean?
+
+My true initials are E.B.M.B.--my long name, as opposed to my short
+one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett!--there's a full length
+to take away one's breath!--Christian name ... Elizabeth
+Barrett:--surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it
+portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it
+closely, ... and of forgetting that I was a _Moulton_, altogether. One
+might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our
+family-name is _Moulton Barrett_, and my brothers reproach me
+sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk
+with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds' Office. As if I
+cared for the _Retrospective Review_! Nevertheless it is true that I
+would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer
+lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from
+generation to generation!--I seem to hear the 'Commination Service.'
+
+May God bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world!--
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Mr. Dickens's 'Cricket' sings repetitions, and, with considerable
+beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of
+his most successful productions, though quite free from what was
+reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.
+
+You do not say how you are--not a word! And you are wrong in saying
+that you 'ought to have written'--as if 'ought' could be in place
+_so_! You _never 'ought' to write to me you know_! or rather ... if
+you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of
+mysteries on my part!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, December 22, 1845.]
+
+Now, '_ought_' you to be 'sorry you sent that letter,' which made, and
+makes me so happy--so happy--can you bring yourself to turn round and
+tell one you have so blessed with your bounty that there was a
+mistake, and you meant only half that largess? If you are not sensible
+that you _do_ make me most happy by such letters, and do not warm in
+the reflection of your own rays, then I _do_ give up indeed the last
+chance of procuring _you_ happiness. My own 'ought,' which you object
+to, shall be withdrawn--being only a pure bit of selfishness; I felt,
+in missing the letter of yours, next day, that I _might_ have drawn it
+down by one of mine,--if I had begged never so gently, the gold would
+have fallen--_there_ was my omitted duty to myself which you properly
+blame. I should stand silently and wait and be sure of the
+ever-remembering goodness.
+
+Let me count my gold now--and rub off any speck that stays the full
+shining. First--_that thought_ ... I told you; I pray you, pray you,
+sweet--never that again--or what leads never so remotely or indirectly
+to it! On _your own fancied ground_, the fulfilment would be of
+necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am
+yours for ever--if you are not _here_, with me--what then? Say, you
+take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, _that_
+defeats every kind purpose ... as if you cut away all the ground from
+my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room ... why still, I
+_stand_ there--and is it the better that I have no broader space,
+when off _that_ you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge
+of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,--on that, I
+can live my life--but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous
+creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life--to
+extend life and deepen it--as you do, and will do. Oh, _how_ I love
+you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to
+me--how, meaning and willing to _give_, you gave _nobly_! Do you think
+I have not seen in this world how women who _do_ love will manage to
+confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how
+much alloy such pure gold as _your_ love would have rendered
+endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what
+but this makes me confident and happy? _Can_ I take a lesson by your
+fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw
+all the world--the worthier, better men there ... those who would' &c.
+&c. No, I think of the great, dear _gift_ that it was; how I '_won_'
+NOTHING (the hateful word, and _French_ thought)--did nothing by my
+own arts or cleverness in the matter ... so what pretence have the
+_more_ artful or more clever for:--but I cannot write out this
+folly--I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of gratitude--to say
+I would give you my life joyfully is little.... I would, I hope, do
+that for two or three other people--but I am not conscious of any
+imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self
+to you--be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be
+spoken of--let me _live_ it into proof, beloved!
+
+And for 'disappointment and a burden' ... now--let us get quite away
+from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the _cords_
+of love with the world's horny eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then?
+Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep
+passion for society? 'Have they common sympathy in each other's
+pursuits?'--always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew
+me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with God's help to write what
+may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me
+or no? Do you _not_ help me so much that, if you saw the more likely
+peril for poor human nature, you would say, 'He will be jealous of all
+the help coming from me,--none from him to me!'--And _that would_ be a
+consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any
+one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being
+_transcended_ and the _blest_ one.
+
+But--'here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed'--I will speak of
+other things. When we are together one day--the days I believe in--I
+mean to set about that reconsidering 'Sordello'--it has always been
+rather on my mind--but yesterday I was reading the 'Purgatorio' and
+the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me
+with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose
+and fate in my own poem--see; one of the burthened, contorted souls
+tells Virgil and Dante--
+
+    Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
+    E _peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora_:
+    QUIVI--_lume del ciel ne fece accorti
+    Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
+    Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
+    Che del disio di se veder n'accora._[1]
+
+Which is just my Sordello's story ... could I '_do_' it off hand, I
+wonder--
+
+    And sinners were we to the extreme hour;
+    _Then_, light from heaven fell, making us aware,
+    So that, repenting us and pardoned, out
+    Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him
+    Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see.
+
+There were many singular incidents attending my work on that
+subject--thus, quite at the end, I found out there _was printed_ and
+not published, a little historical tract by a Count V---- something,
+called 'Sordello'--with the motto 'Post fata resurgam'! I hope he
+prophesied. The main of this--biographical notices--is extracted by
+Muratori, I think. Last year when I set foot in Naples I found after a
+few minutes that at some theatre, that night, the opera was to be 'one
+act of Sordello' and I never looked twice, nor expended a couple of
+carlines on the _libretto_!
+
+I wanted to tell you, in last letter, that when I spoke of people's
+tempers _you_ have no concern with 'people'--I do not glance obliquely
+at _your_ temper--either to discover it, or praise it, or adapt myself
+to it. I speak of the relation one sees in other cases--how one
+opposes passionate foolish people, but hates cold clever people who
+take quite care enough of themselves. I myself am born supremely
+passionate--so I was born with light yellow hair: all changes--that is
+the passion changes its direction and, taking a channel large enough,
+looks calmer, perhaps, than it should--and all my sympathies go with
+quiet strength, of course--but I know what the other kind is. As for
+the breakages of chairs, and the appreciation of Parisian _meubles_;
+manibus, pedibusque descendo in tuam sententiam, Ba, mi ocelle! ('What
+was E.B. C?' why, the first letter after, and _not_, E.B. _B_, my own
+_B_! There was no latent meaning in the C--but I had no inclination to
+go on to D, or E, for instance).
+
+And so, love, Tuesday is to be our day--one day more--and then! And
+meanwhile '_care_' for me! a good word for you--but _my_ care, what is
+that! One day I aspire to _care_, though! I shall not go away at any
+dear Mr. K.'s coming! They call me down-stairs to supper--and my fire
+is out, and you keep me from feeling cold and yet ask if I am well?
+Yes, well--yes, happy--and your own ever--I must bid God bless
+you--dearest!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Purg.' v. 52 7.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Sunday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, December 24, 1845.]
+
+But did I dispute? Surely not. Surely I believe in you and in
+'mysteries.' Surely I prefer the no-reason to ever so much rationalism
+... (rationalism and infidelity go together they say!). All which I
+may do, and be afraid sometimes notwithstanding, and when you
+overpraise me (_not_ over_love_) I must be frightened as I told you.
+
+It is with me as with the theologians. I believe in you and can be
+happy and safe _so_; but when my 'personal merits' come into question
+in any way, even the least, ... why then the position grows untenable:
+it is no more 'of grace.'
+
+Do I tease you as I tease myself sometimes? But do not wrong me in
+turn! Do not keep repeating that 'after long years' I shall know
+you--know you!--as if I did not without the years. If you are forced
+to refer me to those long ears, I must deserve the thistles besides.
+The thistles are the corollary.
+
+For it is obvious--manifest--that I cannot doubt of you, that I may
+doubt of myself, of happiness, of the whole world,--but of
+_you_--_not_: it is obvious that if I could doubt of you and _act so_
+I should be a very idiot, or worse indeed. And _you_ ... you think I
+doubt of you whenever I make an interjection!--now do you not? And is
+it reasonable?--Of _you_, I mean?
+
+_Monday._--For my part, you must admit it to be too possible that you
+may be, as I say, 'disappointed' in me--it _is_ too possible. And if
+it does me good to say so, even now perhaps ... if it is mere weakness
+to say so and simply torments you, why do _you_ be magnanimous and
+forgive _that_ ... let it pass as a weakness and forgive it _so_.
+Often I think painful things which I do not tell you and....
+
+While I write, your letter comes. Kindest of you it was, to write me
+such a letter, when I expected scarcely the shadow of one!--this makes
+up for the other letter which I expected unreasonably and which you
+'_ought not_' to have written, as was proved afterwards. And now why
+should I go on with that sentence? What had I to say of 'painful
+things,' I wonder? all the painful things seem gone ... vanished. I
+forget what I had to say. Only do you still think of this, dearest
+beloved; that I sit here in the dark but for _you_, and that the light
+you bring me (from _my_ fault!--from the nature of _my_ darkness!) is
+not a settled light as when you open the shutters in the morning, but
+a light made by candles which burn some of them longer and some
+shorter, and some brighter and briefer, at once--being 'double-wicks,'
+and that there is an intermission for a moment now and then between
+the dropping of the old light into the socket and the lighting of the
+new. Every letter of yours is a new light which burns so many hours
+... and _then_!--I am morbid, you see--or call it by what name you
+like ... too wise or too foolish. 'If the light of the body is
+darkness, how great is that darkness.' Yet even when I grow too wise,
+I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all. And I am
+never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own
+sake--only for yours:--not for my own sake, since I am content to owe
+all things to you.
+
+And it could be so much to you to lose me!--and you say so,--and
+_then_ think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought! As
+if _that_ were possible! Do you remember what you said once of the
+flowers?--that you 'felt a respect for them when they had passed out
+of your hands.' And must it not be so with my life, which if you
+choose to have it, must be respected too? Much more with my life!
+Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of
+the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now--quite otherwise. I
+did not like it at first to be so much otherwise. And I could not have
+had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old
+motives, but simply to escape the 'risk' I told you of. Should I have
+said to you instead of it ... '_Love me for ever_'? Well then, ... I
+_do_.
+
+As to my 'helping' you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on
+with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as
+deeds. We _have_ sympathy too--we walk one way--oh, I do not forget
+the advantages. Only Mrs. Tomkins's ideas of happiness are below my
+ambition for you.
+
+So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I
+should be more exacting than any other woman--so often I have said it:
+and so different everything is from what I thought it would be!
+Because if I am exacting it is for _you_ and not for _me_--it is
+altogether for _you_--you understand _that_, dearest of all ... it is
+for _you wholly_. It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even,
+the question whether I may be happy so and so--_I_. It is the other
+question which comes always--too often for peace.
+
+People used to say to me, 'You expect too much--you are too romantic.'
+And my answer always was that 'I could not expect too much when I
+expected nothing at all' ... which was the truth--for I never thought
+(and how often I have _said that_!) I never thought that anyone whom
+_I_ could love, would stoop to love _me_ ... the two things seemed
+clearly incompatible to my understanding.
+
+And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking
+twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or _horn_.
+You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion--illusion
+for you,--illusion for me as a consequence. But how natural.
+
+It is true of me--very true--that I have not a high appreciation of
+what passes in the world (and not merely the Tomkins-world!) under the
+name of love; and that a distrust of the thing had grown to be a habit
+of mind with me when I knew you first. It has appeared to me, through
+all the seclusion of my life and the narrow experience it admitted
+of, that in nothing men--and women too--were so apt to mistake their
+own feelings, as in this one thing. Putting _falseness_ quite on one
+side, quite out of sight and consideration, an honest mistaking of
+feeling appears wonderfully common, and no mistake has such frightful
+results--none can. Self-love and generosity, a mistake may come from
+either--from pity, from admiration, from any blind impulse--oh, when I
+look at the histories of my own female friends--to go no step further!
+And if it is true of the _women_, what must the other side be? To see
+the marriages which are made every day! worse than solitudes and more
+desolate! In the case of the two happiest I ever knew, one of the
+husbands said in confidence to a brother of mine--not much in
+confidence or I should not have heard it, but in a sort of smoking
+frankness,--that he had 'ruined his prospects by marrying'; and the
+other said to himself at the very moment of professing an
+extraordinary happiness, ... 'But I should have done as well if I had
+not married _her_.'
+
+Then for the falseness--the first time I ever, in my own experience,
+heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on
+(on some hands!)--it was from a man of whose attentions to another
+woman I was at that _time her confidante_. I was bound so to silence
+for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in
+me--and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror ... a
+terror--for I was very young then, and the world did, at the moment,
+look ghastly!
+
+The falseness and the calculations!--why how can you, who are _just_,
+_blame women_ ... when you must know what the 'system' of man is
+towards them,--and of men not ungenerous otherwise? Why are women to
+be blamed if they act as if they had to do with swindlers?--is it not
+the mere instinct of preservation which makes them do it? These make
+women what they are. And your 'honourable men,' the most loyal of
+them, (for instance) is it not a rule with them (unless when taken
+unaware through a want of self-government) to force a woman (trying
+all means) to force a woman to stand committed in her affections ...
+(they with their feet lifted all the time to trample on her for want
+of delicacy) before _they_ risk the pin-prick to their own personal
+pitiful vanities? Oh--to see how these things are set about by _men_!
+to see how a man carefully holding up on each side the skirts of an
+embroidered vanity to keep it quite safe from the wet, will contrive
+to tell you in so many words that he ... might love you if the sun
+shone! And women are to be blamed! Why there are, to be sure, cold and
+heartless, light and changeable, ungenerous and calculating women in
+the world!--that is sure. But for the most part, they are only what
+they are made ... and far better than the nature of the making ... of
+that I am confident. The loyal make the loyal, the disloyal the
+disloyal. And I give no more discredit to those women you speak of,
+than I myself can take any credit in this thing--I. Because who could
+be disloyal with _you_ ... with whatever corrupt inclination? _you_,
+who are the noblest of all? If you judge me so, ... it is my privilege
+rather than my merit ... as I feel of myself.
+
+_Wednesday._--All but the last few lines of all this was written
+before I saw you yesterday, ever dearest--and since, I have been
+reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both
+in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on
+triumphantly ... to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the
+language is freer--there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm.
+It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the
+interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I
+guess--which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor,
+noble Luria, who will be equal to the leap ... as it is easy to see.
+It is full, altogether, of magnanimities;--noble, and nobly put. I
+will go on with my notes, and those, you shall have at once ... I mean
+together ... presently. And don't hurry and chafe yourself for the
+fourth act--now that you are better! To be ill again--think what that
+would be! Luria will be great now whatever you do--or whatever you do
+_not_. Will he not?
+
+And never, never for a moment (I quite forgot to tell you) did I fancy
+that you were talking at _me_ in the temper-observations--never. It
+was the most unprovoked egotism, all that I told you of my temper; for
+certainly I never suspected you of asking questions so. I was simply
+amused a little by what you said, and thought to myself (if you _will_
+know my thoughts on that serious subject) that you had probably lived
+among very good-tempered persons, to hold such an opinion about the
+innocuousness of ill-temper. It was all I thought, indeed. Now to
+fancy that I was capable of suspecting you of such a manoeuvre! Why
+you would have _asked_ me directly;--if you had wished 'curiously to
+enquire.'
+
+An excellent solemn chiming, the passage from Dante makes with your
+'Sordello,' and the 'Sordello' _deserves_ the labour which it needs,
+to make it appear the great work it is. I think that the principle of
+association is too subtly in movement throughout it--so that _while_
+you are going straight forward you go at the same time round and
+round, until the progress involved in the motion is lost sight of by
+the lookers on. Or did I tell you that before?
+
+You have heard, I suppose, how Dickens's 'Cricket' sells by nineteen
+thousand copies at a time, though he takes Michael Angelo to be 'a
+humbug'--or for 'though' read 'because.' Tell me of Mr. Kenyon's
+dinner and Moxon?
+
+Is not this an infinite letter? I shall hear from you, I hope.... I
+_ask_ you to let me hear soon. I write all sorts of things to you,
+rightly and wrongly perhaps; when wrongly forgive it. I think of you
+always. May God bless you. 'Love me for ever,' as
+
+                                                   Your
+
+                                                        _Ba_
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                           25th Dec. [1845.]
+
+My dear Christmas gift of a letter! I will write back a few lines,
+(all I can, having to go out now)--just that I may forever,--certainly
+during our mortal 'forever'--mix my love for you, and, as you suffer
+me to say, your love for me ... dearest! ... these shall be mixed with
+the other loves of the day and live therein--as I write, and trust,
+and know--forever! While I live I will remember what was my feeling in
+reading, and in writing, and in stopping from either ... as I have
+just done ... to kiss you and bless you with my whole heart.--Yes,
+yes, bless you, my own!
+
+All is right, all of your letter ... admirably right and just in the
+defence of the women I _seemed_ to speak against; and only
+seemed--because that is a way of mine which you must have observed;
+that foolish concentrating of thought and feeling, for a moment, on
+some one little spot of a character or anything else indeed, and in
+the attempt to do justice and develop whatever may seem ordinarily to
+be overlooked in it,--that over vehement _insisting_ on, and giving an
+undue prominence to, the same--which has the effect of taking away
+from the importance of the rest of the related objects which, in
+truth, are not considered at all ... or they would also rise
+proportionally when subjected to the same (that is, correspondingly
+magnified and dilated) light and concentrated feeling. So, you
+remember, the old divine, preaching on 'small sins,' in his zeal to
+expose the tendencies and consequences usually made little account of,
+was led to maintain the said small sins to be 'greater than great
+ones.' _But then_ ... if you look on the world _altogether_, and
+accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater
+... things do not look _quite_ so bad; because the conduct which _is_
+atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, _may_ be
+no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in
+certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly
+less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, exchange (counting
+spiritual gifts as only coin, for our purpose), but surely the
+formalities and policies and decencies all vary with the nature of the
+thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life
+to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl--[he] gets witnesses and
+testimony and so forth--but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges
+are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all
+words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on
+the counter. If instead of diamonds you want--(being a king or
+queen)--provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more
+diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to--high motives
+_supposed_, at all events--whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave
+to black your shoe in the dusty street 'purely for the honour of
+serving your Excellency' you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself
+without a 'grano' or two--(six of which, about, make a farthing)--Now
+do you not see! Where so little is to be got, why offer much more? If
+a man knows that ... but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in
+Benedick's phrase, 'the world must go on.' He who honestly wants his
+wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his
+_help-meat_ (not 'help mete for him')--he shall assuredly find a girl
+of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to
+mortify, who _would_ be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that
+man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead
+of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a 'Every Lady
+Her Own _Market-Woman_, Being a Table of' &c. &c.--_then_, I say he
+is--
+
+Bless you, dearest--the clock strikes--and time is none--but--bless
+you!
+
+                                               Your own R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday 4. p.m.
+                             [Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
+
+I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning--and now I
+have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves. I hoped to
+return from Town earlier. But I can say something--and Monday will
+make amends.
+
+'For ever' and for ever I _do_ love you, dearest--love you with my
+whole heart--in life, in death--
+
+Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon's--who had a little to forgive in my slack
+justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind
+self--and I went, also, to Moxon's--who said something about my
+number's going off 'rather heavily'--so let it!
+
+Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to 'acts' first or
+last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. _Let_ me get done
+with these, and better things will follow.
+
+Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest--I have you ever in my thoughts--And
+on Monday, remember, I am to see you.
+
+                                               Your own R.B.
+
+See what I cut out of a _Cambridge Advertiser_[1] of the 24th--to make
+you laugh!
+
+[Footnote 1: The cutting enclosed is:--'A Few Rhymes for the Present
+Christmas' by J. Purchas, Esq., B.A. It is headed by several
+quotations, the first of which is signed 'Elizabeth B. Barrett:'
+
+    'This age shows to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
+    Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.'
+
+This is followed by extracts from Pindar, 'Lear,' and the Hon. Mrs.
+Norton.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
+
+Yes, indeed, I have 'observed that way' in you, and not once, and not
+twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,--and almost every
+time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the
+reflection that _that_ is the way for making all sorts of mistakes
+dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way!--the
+highway.
+
+For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the
+truth--as partial truth:--I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I
+am not apt to be extravagant in my _esprit de sexe_: the Martineau
+doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember,
+like a woman--most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But
+we are not on that ground now--we are on ground worth holding a brief
+for!--and when women fail _here_ ... it is not so much our fault.
+Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.
+
+It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your 'Luria,' this third
+act, of the worth of a woman's sympathy,--indeed of the exquisite
+double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be
+better, I think, than this:--
+
+    To the motive, the endeavour,--the heart's self--
+    Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
+    The soul of the purpose ere 'tis shaped as act,
+    Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king;
+
+except the characterizing of the 'learned praise,' which comes
+afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to
+you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of
+the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could
+be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal
+only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside!
+You shall tell Mr. Forster so.
+
+And speaking of 'Luria,' which grows on me the more I read, ... how
+fine he is when the doubt breaks on him--I mean, when he begins ...
+'Why then, all is very well.' It is most affecting, I think, all that
+process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which
+at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that
+he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is
+managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....
+
+               ... 'so slight, so slight,
+    And yet it tells you they are dead and gone'--
+
+And then, the direct approach....
+
+    You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
+    What is it in your eyes?--
+
+Do you not feel it to be success, ... '_you_ now?' _I_ do, from my low
+ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the
+manner in which he _stands_, facing it, ... I admire it all
+thoroughly. Braccio's vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too
+_poetically_ subtle for the man--but nobody could have the heart to
+wish a line of it away--_that_ would be too much for critical virtue!
+
+I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were
+so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me
+keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which
+never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!
+
+Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least
+crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to
+listen to,--remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another
+Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say _that_ every
+time, and you will please to remember it--Eccellenza!--
+
+                                         May God bless you--
+
+                                              Your
+
+                                                   E.B.B.
+
+From the _New Monthly Magazine_. 'The admirers of Robert Browning's
+poetry, and they are now very numerous, will be glad to hear of the
+issue by Mr. Moxon of a seventh series of the renowned "Bells" and
+delicious "Pomegranates," under the title of "Dramatic Romances and
+Lyrics."'
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 30, 1845.]
+
+When you are gone I find your flowers; and you never spoke of nor
+showed them to me--so instead of yesterday I thank you to-day--thank
+you. Count among the miracles that your flowers live with me--I accept
+_that_ for an omen, dear--dearest! Flowers in general, all other
+flowers, die of despair when they come into the same atmosphere ...
+used to do it so constantly and observably that it made me melancholy
+and I left off for the most part having them here. Now you see how
+they put up with the close room, and condescend to me and the dust--it
+is true and no fancy! To be sure they know that I care for them and
+that I stand up by the table myself to change their water and cut
+their stalk freshly at intervals--_that_ may make a difference
+perhaps. Only the great reason must be that they are yours, and that
+you teach them to bear with me patiently.
+
+Do not pretend even to misunderstand what I meant to say yesterday of
+dear Mr. Kenyon. His blame would fall as my blame of myself has
+fallen: he would say--will say--'it is ungenerous of her to let such a
+risk be run! I thought she would have been more generous.' There, is
+Mr. Kenyon's opinion as I foresee it! Not that it would be spoken, you
+know! he is too kind. And then, he said to me last summer, somewhere
+_à propos_ to the flies or butterflies, that he had 'long ceased to
+wonder at any extreme of foolishness produced by--_love_.' He will of
+course think you very very foolish, but not ungenerously foolish like
+other people.
+
+Never mind. I do not mind indeed. I mean, that, having said to myself
+worse than the worst perhaps of what can be said against me by any who
+regard me at all, and feeling it put to silence by the fact that you
+_do_ feel so and so for me; feeling that fact to be an answer to
+all,--I cannot mind much, in comparison, the railing at second remove.
+There will be a nine days' railing of it and no more: and if on the
+ninth day you should not exactly wish never to have known me, the
+better reason will be demonstrated to stand with us. On this one point
+the wise man cannot judge for the fool his neighbour. If you _do_ love
+me, the inference is that you would be happier with than without
+me--and whether you do, you know better than another: so I think of
+_you_ and not of _them_--always of _you_! When I talked of being
+afraid of dear Mr. Kenyon, I just meant that he makes me nervous with
+his all-scrutinizing spectacles, put on for great occasions, and his
+questions which seem to belong to the spectacles, they go together
+so:--and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the
+spectacles. My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look
+for me) would be the old child's way of getting behind the window
+curtains or under the sofa:--and even _that_ might not be effectual if
+I had recourse to it now. Do you think it would? Two or three times I
+fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something--but if he ever _did_, his
+only reproof was a reduplicated praise of _you_--he praises you always
+and in relation to every sort of subject.
+
+What a _misomonsism_ you fell into yesterday, you who have much great
+work to do which no one else can do except just yourself!--and you,
+too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work,
+with the principle of life in it, _will_ live, let it be trampled ever
+so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation--yes, that
+it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart
+of a rock. All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said ...
+by prompting the foremost rows ... by tradition and translation:--all,
+_except_ poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own
+song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have
+stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the [Greek:
+stoa] like the conversation-teachers. So much I have to say to you,
+till we are in the Siren's island--and _I_, jealous of the Siren!--
+
+    The Siren waits thee singing song for song,
+
+says Mr. Landor. A prophecy which refuses to class you with the 'mute
+fishes,' precisely as I do.
+
+And are you not my 'good'--all my good now--my only good ever? The
+Italians would say it better without saying more.
+
+I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her
+long silence by the supposition,--put lately to an end by scarcely
+credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says--that I was out of
+England; gone to the South from the 20th of September. She calls
+herself the strongest of women, and talks of 'walking fifteen miles
+one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,'--also
+of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued
+alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting
+well by such unlawful means. And she is to write again to tell me of
+Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile--all
+very kind.
+
+So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so 'against the
+principles of universal justice.' Yes, very unjust--very unfair it
+was--only, you make me do just as you like in everything. Now confess
+to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt
+against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim,
+oh 'son of humanity.' Think how much more need of a letter _I_ have
+than you can have; and that if you have a giant's power, ''tis
+tyrannous to use it like a giant.' Who would take tribute from the
+desert? How I grumble. _Do_ let me have a letter directly! remember
+that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait 'as those who
+watch for the morning'--'lux mea!'
+
+May God bless you--and mind to say how you are _exactly_, and don't
+neglect the walking, _pray_ do not.
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+And after all, those women! A great deal of doctrine commends and
+discommends itself by the delivery: and an honest thing may be said so
+foolishly as to disprove its very honesty. Now after all, what did she
+mean by that very silly expression about books, but that she did not
+feel as she considered herself capable of feeling--and that else but
+_that_ was the meaning of the other woman? Perhaps it should have been
+spoken earlier--nay, clearly it should--but surely it was better
+spoken even in the last hour than not at all ... surely it is always
+and under all circumstances, better spoken at whatever cost--I have
+thought so steadily since I could think or feel at all. An entire
+openness to the last moment of possible liberty, at whatever cost and
+consequence, is the most honourable and most merciful way, both for
+men and women! perhaps for men in an especial manner. But I shall send
+this letter away, being in haste to get change for it.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Wednesday, December 31, 1845.
+
+I have been properly punished for so much treachery as went to that
+re-urging the prayer that _you_ would begin writing, when all the time
+(after the first of those words had been spoken which bade _me_ write)
+I was full of purpose to send my own note last evening; one which
+should do its best to thank you: but see, the punishment! At home I
+found a note from Mr. Horne--on the point of setting out for Ireland,
+too unwell to manage to come over to me; anxious, so he said, to see
+me before leaving London, and with only Tuesday or to-day to allow the
+opportunity of it, if I should choose to go and find him out. So I
+considered all things and determined to go--but not till so late did I
+determine on Tuesday, that there was barely time to get to
+Highgate--wherefore no letter reached you to beg pardon ... and now
+this undeserved--beyond the usual undeservedness--this
+last-day-of-the-Year's gift--do you think or not think my gratitude
+weighs on me? When I lay this with the others, and remember what you
+have done for me--I do bless you--so as I cannot but believe must
+reach the all-beloved head all my hopes and fancies and cares fly
+straight to. Dearest, whatever change the new year brings with it, we
+are together--I can give you no more of myself--indeed, you give me
+now (back again if you choose, but changed and renewed by your
+possession) the powers that seemed most properly mine. I could only
+mean that, by the expressions to which you refer--only could mean that
+you were my crown and palm branch, now and for ever, and so, that it
+was a very indifferent matter to me if the world took notice of that
+fact or no. Yes, dearest, that _is_ the meaning of the prophecy, which
+I was stupidly blind not to have read and taken comfort from long ago.
+You ARE the veritable Siren--and you 'wait me,' and will sing 'song
+for song.' And this is my first song, my true song--this love I bear
+you--I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that
+name--love. I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me:
+they are not earnest enough; so far, not true enough--but this is all
+the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your
+feet.
+
+Now let me say it--what you are to remember. That if I had the
+slightest doubt, or fear, I would utter it to you on the
+instant--secure in the incontested stability of the main _fact_, even
+though the heights at the verge in the distance should tremble and
+prove vapour--and there would be a deep consolation in your
+forgiveness--indeed, yes; but I tell you, on solemn consideration, it
+does seem to me that--once take away the broad and general words that
+admit in their nature of any freight they can be charged with,--put
+aside love, and devotion, and trust--and _then_ I seem to have said
+_nothing_ of my feeling to you--nothing whatever.
+
+I will not write more now on this subject. Believe you are my blessing
+and infinite reward beyond possible desert in intention,--my life has
+been crowned by you, as I said!
+
+May God bless you ever--through you I shall be blessed. May I kiss
+your cheek and pray this, my own, all-beloved?
+
+I must add a word or two of other things. I am very well now, quite
+well--am walking and about to walk. Horne, or rather his friends,
+reside in the very lane Keats loved so much--Millfield Lane. Hunt lent
+me once the little copy of the first Poems dedicated to him--and on
+the title-page was recorded in Hunt's delicate characters that 'Keats
+met him with this, the presentation-copy, or whatever was the odious
+name, in M---- Lane--called Poets' Lane by the gods--Keats came
+running, holding it up in his hand.' Coleridge had an affection for
+the place, and Shelley '_knew_' it--and I can testify it is green and
+silent, with pleasant openings on the grounds and ponds, through the
+old trees that line it. But the hills here are far more open and wild
+and hill-like; not with the eternal clump of evergreens and thatched
+summer house--to say nothing of the 'invisible railing' miserably
+visible everywhere.
+
+You very well know _what_ a vision it is you give me--when you speak
+of _standing up by the table_ to care for my flowers--(which I will
+never be ashamed of again, by the way--I will say for the future;
+'here are my best'--in this as in other things.) Now, do you remember,
+that once I bade you not surprise me out of my good behaviour by
+standing to meet me unawares, as visions do, some day--but now--_omne
+ignotum_? No, dearest!
+
+Ought I to say there will be two days more? till Saturday--and if one
+word comes, _one_ line--think! I am wholly yours--yours, beloved!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                     January 1, 1845 [1846].
+
+How good you are--how best! it is a favourite play of my memory to
+take up the thought of what you were to me (to my mind gazing!) years
+ago, as the poet in an abstraction--then the thoughts of you, a little
+clearer, in concrete personality, as Mr. Kenyon's friend, who had
+dined with him on such a day, or met him at dinner on such another,
+and said some great memorable thing 'on Wednesday last,' and enquired
+kindly about _me_ perhaps on Thursday,--till I was proud! and so, the
+thoughts of you, nearer and nearer (yet still afar!) as the Mr.
+Browning who meant to do me the honour of writing to me, and who did
+write; and who asked me once in a letter (does he remember?) 'not to
+lean out of the window while his foot was on the stair!'--to take up
+all those thoughts, and more than those, one after another, and tie
+them together with all _these_, which cannot be named so easily--which
+cannot be classed in botany and Greek. It is a nosegay of mystical
+flowers, looking strangely and brightly, and keeping their May-dew
+through the Christmases--better than even _your_ flowers! And I am not
+'ashamed' of mine, ... be very sure! no!
+
+For the siren, I never suggested to you any such thing--why you do not
+pretend to have read such a suggestion in my letter certainly. _That_
+would have been most exemplarily modest of me! would it not, O
+Ulysses?
+
+And you meant to write, ... you _meant_! and went to walk in 'Poet's
+lane' instead, (in the 'Aonius of Highgate') which I remember to have
+read of--does not Hunt speak of it in his Memoirs?--and so now there
+is another track of light in the traditions of the place, and people
+may talk of the pomegranate-smell between the hedges. So you really
+have _hills_ at New Cross, and not hills by courtesy? I was at
+Hampstead once--and there was something attractive to me in that
+fragment of heath with its wild smell, thrown down ... like a Sicilian
+rose from Proserpine's lap when the car drove away, ... into all that
+arid civilization, 'laurel-clumps and invisible visible fences,' as
+you say!--and the grand, eternal smoke rising up in the distance, with
+its witness against nature! People grew severely in jest about cockney
+landscape--but is it not true that the trees and grass in the close
+neighbourhood of great cities must of necessity excite deeper emotion
+than the woods and valleys will, a hundred miles off, where human
+creatures ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the 'county families'
+es-_chewing_ all men who are not 'landed proprietors,' and the farmers
+never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do
+you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise
+so, and 'moralize upon into a thousand similes,' as that one greatest,
+purest, noblest thing in the world--the purely English and excellent
+thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would
+rather live in a street than be forced to live it out,--that English
+country-life; for I don't mean life in the country. The social
+exigencies--why, nothing _can_ be so bad--nothing! That is the way by
+which Englishmen grow up to top the world in their peculiar line of
+respectable absurdities.
+
+Think of my talking so as if I could be vexed with any one of them!
+_I!_--On the contrary I wish them all a happy new year to abuse one
+another, or visit each of them his nearest neighbour whom he hates,
+three times a week, because 'the distance is so convenient,' and give
+great dinners in noble rivalship (venison from the Lord Lieutenant
+against turbot from London!), and talk popularity and game-law by
+turns to the tenantry, and beat down tithes to the rector. This
+glorious England of ours; with its peculiar glory of the rural
+districts! And _my_ glory of patriotic virtue, who am so happy in
+spite of it all, and make a pretence of talking--talking--while I
+think the whole time of your letter. I think of your letter--I am no
+more a patriot than _that_!
+
+May God bless you, best and dearest! You say things to me which I am
+not worthy to listen to for a moment, even if I was deaf dust the next
+moment.... I confess it humbly and earnestly as before God.
+
+Yet He knows,--if the entireness of a gift means anything,--that I
+have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul,
+for this year and for other years. Let me be used _for_ you rather
+than _against_ you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of
+feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be
+saved from it!--pray it for _me_ ... for _my_ sake rather than
+_yours_. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to
+me, what to-day you are--and that is all!--!
+
+                                             I am your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Sunday Night.
+                               [Post-mark, January 5, 1846.]
+
+Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you 'think of me'--I wonder
+if you could misunderstand me in that?--As if my words or actions or
+any of my ineffectual outside-self _should_ be thought of, unless to
+be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your
+mind--cared for, rather than thought about--no great harm can happen
+to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pass through you,
+you will care for yourself; _my_self, best self!
+
+Come, let us talk. I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to
+see that fresh beautiful things are there--I suppose 'Delora' will
+stand alone still--but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower
+of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-masses and fern and
+spotty yellow leaves,--all that, I love heartily--and there is good
+sailor-speech in the 'Ben Capstan'--though he does knock a man down
+with a 'crow-bar'--instead of a marling-spike or, even, a
+belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and
+individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder--his not
+reprinting a quaint clever _real_ ballad, published before 'Delora,'
+on the 'Merry Devil of Edmonton'--the first of his works I ever read.
+No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which
+was this line: 'When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,'--good, is
+it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, _is_ that 'Swineshead
+Monk' ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler's touch on the method of
+concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under
+a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c.
+something to that effect. I suspect, _par parenthèse_, you have found
+out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'--you once wrote '_your_
+snails'--and certainly snails are old clients of mine--but efts! Horne
+traced a line to me--in the rhymes of a ''prentice-hand' I used to
+look over and correct occasionally--taxed me (last week) with having
+altered the wise line 'Cold as a _lizard_ in a _sunny_ stream' to
+'Cold as a newt hid in a shady brook'--for 'what do _you_ know about
+newts?' he asked of the author--who thereupon confessed. But never try
+and catch a speckled gray lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you
+see his tail hang out of the chink of a wall, his
+winter-house--because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him
+and stay in your fingers--and though you afterwards learn that there
+is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than
+positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)--and
+though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort--_yet_ ... don't
+do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our English
+water-eft is; 'Triton paludis Linnaei'--_e come guizza_ (_that_ you
+can't say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out
+motion along with the straightforwardness!)--I always loved all those
+wild creatures God '_sets up for themselves_' so independently of us,
+so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as
+it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with
+our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a
+leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no
+doubt; or tomb, perhaps--'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's
+olives swart'--(Kiss me, my Siren!)--Well, it seemed awful to watch
+that bee--he seemed so _instantly_ from the teaching of God! Ælian
+says that ... a _frog_, does he say?--some animal, having to swim
+across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed,
+which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts
+from shore gallantly ... because when the water-serpent comes swimming
+to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent's jaws, and no
+hopes of a swallow that time--now fancy the two meeting heads, the
+frog's wide eyes and the vexation of the snake!
+
+Now, see! do I deceive you? Never say I began by letting down my
+dignity 'that with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian
+Mount'!--
+
+My best, dear, dear one,--may you be better, less _depressed_, ... I
+can hardly imagine frost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what
+happiness you mean to give me,--what a life; what a death! 'I may
+change'--too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning
+so it continues--I _may_ take up stones and pelt the next I
+see--but--do you much fear that?--Now, _walk_, move, _guizza, anima
+mia dolce_. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from
+mine as we walk? May I let that stay ... dearest, (the _line_ stay,
+not the mouth)?
+
+I am not very well to-day--or, rather, have not been so--_now_, I am
+well and _with you_. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict
+frankness' sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all
+about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless
+you, and leave you in the hands of God--My own love!--
+
+Tell me if I do wrong to send _this_ by a morning post--so as to reach
+you earlier than the evening--when you will ... write to me?
+
+Don't let me forget to say that I shall receive the _Review_
+to-morrow, and will send it directly.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Sunday.
+                               [Post-mark, January 6, 1846.]
+
+When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading
+just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a
+little of it--and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do,
+I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the
+first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty.
+But last night I read the 'Monk of Swineshead Abbey' and the 'Three
+Knights of Camelott' and 'Bedd Gelert' and found them all of different
+stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure
+and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless
+ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines
+for clearness--
+
+    Like to the cloud upon the hill
+    We are a moment seen
+    Or the _shadow of the windmill-sail
+    Across yon sunny slope of green_.
+
+New or not, and I don't remember it elsewhere, it is just and
+beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just
+touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying
+is not faster! Then the 'Three Knights' has beautiful things, with
+more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show--for his
+character is a vague grand massiveness,--like Stonehenge--or at least,
+if 'towers and battlements he sees' they are 'bosomed high' in dusky
+clouds ... it is a 'passion-created imagery' which has no clear
+outline. In this ballad of the 'Knights,' and in the Monk's too, we
+may _look at_ things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and
+mates not with his kind afterwards, 'While, _holding beards_, they
+dance in pairs--and that is all excellent and reminds one of those
+fine sylvan festivals, 'in Orion.' But now tell me if you like
+altogether 'Ben Capstan' and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be
+lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we
+may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect
+what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf
+story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I
+am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about
+fairies:--Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' with its
+subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse ...
+'_machina intersit_' ... Grandmama Grey!--to say nothing of the 'small
+dog' that isn't the 'small boy.' Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger
+canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than
+lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity
+in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and
+earnestly. No one has admired more than I the 'Death of Marlowe,'
+scenes in 'Cosmo,' and 'Orion' in much of it. But now tell me if you
+can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I
+am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who
+combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No
+one, at present in the world.
+
+Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I
+found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter
+of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now
+is only as good as the worst before, and I can't hear from you, until
+Monday ... Monday! Did you think of _that_--you who took the credit of
+acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I
+shall have to wait ... till what o'clock on Monday, tempted in the
+meanwhile to fall into controversy against the 'new moons and sabbath
+days' and the pausing of the post in consequence.
+
+You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the
+physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about
+you--you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the
+crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of
+myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could
+not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters
+seemed nearer to me, long ... long ... and in spite of the postmark,
+than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me
+constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his
+side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to
+think of having to wait so many hours before the 'candid' closing
+letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. 'People say,'
+I used to think, 'that women _always_ know, and certainly I do not
+know, and therefore ... therefore.'--The logic crushed on like
+Juggernaut's car. But in the letters it was different--the dear
+letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to
+stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for
+ever and answer them after a fashion ... that, I felt from the
+beginning. But _you_--!
+
+_Monday._--Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my
+letter! Yet you look askance at me over 'newt and toad,' and praise so
+the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same
+head. And you really like _that_? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the
+night cap and all? and 'shoetye and blue sky?' and is it really wrong
+of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole,
+... not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical,
+and in the grotesque--but here there is a want of life and
+consistency, as it seems to me!--the elf is no elf and speaks no
+elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch, ... this, ... for
+supernatural music. So I fancy at least--but I will try the poem again
+presently. You must be right--unless it should be your over-goodness
+opposed to my over-badness--I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps
+in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as
+Mr. Forster did his last _Examiner_ in, when he gave the all-hail to
+Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no!--not
+such as Mr. Forster's. Your soul does not enter into his secret--There
+can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word--he
+who knows--or ought to know!--And now let us agree and admire the
+bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert's unfilled grave--
+
+    The _long_ beard _fell_ like _snow_ into the grave
+                 With solemn grace
+
+A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for
+the fairies.
+
+I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon--Miss Martineau's
+two volumes--and Mr. Bailey sends his 'Festus,' very kindly, ... and
+'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' from America from a Mrs. or a Miss
+Fuller--how I hate those 'Women of England,' 'Women and their Mission'
+and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such
+expositions of rights and wrongs.
+
+Your letter would be worth them all, if _you_ were less _you_! I mean,
+just this letter, ... all alive as it is with crawling buzzing
+wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures ... as all alive as your
+own pedant's book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs
+too--particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so
+high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my
+nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one
+hand to the other. But for the toad!--why, at the end of the row of
+narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an
+old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a
+great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly.
+That he 'wore a jewel in his head' I doubted nothing at all. You must
+see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And
+on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never
+looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs,
+deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than
+go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the
+profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his
+toad's head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment,
+poisoned as by one of the Medici.
+
+Oh--and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my
+sisters in a rat's nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was,
+the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and
+blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet
+no, not much. My aversion proper ... call it horror rather ... was for
+the silent, cold, clinging, gliding _bat_; and even now, I think, I
+could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as
+it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on
+the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing--the
+wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so
+cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of
+natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night
+those bats come sailing ... without a sound--and go ... you cannot
+guess where!--fade with the night-blackness!
+
+You have not been well--which is my first thought if not my first
+word. Do walk, and do not work; and think ... what I could be thinking
+of, if I did not think of _you_ ... dear--dearest! 'As the doves fly
+to the windows,' so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty,
+as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up
+straight to God ... nothing, no one, used to intercept me--now there
+is _you_--only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore
+any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are
+to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you
+know at all what _I_ am,--and what I should be but for you.
+
+So ... love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the
+lizards! love me as you love the efts--and I will believe in _you_ as
+you believe ... in Ælian--Will _that_ do?
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+Say how you are when you write--_and write_.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                            Tuesday Morning.
+
+I this minute receive the Review--a poor business, truly! Is there a
+reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical
+High-place to hold forth?--I have only glanced over the article
+however. Well, one day _I_ am to write of you, dearest, and it must
+come to something rather better than _that_!
+
+I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest.
+I am trusting to hear from you--
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in
+the _New Quarterly_ 'Mr. Browning' figures pleasantly as 'one without
+any sympathy for a human being!'--Then, for newts and efts at all
+events!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Tuesday Night.
+                               [Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
+
+But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you
+not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one's
+supposed tether without danger--there is the distance so palpably
+between the most audacious step _there_, and the next ... which is
+nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal
+intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even,
+might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path
+once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come
+into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended _there_, just there
+... and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid
+speaking irrevocable words--and when, as to me, those words are
+intensely _true, doom-words_--think, dearest! Because, as I told you
+once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect
+_respect_ in it, the full _belief_ ... (I shall get presently to poor
+Robert's very avowal of 'owing you all esteem'!). It is on that I
+build, and am secure--for how should I know, of myself, how to serve
+you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own
+interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be
+considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were
+loathing at your heart, and if so many 'noes' made a 'yes,' and 'one
+refusal no rebuff' and all that horrible bestiality which stout
+gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after
+dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, 'The toast be
+dear woman!' Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,--I
+do believe,--_now_, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love,
+and least able to imagine what I should do without it,--I cannot but
+believe, I say, that had you given me once a 'refusal'--clearly
+derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied
+consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly
+but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by
+any step of mine; I should, _believing you_, have never again renewed
+directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count
+how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to
+you ... but from _the outside_, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I
+should have acted thus under _any_ circumstances, how could I but
+redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish--you know,
+and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for
+the cause, though not the manner--but could I do other than keep
+'farther from you' than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in
+that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and
+_then_, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your
+feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart
+and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be
+yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It
+was the plainness of _that_ which determined me to wait and be patient
+and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might
+please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could
+not have been most rich, too, _then_--in what would seem little only
+to _me_, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud
+beyond measure--happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see
+you simply, speak with you and be spoken to--what am I more than
+others? Don't think this mock humility--_it is not_--you take me in
+your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this
+is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you _might_--if not
+now, at some future time--give other than this, the true reason, for
+that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early
+farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate
+_drawing closer_--I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press
+close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.
+
+_Wednesday._--You are entirely right about those poems of Horne's--I
+spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle
+with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of
+originality in men--the other way of safe copying precedents being
+_so_ safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in
+the form ... reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The
+Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think--and a common mistake,
+too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women,
+and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing
+for children and miss them and the others too,--with that detestable
+irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they
+profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower
+capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by
+half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books
+and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid
+good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club--keep us from all
+that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in
+Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the
+foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all
+events--the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour
+which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then,
+what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, _so_! Not
+altogether,--for first it was but the stranger's welcome I gave, the
+right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once
+admitted within the door. And then--when I know what Horne thinks
+of--you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired
+you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune ... I _could_ NOT
+begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends--he has such
+very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and
+_none_, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than
+your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed--truth
+remains the truth--so, at least, I excuse myself ... and quite as much
+for what I say _now_ as for what was said _then_! 'King John' is very
+fine and full of purpose; 'The Noble Heart,' sadly faint and
+uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor
+conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to
+resist--a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced
+to complete another fashioned morality--a segment of a circle of
+larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your
+own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how
+and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with
+quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one
+to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. 'Bear patiently all
+injuries--revenge in no case'--that is plain. 'Take what you conceive
+to be God's part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy
+evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here'--_that_ is plain,
+too,--but, call Otto's act _no_ wrong, or being one, not such as
+should be avenged--and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is
+a 'recreant'--just what needs the slight punishment of instant death
+to the remarker--and ... where is the way? What _is_ clear?
+
+--Not my letter! which goes on and on--'dear letters'--sweetest?
+because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall
+see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own--I have not half said
+what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which
+proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, 'at a
+cock-crow from the Grange.'--Ever your own.
+
+Last night, I received a copy of the _New Quarterly_--now here is
+popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to
+be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously
+eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last--and
+in _three other_ articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing,
+they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one
+instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and
+_with_ me I don't know how many poetical _crétins_ are praised as
+noticeably--and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the
+richest style of scavengering--only Carlyle! And I love him enough not
+to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into
+his.
+
+All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my
+Ba.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
+
+But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read
+them--of _you_, I mean of course,--though I quite understand that it
+is doing no manner of good to go back so to 'Paracelsus,' heading the
+article 'Paracelsus and other poems,' as if the other poems could not
+front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. 'Paracelsus'
+is a great work and will _live_, but the way to do you good with the
+stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would
+have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last
+living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying 'Look _here_.'
+What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the
+_Retrospective Review_? And then, no attempt at analytical
+criticism--or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in
+sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy
+things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice:
+and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your
+great world--the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like
+that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a
+sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical
+sectarianism, in another place--_yours_!
+
+For me, it is all quite kind enough--only I object, on my own part
+also, to being reviewed in the 'Seraphim,' when my better books are
+nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk
+of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know,--but let
+them be _my_ faults! When I wrote the 'Romaunt of Margret,' I had not
+read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only
+half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and
+sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in
+London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till
+the collected works appeared ... _favente_ Moxon, ... I was ignorant
+of his best _early_ productions; and not even for the rhythmetical
+form of my 'Vision of the Poets,' was I indebted to the 'Two
+Voices,'--three pages of my 'Vision' having been written several years
+ago--at the beginning of my illness--and thrown aside, and taken up
+again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there's no use talking! In a
+solitary review which noticed my 'Essay on Mind,' somebody wrote ...
+'this young lady imitates Darwin'--and I never could _read_ Darwin,
+... was stopped always on the second page of the 'Loves of the Plants'
+when I tried to read him to 'justify myself in having an opinion'--the
+repulsion was too strong. Yet the 'young lady imitated Darwin' of
+course, as the infallible critic said so.
+
+And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the 'many others,'
+whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The 'three
+poets in three distant ages born' may well stare amazed!
+
+After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on
+your review in a passion--because pray mark that the ink has over-run
+some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of
+an inkstand, it would not have been precisely _there_. It is the
+second book spoilt by me within these two days--and my fingers were so
+dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have
+made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty
+enough to befit a poetess--as black 'as bard beseemed'--and he took
+the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.
+
+How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have
+reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very
+very earliest?--and how is it that I did not hear from you last night
+again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you
+_hate_ writing to me?
+
+At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the
+letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the
+ink--I did it 'in a pet,' he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new
+book--certainly I ought--only it is not worth doing justice for--and I
+shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must
+forgive me as magnanimously as you can.
+
+'Omne ignotum pro magnifico'--do you think _so_? I hope not indeed!
+_vo quietando_--and everything else that I ought to do--except of
+course, _that_ thinking of you which is so difficult.
+
+May God bless you. Till to-morrow!
+
+                                            Your own always.
+
+Mr. Kenyon refers to 'Festus'--of which I had said that the fine
+things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Friday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, January 9, 1846.]
+
+You never think, ever dearest, that I 'repent'--why what a word to
+use! You never could _think_ such a word for a moment! If you were to
+leave me even,--to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do
+it,--I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I
+'repent' ... regret anything ... be sorry for having known you and
+loved you ... no! Which I say simply to prove that, in _no_ extreme
+case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be
+different.
+
+_Not_ out of 'generosity' certainly, but from the veriest selfishness,
+I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the
+future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than
+another woman might have been.
+
+Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions--do I not vex you by
+them, _you_ whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force
+their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world,
+and because your happiness is so precious a thing.
+
+    Cloth of frieze, be not too bold,
+    Though thou'rt matched with cloth of gold!
+
+--_that_, beloved, was written for _me_. And you, if you would make me
+happy, _always_ will look at yourself from my ground and by my light,
+as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that
+if I were _vacillating_, I should not be so weak as to tease you with
+the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased
+swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction
+or wish of retraction,--because I belong to you by gift and ownership,
+and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of
+yours,--it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the
+necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being
+wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which
+is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over
+and over have you replied to them,--as yesterday!--and now, do not
+speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for
+particular application,--only to be _ready_ for application. I love
+you from the deepest of my nature--the whole world is nothing to me
+beside you--and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible.
+'How _dreadful_ is this place.'
+
+To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for
+to-day,--it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word.
+It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves)
+under the same aspect and colour--and it is certainly true that I have
+a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects
+as we have never looked at together. I know _you_ so well (yes, I
+boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also
+the _idola_ of all things as they are in your eyes--so that never,
+scarcely, I am curious,--never anxious, to learn what your opinions
+may be. Now, _have_ I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to
+know _you_.
+
+More than enough! You have 'left undone'--do you say? On the contrary,
+you have done too much,--you _are_ too much. My cup,--which used to
+hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the
+absinthus,--has overflowed all this wine: and _that_ makes me look out
+for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out
+your hand for them.
+
+Say how you are--and do take care and exercise--and write to me,
+dearest!
+
+                                             Ever your own--
+
+                                                  BA.
+
+How right you are about 'Ben Capstan,'--and the illustration by the
+_yellow clay_. That is precisely what I meant,--said with more
+precision than I could say it. Art without an ideal is neither nature
+nor art. The question involves the whole difference between Madame
+Tussaud and Phidias.
+
+I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe's book--and I see that the
+deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever
+produceable by the dedication, is cut down and away--perhaps in this
+particular copy only!
+
+Tuesday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being
+afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you!
+Try to let it be long to you--will you? My consistency is wonderful.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                             Friday Morning.
+
+As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review--indeed it was
+foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?--You
+shall not send it back--but on your table I shall find and take it
+next Tuesday--_c'est convenu_! The other precious volume has not yet
+come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to
+carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!
+
+I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a
+scale for the Review's sake; and just now--there is no denying it, and
+spite of all I have been incredulous about--it does seem that the fact
+_is_ achieved and that I _do_ love you, plainly, surely, more than
+ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why,
+the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?--in the
+heart's heart.
+
+Rest--dearest--bless you--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
+
+Kindest and dearest you are!--that is 'my secret' and for the others,
+I leave them to you!--only it is no secret that I should and must be
+glad to have the words you sent with the book,--which I should have
+seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I
+not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of
+critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the
+dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of
+human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on--it is the stamp
+on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or
+farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said
+than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up
+to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could
+have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said
+rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the
+brain,--which is as true as truth can be. Then, I _shall have
+'Pauline' in a day or two_--yes, I shall and must, and _will_.
+
+The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that
+name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley's, and is one of his very best
+papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about
+his writings in general, with a grace and _savoir faire_ nevertheless,
+and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says
+of 'many-sidedness' seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That,
+he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having
+such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of
+principle--yet 'many-sidedness' is certainly no word for him. The
+effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy
+and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather _bends_ to
+a phase of humanity and literature than contains it--than comprehends
+it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all
+round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things:
+universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the
+contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the
+mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the
+willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now
+toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is
+different altogether ... _as_ different as a willow-tree from a church
+tower.
+
+Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while
+I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me
+to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so
+much, of thinking of only you--which _is_ too much, perhaps. Shall I
+tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to
+any woman what you are to me--the fulness must be in proportion, you
+know, to the vacancy ... and only _I_ know what was behind--the long
+wilderness _without_ the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for
+happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is
+it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve--not
+_you_--but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a
+lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without
+the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And
+you love me _more_, you say?--Shall I thank you or God?
+Both,--indeed--and there is no possible return from me to either of
+you! I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God. How
+shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it
+as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.
+
+Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for
+your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a
+thought of any others--_that_ is all I could ask you with any disquiet
+as to the granting of it--May God bless you!--
+
+                                                    Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+But you have the review _now_--surely?
+
+The _Morning Chronicle_ attributes the authorship of 'Modern Poets'
+(_our_ article) to Lord John Manners--so I hear this morning. I have
+not yet looked at the paper myself. The _Athenæum_, still abominably
+dumb!--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
+
+This is _no_ letter--love,--I make haste to tell you--to-morrow I will
+write. For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very
+destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an
+old, old friend he is, beside--so--you must understand my defection,
+when only this scrap reaches you to-night! Ah, love,--you are my
+unutterable blessing,--I discover you, more of you, day by day,--hour
+by hour, I do think!--I am entirely yours,--one gratitude, all my soul
+becomes when I see you over me as now--God bless my dear, dearest.
+
+My 'Act Fourth' is done--but too roughly this time! I will tell you--
+
+One kiss more, dearest!
+
+Thanks for the Review.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 12, 1846.]
+
+I have no words for you, my dearest,--I shall never have.
+
+You are mine, I am yours. Now, here is one sign of what I said ...
+that I must love you more than at first ... a little sign, and to be
+looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows
+_can_ only be little, so very little now--and as the fine French
+Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined
+stages by _millionths_, so--! At first I only thought of being _happy_
+in you,--in your happiness: now I most think of you in the dark hours
+that must come--I shall grow old with you, and die with you--as far as
+I can look into the night I see the light with me. And surely with
+that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed
+sense of security to the sunny middle of the day. I am in the full
+sunshine now; and _after_, all seems cared for,--is it too homely an
+illustration if I say the day's visit is not crossed by uncertainties
+as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?--Now Keats
+speaks of 'Beauty, that must _die_--and Joy whose hand is ever at his
+lips, bidding farewell!' And _who_ spoke of--looking up into the eyes
+and asking 'And _how long_ will you love us'?--There is a Beauty that
+will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will
+love for ever!
+
+And _I_--am to love no longer than I can. Well, dear--and when I _can_
+no longer--you will not blame me? You will do only as ever, kindly and
+justly; hardly more. I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my
+fancy to such an experiment, and consider how _that_ is to happen, and
+what measures ought to be taken in the emergency--because in the
+'universality of my sympathies' I certainly number a very lively one
+with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a
+spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis. There is no doubt
+I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more
+fortunate human being. And I hope that because such a calamity does
+not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no
+less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no
+humanity can be altogether exempt--just as God bids us ask for the
+continuance of the 'daily bread'!--'battle, murder and sudden death'
+lie behind doubtless. I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one
+more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we
+bestow in another's case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our
+own, ... that I only contemplate the _possibility_ you make me
+recognize, with pity, and fear ... no anger at all; and imprecations
+of vengeance, _for what_? Observe, I only speak of cases _possible_;
+of sudden impotency of mind; that _is_ possible--there _are_ other
+ways of '_changing_,' 'ceasing to love' &c. which it is safest not to
+think of nor believe in. A man _may_ never leave his writing desk
+without seeing safe in one corner of it the folded slip which directs
+the disposal of his papers in the event of his reason suddenly leaving
+him--or he may never go out into the street without a card in his
+pocket to signify his address to those who may have to pick him up in
+an apoplectic fit--but if he once begins to fear he is growing a glass
+bottle, and, _so_, liable to be smashed,--do you see? And now, love,
+dear heart of my heart, my own, only Ba--see no more--see what I _am_,
+what God in his constant mercy ordinarily grants to those who have, as
+I, received already so much; much, past expression! It is but--if you
+will so please--at worst, forestalling the one or two years, for my
+sake; but you _will_ be as sure of me _one_ day as I can be now of
+myself--and why not _now_ be sure? See, love--a year is gone by--we
+were in one relation when you wrote at the end of a letter 'Do not say
+I do not tire you' (by writing)--'_I am sure I do_.' A year has gone
+by--_Did you tire me then?_ _Now_, you tell me what is told; for my
+sake, sweet, let the few years go by; we are married, and my arms are
+round you, and my face touches yours, and I am asking you, '_Were you
+not_ to me, in that dim beginning of 1846, a joy behind all joys, a
+life added to and transforming mine, the good I choose from all the
+possible gifts of God on this earth, for which I seemed to have lived;
+which accepting, I thankfully step aside and let the rest get what
+they can; what, it is very likely, they esteem more--for why should my
+eye be evil because God's is good; why should I grudge that, giving
+them, I do believe, infinitely less, he gives them a content in the
+inferior good and belief in its worth? I should have wished _that_
+further concession, that illusion as I believe it, for their
+sakes--but I cannot undervalue my own treasure and so scant the only
+tribute of mere gratitude which is in my power to pay. Hear this said
+_now before_ the few years; and believe in it _now for then_, dearest!
+
+
+Must you see 'Pauline'? At least then let me wait a few days; to
+correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the
+history of it; what is necessary you should know before you see it.
+That article I suppose to be by Heraud--about two thirds--and the
+rest, or a little less, by that Mr. Powell--whose unimaginable,
+impudent vulgar stupidity you get some inkling of in the 'Story from
+Boccaccio'--of which the _words_ quoted were _his_, I am sure--as sure
+as that he knows not whether Boccaccio lived before or after
+Shakspeare, whether Florence or Rome be the more northern city,--one
+word of Italian in general, or letter of Boccaccio's in particular.
+When I took pity on him once on a time and helped his verses into a
+sort of grammar and sense, I did not think he was a _buyer_ of other
+men's verses, to be printed as his own; thus he _bought_ two
+modernisations of Chaucer--'Ugolino' and another story from Leigh
+Hunt--and one, 'Sir Thopas' from Horne, and printed them as his own,
+as I learned only last week. He paid me extravagant court and, seeing
+no harm in the mere folly of the man, I was on good terms with him,
+till ten months ago he grossly insulted a friend of mine who had
+written an article for the Review--(which is as good as _his_, he
+being a large proprietor of the delectable property, and influencing
+the voices of his co-mates in council)--well, he insulted my friend,
+who had written that article at my special solicitation, and did all
+he could to avoid paying the price of it--Why?--Because the poor
+creature had actually taken the article to the Editor _as one by his
+friend Serjeant Talfourd contributed for pure love of him, Powell the
+aforesaid_,--cutting, in consequence, no inglorious figure in the eyes
+of Printer and Publisher! Now I was away all this time in Italy or he
+would never have ventured on such a piece of childish impertinence.
+And my friend being a true gentleman, and quite unused to this sort of
+'practice,' in the American sense, held his peace and went without his
+'honorarium.' But on my return, I enquired, and made him make a
+proper application, which Mr. Powell treated with all the insolence in
+the world--because, as the event showed, the having to write a cheque
+for 'the Author of _the_ Article'--that author's name _not_ being
+Talfourd's ... _there_ was certain disgrace! Since then (ten months
+ago) I have never seen him--and he accuses _himself_, observe, of
+'sucking my plots while I drink his tea'--one as much as the other!
+And now why do I tell you this, all of it? Ah,--now you shall hear!
+Because, it has often been in my mind to ask you what _you_ know of
+this Mr. Powell, or ever knew. For he, (being profoundly versed in
+every sort of untruth, as every fresh experience shows me, and the
+rest of his acquaintance) he told me long ago, 'he used to correspond
+with you, and that he quarrelled with you'--which I supposed to mean
+that he began by sending you his books (as with one and everybody) and
+that, in return to your note of acknowledgment, he had chosen to write
+again, and perhaps, again--is it so? Do not write one word in answer
+to me--the name of such a miserable nullity, and husk of a man, ought
+not to have a place in your letters--and _that way_ he would get near
+to me again; near indeed this time!--So _tell_ me, in a word--or do
+not tell me.
+
+How I never say what I sit down to say! How saying the little makes me
+want to say the more! How the least of little things, once taken up as
+a thing to be imparted to you, seems to need explanations and
+commentaries; all is of importance to me--every breath you breathe,
+every little fact (like this) you are to know!
+
+I was out last night--to see the rest of Frank Talfourd's theatricals;
+and met Dickens and his set--so my evenings go away! If I do not bring
+the _Act_ you must forgive me--yet I shall, I think; the roughness
+matters little in this stage. Chorley says very truly that a tragedy
+implies as much power _kept back_ as brought out--very true that is. I
+do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied--as was to be but
+expected--with the effect of this last--the _shelve_ of the hill,
+whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at
+the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away--not come to a
+stop like your horse against a church wall. It is all in long
+speeches--the _action, proper_, is in them--they are no descriptions,
+or amplifications--but here, in a drama of this kind, all the
+_events_, (and interest), take place in the _minds_ of the actors ...
+somewhat like 'Paracelsus' in that respect. You know, or don't know,
+that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I
+thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt,
+spasmodic writing--they will find some fault with this, of course.
+
+How you know Chorley! That is precisely the man, that willow blowing
+now here now there--precisely! I wish he minded the _Athenæum_, its
+silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I--but he goes on
+painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me,
+I feel confident, that _he_ has no part nor lot in the matter: I have
+_two_ kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday. See
+the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he
+can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt;
+and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to
+prove my belief in that same! For myself--if I have vanity which such
+Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who
+praised Mr. Mackay's own, own 'Dead Pan,' quite his own, the other
+day?--By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the
+gentleman had written a certain 'Song of the Bell' ... 'singularly
+like Schiller's; _considering that Mr. M. had never_ seen it!' I am
+told he writes for the _Athenæum_, but don't know. Would that sort of
+praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue--which Forster, deep
+in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about--as
+pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever
+spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last? You shall
+see they will not notice--unless a fresh publication alters the
+circumstances--until some seven or eight months--as before; and then
+they _will_ notice, and _praise_, and tell anybody who cares to
+enquire, '_So_ we noticed the work.' So do not you go expecting
+justice or injustice till I tell you. It answers me to be found
+writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game,
+when that game is only 'Thimble-rig' and for prizes of
+gingerbread-nuts--Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke _does_ shift the pea,
+and so did from the beginning--as Charles Lamb's pleasant _sobriquet_
+(Mr. _Bilk_, he would have it) testifies. Still he behaved kindly to
+that poor Frances Brown--let us forget him.
+
+And now, my Audience, my crown-bearer, my path-preparer--I am with you
+again and out of them all--there, _here_, in my arms, is my _proved
+palpable success_! My life, my poetry, gained nothing, oh no!--but
+this found them, and blessed them. On Tuesday I shall see you,
+dearest--am much better; well to-day--are you well--or 'scarcely to be
+called an invalid'? Oh, when I _have_ you, am by you--
+
+Bless you, dearest--And be very sure you have your wish about the
+length of the week--still Tuesday must come! And with it your own,
+happy, grateful
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
+
+Ah Mr. Kenyon!--how he vexed me to-day. To keep away all the ten days
+before, and to come just at the wrong time after all! It was better
+for you, I suppose--believe--to go with him down-stairs--yes, it
+certainly was better: it was disagreeable enough to be very wise! Yet
+I, being addicted to every sort of superstition turning to melancholy,
+did hate so breaking off in the middle of that black thread ... (do
+you remember what we were talking of when they opened the door?) that
+I was on the point of saying 'Stay one moment,' which I should have
+repented afterwards for the best of good reasons. Oh, I _should_ have
+liked to have 'fastened off' that black thread, and taken one stitch
+with a blue or a green one!
+
+You do not remember what we were talking of? what _you_, rather, were
+talking of? And what _I_ remember, at least, because it is exactly the
+most unkind and hard thing you ever said to me--ever dearest, so I
+remember it by that sign! That you should say such a thing to me--!
+think what it was, for indeed I will not write it down here--it would
+be worse than Mr. Powell! Only the foolishness of it (I mean, the
+foolishness of it alone) saves it, smooths it to a degree!--the
+foolishness being the same as if you asked a man where he would walk
+when he lost his head. Why, if you had asked St. Denis _beforehand_,
+he would have thought it a foolish question.
+
+And you!--you, who talk so finely of never, never doubting; of being
+such an example in the way of believing and trusting--it appears,
+after all, that you have an imagination apprehensive (or
+comprehensive) of 'glass bottles' like other sublunary creatures, and
+worse than some of them. For mark, that I never went any farther than
+to the stone-wall hypothesis of your forgetting me!--_I_ always
+stopped there--and never climbed, to the top of it over the
+broken-bottle fortification, to see which way you meant to walk
+afterwards. And you, to ask me so coolly--think what you asked me.
+That you should have the heart to ask such a question!
+
+And the reason--! and it could seem a reasonable matter of doubt to
+you whether I would go to the south for my health's sake!--And I
+answered quite a common 'no' I believe--for you bewildered me for the
+moment--and I have had tears in my eyes two or three times since, just
+through thinking back of it all ... of your asking me such questions.
+Now did I not tell you when I first knew you, that I was leaning out
+of the window? True, _that_ was--I was tired of living ...
+unaffectedly tired. All I cared to live for was to do better some of
+the work which, after all, was out of myself, and which I had to reach
+across to do. But I told you. Then, last year, for duty's sake I would
+have _consented_ to go to Italy! but if you really fancy that I would
+have struggled in the face of all that difficulty--or struggled,
+indeed, anywise, to compass such an object as _that_--except for the
+motive of your caring for it and me--why you know nothing of me after
+all--nothing! And now, take away the motive, and I am where I
+was--leaning out of the window again. To put it in plainer words (as
+you really require information), I should let them do what they liked
+to me till I was dead--only I _wouldn't go to Italy_--if anybody
+proposed Italy out of contradiction. In the meantime I do entreat you
+never to talk of such a thing to me any more.
+
+You know, if you were to leave me by your choice and for your
+happiness, it would be another thing. It would be very lawful to talk
+of _that_.
+
+And observe! I perfectly understand that you did not think of
+_doubting me_--so to speak! But you thought, all the same, that if
+such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.
+
+Well--I am not quarrelling--I am uneasy about your head rather. That
+pain in it--what can it mean? I do beseech you to think of me just so
+much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never
+missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then
+not to walk at all until Friday is _not_ taking exercise, nor the
+thing required. Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of
+evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid. I
+do beseech you, dearest! And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you,
+besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to _him_ for a very little
+time--just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast
+somewhere. Will you consider, and do what is right, _for me_? I do not
+propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at
+which you might reasonably hesitate. And--did you ever try smoking as
+a remedy? If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do
+you good, I have been thinking. Or without the smoking, to breathe
+where tobacco is burnt,--_that_ calms the nervous system in a
+wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from
+an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of
+narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was
+tranquillized in one half hour by a _pinch_ of _tobacco_ being burnt
+in a shovel near me. Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?
+
+_Wednesday._--For '_Pauline_'--when I had named it to you I was on the
+point of sending for the book to the booksellers--then suddenly I
+thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very
+much would dislike my reading it. See now! Many readers have done
+virtuously, but _I_, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpassed them
+all!--And now, because I may, I '_must_ read it':--and as there are
+misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you
+think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday? Do not
+send--bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot
+to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read
+it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.
+
+Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not
+keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been
+worse--_that_, you confess!--and what if it should be the crossing of
+my bad star? _You_ of the 'Crown' and the 'Lyre,' to seek influences
+from the 'chair of Cassiopeia'! I hope she will forgive me for using
+her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professorship of
+poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election.
+You know, the qualification, there, is,--_not to be a poet_.
+
+How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of _them_) were out of
+spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet
+sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley!--and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who
+_will_ say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with
+him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk
+down-stairs together?
+
+Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very
+own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself!--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Say particularly how you are--now do not omit it. And will you have
+Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this
+moment I _dare_ not, because they are reading them here.
+
+Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'--which is
+quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank
+verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!
+
+But for the _man_!--To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of
+Commonplaces, such as he is!--I have seen his name in the _Athenæum_
+attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,--more
+than usually fugitive--but I never heard before that his hand was in
+the prose department.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
+
+Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I _well knew
+and felt_ the price I was about to pay--but the thought _did_ occur
+that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was
+that of his own arrival--and that he would not know how very soon,
+alas, I should be _obliged_ to go--so ... to save you any least
+embarrassment in the world, I got--just that shake of the hand, just
+that look--and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after
+all? So I said to myself all the way home.
+
+When I am away from you--a crowd of things press on me for
+utterance--'I will say them, not write them,' I think:--when I see
+you--all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,--'they can be
+written, at all events'--I think _that_ too. So, feeling so much, I
+say so little!
+
+I have just returned from Town and write for the Post--but _you_ mean
+to write, I trust.
+
+_That_ was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!
+
+How are you?--tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!
+
+                             Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.
+
+                                  I am wholly your
+
+                                       R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Thursday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 15, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, dearer to my heart minute by minute, I had no wish to give
+you pain, God knows. No one can more readily consent to let a few
+years more or less of life go out of account,--be lost--but as I sate
+by you, you so full of the truest life, for this world as for the
+next,--and was struck by the possibility, all that might happen were I
+away, in the case of your continuing to acquiesce--dearest, it _is_
+horrible--could not but speak. If in drawing you, all of you, closer
+to my heart, I hurt you whom I would--_outlive_ ... yes,--cannot speak
+here--forgive me, Ba.
+
+My Ba, you are to consider now for me. Your health, your strength, it
+is all wonderful; that is not my dream, you know--but what all see.
+Now, steadily care for us both--take time, take counsel if you choose;
+but at the end tell me what you will do for your part--thinking of me
+as utterly devoted, soul and body, to you, living wholly in your life,
+seeing good and ill only as you see,--being yours as your hand is,--or
+as your Flush, rather. Then I will, on my side, prepare. When I say
+'take counsel'--I reserve my last right, the man's right of first
+speech. _I_ stipulate, too, and require to say my own speech in my own
+words or by letter--remember! But this living without you is too
+tormenting now. So begin thinking,--as for Spring, as for a New Year,
+as for a new life.
+
+I went no farther than the door with Mr. Kenyon. He must see the
+truth; and--you heard the playful words which had a meaning all the
+same.
+
+No more of this; only, think of it for me, love!
+
+One of these days I shall write a long letter--on the omitted matters,
+unanswered questions, in your past letters. The present joy still
+makes me ungrateful to the previous one; but I remember. We are to
+live together one day, love!
+
+Will you let Mr. Poe's book lie on the table on Monday, if you please,
+that I may read what he _does_ say, with my own eyes? _That_ I meant
+to ask, too!
+
+How too, too kind you are--how you care for so little that affects me!
+I am very much better--I went out yesterday, as you found: to-day I
+shall walk, beside seeing Chorley. And certainly, certainly I would go
+away for a week, if so I might escape being ill (and away from you) a
+fortnight; but I am _not_ ill--and will care, as you bid me, beloved!
+So, you will send, and take all trouble; and all about that crazy
+Review! Now, you should not!--I will consider about your goodness. I
+hardly know if I care to read that kind of book just now.
+
+Will you, and must you have 'Pauline'? If I could pray you to revoke
+that decision! For it is altogether foolish and _not_ boylike--and I
+shall, I confess, hate the notion of running over it--yet commented
+it must be; more than mere correction! I was unluckily
+_precocious_--but I had rather you _saw_ real infantine efforts
+(verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this
+ambiguous, feverish--Why not wait? When you speak of the
+'Bookseller'--I smile, in glorious security--having a whole bale of
+sheets at the house-top. He never knew my name even!--and I withdrew
+these after a very little time.
+
+And now--here is a vexation. May I be with you (for this once) next
+Monday, at _two_ instead of _three_ o'clock? Forster's business with
+the new Paper obliges him, he says, to restrict his choice of days to
+_Monday_ next--and give up _my_ part of Monday I will never for fifty
+Forsters--now, sweet, mind that! Monday is no common day, but leads to
+a _Saturday_--and if, as I ask, I get leave to call at 2--and to stay
+till 3-1/2--though I then lose nearly half an hour--yet all will be
+comparatively well. If there is any difficulty--one word and I
+re-appoint our party, his and mine, for the day the paper breaks
+down--not so long to wait, it strikes me!
+
+Now, bless you, my precious Ba--I am your own--
+
+                                               --Your own R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Thursday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]
+
+Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right
+to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it
+seems to me--now what I am going to say may take its place among the
+paradoxes,--that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only
+long one came last, and I was quite contented that the 'old friend'
+should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of
+the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short
+note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a
+child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a
+crown--and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never
+turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of
+precedents.
+
+Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that 'Mr. Browning would soon
+go away'--in reply to an observation of his, that 'he would not stay
+as I had company'; and altogether it was better,--the lamp made it
+look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being
+tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and
+leave me under such an impression--'mens conscia recti' too!!--
+
+And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But
+I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather
+is as 'miraculous' as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and
+make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do
+what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the
+air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech
+you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill
+to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A
+little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me
+to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!--How the
+world has changed since then! To _me_, I mean.
+
+Did I say _that_ ever ... that 'I knew you must be tired?' And it was
+not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?
+
+_Thursday night._--I have begun on another sheet--I could not write
+here what was in my heart--yet I send you this paper besides to show
+how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a
+female friend of mine and broke the thread--the visible thread, that
+is.
+
+And now, even now, at this safe eight o'clock, I could not be safe
+from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and
+sit by me--and when my letter was come--'why wouldn't I read it? What
+wonderful politeness on my part.' She would not and could not consent
+to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire
+rather.
+
+No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the
+Regent, ... (didn't he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in
+the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put
+down to-night in her 'private diary.' I kept the letter in my hand and
+only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the
+mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch
+a little of what was inside. Not _all_, however, happily for me! Or my
+friend would have seen in my eyes what _they_ did not see.
+
+May God bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the
+verses at six years old--or see the drawings either? I am reasonable,
+you observe! Only, 'Pauline,' I must have _some day_--why not without
+the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a
+little--if you promise _at last_ to let me see the book, which I will
+not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the
+day--some day. Am I not generous? And _I_ was 'precocious' too, and
+used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby
+... only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing
+of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I
+used to write of virtue with a large 'V,' and 'Oh Muse' with a harp,
+and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called 'an
+epic'--and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we
+used to act in the nursery. There was a French 'hexameter' tragedy on
+the subject of Regulus--but I cannot even smile to think of it now,
+there are so many grave memories--which time has made grave--hung
+around it. How I remember sitting in 'my house under the sideboard,'
+in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning
+
+    Que suis je? autrefois un général Remain:
+    Maintenant esclave de Carthage je souffre en vain.
+
+Poor Regulus!--Can't you conceive how fine it must have been
+altogether? And these were my 'maturer works,' you are to understand,
+... and 'the moon was bright at ten o'clock at night' years before. As
+to the gods and goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and
+reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a
+fashion, as some greater philosophers have done--and went out one day
+with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the
+housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my
+favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon
+as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of
+general scepticism, ... and though I went on saying 'the Lord's
+prayer' at nights and mornings, and the 'Bless all my kind friends'
+afterwards, by the childish custom ... yet I ended this liturgy with a
+supplication which I found in 'King's Memoirs' and which took my fancy
+and met my general views exactly.... 'O God, if there be a God, save
+my soul if I have a soul.' Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful
+children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is
+wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as
+well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in
+which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds
+all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say ... 'Don't read
+Gibbon's history--it's not a proper book. Don't read "Tom Jones"--and
+none of the books on _this_ side, mind!' So I was very obedient and
+never touched the books on _that_ side, and only read instead Tom
+Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,'
+and Hume's 'Essays,' and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary
+Wollstonecraft ... books, which I was never suspected of looking
+towards, and which were not 'on _that_ side' certainly, but which did
+as well.
+
+How I am writing!--And what are the questions you did not answer? I
+shall remember them by the answers I suppose--but your letters always
+have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.
+
+But this is the end _indeed_.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+           Thursday Night.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+Ever dearest--how you can write touching things to me; and how my
+whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from
+God and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only,
+it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was 'horrible,' it
+was what you _supposed_, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we
+will not talk of it any more.
+
+_Friday morning._--For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I
+have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and
+I hope we _both_ are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our
+position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess
+perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers,
+and that from the moment of a suspicion entering _one_ mind, we should
+be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by
+letter through the ordinary channel. I mean, that letters of yours,
+addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed--if
+not opened. Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing--on these
+grounds it is advisable. What should I do if I did not see you nor
+hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your
+happiness? What should I do for a month even? And then, I might be
+thrown out of the window or its equivalent--I look back shuddering to
+the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never
+offended as I have offended ... years ago which seem as present as
+to-day. She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that
+consent was obtained--and at a word she gave up all--at a word. In
+fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the
+time--a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday. Yet
+how she was made to suffer. Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because
+she had seemed to feel a little. I told you, I think, that there was
+an obliquity--an eccentricity, or something beyond--on one class of
+subjects. I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now!
+she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose
+up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered
+only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit.
+Arabel thought I was dead.
+
+I have tried to forget it all--but now I must remember--and throughout
+our intercourse _I have remembered_. It is necessary to remember so
+much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I
+would conceal nothing from you. Do _you_ remember, besides, that there
+can be no faltering on my 'part,' and that, if I should remain well,
+which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you
+please to have it done. But there is time for considering!
+
+Only ... as you speak of 'counsel,' I will take courage to tell you
+that my _sisters know_, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being
+often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago--she saw
+that I was affected from some cause--and I told her. We are as safe
+with both of them as possible ... and they thoroughly understand that
+_if there should be any change it would not be your fault_.... I made
+them understand that thoroughly. From themselves I have received
+nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I
+thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness for
+me to fail in it now. My brothers, it is quite necessary not to draw
+into a dangerous responsibility. I have felt that from the beginning,
+and shall continue to feel it--though I hear and can observe that they
+are full of suspicions and conjectures, which are never unkindly
+expressed. I told you once that we held hands the faster in this house
+for the weight over our heads. But the absolute _knowledge_ would be
+dangerous for my brothers: with my sisters it is different, and I
+could not continue to conceal from _them_ what they had under their
+eyes; and then, Henrietta is in a like position. It was not wrong of
+me to let them know it?--no?
+
+Yet of what consequence is all this to the other side of the question?
+What, if _you_ should give pain and disappointment where you owe such
+pure gratitude. But we need not talk of these things now. Only you
+have more to consider than _I_, I imagine, while the future comes on.
+
+Dearest, let me have my way in one thing: let me see you on _Tuesday_
+instead of on Monday--on Tuesday at the old hour. Be reasonable and
+consider. Tuesday is almost as near as the day before it; and on
+Monday, I shall be hurried at first, lest Papa should be still in the
+house, (no harm, but an excuse for nervousness: and I can't quote a
+noble Roman as you can, to the praise of my conscience!) and _you_
+will be hurried at last, lest you should not be in time for Mr.
+Forster. On the other hand, I will not let you be rude to the _Daily
+News_, ... no, nor to the _Examiner_. Come on Tuesday, then, instead
+of Monday, and let us have the usual hours in a peaceable way,--and if
+there is no obstacle,--that is, if Mr. Kenyon or some equivalent
+authority should not take note of your being here on Tuesday, why you
+can come again on the Saturday afterwards--I do not see the
+difficulty. Are we agreed? On Tuesday, at three o'clock. Consider,
+besides, that the Monday arrangement would hurry you in every manner,
+and leave you fagged for the evening--no, I will not hear of it. Not
+on my account, not on yours!
+
+Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two
+lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?
+
+My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for
+your sake:--_that_ resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect
+to you. No 'counsel' could make the difference of a grain of dust in
+the balance. It _is so_, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me,
+it would be better for you I believe--and I should be only where I was
+before. While you do _not_ change, I look to you for my first
+affections and my first duty--and nothing but your bidding me, could
+make me look away.
+
+In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not
+talk to him. No--he does not 'see how it is.' He may have passing
+thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce--even
+an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.
+
+It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world
+were away--even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.
+
+And so, once more--may God bless you!
+
+                                         I am wholly yours--
+
+_Tuesday_, remember! And say that you agree.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]
+
+Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the
+forb--no, _un_forbidden shelf--wherein Voltaire pleases to say that
+'si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer'? I feel, after
+reading these letters,--as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or
+hearing from you,--that if _marriage_ did not exist, I should
+infallibly _invent_ it. I should say, no words, no _feelings_ even,
+do justice to the whole conviction and _religion_ of my soul--and
+though they may be suffered to represent some one minute's phase of
+it, yet, in their very fulness and passion they do injustice to the
+_unrepresented, other minute's_, depth and breadth of love ... which
+let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and
+exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way--let me have the
+plain palpable power of this; the assured time for this ... something
+of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the
+illustration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in
+Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and
+lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story _must_ be
+listened to now, and the 'rights of it,'--dearest, the love unspoken
+now you are to hear 'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of
+our wealth ... at the hour of death, and'--
+
+If I did not _know_ this was so,--nothing would have been said, or
+sought for. Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for,
+and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and,
+seen now, nothing.
+
+I will care for it no more, dearest--I am wedded to you now. I believe
+no human being could love you more--that thought consoles me for my
+own imperfection--for when _that_ does strike me, as so often it will,
+I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask 'What if it were a claim
+then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for
+what were in you--do you like _that_ way!'--And I do _not_, Ba--you,
+even, might not--when people everyday buy improveable ground, and
+eligible sites for building, and don't want every inch filled up,
+covered over, done to their hands! So take me, and make me what you
+can and will--and though never to be _more_ yours, yet more _like_
+you, I may and must be--Yes, indeed--best, only love!
+
+And am I not grateful to your sisters--entirely grateful for that
+crowning comfort; it is 'miraculous,' too, if you please--for _you_
+shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or
+new times--but they do not see me, know me--and must moreover be
+jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of
+wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple--yet instead of
+'rapidly levelling eager eyes'--they are indulgent? Then--shall I wish
+capriciously they were _not_ your sisters, not so near you, that there
+might be a kind of grace in loving them for it'--but what grace can
+there be when ... yes, I will tell you--_no_, I will not--it is
+foolish!--and it is _not_ foolish in me to love the table and chairs
+and vases in your room.
+
+Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a
+word against the arrangement--and Saturday promised, too--but though
+all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet--but this is
+wrong--on Tuesday it shall be, then,--thank you, dearest! you let me
+keep up the old proper form, do you not?--I shall continue to thank,
+and be gratified &c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my
+disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion! And so, now, for
+your kind considerateness thank _you ... that I say_, which, God
+knows, _could_ not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good,
+'you are repaid'--
+
+To-morrow I will write, and answer more. I am pretty well, and will go
+out to-day--to-night. My Act is done, and copied--I will bring it. Do
+you see the _Athenæum_? By Chorley surely--and kind and satisfactory.
+I did not expect any notice for a long time--all that about the
+'mist,' 'unchanged manner' and the like is politic concession to the
+Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with
+his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain,
+yet he does not. But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand--the long
+extracts answer every purpose--
+
+There is all to say yet--to-morrow!
+
+And ever, ever your own; God bless you!
+
+                                                          R.
+
+Admire the clean paper.... I did not notice that I have been writing in
+a desk where a candle fell! See the bottoms of the other pages!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+
+You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the
+letter--but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few
+words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in _enough_
+of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in
+your assurance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan
+them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word--I fully
+believe in it,--of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt
+to speak. And for 'waiting'; 'not hurrying',--I leave all with you
+henceforth--all you say is most wise, most convincing.
+
+On the saddest part of all,--silence. You understand, and I can
+understand through you. Do you know, that I never _used_ to dream
+unless indisposed, and rarely then--(of late I dream of you, but quite
+of late)--and _those_ nightmare dreams have invariably been of _one_
+sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the
+infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the
+last)--and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of
+experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous
+arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse
+commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate,
+desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a
+madman--and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some
+bloodvessel was to break)--he, once at a dinner party at which I was
+present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his
+awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in
+order)--brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ...
+purely to 'show off' in the eyes of his guests ... (all males,
+law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too,
+left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to 'just say a
+word and return'--and no sooner was his back to the door than the
+biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark 'what a fortunate
+thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife--not one of
+the women who would resist--that is, attempt to resist--and so
+exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!' I said it
+_was_, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women,
+without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give
+him his desert, I thought--'Oh, indeed?' No--_this_ man was not to be
+opposed--wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what
+kind argument would do--and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently
+we went up-stairs--there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at
+the tea-table--and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand
+in his, our friend--disposed to be very good-natured of course. I
+listened _arrectis auribus_, and in a minute he said he did not know
+somebody I mentioned. I told him, _that_ I easily conceived--such a
+person would never condescend to know _him_, &c., and treated him to
+every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text--and at the end
+marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a
+post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in
+unfeigned wonder, 'What _can_ have possessed you, my _dear_ B?'--All
+which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man
+of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog.
+All this is quite irrelevant to _the_ case--indeed, I write to get rid
+of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of
+all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to
+another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves.
+_Trees_ live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law--but
+with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted
+conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why
+declare that 'the Lord _is_ holy, just and good' unless there is
+recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to
+which the subsequent assertion is referable? 'You know what _holiness_
+is, what it is to be good? Then, He _is_ that'--not, '_that_ is
+_so_--because _he_ is that'; though, of course, when once the converse
+is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical
+purposes. All God's urgency, so to speak, is on the _justice_ of his
+judgments, _rightness_ of his rule: yet why? one might ask--if one
+does believe that the rule _is_ his; why ask further?--Because, his is
+a 'reasonable service,' once for all.
+
+Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed
+as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail,
+under any circumstances--(and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul
+could bring the flesh to perform)--in that case, you will not come to
+me with a shadow past hope of chasing.
+
+The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary
+contrast with those here--you allude to them--if I went with this
+letter downstairs and said simply 'I want this taken to the direction
+to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?' my
+father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful
+absurdities about his 'wanting a walk,' 'just having been wishing to
+go out' &c. At night he sits studying my works--illustrating them (I
+will bring you drawings to make you laugh)--and _yesterday_ I picked
+up a crumpled bit of paper ... 'his notion of what a criticism on this
+last number ought to be,--none, that have appeared, satisfying
+him!'--So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as
+much more as must of necessity be.
+
+Once more, understand all this ... for the clock scares me of a
+sudden--I meant to say more--far more.
+
+But may God bless you ever--my own dearest, my Ba--
+
+                                         I am wholly your R.
+
+_(Tuesday)_
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+
+Your letter came just after the hope of one had past--the latest
+Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed
+as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly
+came the knock--the postman redivivus--just when it seemed so beyond
+hoping for--it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post
+at nearly eight--suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was
+I not glad, do you think?
+
+And you call the _Athenæum_ 'kind and satisfactory'? Well--I was angry
+instead. To make us wait so long for an 'article' like _that_, was not
+over-kind certainly, nor was it 'satisfactory' to class your peculiar
+qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar.
+It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you
+mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who
+knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with
+them. For what is said of 'mist' I have no patience because I who know
+when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your
+former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and
+self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and
+medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound
+in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to
+make the general observation stronger. And then 'mist' is an infamous
+word for your kind of obscurity. You never _are_ misty, not even in
+'Sordello'--never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines,
+always--and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and
+thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the
+general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a 'mist,'
+when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me
+angry.
+
+But the suggested virtue of 'self-renunciation' only made me smile,
+because it is simply nonsense ... nonsense which proves itself to be
+nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself--_that_ is the
+new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the
+poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in
+'self-renunciation' in that very relation--or rather, to hint the
+virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What
+atheists these critics are after all--and how the old heathens
+understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may
+take shame to ourselves, looking back.
+
+Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm,
+the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to
+call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked
+down-stairs into the drawing-room--walked, mind! Before, I was carried
+by one of my brothers,--even to the last autumn-day when I went out--I
+never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But
+yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides--it was
+a feat worthy of the day--and I surprised them all as much as if I had
+walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all
+his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said
+that he was '_so_ glad to see me'!
+
+Well!--setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise
+perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us
+otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this
+morning after an uncomfortable feverish night--not very unwell, mind,
+nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence--and I tell you,
+only to show how susceptible I really am still, though 'scarcely an
+invalid,' say the complimenters.
+
+What a way I am from your letter--that letter--or seem to be
+rather--for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing
+distrustedly of other things. So you are 'grateful' to my sisters ...
+_you_! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such
+extravagances as words like these _imply_--and there are far worse
+words than these, in the letter ... such as I need not put my finger
+on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours,
+and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion.
+Observe!--_certainly_ I should not choose to have a '_claim_,' see!
+Only, what I object to, in 'illusions,' 'miracles,' and things of that
+sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the
+sun to stand still, it was not for a year even!--Ungrateful, I am!
+
+And 'pretty well' means 'not well' I am afraid--or I should be gladder
+still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what 'pretty well'
+means, and if your mother is better--or I may have a letter
+to-morrow--dearest! May God bless you!
+
+To-morrow too, at half past three o'clock, how joyful I shall be that
+my 'kind considerateness' decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My
+very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+A hundred letters I have, by this last, ... to set against Napoleon's
+Hundred Days--did you know _that_?
+
+So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from
+the damp--the fog, you see!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Monday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+
+Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my
+note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into
+which some of the phrases might be construed--you would forgive me,
+indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact
+remains--that it would be the one trial I _know_ I should not be able
+to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'--intolerable--not to be
+written of, even my mind _refuses_ to form a clear conception of them.
+
+My own loved letter is come--and the news; of which the reassuring
+postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not
+to be grateful for that; nor that you _do_ 'eat your dinner'? Indeed
+you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on
+'the stairs'--stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou
+indeed!) all, with their picturesque _accidents_, of landing-places,
+and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half
+open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'--and above
+all, _landing-places_--they are my heart's delight--I would come upon
+you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk
+on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges' Palace
+at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was
+banished for an 'enormous dig (intacco) into the public
+treasure'--another for ... what you are not to know because his
+friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it--underneath
+the 'giants' on their stands, and in the midst of the _cortile_ the
+bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.
+
+So _you_ too wrote French verses?--Mine were of less lofty
+argument--one couplet makes me laugh now for the reason of its false
+quantity--I translated the Ode of Alcæus; and the last couplet ran
+thus....
+
+    Harmodius, et toi, cher Aristogiton!
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Comme l'astre du jour, brillera votre nom!
+
+The fact was, I could not bear to hurt my French Master's
+feelings--who inveterately maltreated 'ai's and oi's' and in this
+instance, an 'ei.' But 'Pauline' is altogether of a different sort of
+precocity--you shall see it when I can master resolution to transcribe
+the explanation which I know is on the fly-leaf of a copy here. Of
+that work, the _Athenæum_ said [several words erased] now, what
+outrageous folly! I care, and you care, precisely nothing about its
+sayings and doings--yet here I talk!
+
+Now to you--Ba! When I go through sweetness to sweetness, at 'Ba' I
+stop last of all, and lie and rest. That is the quintessence of them
+all,--they all take colour and flavour from that. So, dear, dear Ba,
+be glad as you can to see me to-morrow. God knows how I embalm every
+such day,--I do not believe that one of the _forty_ is confounded with
+another in my memory. So, _that_ is gained and sure for ever. And of
+letters, this makes my 104th and, like Donne's Bride,
+
+              ... I take,
+    My jewels from their boxes; call
+    My Diamonds, Pearls, and Emeralds, and make
+    Myself a constellation of them all!
+
+Bless you, my own Beloved!
+
+I am much better to-day--having been not so well yesterday--whence the
+note to you, perhaps! I put that to your charity for construction. By
+the way, let the foolish and needless story about my whilome friend be
+of this use, that it records one of the traits in that same generous
+love, of me, I once mentioned, I remember--one of the points in his
+character which, I told you, _would_ account, if you heard them, for
+my parting company with a good deal of warmth of attachment to myself.
+
+What a day! But you do not so much care for rain, I think. My Mother
+is no worse, but still suffering sadly.
+
+                               Ever your own, dearest ever--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
+
+Ever since I ceased to be with you--ever dearest,--have been with your
+'Luria,' if _that_ is ceasing to be with you--which it _is_, I feel at
+last. Yet the new act is powerful and subtle, and very affecting, it
+seems to me, after a grave, suggested pathos; the reasoning is done on
+every hand with admirable directness and adroitness, and poor Luria's
+iron baptism under such a bright crossing of swords, most miserably
+complete. Still ... is he to die _so_? can you mean it? Oh--indeed I
+foresaw _that_--not a guess of mine ever touched such an end--and I
+can scarcely resign myself to it as a necessity, even now ... I mean,
+to the act, as Luria's act, whether it is final or not--the act of
+suicide being so unheroical. But you are a dramatic poet and right
+perhaps, where, as a didactic poet, you would have been wrong, ...
+and, after the first shock, I begin to see that your Luria is the man
+Luria and that his 'sun' lights him so far and not farther than so,
+and to understand the natural reaction of all that generous trust and
+hopefulness, what naturally it would be. Also, it is satisfactory that
+Domizia, having put her woman's part off to the last, should be too
+late with it--it will be a righteous retribution. I had fancied that
+her object was to isolate him, ... to make his military glory and
+national recompense ring hollowly to his ears, and so commend herself,
+drawing back the veil.
+
+Puccio's scornful working out of the low work, is very finely given,
+I think, ... and you have 'a cunning right hand,' to lift up Luria
+higher in the mind of your readers, by the very means used to pull
+down his fortunes--you show what a man he is by the very talk of his
+rivals ... by his 'natural godship' over Puccio. Then Husain is nobly
+characteristic--I like those streaks of Moorish fire in his speeches.
+'Why 'twas all fighting' &c. ... _that_ passage perhaps is over-subtle
+for a Husain--but too nobly right in the abstract to be altered, if it
+is so or not. Domizia talks philosophically besides, and how
+eloquently;--and very noble she is where she proclaims
+
+    The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
+    That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
+    And mingle with his work and claim a share!--
+
+But why not 'spirits' rather than 'sprites,' which has a different
+association by custom? 'Spirits' is quite short enough, it seems to
+me, for a last word--it sounds like a monosyllable that trembles--or
+thrills, rather. And, do you know, I agree with yourself a little when
+you say (as did you _not_ say?) that some of the speeches--Domizia's
+for instance--are too lengthy. I think I should like them to coil up
+their strength, here and there, in a few passages. Luria ... poor
+Luria ... is great and pathetic when he stands alone at last, and 'all
+his waves have gone over him.' Poor Luria!--And now, I wonder where
+Mr. Chorley will look, in this work,--along all the edges of the
+hills,--to find, or prove, his favourite 'mist!' On the glass of his
+own opera-lorgnon, perhaps:--shall we ask him to try _that_?
+
+But first, I want to ask _you_ something--I have had it in my head a
+long time, but it might as well have been in a box--and indeed if it
+had been in the box with your letters, I should have remembered to
+speak of it long ago. So now, at last, tell me--how do you write, O my
+poet? with steel pens, or Bramah pens, or goose-quills or
+crow-quills?--Because I have a penholder which was given to me when I
+was a child, and which I have used both then and since in the
+production of various great epics and immortal 'works,' until in these
+latter years it has seemed to me too heavy, and I have taken into
+service, instead of it, another two-inch-long instrument which makes
+Mr. Kenyon laugh to look at--and so, my fancy has run upon your having
+the heavier holder, which is not very heavy after all, and which will
+make you think of me whether you choose it or not, besides being made
+of a splinter from the ivory gate of old, and therefore not unworthy
+of a true prophet. Will you have it, dearest? Yes--because you can't
+help it. When you come ... on Saturday!--
+
+And for 'Pauline,' ... I am satisfied with the promise to see it some
+day ... when we are in the isle of the sirens, or ready for wandering
+in the Doges' galleries. I seem to understand that you would really
+rather wish me not to see it now ... and as long as I _do_ see it! So
+_that shall_ be!--Am I not good now, and not a teazer? If there is any
+poetical justice in 'the seven worlds,' I shall have a letter
+to-night.
+
+By the way, you owe me two letters by your confession. A hundred and
+four of mine you have, and I, only a hundred and two of yours ...
+which is a 'deficit' scarcely creditable to me, (now is it?) when,
+according to the law and ordinance, a woman's hundred and four letters
+would take two hundred and eight at least, from the other side, to
+justify them. Well--I feel inclined to wring out the legal per centage
+to the uttermost farthing; but fall into a fit of gratitude,
+notwithstanding, thinking of Monday, and how the second letter came
+beyond hope. Always better, you are, than I guess you to be,--and it
+was being _best_, to write, as you did, for me to hear twice on one
+day!--best and dearest!
+
+But the first letter was not what you feared--I know you too well not
+to know how that letter was written and with what intention. _Do
+you_, on the other hand, endeavour to comprehend how there may be an
+eccentricity and obliquity in certain relations and on certain
+subjects, while the general character stands up worthily of esteem and
+regard--even of yours. Mr. Kenyon says broadly that it is
+monomania--neither more nor less. Then the principle of passive filial
+obedience is held--drawn (and quartered) from Scripture. He _sees_ the
+law and the gospel on his side. Only the other day, there was a
+setting forth of the whole doctrine, I hear, down-stairs--'passive
+obedience, and particularly in respect to marriage.' One after the
+other, my brothers all walked out of the room, and there was left for
+sole auditor, Captain Surtees Cook, who had especial reasons for
+sitting it out against his will,--so he sate and asked 'if children
+were to be considered slaves' as meekly as if he were asking for
+information. I could not help smiling when I heard of it. He is just
+_succeeding_ in obtaining what is called an 'adjutancy,' which, with
+the half pay, will put an end to many anxieties.
+
+Dearest--when, in the next dream, you meet me in the 'landing-place,'
+tell me why I am to stand up to be reviewed again. What a fancy,
+_that_ is of yours, for 'full-lengths'--and what bad policy, if a
+fancy, to talk of it so! because you would have had the glory and
+advantage, and privilege, of seeing me on my feet twenty times before
+now, if you had not impressed on me, in some ineffable manner, that to
+stand on my head would scarcely be stranger. Nevertheless you shall
+have it your own way, as you have everything--which makes you so very,
+very, exemplarily submissive, you know!
+
+Mr. Kenyon does not come--puts it off to _Saturday_ perhaps.
+
+The _Daily News_ I have had a glance at. A weak leading article, I
+thought ... and nothing stronger from Ireland:--but enough
+advertisements to promise a long future. What do you think? or have
+you not seen the paper? No broad principles laid down. A mere
+newspaper-support of the 'League.'
+
+May God bless you. Say how you are--and _do_ walk, and 'care' for
+yourself,
+
+                                       and, so, for your own
+
+                                            _Ba_.
+
+Have I expressed to you at all how 'Luria' impresses _me_ more and
+more? You shall see the 'remarks' with the other papers--the details
+of what strikes me.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Thursday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
+
+But you did _not_ get the letter last evening--no, for all my good
+intentions--because somebody came over in the morning and forced me to
+go out ... and, perhaps, I _knew_ what was coming, and had all my
+thoughts _there_, that is, _here_ now, with my own letters from you. I
+think so--for this punishment, I will tell you, came for some sin or
+other last night. I woke--late, or early--and, in one of those lucid
+moments when all things are thoroughly _perceived_,--whether suggested
+by some forgotten passage in the past sleep itself, I don't know--but
+I seem to _apprehend_, comprehend entirely, for the first time, what
+would happen if I lost you--the whole sense of that _closed door_ of
+Catarina's came on me at once, and it was _I_ who said--not as quoting
+or adapting another's words, but spontaneously, unavoidably, '_In that
+door, you will not enter, I have_'.... And, dearest, the
+
+Unwritten it must remain.
+
+What is on the other leaf, no ill-omen, after all,--because I
+strengthened myself against a merely imaginary evil--as I do always;
+and _thus_--I know I never can lose you,--you surely are more mine,
+there is less for the future to give or take away than in the
+ordinary cases, where so much less is known, explained, possessed, as
+with us. Understand for me, my dearest--
+
+And do you think, sweet, that there _is_ any free movement of my soul
+which your penholder is to secure? Well, try,--it will be yours by
+every right of discovery--and I, for my part, will religiously report
+to you the first time I think of you 'which, but for your present I
+should not have done'--or is it not a happy, most happy way of
+ensuring a better fifth act to Luria than the foregoing? See the
+absurdity I write--when it will be more probably the ruin of the
+whole--for was it not observed in the case of a friend of mine once,
+who wrote his own part in a piece for private theatricals, and had
+ends of his own to serve in it,--that he set to work somewhat after
+this fashion: 'Scene 1st. A breakfast chamber--Lord and Lady A. at
+table--Lady A./ No more coffee my dear?--Lord A./ One more cup!
+(_Embracing her_). Lady A./ I was thinking of trying the ponies in the
+Park--are you engaged? Lord A./ Why, there's that bore of a Committee
+at the House till 2. (_Kissing her hand_).' And so forth, to the
+astonishment of the auditory, who did not exactly see the 'sequitur'
+in either instance. Well, dearest, whatever comes of it, the 'aside,'
+the bye-play, the digression, will be the best, and only true business
+of the piece. And though I must smile at your notion of securing
+_that_ by any fresh appliance, mechanical or spiritual, yet I do thank
+you, dearest, thank you from my heart indeed--(and I write with
+Bramahs _always_--not being able to make a pen!)
+
+If you have gone so far with 'Luria,' I fancy myself nearly or
+altogether safe. I must not tell you, but I wished just these feelings
+to be in your mind about Domizia, and the death of Luria: the last act
+throws light back on all, I hope. Observe only, that Luria _would_
+stand, if I have plied him effectually with adverse influences, in
+such a position as to render any other end impossible without the hurt
+to Florence which his religion is, to avoid inflicting--passively
+awaiting, for instance, the sentence and punishment to come at night,
+would as surely inflict it as taking part with her foes. His aim is to
+prevent the harm she will do herself by striking him, so he moves
+aside from the blow. But I know there is very much to improve and
+heighten in this fourth act, as in the others--but the right aspect of
+things seems obtained and the rest of the work is plain and easy.
+
+I am obliged to leave off--the rest to-morrow--and then dear,
+Saturday! I love you utterly, my own best, dearest--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Thursday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
+
+Yes, I understand your 'Luria'--and there is to be more light; and I
+open the window to the east and wait for it--a little less gladly than
+for _you_ on Saturday, dearest. In the meanwhile you have 'lucid
+moments,' and 'strengthen' yourself into the wisdom of learning to
+love me--and, upon consideration, it does not seem to be so hard after
+all ... there is 'less for the future to take away' than you had
+supposed--so _that_ is the way? Ah, 'these lucid moments, in which all
+things are thoroughly _perceived_';--what harm they do me!--And I am
+to 'understand for you,' you say!--Am I?
+
+On the other side, and to make the good omen complete, I remembered,
+after I had sealed my last letter, having made a confusion between the
+ivory and horn gates, the gates of false and true visions, as I am apt
+to do--and my penholder belongs to the ivory gate, ... as you will
+perceive in your lucid moments--poor holder! But, as you forget me on
+Wednesdays, the post testifying, ... the sinecure may not be quite so
+certain as the Thursday's letter says. And _I_ too, in the meanwhile,
+grow wiser, ... having learnt something which you cannot do,--you of
+the 'Bells and Pomegranates': _You cannot make a pen._ Yesterday I
+looked round the world in vain for it.
+
+Mr. Kenyon does not come--_will_ not perhaps until Saturday! Which
+reminds me--Mr. Kenyon told me about a year ago that he had been
+painfully employed that morning in _parting_ two--dearer than
+friends--and he had done it he said, by proving to either, that he or
+she was likely to mar the prospects of the other. 'If I had spoken to
+each, of himself or herself,' he said, 'I _never could have done it_.'
+
+Was not _that_ an ingenious cruelty? The remembrance rose up in me
+like a ghost, and made me ask you once to promise what you promised
+... (you recollect?) because I could not bear to be stabbed with my
+own dagger by the hand of a third person ... _so_! When people have
+lucid moments themselves, you know, it is different.
+
+And _shall_ I indeed have a letter to-morrow? Or, not having the
+penholder yet, will you....
+
+Goodnight. May God bless you--
+
+                                        Ever and wholly your
+
+                                             BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
+
+Now, of all perverse interpretations that ever were and never ought to
+have been, commend me to this of Ba's--after I bade her generosity
+'understand me,' too!--which meant, 'let her pick out of my disjointed
+sentences a general meaning, if she can,--which I very well know their
+imperfect utterance would not give to one unsupplied with the key of
+my whole heart's-mystery'--and Ba, with the key in her hand, to
+pretend and poke feathers and penholders into the key-hole, and
+complain that the wards are wrong! So--when the poor scholar, one has
+read of, uses not very dissimilar language and argument--who being
+threatened with the deprivation of his Virgil learnt the Æneid by
+heart and then said 'Take what you can now'!--_that_ Ba calls
+'feeling the loss would not be so hard after all'!--_I_ do not, at
+least. And if at any future moment I should again be visited--as I
+earnestly desire may never be the case--with a sudden consciousness of
+the entire inutility of all earthly love (since of _my_ love) to hold
+its object back from the decree of God, if such should call it away;
+one of those known facts which, for practical good, we treat as
+supremely common-place, but which, like those of the uncertainty of
+life--the very existence of God, I may say--if they were _not_
+common-place, and could they be thoroughly apprehended (except in the
+chance minutes which make one grow old, not the mere years)--the
+business of the world would cease; but when you find Chaucer's graver
+at his work of 'graving smale seles' by the sun's light, you know that
+the sun's self could not have been _created_ on that day--do you
+'understand' that, Ba? And when I am with you, or here or writing or
+walking--and perfectly happy in the sunshine of you, I very well know
+I am no wiser than is good for me and that there seems no harm in
+feeling it impossible this should change, or fail to go on increasing
+till this world ends and we are safe, I with you, for ever. But
+when--if only _once_, as I told you, recording it for its very
+strangeness, I _do_ feel--in a flash--that words are words, and could
+not alter _that_ decree ... will you tell me how, after all, that
+conviction and the true woe of it are better met than by the as
+thorough conviction that, for one blessing, the extreme woe is
+_impossible_ now--that you _are_, and have been, _mine_, and _me_--one
+with me, never to be parted--so that the complete separation not being
+to be thought of, such an incomplete one as is yet in Fate's power may
+be the less likely to attract her notice? And, dearest, in all
+emergencies, see, I go to you for help; for your gift of better
+comfort than is found in myself. Or ought I, if I could, to add one
+more proof to the Greek proverb 'that the half is greater than the
+whole'--and only love you for myself (it is absurd; but if I _could_
+disentwine you from my soul in that sense), only see my own will, and
+good (not in _your_ will and good, as I now see them and shall ever
+see) ... should you say I _did_ love you then? Perhaps. And it would
+have been better for me, I know--I should not have _written_ this or
+the like--there being no post in the Siren's isle, as you will see.
+
+And the end of the whole matter is--what? Not by any means what my Ba
+expects or ought to expect; that I say with a flounce 'Catch me
+blotting down on paper, again, the first vague impressions in the
+weakest words and being sure I have only to bid her
+"understand"!--when I can get "Blair on Rhetoric," and the additional
+chapter on the proper conduct of a letter'! On the contrary I tell
+you, Ba, my own heart's dearest, I will provoke you tenfold worse;
+will tell you all that comes uppermost, and what frightens me or
+reassures me, in moments lucid or opaque--and when all the pen-stumps
+and holders refuse to open the lock, out will come the key perforce;
+and once put that knowledge--of the entire love and worship of my
+heart and soul--to its proper use, and all will be clear--tell me
+to-morrow that it will be clear when I call you to account and exact
+strict payment for every word and phrase and full-stop and partial
+stop, and no stop at all, in this wicked little note which got so
+treacherously the kisses and the thankfulness--written with no
+penholder that is to belong to me, I hope--but with the feather,
+possibly, which Sycorax wiped the dew from, as Caliban remembered when
+he was angry! All but--(that is, all was wrong but)--to be just ...
+the old, dear, so dear ending which makes my heart beat now as at
+first ... and so, pays for all! Wherefore, all is right again, is it
+not? and you are my own priceless Ba, my very own--and I will have
+you, if you like that style, and want you, and must have you every day
+and all day long--much less see you to-morrow _stand_--
+
+... Now, there breaks down my new spirit--and, shame or no, I must
+pray you, in the old way, _not_ to _receive me standing_--I should not
+remain master of myself I do believe!
+
+You have put out of my head all I intended to write--and now I slowly
+begin to remember the matters they seem strangely unimportant--that
+poor impotency of a Newspaper! No--nothing of that for the present.
+To-morrow my dearest! Ba's first comment--'_To-morrow?_ _To-day_ is
+too soon, it seems--yet it is wise, perhaps, to avoid the satiety &c.
+&c. &c. &c. &c.'
+
+Does she feel how I kissed that comment back on her dear self as fit
+punishment?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
+
+I must begin by invoking my own stupidity! To forget after all the
+penholder! I had put it close beside me too on the table, and never
+once thought of it afterwards from first to last--just as I should do
+if I had a common-place book, the memoranda all turning to
+obliviscenda as by particular contact. So I shall send the holder with
+Miss Martineau's books which you can read or not as you like ... they
+have beauty in passages ... but, trained up against the wall of a set
+design, want room for branching and blossoming, great as her skill is.
+I like her 'Playfellow' stories twice as well. Do you know _them_?
+Written for children, and in such a fine heroic child-spirit as to be
+too young and too old for nobody. Oh, and I send you besides a most
+frightful extract from an American magazine sent to me yesterday ...
+no, the day before ... on the subject of mesmerism--and you are to
+understand, if you please, that the Mr. Edgar Poe who stands committed
+in it, is my dedicator ... whose dedication I forgot, by the way, with
+the rest--so, while I am sending, you shall have his poems with his
+mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to
+E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to
+prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen
+between the great gaps of bathos.... 'Politian' will make you
+laugh--as the 'Raven' made _me_ laugh, though with something in it
+which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P.
+Willis and his peers--it was sent to me from _four_ different quarters
+besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and
+when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power
+of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at
+all--never heard from him nor wrote to him--and in my opinion, there
+is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric
+experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the
+beginning to the end. That '_going out_' of the hectic, struck me very
+much ... and the writhing _away_ of the upper lip. Most
+horrible!--Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for
+the full acting of the story on me ... without absolutely giving full
+credence to it, understand.
+
+Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was
+because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the
+jesting a little--for had I not thought of _that_ before, myself, and
+was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content,
+for my part, even _so_? Surely you remember--and I should not have
+said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that 'there is,
+with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary
+cases.' So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me
+through you, and it is enough to live for or die in--therefore living
+or dying I would thank God, and use that word '_enough_' ... being
+yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us
+should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when
+she knew you, since I could not bear--
+
+Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs
+to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.
+
+Let me tell you instead of my sister's affairs, which are so publicly
+talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in
+respect to them--yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told
+nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may
+say of Henrietta that her only fault is, her virtues being written in
+water--I know not of one other fault. She has too much softness to be
+able to say 'no' in the right place--and thus, without the slightest
+levity ... perfectly blameless in that respect, ... she says half a
+yes or a quarter of a yes, or a yes in some sort of form, too
+often--but I will tell you. Two years ago, three men were loving her,
+as they called it. After a few months, and the proper quantity of
+interpretations, one of them consoled himself by giving nick-names to
+his rivals. Perseverance and Despair he called them, and so, went up
+to the boxes to see out the rest of the play. Despair ran to a crisis,
+was rejected in so many words, but appealed against the judgment and
+had his claim admitted--it was all silence and mildness on each side
+... a tacit gaining of ground,--Despair 'was at least a gentleman,'
+said my brothers. On which Perseverance came on with violent
+re-iterations,--insisted that she loved him without knowing it, or
+_should_--elbowed poor Despair into the open streets, who being a
+gentleman wouldn't elbow again--swore that 'if she married another he
+would wait till she became a widow, trusting to Providence' ... _did_
+wait every morning till the head of the house was out, and sate day by
+day, in spite of the disinclination of my sisters and the rudeness of
+all my brothers, four hours in the drawing-room ... let himself be
+refused once a week and sate all the longer ... allowed everybody in
+the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of
+hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits
+now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of
+remorse for her own instability, that she is 'taken by storm and
+cannot help it.' I give you only the _résumé_ of this military
+movement--and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid
+at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person and
+then another, yet I am woman enough rather to be glad that the
+decision is made _so_. He is sincerely attached to her, I believe; and
+the want of refinement and sensibility (for he understood her
+affections to be engaged to another at one time) is covered in a
+measure by the earnestness,--and justified too by the event--everybody
+being quite happy and contented, even to Despair, who has a new horse
+and takes lessons in music.
+
+That's love--is it not? And that's my answer (if you look for it) to
+the question you asked me yesterday.
+
+Yet do not think that I am turning it all to game. I could not do so
+with any real earnest sentiment ... I never could ... and now least,
+and with my own sister whom I love so. One may smile to oneself and
+yet wish another well--and so I smile to _you_--and it is all safe
+with you I know. He is a second or third cousin of ours and has golden
+opinions from all his friends and fellow-officers--and for the rest,
+most of these men are like one another.... I never could see the
+difference between fuller's earth and common clay, among them all.
+
+What do you think he has said since--to _her_ too?--'I always
+persevere about everything. Once I began to write a farce--which they
+told me was as bad as could be. Well!--I persevered!--_I finished
+it_.' Perfectly unconscious, both he and she were of there being
+anything mal à propos in _that_--and no kind of harm was meant,--only
+it expresses the man.
+
+Dearest--it had better be Thursday I think--_our_ day! I was showing
+to-day your father's drawings,--and my brothers, and Arabel besides,
+admired them very much on the right grounds. Say how you are. You did
+not seem to me to answer frankly this time, and I was more than half
+uneasy when you went away. Take exercise, dear, dearest ... think of
+me enough for it,--and do not hurry 'Luria.' May God bless you!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         _Ba._
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
+
+I will not try and write much to-night, dearest, for my head gives a
+little warning--and I have so much to think of!--spite of my penholder
+being kept back from me after all! Now, ought I to have asked for it?
+Or did I not seem grateful enough at the promise? This last would be a
+characteristic reason, seeing that I reproached myself with feeling
+_too_ grateful for the 'special symbol'--the 'essential meaning' of
+which was already in my soul. Well then, I will--I do pray for
+it--next time; and I will keep it for that one yesterday and all its
+memories--and it shall bear witness against me, if, on the Siren's
+isle, I grow forgetful of Wimpole Street. And when is 'next time' to
+be--Wednesday or Thursday? When I look back on the strangely steady
+widening of my horizon--how no least interruption has occurred to
+visits or letters--oh, care _you_, sweet--care for us both!
+
+That remark of your sister's delights me--you remember?--that the
+anger would not be so formidable. I have exactly the fear of
+encountering _that_, which the sense of having to deal with a ghost
+would induce: there's no striking at it with one's partizan. Well, God
+is above all! It is not my fault if it so happens that by returning my
+love you make me exquisitely blessed; I believe--more than hope, I am
+_sure_ I should do all I ever _now_ can do, if you were never to know
+it--that is, my love for you was in the first instance its own
+reward--if one must use such phrases--and if it were possible for
+that ... not _anger_, which is of no good, but that _opposition_--that
+adverse will--to show that your good would be attained by the--
+
+But it would need to be _shown_ to me. You have said thus to me--in
+the very last letter, indeed. But with me, or any _man_, the instincts
+of happiness develop themselves too unmistakably where there is
+anything like a freedom of will. The man whose heart is set on being
+rich or influential after the worldly fashion, may be found far enough
+from the attainment of either riches or influence--but he will be in
+the presumed way to them--pumping at the pump, if he is really anxious
+for water, even though the pump be dry--but not sitting still by the
+dusty roadside.
+
+I believe--first of all, you--but when that is done, and I am allowed
+to call your heart _mine_,--I cannot think you would be happy if
+parted from me--and _that_ belief, coming to add to my own feeling in
+_that_ case. So, this will _be_--I trust in God.
+
+In life, in death, I am your own, _my_ own! My head has got well
+already! It is so slight a thing, that I make such an ado about! Do
+not reply to these bodings--they are gone--they seem absurd! All steps
+secured but the last, and that last the easiest! Yes--far easiest! For
+first you had to be created, only that; and then, in my time; and
+then, not in Timbuctoo but Wimpole Street, and then ... the strange
+hedge round the sleeping Palace keeping the world off--and then ...
+all was to begin, all the difficulty only _begin_:--and now ... see
+where is reached! And I kiss you, and bless you, my dearest, in
+earnest of the end!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Monday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
+
+You have had my letter and heard about the penholder. Your fancy of
+'not seeming grateful enough,' is not wise enough for _you_, dearest;
+when you know that _I_ know your common fault to be the undue
+magnifying of everything that comes from me, and I am always
+complaining of it outwardly and inwardly. That suddenly I should set
+about desiring you to be more grateful,--even for so great a boon as
+an old penholder,--would be a more astounding change than any to be
+sought or seen in a prime minister.
+
+Another mistake you made concerning Henrietta and her opinion--and
+there's no use nor comfort in leaving you in it. Henrietta says that
+the 'anger would not be so formidable after all'! Poor dearest
+Henrietta, who trembles at the least bending of the brows ... who has
+less courage than I, and the same views of the future! What she
+referred to, was simply the infrequency of the visits. 'Why was I
+afraid,' she said--'where was the danger? who would be the
+_informer_?'--Well! I will not say any more. It is just natural that
+you, in your circumstances and associations, should be unable to see
+what I have seen from the beginning--only you will not hereafter
+reproach me, in the most secret of your thoughts, for not having told
+you plainly. If I could have told you with greater plainness I should
+blame myself (and I do not) because it is not an opinion I have, but a
+perception. I see, I know. The result ... the end of all ... perhaps
+now and then I see _that_ too ... in the 'lucid moments' which are not
+the happiest for anybody. Remember, in all cases, that I shall not
+repent of any part of our past intercourse; and that, therefore, when
+the time for decision comes, you will be free to look at the question
+as if you saw it then for the first moment, without being hampered by
+considerations about 'all those yesterdays.'
+
+For _him_ ... he would rather see me dead at his foot than yield the
+point: and he will say so, and mean it, and persist in the meaning.
+
+Do you ever wonder at me ... that I should write such things, and have
+written others so different? _I have thought that in myself very
+often._ Insincerity and injustice may seem the two ends, while I
+occupy the straight betwixt two--and I should not like you to doubt
+how this may be! Sometimes I have begun to show you the truth, and
+torn the paper; I _could_ not. Yet now again I am borne on to tell
+you, ... to save you from some thoughts which you cannot help perhaps.
+
+There has been no insincerity--nor is there injustice. I believe, I am
+certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children. I have
+heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in
+towards him through the stones of the rock ... thrust off ... dropping
+off ... turning in again and clinging! Knowing what is excellent in
+him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly,
+notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable 'system' which made
+him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for
+his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so
+bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt
+acutely--more than you and I could feel them--but the fortitude was
+admirable. Then came the trials of love--then, I was repulsed too
+often, ... made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side ...
+depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is
+possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as past. Yet
+my friends used to say 'You look broken-spirited'--and it was true. In
+the midst, came my illness,--and when I was ill he grew gentler and
+let me draw nearer than ever I had done: and after that great stroke
+... you _know_ ... though _that_ fell in the middle of a storm of
+emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God
+seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful
+to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, '_If it
+had not been for you_'...! And comparing my self-reproach to what I
+imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if _I_ had loved
+selfishly, _he_ had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and
+forgive him for two ... (I knowing that serene generous departed
+spirit, and seeming left to represent it) ... and I did love him
+better than all those left to _me_ to love in the world here. I proved
+a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my
+life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of
+my family away from him. And afterwards for long and long he spoke to
+me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much
+praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself
+capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of
+his voice when he prayed in this room; my best hope, as I have told
+him since, being, to die beneath his eyes. Love is so much to me
+naturally--it is, to all women! and it was so much to _me_ to feel
+sure at last that _he_ loved me--to forget all blame--to pull the
+weeds up from that last illusion of life:--and this, till the
+Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again--farther than
+ever--when George said 'he could not flatter me' and I dared not
+flatter myself. But do _you_ believe that I never wrote what I did not
+feel: I never did. And I ask one kindness more ... do not notice what
+I have written here. Let it pass. We can alter nothing by ever so many
+words. After all, he is the victim. He isolates himself--and now and
+then he feels it ... the cold dead silence all round, which is the
+effect of an incredible system. If he were not stronger than most men,
+he could not bear it as he does. With such high qualities too!--so
+upright and honourable--you would esteem him, you would like him, I
+think. And so ... dearest ... let _that_ be the last word.
+
+I dare say you have asked yourself sometimes, why it was that I never
+managed to draw you into the house here, so that you might make your
+own way. Now _that_ is one of the things impossible to me. I have not
+influence enough for _that_. George can never invite a friend of his
+even. Do you see? The people who do come here, come by particular
+license and association ... Capt. Surtees Cook being one of them.
+Once ... when I was in high favour too ... I asked for Mr. Kenyon to
+be invited to dinner--he an old college friend, and living close by
+and so affectionate to me always--I felt that he must be hurt by the
+neglect, and asked. _It was in vain._ Now, you see--
+
+May God bless you always! I wrote all my spirits away in this letter
+yesterday, and kept it to finish to-day ... being yours every day,
+glad or sad, ever beloved!--
+
+                                                    Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
+
+Why will you give me such unnecessary proofs of your goodness? Why not
+leave the books for me to take away, at all events? No--you must fold
+up, and tie round, and seal over, and be at all the pains in the world
+with those hands I see now. But you only threaten; say you 'shall
+send'--as yet, and nothing having come, I do pray you, if not too
+late, to save me the shame--add to the gratitude you never can now, I
+think ... only _think_, for you are a siren, and I don't know
+certainly to what your magic may not extend. Thus, in not so important
+a matter, I should have said, the day before yesterday, that no letter
+from you could make my heart rise within me, more than of old ...
+unless it should happen to be of twice the ordinary thickness ... and
+_then_ there's a fear at first lest the over-running of my dealt-out
+measure should be just a note of Mr. Kenyon's, for instance! But
+yesterday the very seal began with 'Ba'--Now, always seal with that
+seal my letters, dearest! Do you recollect Donne's pretty lines about
+seals?
+
+    Quondam fessus Amor loquens Amato,
+    Tot et tanta loquens amica, scripsit:
+    Tandem et fessa manus dedit Sigillum.
+
+And in his own English,
+
+    When love, being weary, made an end
+    Of kind expressions to his friend,
+    He writ; when hand could write no more,
+    He gave the seal--and so left o'er.
+
+(By the way, what a mercy that he never noticed the jingle _in posse_
+of ending 'expressions' and beginning 'impressions.')
+
+How your account of the actors in the 'Love's Labour Lost' amused me!
+I rather like, though, the notion of that steady, business-like
+pursuit of love under difficulties; and the _sobbing_ proves something
+surely! Serjt. Talfourd says--is it not he who says it?--'All tears
+are not for sorrow.' I should incline to say, from my own feeling,
+that no tears were. They only express joy in me, or sympathy with
+joy--and so is it with you too, I should think.
+
+Understand that I do _not_ disbelieve in Mesmerism--I only object to
+insufficient evidence being put forward as quite irrefragable. I keep
+an open sense on the subject--ready to be instructed; and should have
+refused such testimony as Miss Martineau's if it had been adduced in
+support of something I firmly believed--'non _tali_ auxilio'--indeed,
+so has truth been harmed, and only so, from the beginning. So, I shall
+read what you bid me, and learn all I can.
+
+I am not quite so well this week--yesterday some friends came early
+and kept me at home--for which I seem to suffer a little; less,
+already, than in the morning--so I will go out and walk away the
+whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment. As for 'Luria' I have
+not looked at it since I saw you--which means, saw you in the body,
+because last night I saw you; as I wonder if you know!
+
+Thursday, and again I am with you--and you will forget nothing ... how
+the farewell is to be returned? Ah, my dearest, sweetest Ba; how
+entirely I love you!
+
+                                    May God bless you ever--
+
+                                         R.
+
+2. p.m. Your parcel arrives ... the penholder; now what shall I say?
+How am I to use so fine a thing even in writing to you? I will give it
+you again in our Isle, and meantime keep it where my other treasures
+are--my letters and my dear ringlet.
+
+Thank you--all I can thank.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 28, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest--I will say, as you desire, nothing on that subject--but
+this strictly for myself: you engaged me to consult my own good in the
+keeping or breaking our engagement; not _your_ good as it might even
+seem to me; much less seem to another. My only good in this
+world--that against which all the world goes for nothing--is to spend
+my life with you, and be yours. You know that when I _claim_ anything,
+it is really yourself in me--you _give_ me a right and bid me use it,
+and I, in fact, am most obeying you when I appear most exacting on my
+own account--so, in that feeling, I dare claim, once for all, and in
+all possible cases (except that dreadful one of your becoming worse
+again ... in which case I wait till life ends with both of us), I
+claim your promise's fulfilment--say, at the summer's end: it cannot
+be for your good that this state of things should continue. We can go
+to Italy for a year or two and be happy as day and night are long. For
+me, I adore you. This is all unnecessary, I feel as I write: but you
+will think of the main fact as _ordained_, granted by God, will you
+not, dearest?--so, not to be put in doubt _ever again_--then, we can
+go quietly thinking of after matters. Till to-morrow, and ever after,
+God bless my heart's own, own Ba. All my soul follows you,
+love--encircles you--and I live in being yours.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
+
+Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am
+not ill, ... _then_ ... _not now_ ... you shall decide, and your
+decision shall be duty and desire to me, both--I will make no
+difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I _have_ decided to let
+it be as you shall choose ... _shall_ choose. That I love you enough
+to give you up 'for your good,' is proof (to myself at least) that I
+love you enough for any other end:--but you thought _too much of me in
+the last letter_. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your
+words--only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.
+
+More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into
+the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I
+see that you love me and that I am bound to you:--and 'what more need
+I see,' you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to
+the blue ridges of the hills, to the _chances_ of your being happy
+with me. Well! I am yours as _you_ see ... and not yours to teaze you.
+You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ...
+and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use 'the
+liberty of leaping out of the window,' unless you are sure of the
+house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window--least of
+all, _I_.
+
+For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say,
+and further from the world, as I think--out of hearing of the great
+storm of gossiping, when 'scirocco is loose.' Even if you liked to
+live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no
+sacrifice for me--and whether in Italy or England, we should have
+sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying
+by a line that 'good free life' of yours which you reasonably
+praise--which, if it had been necessary to modify, _we must have
+parted_, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though,
+that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.
+
+Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had
+been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his
+club (the Athenæum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of
+something better to say--and he had not heard of it. There were more
+black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of
+his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy
+councillor.
+
+But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson--I forgot to tell you--I
+forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and
+confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does
+not prevent his writing a new poem--he has finished the second book of
+it--and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the
+'University,' the university-members being all females. If George has
+not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I
+don't know what to think--it makes me open my eyes. Now isn't the
+world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so
+many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him,
+for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger,
+understand--but the complaint may _run_ into danger--so the account
+went.
+
+And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May God bless you. Is Monday or
+Tuesday to be _our_ day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take
+courage and say Monday--but Tuesday and Saturday would do as
+well--would they not?
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Shall I have a letter?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
+
+It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further
+remark on _that_ subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I
+suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and
+choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ...
+(that is, in _expression_; the just correspondency of word to fact and
+feeling: for _it_--the love--may be very truly _there_, at the bottom,
+when it is got at, and spoken out)--quite otherwise, I do really have
+to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as
+little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity.
+Dearest, _love_ means _love_, certainly, and adoration carries its
+sense with it--and _so_, you may have received my feeling in that
+shape--but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice
+one or the other profession, you 'fly out'--instead of keeping your
+throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to
+it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a
+moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able,
+see more--'si _minus propè_ stes, te capiet magis.' Meanwhile, silent
+or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that _glove_--not that hand.
+
+I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness
+... hardly disapproves--he knows I could not avoid--escape you--for he
+knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in
+our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) 'what I thought of his
+young relative'--and I considered half a second to this effect--'if he
+asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the
+crown of the Czar--and I answered truly--he would not return; "then of
+course you mean to try and get it to keep."' So I _did_ tell the truth
+in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.
+
+I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected
+book--title, scheme, all of it,--_that_ is astounding;--and fairies?
+If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies--_this_ maketh that
+there ben no fairies'--locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must
+keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world
+passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if _we_ have the making
+of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to
+hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play
+goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir
+[Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is
+slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually
+insisted upon and drawn boldly ... _here_, you have it gone over with
+an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes
+whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of
+mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode,
+'Sic fatur--so said Æneas; lachrymans--_a-crying_' ... our pedagogue
+turned on him furiously--'D'ye think Æneas made such a noise--as _you_
+shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy,
+smiling at itself.
+
+Then _Tuesday_, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer
+afterward. I am singularly well to-day--head quite quiet--and
+yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my
+last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor
+dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever--
+
+                                                          R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]
+
+Something, you said yesterday, made me happy--'that your liking for me
+did not come and go'--do you remember? Because there was a letter,
+written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully,
+as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your
+fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold
+water'!--and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my
+thoughts of you too much, until quite of late--while even yesterday I
+was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach
+me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'--it was your own word!
+And the other long word _idiosyncrasy_ seemed long enough to cover it;
+and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man
+of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings
+sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at
+half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black
+beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most
+of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... _where_ did they
+gape? who could tell? Oh--but lately I have not been crossed so, of
+course, with those fabulous terrors--lately that horror of the burning
+mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear!--and
+if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably
+sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him
+that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a
+white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse!--call it the
+'mammoth horse'--the '_real_ mammoth,' this time!
+
+Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems
+so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and
+that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping
+on your purple underneath. _Your_ letter, the letter I answered, was
+in my heart ... _is_ in my heart--and all the yeses in the world would
+not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps,
+I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction--and it comes to the
+same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of
+instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from
+your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should,
+would, _must_, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You
+understand--you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like.
+On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and
+better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the
+whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing
+beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to
+me, I do not feel it any longer--it may be raining still, but I am in
+the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you _could_ be _too dear_ to me
+you would be now--but you could not--I do not believe in those
+supposed excesses of pure affections--God cannot be too great.
+
+Therefore it is a conditional engagement still--all the conditions
+being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall
+I tell you what is 'not to be put in doubt _ever_'?--your goodness,
+_that_ is ... and every tie that binds me to you. 'Ordained, granted
+by God' it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you,
+and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it
+at this present point. Still I _do not_--there seems no necessity yet.
+
+May God bless you, ever dearest:--
+
+                                                Your own BA.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+           Saturday.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+Well I have your letter--and I send you the postscript to my last one,
+written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in
+some parts of it, _so_ far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the
+'flying out'--perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your moments
+of starry centrifugal motion.
+
+So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon's opinion of his 'young
+relative'--(neither young nor his relative--not very much of either!)
+is to the effect that you couldn't possibly 'escape' her--? It looks
+like the sign of the Red Dragon, put _so_ ... and your burning
+mountain is not too awful for the scenery.
+
+Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you
+should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say
+infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean
+a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No--do not say
+such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal
+Czarina who must stand between you and me.... I shall think that it is
+not _I_ whom you look at ... and _pour cause_. 'Flying out,' _that_
+would be!
+
+And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful
+of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not
+come, certainly uncomfortable when he does--yes, _really_ I would
+rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of
+which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me
+ask why he does not come &c. ... questions which never came to my lips
+before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I
+wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except,
+except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his
+too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being
+overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate
+writing letters to any of my old friends--I feel as if it were the
+merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to
+anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very
+fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards
+through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am
+ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ...
+which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ...
+and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of
+understanding, I have a distaste for _them_ ... cannot help it--and
+you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it,
+persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon--with whom we began,
+and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can
+think of another,--do not imagine that, if he _should_ see anything,
+he can 'approve' of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... _he_,
+with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and
+left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know, ... if I
+should be ill _before_ ... why there, is a conclusion!--but if
+_afterward_ ... what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I
+only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both
+suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master
+to run the latter risk. You have overcome ... to your loss
+perhaps--unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my
+prison ... I could not even smile at _that_ if it seemed probable ...
+I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you
+... dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and
+believe--in spite of the _possibility_ which it is impossible to deny.
+And now we leave this subject for the present.
+
+_Sunday._--You are 'singularly well.' You are very seldom quite well,
+I am afraid--yet 'Luria' seems to have done no harm this time, as you
+are singularly well the day _after_ so much writing. Yet do not hurry
+that last act.... I won't have it for a long while yet.
+
+Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine,
+very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you
+understand that I had said there was nothing in him but _manner_ ... I
+thought he said so--and I am confident that he never heard such an
+opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have
+observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called
+_mannerism_, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the
+medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon
+teaches ... 'Le style, c'est _l'homme_.' But if the _whole man_ were
+style, if all Carlyleism were manner--why there would be no man, no
+Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent
+me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world--affected
+parlances--just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic
+the distractions of some great wandering soul--although _that_ is a
+bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not
+his dress, but his physiognomy--or more than _that_ even.
+
+But I do not forgive him for talking here against the 'ideals of
+poets' ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called _reality_, which is
+another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in
+broad blazing lights--but he does not analyse them like a
+philosopher--do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action
+as opposed to speech and singing, what is _that_--when all earnest
+thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions
+surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if
+Shakespeare's actions were not greater than Cromwell's!--
+
+But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.
+
+                                             Wholly and only
+
+                                                  Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]
+
+You ought hardly,--ought you, my Ba?--to refer to _that_ letter or any
+expression in it; I had--and _have_, I trust--your forgiveness for
+what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows.
+That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose
+of what you properly call a _crisis_. I _did_ believe,--taking an
+expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an
+excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day
+previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny
+me admittance again unless I blotted out--not merely softened
+down--the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion,
+I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most
+painfully to my mind--_that_ does not, after all, disagree with what I
+said and you repeat--does it, if you will think? I said my other
+'_likings_' (as you rightly set it down) _used_ to 'come and go,' and
+that my love for you _did not_, and that is true; the first clause as
+the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and
+general,--always have been--and the natural problem has been the
+giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of
+dispersing. I seem to have foretold, _foreknown_ you in other likings
+of mine--now here ... when the liking '_came_' ... and now elsewhere
+... when as surely the liking '_went_': and if they had stayed before
+the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary,
+I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,--for Romeo
+_thinks_ he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands--whereas I saw
+the plain truth without one mistake, and 'looked to like, if looking
+liking moved--and no more deep _did_ I endart mine eye'--about which,
+first I was very sorry, and after rather proud--all which I seem to
+have told you before.--And now, when my whole heart and soul find you,
+and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy
+cannot last, seeing that
+
+--it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone
+now, dearest, ever-dearest?
+
+And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some
+chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to
+_me_--like Charles Lamb's 'letter to an elderly man whose education
+had been neglected'--when he finds himself involuntarily communicating
+truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops
+himself after this fashion--'If you look round the world, my dear
+Sir--for it _is_ round!--so I will make you laugh at me, if you will,
+for _my_ inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment
+with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of
+that--for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the
+most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it--so that increase
+of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness--and
+diminution, diminished illness. And now there _is_ diminution! Dear,
+dear Ba--you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and
+what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and
+what ends it all directly?--just an hour's walk! So with _me_:
+now,--fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is--no, _don't_
+see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But _you_, at the end;
+this is _all_ the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief
+in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless God with my whole heart that
+it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say--so
+superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath
+(I who _do_ love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes
+dearest,)--I _will not_ bid you--that is, pray you--to persevere! You
+have all my life bound to yours--save me from _my 'seven years'_--and
+God reward you!
+
+                                                 Your own R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]
+
+But I did not--dear, dearest--no indeed, I did not mean any harm about
+the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure--and
+so,--did I give you pain? was _that_ my ingenuity? Forgive my
+unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will
+just say that what made me talk about 'the thorn in the flesh' from
+that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into
+it as much of the truth, _your_ truth, as admitted of the ultimate
+purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave
+me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set
+about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that
+it 'did not come and go,'--was it not enough? enough to make me feel
+happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this?
+Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning
+to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you
+have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent,
+most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing
+and at no moment have you--I will not say--failed to _me_, but spoken
+or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever
+been to me except too generous? Ah--if I had been only half as
+generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that
+first meeting--it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not
+courage--I shrank from the thought of it--and then ... besides ... I
+could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,--I concluded
+that I might keep my friend.
+
+Why should any remembrance be painful to _you_? I do not understand.
+Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself!--seeing that
+every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made
+me yours with a deeper trust and love.
+
+And for that letter ... do you fancy that in _my_ memory the sting is
+not gone from it?--and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the
+Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart
+always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear
+letter that was burnt, forgiven by _you_--until you grow angry with me
+instead--just till then.
+
+And that you should care so much about the opium! Then _I_ must care,
+and get to do with less--at least. On the other side of your goodness
+and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike
+you as strange that I who have had no pain--no acute suffering to keep
+down from its angles--should need opium in any shape. But I have had
+restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power
+of sleeping quite--and even in the day, the continual aching sense of
+weakness has been intolerable--besides palpitation--as if one's life,
+instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished
+within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all
+the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium--a
+preparation of it, called morphine, and ether--and ever since I have
+been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,--because the
+tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I
+have--so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that
+the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be
+dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very
+slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be
+done--and you are to understand that I never _increased_ upon the
+prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance--no! Now
+think of my writing all this to you!--
+
+And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters;
+and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.
+
+Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I
+have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I
+shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... _you_:--a
+forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is
+just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!
+
+Your head ... is it ... _how_ is it? tell me. And consider again if it
+could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach _you_ ... in
+what I said about the letter.
+
+May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the _compensation_
+blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and _that_, I can say before
+God.
+
+                                                    Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]
+
+If I said you 'gave me pain' in anything, it was in the only way ever
+possible for you, my dearest--by giving _yourself_, in me, pain--being
+unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in
+that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called--in this
+very letter--'generous' &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep
+into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall
+hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of
+gratitude already is beyond expression.
+
+All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. 'Slowly and
+gradually' what may _not_ be done? Then see the bright weather while I
+write--lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf,
+rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge
+sparrows in full song--there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in
+store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps--and then comes what
+shall come--
+
+And Miss Mitford yesterday--and has she fresh fears for you of my evil
+influence and Origenic power of 'raying out darkness' like a swart
+star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing
+people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as
+the like infirmity in others--whether they are unconscious of, or
+indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance
+from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think
+he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by
+his deafness as you profess--but he will be quite aware, to say the
+least of it, when another man can't hear _him_; he will certainly not
+encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who
+fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either
+believe in his heart that it is _not_ so ... that only as much
+attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would
+quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and
+be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to
+confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness
+of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were
+just such another mote--_then_ one might sympathize and feel no such
+inconvenience--but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to
+just its _double_, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce
+see nothing wrong? 'No'--it is supposed--'but something _as_ obscure
+in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no
+nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought
+and the two words that express it without obscurity at all--'bricks
+and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle
+wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in
+him'--I am almost inclined to say that _clear expression_ should be
+his only work and care--for he is born, ordained, such as he is--and
+not born learned in putting what was born in him into words--what ever
+_can_ be clearly spoken, ought to be. But 'bricks and mortar' is very
+easily said--and some of the thoughts in 'Sordello' not so readily
+even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.
+
+I look forward to a real life's work for us both. _I_ shall do
+all,--under your eyes and with your hand in mine,--all I was intended
+to do: may but _you_ as surely go perfecting--by continuing--the work
+begun so wonderfully--'a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven'--
+
+I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend--'to-morrow'
+always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your
+sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did _not_
+tell you that I had almost passed by her--the eyes being still
+elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that--no--I will send the
+old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence--and it is very
+charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest--and
+tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as
+glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you
+ever.
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing
+you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner
+with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it--these
+have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some
+reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive
+me--and let me forget it all on Monday? On _Monday_--unless I am told
+otherwise by the early post--And God bless you ever
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+
+I felt it must be so ... that something must be the matter, ... and I
+had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which
+comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than
+my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now _was_
+it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great
+dinner?--but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest--I have no
+heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like
+... if you are well enough on Monday ... if it should be thought wise
+of you to come to London through the noise ... if ... you understand
+all the _ifs_ ... and among them the greatest if of all, ... for if
+you do love me ... _care_ for me even, you will not do yourself harm
+or run any risk of harm by going out _anywhere too soon_. On Monday,
+in case you are _considered well enough_, and otherwise Tuesday,
+Wednesday--I leave it to you. Still I _will_ ask one thing, whether
+you come on Monday or not. _Let_ me have a single line by the nearest
+post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible--oh
+no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with
+me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to
+save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course
+with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all!--I
+thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when
+Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been
+depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ...
+that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that
+she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I
+had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half
+past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have
+a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward
+skyward ... to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come
+that day ... no!--and I revenged myself by writing a letter to _you_,
+which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for
+letters. Last night, came a real one--dearest! So we could not keep
+our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead, ... on my part. How
+should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you
+on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday,
+nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again--if all
+the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you!--it
+has grown to be enough prayer!--as _you_ are enough (and all, besides)
+for
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+
+The clock strikes--_three_; and I am here, not with you--and my
+'fractious' headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now,
+and is leaving me every minute--as if to make me aware, with an
+undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and
+soon will be wondering--and it would be so easy now to dress myself
+and walk or run or ride--do anything that led to you ... but by no
+haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a
+quarter to five--by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear,
+dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am--with myself, with--this
+is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last
+night--yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been
+twice put off before--once solely on my account. And the sun shines,
+and you would shine--
+
+Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still
+I have lost my day.
+
+                                 Bless you, my ever-dearest.
+
+                                      Your R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, February 9, 1846.]
+
+My dearest--there are no words,--nor will be to-morrow, nor even in
+the Island--I know that! But I do love you.
+
+My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word--
+
+I am quite well now--my other note will have told you when the change
+began--I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of
+getting better in as little time as possible,--and the stimulus turned
+mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a
+degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you--but I knew
+my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later--and I
+thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually
+prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had
+been laid to heart--to-morrow I shall see you, Ba--my sweetest. But
+there are cold winds blowing to-day--how do you bear them, my Ba?
+'_Care_' you, pray, pray, care for all _I_ care about--and be well, if
+God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss
+you, and will begin a new thinking of you--and end, and begin, going
+round and round in my circle of discovery,--_My_ lotos-blossom!
+because they _loved_ the lotos, were lotos-lovers,--[Greek: lôtou t'
+erôtes], as Euripides writes in the [Greek: Trôades].
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+P.S. See those lines in the _Athenæum_ on Pulci with Hunt's
+translation--all wrong--'_che non si sente_,' being--'that one does
+not _hear_ him' i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow--and the rest, male,
+pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mî ocelle!
+
+    Where's Luigi Pulci, that one don't the man see?
+    He just now yonder in the copse has '_gone it_' (_n_'andò)
+    Because across his mind there came a fancy;
+    He'll wish to fancify, perhaps, a sonnet!
+
+Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read _this_ which I
+really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful
+persecuted Pietro d'Abano wrote this quatrain on the people's plaguing
+him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him--he helped
+to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and
+passes for a conjuror in his country to this day--when there is a
+storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact
+with the evil one obliged him to drink no _milk_; no natural human
+food! You know Tieck's novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I
+believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty
+years ago.
+
+    Studiando le mie cifre, col compasso
+    Rilevo, che presto sarò sotterra--
+    Perchè del mio saper si fa gran chiasso,
+    E gl'ignoranti m'hanno mosso guerra.
+
+Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I
+remember, I turned it--word for word--
+
+    Studying my ciphers, with the compass
+    I reckon--who soon shall be below ground,
+    Because of my lore they make great 'rumpus,'
+    And against me war makes each dull rogue round.
+
+Say that you forgive me to-morrow!
+
+[The following is in E.B.B.'s handwriting.]
+
+    With my compass I take up my ciphers, poor scholar;
+    Who myself shall be taken down soon under the ground ...
+    Since the world at my learning roars out in its choler,
+    And the blockheads have fought me all round.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 10, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your 'Luria' just as you would
+have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a
+conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has
+moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of
+pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has--it is
+very fine. For the execution, _that_ too is worthily done--although I
+agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here
+and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to
+lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger--but you will
+look to it yourself--and such a conception _must_ come in thunder and
+lightning, as a chief god would--_must_ make its own way ... and will
+not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable.
+Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light
+on her face--might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a
+magnificent work--a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against
+their 'heroes,' and (what is peculiar) an _humane_ exposition ... not
+misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the
+return, the remorse, saves it--and the 'Too late' of the repentance
+and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors
+and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward ...
+'_That is done._' And now--surely you think well of the work as a
+whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it--and of the
+_subtilty_ too, for it is subtle--too subtle perhaps for stage
+purposes, though as clear, ... as to expression ... as to medium ...
+as 'bricks and mortar' ... shall I say?
+
+    'A people is but the attempt of many
+    To rise to the completer life of one.'
+
+There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine _he_ is, your Luria,
+when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and
+half-disdain of Domizia. Ah--Domizia! would it hurt her to make her
+more a woman ... a little ... I wonder!
+
+So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read
+_through_ ... since I have read the fifth twice over. And remember,
+please, that I am to read, besides, the 'Soul's Tragedy,' and that I
+shall dun you for it presently. Because you told me it was finished,
+otherwise I would not speak a word, feeling that you want rest, and
+that I, who am anxious about you, would be crossing my own purposes
+by driving you into work. It is the overwork, the overwear of mind and
+heart (for the feelings come as much into use as the thoughts in these
+productions), that makes you so pale, dearest, that distracts your
+head, and does all the harm on Saturdays and so many other days
+besides.
+
+To-day--how are you? It _was_ right and just for me to write this
+time, after the two dear notes ... the one on Saturday night which
+made me praise you to myself and think you kinder than kindest, and
+the other on Monday morning which took me unaware--such a note, _that_
+was! Oh it _was_ right and just that I should not teaze you to send me
+another after those two others,--yet I was very near doing it--yet I
+should like infinitely to hear to-day how you
+are--unreasonable!--Well! you will write now--you will answer what I
+am writing, and mention yourself particularly and sincerely--Remember!
+Above all, you will care for your head. I have been thinking since
+yesterday that, coming out of the cold, you might not have refused as
+usual to take something ... hot wine and water, or coffee? Will you
+have coffee with me on Saturday? 'Shunning the salt,' will you have
+the sugar? And do tell me, for I have been thinking, are you careful
+as to diet--and will such sublunary things as coffee and tea and cocoa
+affect your head--_for_ or _against_! Then you do not touch wine--and
+perhaps you ought. Surely something may be found or done to do you
+good. If it had not been for me, you would be travelling in Italy by
+this time and quite well perhaps.
+
+This morning I had a letter from Miss Martineau and really read it to
+the end without thinking it too long, which is extraordinary for me
+just now, and scarcely ordinary in the letter, and indeed it is a
+delightful letter, as letters go, which are not yours! You shall take
+it with you on Saturday to read, and you shall see that it is worth
+reading, and interesting for Wordsworth's sake and her own. Mr.
+Kenyon has it now, because he presses on to have her letters, and I
+should not like to tell him that you had it first from me.... Also
+Saturday will be time enough.
+
+Oh--poor Mr. Horne! shall I tell you some of his offences? That he
+desires to be called at four in the morning, and does not get up till
+eight. That he pours libations on his bare head out of the
+water-glasses at great dinners. That being in the midst of
+sportsmen--rural aristocrats--lords of soil--and all talking learnedly
+of pointers' noses and spaniels' ears; he has exclaimed aloud in a
+mocking paraphrase--'If I were to hold up a horse by the tail.' The
+wit is certainly doubtful!--That being asked to dinner on Tuesday, he
+will go on Wednesday instead.--That he throws himself at full length
+with a gesture approaching to a 'summerset' on satin sofas. That he
+giggles. That he only _thinks_ he can talk. That his ignorance on all
+subjects is astounding. That he never read the old ballads, nor saw
+Percy's collection. That he asked _who_ wrote 'Drink to me only with
+thine eyes.' That after making himself ridiculous in attempting to
+speak at a public meeting, he said to a compassionate friend 'I got
+very well out of _that_.' That, in writing his work on Napoleon, he
+employed a man to study the subject for him. That he cares for
+nobody's poetry or fame except his own, and considers Tennyson chiefly
+illustrious as being his contemporary. That, as to politics, he
+doesn't care '_which_ side.' That he is always talking of 'my shares,'
+'my income,' as if he were a Kilmansegg. Lastly (and understand, this
+is _my_ 'lastly' and not Miss Mitford's, who is far from being out of
+breath so soon) that he has a mania for heiresses--that he has gone
+out at half past five and 'proposed' to Miss M or N with fifty
+thousand pounds, and being rejected (as the lady thought fit to report
+herself) came back to tea and the same evening 'fell in love' with
+Miss O or P ... with forty thousand--went away for a few months, and
+upon his next visit, did as much to a Miss Q or W, on the promise of
+four blood horses--has a prospect now of a Miss R or S--with hounds,
+perhaps.
+
+Too, too bad--isn't it? I would repeat none of it except to you--and
+as to the worst part, the last, why some may be coincidence, and some,
+exaggeration, for I have not the least doubt that every now and then a
+fine poetical compliment was turned into a serious thing by the
+listener, and then the poor poet had critics as well as listeners all
+round him. Also, he rather 'wears his heart on his sleeve,' there is
+no denying--and in other respects he is not much better, perhaps, than
+other men. But for the base traffic of the affair--I do not believe a
+word. He is too generous--has too much real sensibility. I fought his
+battle, poor Orion. 'And so,' she said 'you believe it possible for a
+disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses,
+on the same day?' I doubted the _fact_. And then she showed me a note,
+an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the
+business--while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But
+I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady's confessions, or
+convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having
+tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few
+days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a
+neighbourhood where all were strangers to him,--and never outstaying
+his week! He must have been _foolish_, read it all how we may.
+
+And so am _I_, to write this 'personal talk' to you when you will not
+care for it--yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though
+Wordsworth's tea-kettle outsings it all.
+
+When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and
+his Italian poets, in the _Examiner_. How I liked to be pulled by the
+sleeve to your translations!--How I liked everything!--Pulci, Pietro
+... and you, best!
+
+Yet here's a naiveté which I found in your letter! I will write it out
+that you may read it--
+
+'However it' (the headache) 'was no sooner gone in a degree, than a
+worse plague came--_I sate thinking of you_.'
+
+Very satisfactory _that_ is, and very clear.
+
+May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold
+makes me _languid_, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not
+unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.
+
+                                 Your worse ... worst plague
+
+                                      Your own
+
+                                           BA.
+
+I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written 'a long
+letter' _to_ the letter!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Wednesday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 11, 1846.]
+
+My sweetest 'plague,' _did_ I really write that sentence so, without
+gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it--but you
+know well, well where the real plague lay,--that I thought of you as
+thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had
+kept me from you--and if I did not dwell more particularly on that
+thinking of _yours_, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a
+plague when brought before me _with_ the thought of you,--if I passed
+this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take
+up the care and stop the 'reverie serene' of--ah, the rhyme _lets_ me
+say--'sweetest eyes were ever seen'--were _ever_ seen! And yourself
+confess, in the Saturday's note, to having been 'unhappy for half an
+hour till' &c. &c.--and do not I feel _that_ here, and am not I
+plagued by it?
+
+Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back
+gently (that is backwards) and tell you I 'sate thinking' too, and
+with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the
+window was frozen ('so as to bear sparrows' somebody said) and I knew
+you would feel it--'but you are not unwell'--really? thank God--and
+the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance--you asked me once
+if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you
+say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for
+a book, an old fancy seized me to try the 'sortes' and dip into the
+first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said 'what
+will be the event of my love for Her'--in so many words--and my book
+turned out to be--'Cerutti's Italian Grammar!'--a propitious source of
+information ... the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some
+assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative
+absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible
+pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush ... such
+dreadful possibilities of stumbling on 'conditional moods,' 'imperfect
+tenses,' 'singular numbers,'--I should have been too glad to put up
+with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than
+afforded by such a word as 'Conjunction,' 'possessive pronoun--,'
+secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and
+what did I find? _This_--which I copy from the book now--'_If we love
+in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to
+eternity_'--from 'Promiscuous Exercises,' to be translated into
+Italian, at the end.
+
+And now I reach Horne and his characteristics--of which I can tell you
+with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not
+altogether false--whether it proceed from inability to see what one
+may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne,
+but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of
+those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses,
+meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter
+he had hired once,--how it galloped and could not walk; also he
+propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when
+a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the
+sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in
+that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself--but when thrown there,
+he can talk, with Miss Mitford's leave, admirably,--I never heard
+better stories than Horne's--some Spanish-American incidents of travel
+want printing--or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares
+for nobody's poetry is _false_, he praises more unregardingly of his
+own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,--(do I speak
+clearly?)--less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the
+'line' of the other man he is praising--which 'somewhat' has to be
+guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise
+of the 'craft' than any other I ever met--instance after instance
+starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him
+allude--unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time
+we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by
+somebody's withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article,
+and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which
+does not look like 'boasting of his income'! As for the heiresses--I
+don't believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and
+trafficking. Altogether, what miserable 'set-offs' to the achievement
+of an 'Orion,' a 'Marlowe,' a 'Delora'! Miss Martineau understands him
+better.
+
+Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now--at all
+events, much better, just a little turning in the head--since you
+appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee--thank you, indeed thank you,
+but nothing after the '_oenomel_' and before half past six. _I_ know
+all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not--and can
+tell you--, how truly...!
+
+    The thirst that from the soul doth rise
+      Doth ask a drink divine--
+    But might I of Jove's nectar sup
+      I would not change for thine! _No, no, no!_
+
+
+And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of
+wine, 'that I do not touch it'--not habitually, nor so as to feel the
+loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.
+
+And now, 'Luria', so long as the parts cohere and the whole is
+discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think
+of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia
+is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,--it
+was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so
+narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper 'pro memoria'
+was, under the 'Act V.' '_she loves_'--to which I could not bring it,
+you see! Yet the play requires it still,--something may yet be
+effected, though.... I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa
+with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry--I suppose it is
+no use publishing much before Easter--I will try and remember what my
+whole character _did_ mean--it was, in two words, understood at the
+time by 'panther's-beauty'--on which hint I ought to have spoken! But
+the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire
+on the hearth _nec vult panthera domari_!
+
+For the 'Soul's Tragedy'--_that_ will surprise you, I think. There is
+no trace of you there,--you have not put out the black face of
+_it_--it is all sneering and _disillusion_--and shall not be printed
+but burned if you say the word--now wait and see and then say! I will
+bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.
+
+And now, dearest, I am with you--and the other matters are forgotten
+already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I
+trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 12, 1846.]
+
+Ah, the 'sortes'! Is it a double oracle--'swan and shadow'--do you
+think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? 'I shall
+love thee to eternity'--I _shall_.
+
+And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you 'as my wont
+is,' because I understood simply that 'habitually' you abstained from
+wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your
+health to take it habitually. It _might_, you know--not that I pretend
+to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes
+into one's thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold
+water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare
+to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver _me_
+from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison.
+And your 'quite well' means that dreadful 'turning' still ... still!
+Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor 'try to remember,'
+which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read
+your 'Luria,' the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with
+all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try
+to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in 'coming between,' and
+all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just
+_that_, and then with a white conscience 'I shall love thee to
+eternity!... dearest! You have made a golden work out of your
+'golden-hearted Luria'--as once you called him to me, and I hold it in
+the highest admiration--_should_, if you were precisely nothing to me.
+And still, the fifth act _rises_! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem
+to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do
+not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other
+persons--we do not see the _panther_,--no, certainly we do not--but
+you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a
+time ... and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript
+before, you should not have a page of it--_now_, you are only to rest.
+What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I
+read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows--and as to 'faded
+lines,' you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it.
+Also, no one can say 'This is not clearly written.' The people who are
+at 'words of one syllable' may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth
+together this time ... as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts
+you always must have, in and out of 'Sordello'--and the objectors
+would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that
+ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.
+
+To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific
+confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he
+had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see
+me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took _Saturday_!!'
+So I let him mistake the one week for the other--'Mr. Browning took
+Saturday,' it was true, both ways. Well--and then he went on to tell
+me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell,
+and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire
+besides--now, what do you think, she enquired besides? 'how you and
+... Browning were' said Mr. Kenyon--I write his words. He is coming,
+perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday--Saturday is to have a twofold
+safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think
+of coming if you are ill ... unwell even. I shall not be frightened
+next time, as I told you--I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to
+think! 'It has never happened _so_--there must be a cause--and if it
+is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell _me_ ... it will not
+seem _my_ concern'--_that_ was my thought on Saturday. But another
+time ... only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved,
+and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for
+your suffering ... my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the
+future that you may have the headache--and do you remember it too!
+
+For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. _She
+blots_ with her _eyes_ sometimes. She hates ... and loves, in extreme
+degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of
+mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to
+observe the trust on one side and the _dyspathy_ on the other--using
+the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in
+quite a strange element of society,--he, an artist in his good and his
+evil,--and the people there, 'county families,' smoothly plumed in
+their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of
+using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then,
+meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times
+worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated
+impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses,--all
+these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I
+dare say, and just the things suited to the _genus_ poet, and to
+himself specifically,--were understood by the natives and their 'rural
+deities' to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county,
+and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known
+better--_she_ should. And she _would_ have known better, if she had
+liked him--for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences.
+She is too fervent a friend--she can be. Generous too, she can be
+without an effort; and I have had much affection from her--and accuse
+myself for seeming to have less--but--
+
+May God bless you!--I end in haste after this long lingering.
+
+                                                     Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Not unwell--_I_ am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 13, 1846.]
+
+Two nights ago I read the 'Soul's Tragedy' once more, and though there
+were not a few points which still struck me as successful in design
+and execution, yet on the whole I came to a decided opinion, that it
+will be better to postpone the publication of it for the present. It
+is not a good ending, an auspicious wind-up of this series;
+subject-matter and style are alike unpopular even for the literary
+_grex_ that stands aloof from the purer _plebs_, and uses that
+privilege to display and parade an ignorance which the other is
+altogether unconscious of--so that, if 'Luria' is _clearish_, the
+'Tragedy' would be an unnecessary troubling the waters. Whereas, if I
+printed it first in order, my readers, according to custom, would make
+the (comparatively) little they did not see into, a full excuse for
+shutting their eyes at the rest, and we may as well part friends, so
+as not to meet enemies. But, at bottom, I believe the proper objection
+is to the immediate, _first_ effect of the whole--its moral
+effect--which is dependent on the contrary supposition of its being
+really understood, in the main drift of it. Yet I don't know; for I
+wrote it with the intention of producing the best of all
+effects--perhaps the truth is, that I am tired, rather, and desirous
+of getting done, and 'Luria' will answer my purpose so far. Will not
+the best way be to reserve this unlucky play and in the event of a
+second edition--as Moxon seems to think such an apparition
+possible--might not this be quietly inserted?--in its place, too, for
+it was written two or three years ago. I have lost, of late, interest
+in dramatic writing, as you know, and, perhaps, occasion. And,
+dearest, I mean to take your advice and be quiet awhile and let my
+mind get used to its new medium of sight; seeing all things, as it
+does, through you: and then, let all I have done be the prelude and
+the real work begin. I felt it would be so before, and told you at the
+very beginning--do you remember? And you spoke of Io 'in the proem.'
+How much more should follow now!
+
+And if nothing follows, I have _you_.
+
+I shall see you to-morrow and be happy. To-day--is it the weather or
+what?--something depresses me a little--to-morrow brings the remedy
+for it all. I don't know why I mention such a matter; except that I
+tell you everything without a notion of after-consequence; and because
+your dearest, dearest presence seems under any circumstances as if
+created just to help me _there_; if my spirits rise they fly to you;
+if they fall, they hold by you and cease falling--as now. Bless you,
+Ba--my own best blessing that you are! But a few hours and I am with
+you, beloved!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest, though you wanted to make me say one thing displeasing
+to you to-day, I had not courage to say two instead ... which I might
+have done indeed and indeed! For I am capable of thinking both
+thoughts of 'next year,' as you suggested them:--because while you are
+with me I see only _you_, and you being you, I cannot doubt a power of
+yours nor measure the deep loving nature which I feel to be so
+deep--so that there may be ever so many 'mores,' and no 'more' wonder
+of mine!--but afterwards, when the door is shut and there is no 'more'
+light nor speaking until Thursday, why _then_, that I do not see _you_
+but _me_,--_then_ comes the reaction,--the natural lengthening of the
+shadows at sunset,--and _then_, the 'less, less, less' grows to seem
+as natural to my fate, as the 'more' seemed to your nature--I being I!
+
+_Sunday._--Well!--you are to try to forgive it all! And the truth,
+over and under all, is, that I scarcely ever do think of the future,
+scarcely ever further than to your next visit, and almost never
+beyond, except for your sake and in reference to that view of the
+question which I have vexed you with so often, in fearing for your
+happiness. Once it was a habit of mind with me to live altogether in
+what I called the future--but the tops of the trees that looked
+towards Troy were broken off in the great winds, and falling down into
+the river beneath, where now after all this time they grow green
+again, I let them float along the current gently and pleasantly. Can
+it be better I wonder! And if it becomes worse, can I help it? Also
+the future never seemed to belong to me so little--never! It might
+appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself
+sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am--from the sort of
+anxiety which might be well connected with my own position _here_, and
+which is personal to myself. _That_ is all thrown behind--into the
+bushes--long ago it was, and I think I told you of it before.
+Agitation comes from indecision--and _I_ was decided from the first
+hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really.
+Now,--as the Euphuists used to say,--I am 'more thine than my own' ...
+it is a literal truth--and my future belongs to you; if it was mine,
+it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given, and if
+it was given ... beloved....
+
+So you see!
+
+Then I will confess to you that all my life long I have had a rather
+strange sympathy and dyspathy--the sympathy having concerned the genus
+_jilt_ (as vulgarly called) male and female--and the dyspathy--the
+whole class of heroically virtuous persons who make sacrifices of what
+they call 'love' to what they call 'duty.' There are exceptional cases
+of course, but, for the most part, I listen incredulously or else with
+a little contempt to those latter proofs of strength--or weakness, as
+it may be:--people are not usually praised for giving up their
+religion, for unsaying their oaths, for desecrating their 'holy
+things'--while believing them still to be religious and sacramental!
+On the other side I have always and shall always understand how it is
+possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women
+perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the
+mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and
+retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth
+which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most
+courageous for the truth's sake, and instead of blaming them I hold
+them in honour, for me, and always did and shall.
+
+And while I write, you are 'very ill'--very ill!--how it looks,
+written down _so_! When you were gone yesterday and my thoughts had
+tossed about restlessly for ever so long, I was wise enough to ask
+Wilson how _she_ thought you were looking, ... and she 'did not know'
+... she 'had not observed' ... 'only certainly Mr. Browning ran
+up-stairs instead of walking as he did the time before.'
+
+Now promise me dearest, dearest--not to trifle with your health. Not
+to neglect yourself ... not to tire yourself ... and besides to take
+the advice of your medical friend as to diet and general
+treatment:--because there must be a wrong and a right in everything,
+and the right is very important under your circumstances ... if you
+have a tendency to illness. It may be right for you to have wine for
+instance. Did you ever try the putting your feet into hot water at
+night, to prevent the recurrence of the morning headache--for the
+affection of the head comes on early in the morning, does it not? just
+as if the sleeping did you harm. Now I have heard of such a remedy
+doing good--and could it _increase_ the evil?--mustard mixed with the
+water, remember. Everything approaching to _congestion_ is full of
+fear--I tremble to think of it--and I bring no remedy by this teazing
+neither! But you will not be 'wicked' nor 'unkind,' nor provoke the
+evil consciously--you will keep quiet and forswear the going out at
+nights, the excitement and noise of parties, and the worse excitement
+of composition--you promise. If you knew how I keep thinking of you,
+and at intervals grow so frightened! Think _you_, that you are three
+times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest,--because
+you are more than three times the larger planet--and because too, you
+have known other sources of light and happiness ... but I need not say
+this--and I shall hear on Monday, and may trust to you every day ...
+may I not? Yet I would trust my soul to you sooner than your own
+health.
+
+May God bless you, dear, dearest. If the first part of the 'Soul's
+Tragedy' should be written out, I can read _that_ perhaps, without
+drawing you in to think of the second. Still it may be safer to keep
+off altogether for the present--and let it be as you incline. I do not
+speak of 'Luria.'
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+If it were not for Mr. Kenyon, I should say, almost, Wednesday,
+instead of Thursday--I want to see you so much, and to see for myself
+about the looks and spirits, only it would not do if he found you here
+on Wednesday. Let him come to-morrow or on Tuesday, and Wednesday will
+be safe--shall we consider? what do you think?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Afternoon.
+                             [Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+
+Here is the letter again, dearest: I suppose it gives me the same
+pleasure, in reading, as you--and Mr. K. as me, and anybody else as
+him; if all the correspondence which was claimed again and burnt on
+some principle or other some years ago be at all of the nature of this
+sample, the measure seems questionable. Burn anybody's _real_
+letters, well and good: they move and live--the thoughts, feelings,
+and expressions even,--in a self-imposed circle limiting the
+experience of two persons only--_there_ is the standard, and to _that_
+the appeal--how should a third person know? His presence breaks the
+line, so to speak, and lets in a whole tract of country on the
+originally inclosed spot--so that its trees, which were from side to
+side there, seem left alone and wondering at their sudden unimportance
+in the broad land; while its 'ferns such as I never saw before' and
+which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid
+the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth's
+general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole
+value of such letters--the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed:
+but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom
+it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it
+and shan't have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to
+the ineffable mysteries of those 'upper-rooms,' now that the broom and
+dust pan, stocking-mending and gingerbread-making are invested with
+such unforeseen reverence ... but the carriage-sweep and quarry,
+together with Jane and our baskets, and a pleasant shadow of
+Wordsworth's Sunday hat preceding his own rapid strides in the
+direction of Miss Fenwick's house--surely, 'men's eyes were made to
+see, so let them gaze' at all _this_! And so I, gazing with a clear
+conscience, am very glad to hear so much good of a very good person
+and so well told. She plainly sees the proper use and advantage of a
+country-life; and _that_ knowledge gets to seem a high point of
+attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of--for
+_mine_ he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a '_great_'
+poet before? Put one trait with the other--the theory of rural
+innocence--alternation of 'vulgar trifles' with dissertating with
+style of 'the utmost grandeur that _even you_ can conceive' (speak for
+yourself, Miss M.!)--and that amiable transition from two o'clock's
+grief at the death of one's brother to three o'clock's happiness in
+the 'extraordinary mesmeric discourse' of one's friend. All this, and
+the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of
+'unpunctuality' can ruin, and to which the guardian 'angel' brings as
+crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly--of
+this--what can one say but that--no, best hold one's tongue and read
+the 'Lyrical Ballads' with finger in ear. Did not Shelley say long ago
+'He had no more _imagination_ than a pint-pot'--though in those days
+he used to walk about France and Flanders like a man? _Now_, he is
+'most comfortable in his worldly affairs' and just this comes of it!
+He lives the best twenty years of his life after the way of his own
+heart--and when one presses in to see the result of the rare
+experiment ... what the _one_ alchemist whom fortune has allowed to
+get all his coveted materials and set to work at last in earnest with
+fire and melting-pot--what _he_ produces after all the talk of him and
+the like of him; why, you get _pulvis et cinis_--a man at the mercy of
+the tongs and shovel!
+
+Well! Let us despair at nothing, but, wishing success to the newer
+aspirant, expect better things from Miss M. when the 'knoll,' and
+'paradise,' and their facilities, operate properly; and that she will
+make a truer estimate of the importance and responsibilities of
+'authorship' than she does at present, if I understand rightly the
+sense in which she describes her own life as it means to be; for in
+one sense it is all good and well, and quite natural that she should
+like 'that sort of strenuous handwork' better than book-making; like
+the play better than the labour, as we are apt to do. If she realises
+a very ordinary scheme of literary life, planned under the eye of God
+not 'the public,' and prosecuted under the constant sense of the
+night's coming which ends it good or bad--then, she will be sure to
+'like' the rest and sport--teaching her maids and sewing her gloves
+and making delicate visitors comfortable--so much more rational a
+resource is the worst of them than gin-and-water, for instance. But
+if, as I rather suspect, these latter are to figure as a virtual
+_half_ duty of the whole Man--as of equal importance (on the ground of
+the innocence and utility of such occupations) with the book-making
+aforesaid--always supposing _that_ to be of the right kind--_then_ I
+respect Miss M. just as I should an Archbishop of Canterbury whose
+business was the teaching A.B.C. at an infant-school--he who might set
+on the Tens to instruct the Hundreds how to convince the Thousands of
+the propriety of doing that and many other things. Of course one will
+respect him only the more if when _that_ matter is off his mind he
+relaxes at such a school instead of over a chess-board; as it will
+increase our love for Miss M. to find that making 'my good Jane (from
+Tyne-mouth)'--'happier and--I hope--wiser' is an amusement, or more,
+after the day's progress towards the 'novel for next year' which is to
+inspire thousands, beyond computation, with the ardour of making
+innumerable other Janes and delicate relatives happier and wiser--who
+knows but as many as Burns did, and does, so make happier and wiser?
+Only, _his quarry_ and after-solace was that 'marble bowl often
+replenished with whiskey' on which Dr. Curry discourses mournfully,
+'Oh, be wiser Thou!'--and remember it was only _after_ Lord Bacon had
+written to an end _his_ Book--given us for ever the Art of
+Inventing--whether steam-engine or improved dust-pan--that he took on
+himself to do a little exemplary 'hand work'; got out on that cold St.
+Alban's road to stuff a fowl with snow and so keep it fresh, and got
+into his bed and died of the cold in his hands ('strenuous _hand_
+work'--) before the snow had time to melt. He did not begin in his
+youth by saying--'I have a horror of merely writing 'Novum Organums'
+and shall give half my energies to the stuffing fowls'!
+
+All this it is _my_ amusement, of an indifferent kind, to put down
+solely on the pleasant assurance contained in that postscript, of the
+one way of never quarrelling with Miss M.--'by joining in her plan
+and practice of plain speaking'--could she but 'get people to do it!'
+Well, she gets me for a beginner: the funny thing would be to know
+what Chorley's desperate utterance amounted to! Did you ever hear of
+the plain speaking of some of the continental lottery-projectors? An
+estate on the Rhine, for instance, is to be disposed of, and the
+holder of the lucky ticket will find himself suddenly owner of a
+mediæval castle with an unlimited number of dependencies--vineyards,
+woods, pastures, and so forth--all only waiting the new master's
+arrival--while inside, all is swept and garnished (not to say,
+varnished)--the tables are spread, the wines on the board, all is
+ready for the reception _but_ ... here 'plain speaking' becomes
+necessary--it prevents quarrels, and, could the projector get people
+to practise it as he does all would be well; so he, at least, will
+speak plainly--you hear what _is_ provided but, he cannot, dares not
+withhold what is _not_--there is then, to speak plainly,--no night
+cap! You _will_ have to bring your own night cap. The projector
+furnishes somewhat, as you hear, but not _all_--and now--the worst is
+heard,--will you quarrel with him? Will my own dear, dearest Ba please
+and help me here, and fancy Chorley's concessions, and tributes, and
+recognitions, and then, at the very end, the 'plain words,' to
+counterbalance all, that have been to overlook and pardon?
+
+Oh, my own Ba, hear _my_ plain speech--and how this is _not_ an
+attempt to frighten you out of your dear wish to '_hear_ from me'--no,
+indeed--but a whim, a caprice,--and now it is out! over, done with!
+And now I am with you again--it is to _you_ I shall write next. Bless
+you, ever--my beloved. I am much better, indeed--and mean to be well.
+And you! But I will write--this goes for nothing--or only _this_, that
+I am your very own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+
+My long letter is with you, dearest, to show how serious my illness
+was 'while you wrote': unless you find that letter too foolish, as I
+do on twice thinking--or at all events a most superfluous bestowment
+of handwork while the heart was elsewhere, and with you--never more
+so! Dear, dear Ba, your adorable goodness sinks into me till it nearly
+pains,--so exquisite and strange is the pleasure: _so_ you care for
+me, and think of me, and write to me!--I shall never die for you, and
+if it could be so, what would death prove? But I can live on, your own
+as now,--utterly your own.
+
+Dear Ba, do you suppose we differ on so plain a point as that of the
+superior wisdom, and generosity, too, of announcing such a change &c.
+at the eleventh hour? There can be no doubt of it,--and now, what of
+it to me?
+
+But I am not going to write to-day--only this--that I am better,
+having not been quite so well last night--so I shut up books (that is,
+of my own) and mean to think about nothing but you, and you, and still
+you, for a whole week--so all will come right, I hope! _May_ I take
+Wednesday? And do you say that,--hint at the possibility of that,
+because you have been reached by my own remorse at feeling that if I
+had kept my appointment _last_ Saturday (but one)--Thursday would have
+been my day this past week, and this very Monday had been gained?
+Shall I not lose a day for ever unless I get Wednesday and
+Saturday?--yet ... care ... dearest--let nothing horrible happen.
+
+If I do not hear to the contrary to-morrow--or on Wednesday early--
+
+But write and bless me dearest, most dear Ba. God bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 17, 1846.]
+
+_Méchant comme quatre!_ you are, and not deserving to be let see the
+famous letter--is there any grammar in _that_ concatenation, can you
+tell me, now that you are in an arch-critical humour? And remember
+(turning back to the subject) that personally she and I are strangers
+and that therefore what she writes for me is naturally scene-painting
+to be looked at from a distance, done with a masterly hand and most
+amiable intention, but quite a different thing of course from the
+intimate revelations of heart and mind which make a living thing of a
+letter. If she had sent such to me, I should not have sent it to Mr.
+Kenyon, but then, she would not have sent it to me in any case. What
+she _has_ sent me might be a chapter in a book and has the life proper
+to itself, and I shall not let you try it by another standard, even if
+you wished, but you don't--for I am not so _bête_ as not to understand
+how the jest crosses the serious all the way you write. Well--and Mr.
+Kenyon wants the letter the second time, not for himself, but for Mr.
+Crabb Robinson who promises to let me have a new sonnet of
+Wordsworth's in exchange for the loan, and whom I cannot refuse
+because he is an intimate friend of Miss Martineau's and once allowed
+me to read a whole packet of letters from her to him. She does not
+object (as I have read under her hand) to her letters being shown
+about in MS., notwithstanding the anathema against all printers of the
+same (which completes the extravagance of the unreason, I think) and
+people are more anxious to see them from their presumed nearness to
+annihilation. I, for my part, value letters (to talk literature) as
+the most vital part of biography, and for any rational human being to
+put his foot on the traditions of his kind in this particular class,
+does seem to me as wonderful as possible. Who would put away one of
+those multitudinous volumes, even, which stereotype Voltaire's
+wrinkles of wit--even Voltaire? I can read book after book of such
+reading--or could! And if her principle were carried out, there would
+be an end! Death would be deader from henceforth. Also it is a wrong
+selfish principle and unworthy of her whole life and profession,
+because we should all be ready to say that if the secrets of our daily
+lives and inner souls may instruct other surviving souls, let them be
+open to men hereafter, even as they are to God now. Dust to dust, and
+soul-secrets to humanity--there are natural heirs to all these things.
+Not that I do not intimately understand the shrinking back from the
+idea of publicity on any terms--not that I would not myself destroy
+papers of mine which were sacred to _me_ for personal reasons--but
+then I never would call this natural weakness, virtue--nor would I, as
+a teacher of the public, announce it and attempt to justify it as an
+example to other minds and acts, I hope.
+
+How hard you are on the mending of stockings and the rest of it! Why
+not agree with me and like that sort of homeliness and simplicity in
+combination with such large faculty as we must admit _there_? Lord
+Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl
+you mention--which I did not remember: and in fact, all the great work
+done in the world, is done just by the people who know how to
+trifle--do you not think so? When a man makes a principle of 'never
+losing a moment,' he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an
+hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. 'What are you doing' said
+somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford
+as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground--'Only a little
+algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground
+are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for
+meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be
+sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of
+pastime _I_ should choose--who do things quite as trifling without the
+utility--and even your Seigneurie peradventure.... I stop there for
+fear of growing impertinent. The _argumentum ad hominem_ is apt to
+bring down the _argumentum ad baculum_, it is as well to remember in
+time.
+
+For Wordsworth ... you are right in a measure and by a standard--but I
+have heard such really desecrating things of him, of his selfishness,
+his love of money, his worldly _cunning_ (rather than prudence) that I
+felt a relief and gladness in the new chronicle;--and you can
+understand how _that_ was. Miss Mitford's doctrine is that everything
+put into the poetry, is taken out of the man and lost utterly by him.
+Her general doctrine about poets, quite amounts to that--I do not say
+it too strongly. And knowing that such opinions are held by minds not
+feeble, it is very painful (as it would be indeed in any case) to see
+them apparently justified by royal poets like Wordsworth. Ah, but I
+know an answer--I see one in my mind!
+
+So again for the letters. Now ought I not to know about letters, I who
+have had so many ... from chief minds too, as society goes in England
+and America? And _your_ letters began by being first to my intellect,
+before they were first to my heart. All the letters in the world are
+not like yours ... and I would trust them for that verdict with any
+jury in Europe, if they were not so far too dear! Mr. Kenyon wanted to
+make me show him your letters--I did show him the first, and resisted
+gallantly afterwards, which made him say what vexed me at the moment,
+... 'oh--you let me see only _women's_ letters,'--till I observed that
+it was a breach of confidence, except in some cases, ... and that _I_
+should complain very much, if anyone, man or woman, acted so by
+myself. But nobody in the world writes like you--not so _vitally_--and
+I have a right, if you please, to praise my letters, besides the
+reason of it which is as good.
+
+Ah--you made me laugh about Mr. Chorley's free speaking--and, without
+the personal knowledge, I can comprehend how it could be nothing very
+ferocious ... some 'pardonnez moi, vous êtes un ange.' The amusing
+part is that by the same post which brought me the Ambleside document,
+I heard from Miss Mitford 'that it was an admirable thing of Chorley
+to have persisted in not allowing Harriet Martineau to quarrel with
+him' ... so that there are laurels on both sides, it appears.
+
+And I am delighted to hear from you to-day just _so_, though I
+reproach you in turn just _so_ ... because you were not 'depressed' in
+writing all this and this and this which has made me laugh--you were
+not, dearest--and you call yourself better, 'much better,' which means
+a very little perhaps, but is a golden word, let me take it as I may.
+May God bless you. Wednesday seems too near (now that this is Monday
+and you are better) to be _our_ day ... perhaps it does,--and Thursday
+_is_ close beside it at the worst.
+
+                                       Dearest I am your own
+
+                                            BA.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+           Monday Evening.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+Now forgive me, dearest of all, but I must teaze you just a little,
+and entreat you, if only for the love of me, to have medical advice
+and follow it _without further delay_. I like to have recourse to
+these medical people quite as little as you can--but I am persuaded
+that it is necessary--that it is at least _wise_, for you to do so
+now, and, you see, you were 'not quite so well' again last night! So
+will you, for me? Would _I_ not, if you wished it? And on Wednesday,
+yes, on Wednesday, come--that is, if coming on Wednesday should really
+be not bad for you, for you _must_ do what is right and kind, and I
+doubt whether the omnibus-driving and the noises of every sort betwixt
+us, should not keep you away for a little while--I trust you to do
+what is best for both of us.
+
+And it is not best ... it is not good even, to talk about 'dying for
+me' ... oh, I do beseech you never to use such words. You make me feel
+as if I were choking. Also it is nonsense--because nobody puts out a
+candle for the light's sake.
+
+Write _one line_ to me to-morrow--literally so little--just to say how
+you are. I know by the writing here, what _is_. Let me have the one
+line by the eight o'clock post to-morrow, Tuesday.
+
+For the rest it may be my 'goodness' or my badness, but the world
+seems to have sunk away beneath my feet and to have left only you to
+look to and hold by. Am I not to _feel_, then, any trembling of the
+hand? the least trembling?
+
+May God bless both of us--which is a double blessing for me
+notwithstanding my badness.
+
+_I trust you about Wednesday_--and if it should be wise and kind not
+to come quite so soon, we will take it out of other days and lose not
+one of them. And as for anything 'horrible' being likely to happen, do
+not think of that either,--there can be nothing horrible while you are
+not ill. So be well--try to be well--use the means and, well or ill,
+let me have the one line to-morrow ... Tuesday. I send you the foolish
+letter I wrote to-day in answer to your too long one--too long, was it
+not, as you felt? And I, the writer of the foolish one, am
+twice-foolish, and push poor 'Luria' out of sight, and refuse to
+finish my notes on him till the harm he has done shall have passed
+away. In my badness I bring false accusation, perhaps, against poor
+Luria.
+
+So till Wednesday--or as you shall fix otherwise.
+
+                                                    Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                      6-1/2 Tuesday Evening.
+
+My dearest, your note reaches me only _now_, with an excuse from the
+postman. The answer you expect, you shall have the only way possible.
+I must make up a parcel so as to be able to knock and give it. I shall
+be with you to-morrow, God willing--being quite well.
+
+                                            Bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Thursday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 19, 1846.]
+
+My sweetest, best, dearest Ba I _do_ love you less, much less already,
+and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of
+you--I am yours just as much as those flowers; and you may pluck those
+flowers to pieces or put them in your breast; it is not because you so
+bless me now that you may not if you please one day--you will stop me
+here; but it is the truth and I live in it.
+
+I am quite well; indeed, this morning, _noticeably_ well, they tell
+me, and well I mean to keep if I can.
+
+When I got home last evening I found this note--and I have _accepted_,
+that I might say I could also keep an engagement, if so minded, at
+Harley Street--thereby insinuating that other reasons _may_ bring me
+into the neighbourhood than _the_ reason--but I shall either not go
+there, or only for an hour at most. I also found a note headed
+'Strictly private and confidential'--so here it goes from my mouth to
+my heart--pleasantly proposing that I should start in a few days for
+St. Petersburg, as secretary to somebody going there on a 'mission of
+humanity'--_grazie tante_!
+
+Did you hear of my meeting someone at the door whom I take to have
+been one of your brothers?
+
+One thing vexed me in your letter--I will tell you, the praise of
+_my_ letters. Now, one merit they have--in language mystical--that of
+having _no_ merit. If I caught myself trying to write finely,
+graphically &c. &c., nay, if I found myself conscious of having in my
+own opinion, so written, all would be over! yes, over! I should be
+respecting you inordinately, paying a proper tribute to your genius,
+summoning the necessary collectedness,--plenty of all that! But the
+feeling with which I write to you, not knowing that it is
+writing,--with _you_, face and mouth and hair and eyes opposite me,
+touching me, knowing that all _is_ as I say, and helping out the
+imperfect phrases from your own intuition--_that_ would be gone--and
+_what_ in its place? 'Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we write to
+Ambleside.' No, no, love, nor can it ever be so, nor should it ever be
+so if--even if, preserving all that intimate relation, with the
+carelessness, _still_, somehow, was obtained with no effort in the
+world, graphic writing and philosophic and what you please--for I
+_will_ be--_would_ be, better than my works and words with an infinite
+stock beyond what I put into convenient circulation whether in fine
+speeches fit to remember, or fine passages to quote. For the rest, I
+had meant to tell you before now, that you often put me 'in a maze'
+when you particularize letters of mine--'such an one was kind' &c. I
+know, sometimes I seem to give the matter up in despair, I take out
+paper and fall thinking on you, and bless you with my whole heart and
+then begin: 'What a fine day this is?' I distinctly remember having
+done that repeatedly--but the converse is not true by any means, that
+(when the expression may happen to fall more consentaneously to the
+mind's motion) that less is felt, oh no! But the particular thought at
+the time has not been of the _insufficiency_ of expression, as in the
+other instance.
+
+Now I will leave off--to begin elsewhere--for I am always with you,
+beloved, best beloved! Now you will write? And walk much, and sleep
+more? Bless you, dearest--ever--
+
+                                                   Your own,
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+[Post-marks, Mis-sent to Mitcham. February 19 and 20, 1846.]
+
+Best and kindest of all that ever were to be loved in dreams, and
+wondered at and loved out of them, you are indeed! I cannot make you
+feel how I felt that night when I knew that to save me an anxious
+thought you had come so far so late--it was almost too much to feel,
+and _is_ too much to speak. So let it pass. You will never act so
+again, ever dearest--you shall not. If the post sins, why leave the
+sin to the post; and I will remember for the future, will be ready to
+remember, how postmen are fallible and how you live at the end of a
+lane--and not be uneasy about a silence if there should be one
+unaccounted for. For the Tuesday coming, I shall remember that
+too--who could forget it?... I put it in the niche of the wall, one
+golden lamp more of your giving, to throw light purely down to the end
+of my life--I do thank you. And the truth is, I _should_ have been in
+a panic, had there been no letter that evening--I was frightened the
+day before, then reasoned the fears back and waited: and if there had
+been no letter after all--. But you are supernaturally good and kind.
+How can I ever 'return' as people say (as they might say in their
+ledgers) ... any of it all? How indeed can I who have not even a heart
+left of my own, to love you with?
+
+I quite trust to your promise in respect to the medical advice, if
+walking and rest from work do not prevent at once the recurrence of
+those sensations--it was a promise, remember. And you will tell me the
+very truth of how you are--and you will try the music, and not be
+nervous, dearest. Would not _riding_ be good for you--consider. And
+why should you be 'alone' when your sister is in the house? How I keep
+thinking of you all day--you cannot really be alone with so many
+thoughts ... such swarms of thoughts, if you could but see them,
+drones and bees together!
+
+George came in from Westminster Hall after we parted yesterday and
+said that he had talked with the junior counsel of the wretched
+plaintiffs in the Ferrers case, and that the belief was in the mother
+being implicated, although not from the beginning. It was believed too
+that the miserable girl had herself taken step after step into the
+mire, involved herself gradually, the first guilt being an
+extravagance in personal expenses, which she lied and lied to account
+for in the face of her family. 'Such a respectable family,' said
+George, 'the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone
+indignant upon being so disgraced by her!' But for the respectability
+in the best sense, I do not quite see. That all those people should
+acquiesce in the indecency (according to every standard of English
+manners in any class of society) of thrusting the personal expenses of
+a member of their family on Lord Ferrers, she still bearing their
+name--and in those peculiar circumstances of her supposed position
+too--where is the respectability? And they are furious with her, which
+is not to be wondered at after all. Her counsel had an interview with
+her previous to the trial, to satisfy themselves of her good faith,
+and she was quite resolute and earnest, persisting in every statement.
+On the coming out of the anonymous letters, Fitzroy Kelly said to the
+juniors that if anyone could suggest a means of explanation, he would
+be eager to carry forward the case, ... but for him he saw no way of
+escaping from the fact of the guilt of their client. Not a voice could
+speak for her. So George was told. There is no ground for a
+prosecution for a conspiracy, he says, but she is open to the charge
+for _forgery_, of course, and to the dreadful consequences, though it
+is not considered at all likely that Lord Ferrers could wish to
+disturb her beyond the ruin she has brought on her own life.
+
+Think of Miss Mitford's growing quite cold about Mr. Chorley who has
+spent two days with her lately, and of her saying in a letter to me
+this morning that he is very much changed and grown to be 'a
+presumptuous coxcomb.' He has displeased her in some way--that is
+clear. What changes there are in the world.
+
+Should I ever change to _you_, do you think, ... even if you came to
+'love me less'--not that I meant to reproach you with that
+possibility. May God bless you, dear dearest. It is another miracle
+(beside the many) that I get nearer to the mountains yet still they
+seem more blue. Is not _that_ strange?
+
+                                             Ever and wholly
+
+                                                  Your BA.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
+
+And I offended you by praising your letters--or rather _mine_, if you
+please--as if I had not the right! Still, you shall not, shall not
+fancy that I meant to praise them in the way you seem to think--by
+calling them 'graphic,' 'philosophic,'--why, did I ever use such
+words? I agree with you that if I could play critic upon your letters,
+it would be an end!--but no, no ... I did not, for a moment. In what I
+said I went back to my first impressions--and they were _vital_
+letters, I said--which was the résumé of my thoughts upon the early
+ones you sent me, because I felt your letters to be _you_ from the
+very first, and I began, from the beginning, to read every one several
+times over. Nobody, I felt, nobody of all these writers, did write as
+you did. Well!--and had I not a right to say _that_ now at last, and
+was it not natural to say just _that_, when I was talking of other
+people's letters and how it had grown almost impossible for me to read
+them; and do I deserve to be scolded? No indeed.
+
+And if I had the misfortune to think now, when you say it is a fine
+day, that _that_ is said in more music than it could be said in by
+another--where is the sin against _you_, I should like to ask. It is
+yourself who is the critic, I think, after all. But over all the
+brine, I hold my letters--just as Camoens did his poem. They are _best
+to me_--and they are _best_. I knew what _they_ were, before I knew
+what _you_ were--all of you. And I like to think that I never fancied
+anyone on a level with you, even in a letter.
+
+What makes you take them to be so bad, I suppose, is just feeling in
+them how near we are. _You say that!_--not I.
+
+Bad or good, you _are_ better--yes, 'better than the works and
+words'!--though it was very shameful of you to insinuate that I talked
+of fine speeches and passages and graphical and philosophical
+sentences, as if I had proposed a publication of 'Elegant Extracts'
+from your letters. See what blasphemy one falls into through a
+beginning of light speech! It is wiser to talk of St. Petersburg; for
+all Voltaire's ... '_ne disons pas de mal de Nicolas_.'
+
+Wiser--because you will not go. If you were going ... well!--but there
+is no danger--it would not do you good to go, I am so happy this time
+as to be able to think--and your 'mission of humanity' lies
+nearer--'strictly private and confidential'? but not in Harley
+Street--so if you go _there_, dearest, keep to the 'one hour' and do
+not suffer yourself to be tired and stunned in those hot rooms and
+made unwell again--it is plain that you cannot bear that sort of
+excitement. For Mr. Kenyon's note, ... it was a great temptation to
+make a day of Friday--but I resist both for Monday's sake and for
+yours, because it seems to me safer not to hurry you from one house to
+another till you are tired completely. I shall think of you so much
+the nearer for Mr. Kenyon's note--which is something gained. In the
+meanwhile you are better, which is everything, or seems so. Ever
+dearest, do you remember what it is to me that you should be better,
+and keep from being worse again--I mean, of course, _try_ to keep from
+being worse--be wise ... and do not stay long in those hot Harley
+Street rooms. Ah--now you will think that I am afraid of the
+unicorns!--
+
+Through your being ill the other day I forgot, and afterwards went on
+forgetting, to speak of and to return the ballad--which is delightful;
+I have an unspeakable delight in those suggestive ballads, which seem
+to make you touch with the end of your finger the full warm life of
+other times ... so near they bring you, yet so suddenly all passes in
+them. Certainly there is a likeness to your Duchess--it is a curious
+crossing. And does it not strike you that a verse or two must be
+wanting in the ballad--there is a gap, I fancy.
+
+Tell Mr. Kenyon (if he enquires) that you come here on Monday instead
+of Saturday--and if you can help it, do not mention Wednesday--it will
+be as well, not. You met Alfred at the door--he came up to me
+afterwards and observed that 'at last he had seen you!' 'Virgilium
+tantum vidi!'
+
+As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter,
+and which you 'stop' yourself in saying ... _I_ need not stop you in
+it....
+
+And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night. May God bless
+you, dearest, dearest.
+
+I must be your own while He blesses _me_.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Afternoon.
+                             [Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
+
+Here is my Ba's dearest _first_ letter come four hours after the
+second, with '_Mis-sent to Mitcham_' written on its face as a
+reason,--one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I _do_ have
+it at last--what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the
+first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!
+
+Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all
+you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are
+the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White--I go for
+_him_) if even that--for to-morrow night I must go out again, I
+fear--to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.'s
+_soirée_ at Lord Northampton's. And then comes Monday--and to-night
+any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch.
+(N.B.--should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant
+Extracts'--mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when
+walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we
+found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a
+ditch--'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the
+king'--he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).
+
+As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly
+things. One remembers Regan's 'Oh Heaven--so you will rail at _me_,
+when you are in the mood.' But what a want of self-respect such
+judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect
+is: 'So I believed yesterday, and _so_ now--and yet am neither hasty,
+nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent'--what then?
+
+--But I will say more of my mind--(not of that)--to-morrow, for time
+presses a little--so bless you my ever ever dearest--I love you
+wholly.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Friday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 21, 1846.]
+
+As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in
+the evening, I never heard till just now and _from Papa himself_, that
+'George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.' How
+surprised you will be. It must have been a sudden thought of Mr.
+Kenyon's.
+
+And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you
+then a letter all but ... insolent ... which, do you know, I feel half
+ashamed to look back upon this morning--particularly what I wrote
+about 'missions of humanity'--now was it not insolent of me to write
+so? If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between
+the lilies, instead of the post office:--but I can't--so if you
+wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it
+was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes
+... first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of
+yours, and secondly because you were 'noticeably' better you said, or
+'noticeably well' rather, to mind my quotations. So I wrote what I
+wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give it
+to Henrietta who goes out before eight in the morning and often takes
+charge of my letters, and it was too late, at the earliest this
+morning, to feel a little ashamed. Miss Thomson told me that she had
+determined to change the type of the few pages of her letterpress
+which had been touched, and that therefore Mr. Burges's revisions of
+my translations should be revised back again. She appears to be a very
+acute person, full of quick perceptions--naturally quick, and
+carefully trained--a little over anxious perhaps about mental lights,
+and opening her eyes still more than she sees, which is a common fault
+of clever people, if one must call it a fault. I like her, and she is
+kind and cordial. Will she ask you to help her book with a translation
+or two, I wonder. Perhaps--if the courage should come. Dearest, how I
+shall think of you this evening, and how near you will seem, not to be
+here. I had a letter from Mr. Mathews the other day, and smiled to
+read in it just what I had expected, that he immediately sent Landor's
+verses on you to a _few editors_, friends of his, in order to their
+communication to the public. He received my apology for myself with
+the utmost graciousness. A kind good man he is.
+
+After all, do you know, I am a little vexed that I should have even
+_seemed_ to do wrong in my speech about the letters. It must have been
+wrong, if it seemed so to you, I fancy now. Only I really did no more
+mean to try your letters ... mine ... such as they are to me now, by
+the common critical measure, than the shepherds praised the pure tenor
+of the angels who sang 'Peace upon earth' to them. It was enough that
+they knew it for angels' singing. So do _you_ forgive me, beloved, and
+put away from you the thought that I have let in between us any
+miserable stuff 'de métier,' which I hate as you hate. And I will not
+say any more about it, not to run into more imprudences of mischief.
+
+On the other hand I warn you against saying again what you began to
+say yesterday and stopped. Do not try it again. What may be quite good
+sense from me, is from _you_ very much the reverse, and pray observe
+that difference. Or did you think that I was making my own road clear
+in the the thing I said about--'jilts'? No, you did not. Yet I am
+ready to repeat of myself as of others, that if I ceased to love you,
+I certainly would act out the whole consequence--but _that_ is an
+impossible 'if' to my nature, supposing the conditions of it otherwise
+to be probable. I never loved anyone much and ceased to love that
+person. Ask every friend of mine, if I am given to change even in
+friendship! _And to you...!_ Ah, but you never think of such a thing
+seriously--and you are conscious that you did not say it very sagely.
+You and I are in different positions. Now let me tell you an apologue
+in exchange for your Wednesday's stories which I liked so, and mine
+perhaps may make you 'a little wiser'--who knows?
+
+It befell that there stood in hall a bold baron, and out he spake to
+one of his serfs ... 'Come thou; and take this baton of my baronie,
+and give me instead thereof that sprig of hawthorn thou holdest in
+thine hand.' Now the hawthorn-bough was no larger a thing than might
+be carried by a wood-pigeon to the nest, when she flieth low, and the
+baronial baton was covered with fine gold, and the serf, turning it
+in his hands, marvelled greatly.
+
+And he answered and said, 'Let not my lord be in haste, nor jest with
+his servant. Is it verily his will that I should keep his golden
+baton? Let him speak again--lest it repent him of his gift.'
+
+And the baron spake again that it was his will. 'And I'--he said once
+again--'shall it be lawful for me to keep this sprig of hawthorn, and
+will it not repent thee of thy gift?'
+
+Then all the servants who stood in hall, laughed, and the serf's hands
+trembled till they dropped the baton into the rushes, knowing that his
+lord did but jest....
+
+Which mine did not. Only, _de te fabula narratur_ up to a point.
+
+And I have your letter. 'What did I expect?' Why I expected just
+_that_, a letter in turn. Also I am graciously pleased (yes, and very
+much pleased!) to '_let_ you write to-morrow.' How you spoil me with
+goodness, which makes one 'insolent' as I was saying, now and then.
+
+The worst is, that I write 'too kind' letters--I!--and what does that
+criticism mean, pray? It reminds me, at least, of ... now I will tell
+you what it reminds me of.
+
+A few days ago Henrietta said to me that she was quite uncomfortable.
+She had written to somebody a not kind enough letter, she thought, and
+it might be taken ill. 'Are _you_ ever uncomfortable, Ba, after you
+have sent letters to the post?' she asked me.
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'sometimes, but from a reason just the very reverse of
+your reason, _my_ letters, when they get into the post, seem too
+kind,--rather.' And my sisters laughed ... laughed.
+
+But if _you_ think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see,
+to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time _dis
+faventibus_, though it will be difficult.
+
+Mr. Kenyon's dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. _You_ are
+invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and '_no one else_.'
+George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and '_no one
+else_'--just those words. The '_absolu_' (do you remember Balzac's
+beautiful story?) is just _you_ and 'no one else,' the other elements
+being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.
+
+Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not 'too _wise_' in any case,
+which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being
+'well,' ever and ever dearest. Keep so for _me_. May God bless you
+hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+For Miss Mitford ...
+
+    But people are not angels quite ...
+
+and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her
+way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She
+is affectionate to _me_ beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I
+were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low
+enough for _me_. I always feel _that_. She would advertise me directly
+for a wretch proper.
+
+Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me
+just now to hold the sparrows!--in respect to a great crowd of people,
+and she is among them--for reasons--for reasons.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 23, 1846.]
+
+So all was altered, my love--and, instead of Miss T. and the other
+friend, I had your brother and Procter--to my great pleasure. After, I
+went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning
+in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after
+dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is--(Here your letter
+reaches me--let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing
+you, dearest beyond all dearness--My own heart's Ba!)--oh, as I am
+used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied
+elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue
+utter 'Miss Barrett ... that is, Mrs. Jameson says' ... or 'does ...
+or does not.' I forget which! And if anybody noticed the _gaucherie_
+it must have been just your brother!
+
+Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can
+put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it
+as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday--there is, I see,
+and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be
+scientifically appreciated, _proved there_--but over and above, is it
+in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper--here does
+the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day
+I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta--wherein he avers
+that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal
+properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,--and
+that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of
+elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a
+decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may
+discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were--ah, what were
+they? Curious thinking won't do for me and the wise head which is
+mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand
+that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one
+person--which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.--to make me
+supremely happy, and that you have your wish--you _do_ bless me! More
+and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new
+comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life,
+_will this last_, let _me_ begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live
+this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put
+in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not
+deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I
+do feel, as I say--it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.
+
+With which conviction--renewed conviction time by time, of your
+extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,--will it seem
+characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening
+me, all the same, with threats of writing _less_ kindly? That must not
+be, love, for _your_ sake now--if you had not thrown open those
+windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord
+on whom the King leaned 'how such things might be'--but, once their
+influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut
+up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of
+blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever--so let all be as it is, pray,
+_pray_!
+
+No--not _all_. No more, ever, of that strange
+suspicion--'insolent'--oh, what a word!--nor suppose I shall
+particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to _that_, of all
+other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect
+the existence of such a quality _there_ as elsewhere: how _can_ such a
+thing, _could_ such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, _do_
+you know me better! _Do_ feel that I know you, I am bold to believe,
+and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be
+sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon's touch, for my entire good,
+that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or
+spoken--I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to
+the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other
+peoples' words, people in the world. But _your_ words! And about the
+'mission'; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have
+begun, as I did--as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected
+then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear.
+The 'humanity' however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen
+to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants
+_somebody_, and urgently, I can well believe.
+
+As for your apologue, it is naught--as you felt, and so broke off--for
+the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which
+once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and
+be glorious with leaves and musical with birds' nests, and a fairy
+safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish
+baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it _were_, and
+spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men
+pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering
+tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his
+heart and was happy--in spite of his disastrous chase the night
+before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a
+respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had
+doubtless cost to rear her--'insolence!'
+
+I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing
+was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday.
+So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I
+love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone,
+out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and
+with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you
+brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling!
+Doing the 'honour due' to the flowers, makes your presence a little
+longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time,
+and then drops, till the next letter.
+
+If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could
+_not_ have answered it so that you should have my answer on
+Sunday--no, I should still have had to write first.
+
+Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only
+to the hearing second. I would rather write than not--I! But to be
+written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of
+liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed)
+you cannot pretend to think that _yours_ are not more to _me_, most to
+_me_! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look
+another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have
+said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all
+the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I
+and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of
+life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all
+the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and
+black, as if for playing at fox and goose ... only there is no fox,
+and I will not agree to be goose for one ... _that_ is _you_ perhaps,
+for being 'too easily' satisfied.
+
+So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any
+rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a 'religious hermit' who wrote
+'poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove'; and religious
+hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say,
+through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St.
+Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your
+Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then,
+how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter,
+fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you ... think
+how it is the one light, seen without distractions.
+
+_I_ was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather
+before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of
+you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to
+reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such
+an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and
+forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book,
+because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the
+original of Mr. Ward's 'Tremaine,' because nothing would do for _her_,
+she insisted, except just _that_ excess of so-called refinement, with
+the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (_loue qui peut_,
+Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could
+not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say
+the wise:--and _this_ being otherwise with _me_ is miraculous
+compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant,
+overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much,
+as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the
+degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a
+level to meet on. One's ideal must be above one, as a matter of
+course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one's eyes
+(soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine ... shall I tell
+you? ... even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the
+complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you,
+if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair
+quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out
+fully and make you smile half.
+
+Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love _you_ when you came to
+see me--no indeed ... any more than I did your caring on your side. My
+ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should
+forget I was a woman (being weary and _blasée_ of the empty written
+gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps
+from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence),
+that you should forget _that_ and let us be friends, and consent to
+teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and
+give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper
+and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to
+write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used
+to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other
+letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you _influenced_ me, in a
+way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words
+you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the
+same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house
+by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I
+mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes ... and to prove
+how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has
+occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning ...
+'it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset
+me--I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some
+degree--but it haunts me ... it is a persecution.' On which he smiled
+and said that 'it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.'
+When the letter came....
+
+Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in
+this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it,
+and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you
+chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that
+you read _them_ as you read the newspaper--examined them, and fastened
+them down writhing under your long entomological pins--ah, do you
+remember the entomology of it all?
+
+But the power was used upon _me_--and I never doubted that you had
+mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional
+weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you
+admitted yesterday ... yes, I saw _that_ very early ... that you had
+come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should
+find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount
+of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more
+determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine.
+Well--and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I
+be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that
+the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe
+that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself,
+_then_, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe
+your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world
+(except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to
+me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy
+that I am _vain_ of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If
+it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I
+may say _before_ God and you, that of all the events of my life,
+inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your
+love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it _is_, and I tell you. Your
+love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of
+it kneelers.
+
+Why all this should be written, I do not know--but you set me thinking
+yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and
+for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts
+went, that way.
+
+Say how you are, beloved--and do not brood over that 'Soul's Tragedy,'
+which I wish I had here with 'Luria,' because, so, you should not see
+it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well--and remember
+how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do
+you want to hear me say
+
+     I cannot love you less...?
+
+_That_ is a doubtful phrase. And
+
+     I cannot love you more
+
+is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love
+you, but it does not sound right, even _so_, does it? I know what it
+ought to be, and will put it into the 'seal' and the 'paper' with the
+ineffable other things.
+
+Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear
+it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the
+Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your
+
+                                                         BA?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
+
+Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought
+not to go, but must--because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons
+and such like without bringing in your dear name (not _dearest_ name,
+my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though
+possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet _may_ speak, and
+to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good
+news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium--how I do
+thank you, my dearest--and desire to thank God through whose goodness
+it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at
+length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever
+effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and
+think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a
+letter.
+
+              Dearest, dearest--my perfect blessing you are!
+
+                   May God continue his care for us. R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Wednesday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]
+
+Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that 'I made you do as I
+would.' I am quite sure, you make me _speak_ as you would, and not at
+all as I mean--and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything
+half so untrue as that 'I came with the intention of loving whomever I
+should find'--No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of
+caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or
+so change it as to almost alter, but turn a 'no' into a 'yes' can no
+echo (except the Irish one), and I said 'no' to such a charge, and
+still say 'no.' I _did_ have a presentiment--and though it is hardly
+possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true
+colours given to it by the event, yet I _can_ put them aside, if I
+please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (_not_
+that the effect I expected to be produced would be _less_ than in
+anticipation, certainly I did not hope _that_, but that it would range
+itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and
+friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I _could_
+love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to
+divert me from my intended way of life, I made--went on making
+arrangements to return to Italy. You know--did I not tell you--I
+wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so
+much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist.
+I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily
+bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory
+than to mine, the true one--but that was instinct,
+Providence--anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you!
+yourself have noticed the difference between the _letters_ and the
+_writer_; the greater 'distance of the latter from you,' why was that?
+Why, if not because the conduct _began_ with _him_, with one who had
+now seen you--was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the
+feeling, of the letters--else, they, if _near_, should have enabled
+him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of
+familiarity, to become _nearer_--but it was not so! The letters began
+by loving you after their way--but what a world-wide difference
+between _that_ love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and
+feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so
+harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from
+what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels
+meant for ordinary service than Lord N's! But I _don't_ know that
+handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if
+you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came
+and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it
+was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more
+unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of
+truths that here, ('how begot? how nourished?')--here is the whole
+wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it,
+because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At
+the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think
+that it would be _so_ difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes
+to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to 'justify my
+presentiment?' Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could
+account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of
+your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps!
+So let us go on--taking a lesson out of the world's book in a
+different sense. You shall think I love you for--(tell me, you must,
+what for) while in my secret heart I know what my 'mission of
+humanity' means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures
+me. Enough--Wait, one word about the 'too kind letters'--could not the
+same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his
+thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his
+next gift by merely _ten_? It _is_ all too kind--but I shall feel the
+diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however,
+not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all--dearest
+letter of all--till the next! I looked yesterday over the 'Tragedy,'
+and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next
+time, and 'Luria' take away, if you let me, so all will be off my
+mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don't think I am going to
+take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the 'Tragedy' I
+should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring
+as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works
+fetter it, if left behind.
+
+Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing--if _you_, in any
+respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me,
+beyond words--beyond dreams--if, because I find you, your own works
+_stop_--'then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.' Oh, no, no,
+dearest, _so_ would the help cease to be help--the joy to be joy, Ba
+herself to be _quite_ Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear
+love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and
+promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I
+will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the
+world, proud of you--and _vain_, too, very likely, which is all the
+sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my
+heart on your fulfilling your mission--my heart is on it! Bless you,
+my Ba--
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)--and I
+walk, especially near the elms and stile--and mean to walk, and be
+very well--and you, dearest?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
+
+I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that
+they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to
+something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off
+the chrystals--they _are_ so brittle, then? do you know _that_ by an
+'instinct.' But I agree that it is best not to talk--I 'gave it up' as
+a riddle long ago. Let there be 'analysis' even, and it will not be
+solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and
+the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some
+snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have
+_his_ thoughts too, and _he_ would think that if you had been
+reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or
+by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person
+thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I
+hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks 'damnable
+iterations' and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now
+perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little
+further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and
+miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it
+was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for
+anything--your having no reason for it is the only way of your not
+seeming unreasonable. Also _for my own sake_. I like it to be so--I
+cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the
+baron's hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead
+since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it
+last--take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the
+tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and
+length towards and around it. But what then? What does _that prove_?
+... as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of
+such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental
+illustrations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not
+draw the sea.
+
+Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You
+are better than the imaginations of my heart, and _they_, as far as
+they relate to you (not further) are _not_ desperately wicked, I
+think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are
+doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle
+too, like the rest, now isn't it? When the knock came last night, I
+knew it was your letter, and not another's. Just another little leaf
+of my Koran! How I thank you ... thank you! If I write too kind
+letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not
+for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me,
+which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And _that_
+is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very
+often--as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly
+out of the ninety-sixth volume of the 'Code of Conventions,' only you
+are not like another, nor have you been to me like another--you began
+with most improvident and (will you let me say?) _unmasculine_
+generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the
+fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.
+
+But ... but ... you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the
+matter of the 'Tragedy' and 'Luria'--you promised to rest--and _you
+rest for three days_. Is it _so_ that people get well? or keep well?
+Indeed I do not think I shall let you have 'Luria.' Ah--be careful, I
+do beseech you--be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works
+will profit by it themselves. And _you_! And I ... if you are ill!--
+
+For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much
+as you please ... though I hear about the shower bath with a little
+suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and
+why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn't
+made you rather unwell since the new trial!--tell me, dear, dearest.
+
+As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy,
+just that I might not reproach _you_ for the over-business. Confess
+that _that_ was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are
+quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground
+murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write
+so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away
+my license to be loved ... I am not to be Ba to you any longer ... you
+say! And is _this_ right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell
+off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you. Only you did not
+mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it,
+if you please, and unthink it near the elms.
+
+As for the writing, I will write ... I have written ... I am writing.
+You do not fancy that I have given up writing?--No. Only I have
+certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have
+done, which is not my fault--nor yours directly--and I feel an
+indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul
+shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the
+right inclination. Well--it will come. But all in blots and fragments
+there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.
+
+And if there were not ... if there were none ... I hold that I should
+be Ba, and also _your_ Ba ... which is 'insolence' ... will you say?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Thursday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
+
+As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the
+beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me--'the late
+Robert Hall--when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate
+of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of
+cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't
+kiss Mind"! May _you_ not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that
+mere intellectual endowments--though incontestably of the loftiest
+character--mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's--cannot be
+_kissed_--nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities,
+those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot,
+if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us
+died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person!
+and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street,
+suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise
+an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it
+augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be
+_wholly, exclusively_ based on such perishable attractions as the
+sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to
+know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent
+with this--some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some--' Would he not
+say that? But I can't do his platitudes justice because here is our
+post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect
+joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing--dearest,
+dearest Ba--let me say more to-morrow--only this now, that you--ah,
+what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you--till to-morrow
+when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, _lengthen_ it!)
+
+                                              Ever your own.
+
+'Hawthorn'[1]--to show how Spring gets on!
+
+[Footnote 1: Sprig of Hawthorn enclosed with letter.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
+
+If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours,
+ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices
+without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in
+your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of
+nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with
+him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:--he is quite a
+third person _singular_ for the nonsense he talks!
+
+So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The
+sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was
+warm enough to go down-stairs--and I put on my cloak as if I were
+going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took
+Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant
+to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's
+ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning
+visitors--and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me,
+besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees
+Cook--_plus_ his regimentals--fresh from the royal presence at St.
+James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of
+cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be
+unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after
+another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told
+her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the
+regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me
+by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and '_There_ is
+Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I
+had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too!
+who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have
+encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next
+moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was
+standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely
+have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that
+room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I
+couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had
+drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a
+minute or two--and the corollary of this interesting history is, that
+being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking
+'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves
+my gigantic strength--now doesn't it?
+
+For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish
+as any third person in the world. What do you think?
+
+And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me
+to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth
+proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed,
+it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the
+kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.
+
+I wanted to hear her speak of you, and was afraid. I _could not_ name
+you. Yet I _did_ want to hear the last 'Bell' praised.
+
+She goes to Ireland for two months soon, but prints a book first, a
+collection of essays. I have not seen Mr. Kenyon, with whom she dined
+yesterday. The Macreadys were to be there, and he told me a week ago
+that he very nearly committed himself in a 'social mistake' by
+inviting you to meet them.
+
+Ah my hawthorn spray! Do you know, I caught myself pitying it for
+being gathered, with that green promise of leaves on it! There is room
+too on it for the feet of a bird! Still I shall keep it longer than it
+would have stayed in the hedge, _that_ is certain!
+
+The first you ever gave me was a yellow rose sent in a letter, and
+shall I tell you what _that_ means--the yellow rose? '_Infidelity_,'
+says the dictionary of flowers. You see what an omen, ... to begin
+with!
+
+Also you see that I am not tired with the great avatar to-day--the
+'fell swoop' rather--mine, into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Jameson's
+on _me_.
+
+And I shall hear to-morrow again, really? I '_let_' you. And you are
+best, kindest, dearest, every day. Did I ever tell you that you made
+me do what you choose? I fancied that I only _thought_ so. May God
+bless you. I am your own.
+
+Shall I have the 'Soul's Tragedy' on Saturday?--any of it? But _do not
+work_--I beseech you to take care.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
+
+To be sure my 'first person' was nonsensical, and, in that respect
+made speak properly, I hope, only he was cut short in the middle of
+his performance by the exigencies of the post. So, never mind what
+such persons say, my sweetest, because they know nothing at all--_quod
+erat demonstrandum_. But you, love, you speak roses, and
+hawthorn-blossoms when you tell me of the cloak put on, and the
+descent, and the entry, and staying and delaying. I will have had a
+hand in all that; I know what I wished all the morning, and now this
+much came true! But you should have seen the regimentals, if I could
+have so contrived it, for I confess to a Chinese love for bright
+red--the very names 'vermilion' 'scarlet' warm me, yet in this cold
+climate nobody wears red to comfort one's eye save soldiers and fox
+hunters, and old women fresh from a Parish Christmas Distribution of
+cloaks. To dress in floating loose crimson silk, I almost understand
+being a Cardinal! Do you know anything of Nat Lee's Tragedies? In one
+of them a man angry with a Cardinal cries--
+
+    Stand back, and let me mow this poppy down,
+    This rank red weed that spoils the Churches' corn.
+
+Is not that good? and presently, when the same worthy is poisoned
+(that is the Cardinal)--they bid him--'now, Cardinal, lie down and
+roar!'
+
+    Think of thy scarlet sins!
+
+Of the justice of all which, you will judge with no Mrs. Jameson for
+guide when we see the Sistina together, I trust! By the way, yesterday
+I went to Dulwich to see some pictures, by old Teniers, Murillo,
+Gainsborough, Raphael!--then twenty names about, and last but one, as
+if just thought of, 'Correggio.' The whole collection, including 'a
+_divine_ picture by Murillo,' and Titian's Daughter (hitherto supposed
+to be in the Louvre)--the whole I would, I think, have cheerfully
+given a pound or two for the privilege of not possessing--so execrable
+as sign-paintings even! 'Are there worse poets in their way than
+painters?' Yet the melancholy business is here--that the bad poet goes
+out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order
+to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do
+afterwards--but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning
+even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other
+good do his acquisitions go? This short minute of life our one chance,
+an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and
+ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up
+and conies out after a dozen years with 'Titian's Daughter' and,
+there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!
+
+I have tried--my trial is made too!
+
+To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to
+see you so well--did she not wonder? Ah, to-morrow! There is a lesson
+from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being
+corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip,
+dearest? See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the
+chrystals, you say! But the writing is but for a time--'a time and
+times and half a time!'--would I knew when the prophetic weeks end!
+Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization
+of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush's ears!)
+meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise
+diplomacy and say carelessly 'I should be glad to know what Miss B. is
+like--' No, that I must not do, something tells me, 'for reasons, for
+reasons'--
+
+I do not know--you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my
+'divine Murillo' of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the
+pages, but--in fact my wise head does ache a little--it is
+inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone,
+and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird's foot, which
+would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching
+begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite
+naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved
+aching now, so I _do_ care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba
+to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another,
+even your sister, if--if--
+
+But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes,
+till to-morrow--Bless you, my own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Sunday.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+
+You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a
+word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek
+a 'security'! do you know it was not right of you to use such an
+expression--indeed no. You were angry with me for just one minute, or
+you would not have used it--and why? Now what did I say that was wrong
+or unkind even by construction? If I did say anything, it was three
+times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart
+and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could _you_.
+But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under
+the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then _I_,
+remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to
+scorn, said something to that effect, you _know_. I once was in
+company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his
+constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became
+his wife at last ... and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at
+him on that ground as a sort of monster. And can you guess what the
+constancy meant? Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and
+she repulsed him. 'And in the meantime, _how many_?' I had the
+impertinence to ask a female friend who told me the tale. 'Why,' she
+answered with the utmost simplicity, 'I understand that Miss A. and
+Miss B. and Mrs. C. would not listen to him, but he took Miss D.'s
+rejection most to heart.' That was the head and front of his
+'constancy' to Miss E., who had been loved, she boasted, for seven
+years ... that is, once at the beginning and once at the end. It was
+just a coincidence of the 'premier pas' and the 'pis aller.'
+
+Beloved, I could not mean this for you; you are not made of such
+stuff, as we both know.
+
+And for myself, it was my compromise with my own scruples, that you
+should not be 'chained' to me, not in the merest metaphor, that you
+should not seem to be bound, in honour or otherwise, so that if you
+stayed with me it should be your free choice to stay, not the
+_consequence_ of a choice so many months before. That was my
+compromise with my scruples, and not my doubt of your affection--and
+least of all, was it an intention of trifling with you sooner or later
+that made me wish to suspend all _decisions_ as long as possible. I
+have decided (for me) to let it be as you shall please--now I told you
+that before. Either we will live on as we are, until an obstacle
+arises,--for indeed I do not look for a 'security' where you suppose,
+and the very appearance of it _there_, is what most rebuts me--or I
+will be yours in the obvious way, to go out of England the next
+half-hour if possible. As to the steps to be taken (or not taken)
+before the last step, we must think of those. The worst is that the
+only question is about a _form_. Virtually the evil is the same all
+round, whatever we do. Dearest, it was plain to see yesterday evening
+when he came into this room for a moment at seven o'clock, before
+going to his own to dress for dinner ... plain to see, that he was not
+altogether pleased at finding you here in the morning. There was no
+pretext for objecting gravely--but it was plain that he was not
+pleased. Do not let this make you uncomfortable, he will forget all
+about it, and I was not _scolded_, do you understand. It was more
+manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance:--and it
+was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game
+we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve _there_.
+
+And to-day I went down-stairs (to prove how my promises stand) though
+I could find at least ten good excuses for remaining in my own room,
+for our cousin, Sam Barrett, who brought the interruption yesterday
+and put me out of humour (it wasn't the fault of the dear little
+cousin, Lizzie ... my 'portrait' ... who was '_so_ sorry,' she said,
+dear child, to have missed Papa somewhere on the stairs!) the cousin
+who should have been in Brittany yesterday instead of here, sate in
+the drawing-room all this morning, and had visitors there, and so I
+had excellent excuses for never moving from my chair. Yet, the field
+being clear at _half-past two_! I went for half an hour, just--just
+for _you_. Did you think of me, I wonder? It was to meet your thoughts
+that I went, dear dearest.
+
+How clever these sketches are. The expression produced by such
+apparently inadequate means is quite striking; and I have been making
+my brothers admire them, and they 'wonder you don't think of employing
+them in an illustrated edition of your works.' Which might be, really!
+Ah, you did not ask for 'Luria'! Not that I should have let you have
+it!--I think I should not indeed. Dearest, you take care of the head
+... and don't make that tragedy of the soul one for mine, by letting
+it make you ill. Beware too of the shower-bath--it plainly does not
+answer for you at this season. And walk, and think of me for _your_
+good, if such a combination should be possible.
+
+And _I_ think of _you_ ... if I do not of Italy. Yet I forget to speak
+to you of the Dulwich Gallery. I never saw those pictures, but am
+astonished that the whole world should be wrong in praising them.
+'Divine' is a bad word for Murillo in any case--because he is
+intensely human in his most supernatural subjects. His beautiful
+Trinity in the National Gallery, which I saw the last time I went out
+to look at pictures, has no deity in it--and I seem to see it now. And
+do you remember the visitation of the angels to Abraham (the Duke of
+Sutherland's picture--is it not?) where the mystic visitors look like
+shepherds who had not even dreamt of God? But I always understood that
+that Dulwich Gallery was famous for great works--you surprise me! And
+for painters ... their badness is more ostentatious than that of
+poets--they stare idiocy out of the walls, and set the eyes of
+sensitive men on edge. For the rest, however, I very much doubt
+whether they wear their lives more to rags, than writers who mistake
+their vocation in poetry do. There is a mechanism in poetry as in the
+other art--and, to men not native to the way of it, it runs hard and
+heavily. The 'cudgelling of the brain' is as good labour as the
+grinding of the colours, ... do you not think?
+
+If ever I am in the Sistine Chapel, it will not be with Mrs.
+Jameson--no. If ever I should be there, what teaching I shall want,
+_I_ who have seen so few pictures, and love them only as children do,
+with an unlearned love, just for the sake of the thoughts they bring.
+Wonderfully ignorant I am, to have had eyes and ears so long! There is
+music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much, ...
+yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the
+masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the
+private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my
+life--judge by _that_! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and
+divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a
+composer like Beethoven _must_ stand above the divinest painter in
+soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, of all artists. And this
+I felt in my guess, long before I knew you. But observe how, if I had
+died in this illness, I should have left a sealed world behind me!
+_you_, unknown too--unguessed at, _you_, ... in many respects,
+wonderfully unguessed at! Lately I have learnt to despise my own
+instincts. And apart from those--and _you_, ... it was right for me to
+be melancholy, in the consciousness of passing blindfolded under all
+the world-stars, and of going out into another side of the creation,
+with a blank for the experience of this ... the last revelation,
+unread! How the thought of it used to depress me sometimes!
+
+Talking of music, I had a proposition the other day from certain of
+Mr. Russell's (the singer's) friends, about his setting to music my
+'Cry of the Children.' His programme exhibits all the horrors of the
+world, I see! Lifeboats ... madhouses ... gamblers' wives ... all done
+to the right sort of moaning. His audiences must go home delightfully
+miserable, I should fancy. He has set the 'Song of the Shirt' ... and
+my 'Cry of the Children' will be acceptable, it is supposed, as a
+climax of agony. Do you know this Mr. Russell, and what sort of music
+he suits to his melancholy? But to turn my 'Cry' to a 'Song,' a
+burden, it is said, is required--he can't sing it without a burden!
+and behold what has been sent 'for my approval'.... I shall copy it
+_verbatim_ for you....
+
+    And the threads twirl, twirl, twirl,
+        Before each boy and girl;
+    And the wheels, big and little, still whirl, whirl, whirl.
+
+... accompaniment _agitato_, imitating the roar of the machinery!
+
+This is not endurable ... ought not to be ... should it now? Do tell
+me.
+
+May God bless you, very dearest! Let me hear how you are--and think
+how I am
+
+                                                Your own....
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, I have been kept in town and just return in time to say why
+you have _no_ note ... to-morrow I will write ... so much there is to
+say on the subject of this letter I find.
+
+                                    Bless you, all beloved--
+
+                                         R.B.
+
+Oh, do not sleep another night on that horrible error I have led you
+into! The 'Dulwich Gallery'!--!!!--oh, no. Only some pictures to be
+sold at the Greyhound Inn, Dulwich--'the genuine property of a
+gentleman deceased.'
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Sunday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+
+One or two words, if no more, I must write to dearest Ba, the night
+would go down in double blackness if I had neither written nor been
+written to! So here is another piece of 'kindness' on my part, such as
+I have received praise for of late! My own sweetest, there is just
+this good in such praise, that by it one comes to something pleasantly
+definite amid the hazy uncertainties of mere wishes and
+possibilities--while my whole heart does, _does_ so yearn, love, to do
+something to prove its devotion for you; and, now and then, amuses
+itself with foolish imaginings of real substantial services to which
+it should be found equal if fortune so granted; suddenly you interpose
+with thanks, in such terms as would all too much reward the highest of
+even those services which are never to be; and for what?--for a note,
+a going to Town, a ----! Well, there are definite beginnings
+certainly, if you will recognise them--I mean, that since you _do_
+accept, far from 'despising this day of small things,' then I may
+take heart, and be sure that even though none of the great
+achievements should fall to my happy chance, still the barrenest,
+flattest life will--_must_ of needs produce in its season better
+fruits than these poor ones--I keep it, value it, now, that it may
+produce such.
+
+Also I determine never again to 'analyse,' nor let you analyse if the
+sweet mouth can be anyway stopped: the love shall be one and
+indivisible--and the Loves we used to know from
+
+    One another huddled lie ...
+    Close beside Her tenderly--
+
+(which is surely the next line). Now am I not anxious to know what
+your father said? And if anybody else said or wondered ... how should
+I know? Of all fighting--the warfare with shadows--what a work is
+_there_. But tell me,--and, with you for me--
+
+Bless me dearest ever, as the face above mine blesses me--
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+Sir Moses set off this morning, I hear--somebody yesterday called the
+telescope an 'optical delusion,' anticipating many more of the kind!
+So much for this 'wandering Jew.'
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]
+
+Upon the whole, I think, I am glad when you are kept in town and
+prevented from writing what you call 'much' to me. Because in the
+first place, the little from _you_, is always much to _me_--and then,
+besides, _the letter comes_, and with it the promise of another! Two
+letters have I had from you to-day, ever dearest! How I thank
+you!--yes, _indeed_! It was like yourself to write yesterday ... to
+remember what a great gap there would have been otherwise, as it
+looked on this side--here. The worst of Saturday is (when you come on
+it) that Sunday follows--Saturday night bringing no letter. Well, it
+was very good of you, best of you!
+
+For the 'analyzing' I give it up willingly, only that I must say what
+altogether I forgot to say in my last letter, that it was not _I_, if
+you please, who spoke of the chrystals breaking away! And you, to
+quote me with that certainty! "The chrystals are broken off," _you
+say_.' _I_ say!! When it was in your letter, and not at all in mine!!
+
+The truth is that I was stupid, rather, about the Dulwich
+collection--it was my fault. I caught up the idea of the gallery out
+of a heap of other thoughts, and really might have known better if I
+had given myself a chance, by considering.
+
+Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and has taken out a licence, it seems to me,
+for praising you, for he praised and praised. Somebody has told him
+(who had spent several days with you in a house with a large library)
+that he came away 'quite astounded by the versatility of your
+learning'--and that, to complete the circle, you discoursed as
+scientifically on the training of greyhounds and breeding of ducks as
+if you had never done anything else all your life. Then dear Mr.
+Kenyon talked of the poems; and hoped, very earnestly I am sure, that
+you would finish 'Saul'--which you ought to do, must do--_only not
+now_. By the way Mrs. Coleridge had written to him to enquire whether
+you had authority for the 'blue lilies,' rather than white. Then he
+asked about 'Luria' and 'whether it was obscure'; and I said, not
+unless the people, who considered it, began by blindfolding
+themselves.
+
+And where do you think Mr. Kenyon talks of going next February--a long
+while off to be sure? To Italy of course. Everybody I ever heard of
+seems to be going to Italy next winter. He visits his brother at
+Vienna, and 'may cross the Alps and get to Pisa'--it is the shadow of
+a scheme--nothing certain, so far.
+
+I did not go down-stairs to-day because the wind blew and the
+thermometer fell. To-morrow, perhaps I may. And _you_, dearest
+dearest, might have put into the letters how you were when you wrote
+them. You might--but you did not feel well and would not say so.
+Confess that that was the reason. Reason or no reason, mention
+yourself to-morrow, and for the rest, do not write a long letter so as
+to increase the evil. There was nothing which I can remember as
+requiring an answer in what I wrote to you, and though I _will_ have
+my letter of course, it shall be as brief as possible, if briefness is
+good for you--_now always remember that_. Why if I, who talk against
+'Luria,' should work the mischief myself, what should I deserve? I
+should be my own jury directly and not recommend to mercy ... not to
+mine. Do take care--care for _me_ just so much.
+
+And, except that taking care of your health, what would you do for me
+that you have not done? You have given me the best of the possible
+gifts of one human soul to another, you have made my life new, and am
+I to count these things as small and insufficient? Ah, you _know_, you
+_know_ that I cannot, ought not, will not.
+
+May God bless you. He blesses me in letting me be grateful to you as
+your Ba.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]
+
+First and most important of all,--dearest, 'angry'--with you, and for
+_that_! It is just as if I had spoken contemptuously of that Gallery I
+so love and so am grateful to--having been used to go there when a
+child, far under the age allowed by the regulations--those two Guidos,
+the wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob's vision, such a Watteau, the
+triumphant three Murillo pictures, a Giorgione music-lesson group,
+all the Poussins with the 'Armida' and 'Jupiter's nursing'--and--no
+end to 'ands'--I have sate before one, some _one_ of those pictures I
+had predetermined to see, a good hour and then gone away ... it used
+to be a green half-hour's walk over the fields. So much for one error,
+now for the second like unto it; what I meant by charging you with
+_seeing_, (not, _not_ '_looking_ for')--_seeing_ undue 'security' in
+_that_, in the form,--I meant to say 'you talk about me being 'free'
+now, free till _then_, and I am rather jealous of the potency
+attributed to the _form_, with all its solemnity, because it _is_ a
+form, and no more--yet you frankly agree with me that _that_ form
+complied with, there is no redemption; yours I am _then_ sure enough,
+to repent at leisure &c. &c.' So I meant to ask, 'then, all _now_
+said, all short of that particular form of saying it, all goes for
+comparatively nothing'? Here it is written down--you 'wish to
+_suspend_ all decisions as long as possible'--_that_ form effects the
+decision, then,--till then, 'where am I'? Which is just what Lord
+Chesterfield cautions people against asking when they tell stories.
+Love, Ba, my own heart's dearest, if all is _not_ decided
+_now_--why--hear a story, à propos of storytelling, and deduce what is
+deducible. A very old Unitarian minister met a still older evangelical
+brother--John Clayton (from whose son's mouth I heard what you shall
+hear)--the two fell to argument about the true faith to be held--after
+words enough, 'Well,' said the Unitarian, as winding up the
+controversy with an amicable smile--'at least let us hope we are both
+engaged in the _pursuit_ of Truth!'--'_Pursuit_ do you say?' cried the
+other, 'here am I with my years eighty and odd--if I haven't _found_
+Truth by this time where is my chance, pray?' My own Ba, if I have not
+already _decided_, alas for me and the solemn words that are to help!
+Though in another point of view there would be some luxurious feeling,
+beyond the ordinary, in knowing one was kept safe to one's heart's
+good by yet another wall than the hitherto recognised ones. Is there
+any parallel in the notion I once heard a man deliver himself of in
+the street--a labourer talking with his friends about '_wishes_'--and
+this one wished, if he might get his wish, 'to have a nine gallon cask
+of strong ale set running that minute and his own mouth to be _tied_
+under it'--the exquisiteness of the delight was to be in the security
+upon security,--the being 'tied.' Now, Ba says I shall not be
+'chained' if she can help!
+
+But now--here all the jesting goes. You tell me what was observed in
+the 'moment's' visit; by you, and (after, I suppose) by your sisters.
+First, I _will_ always see with your eyes _there_--next, what I see I
+will _never_ speak, if it pain you; but just this much truth I ought
+to say, I think. I always give myself to you for the worst I am,--full
+of faults as you will find, if you have not found them. But I _will_
+not affect to be so bad, so wicked, as I count wickedness, as to call
+that conduct other than intolerable--_there_, in my conviction of
+_that_, is your real 'security' and mine for the future as the
+present. That a father choosing to give out of his whole day some five
+minutes to a daughter, supposed to be prevented from participating in
+what he, probably, in common with the whole world of sensible men, as
+distinguished from poets and dreamers, consider _every_ pleasure of
+life, by a complete foregoing of society--that he, after the Pisa
+business and the enforced continuance, and as he must believe,
+permanence of this state in which any other human being would go
+mad--I do dare say, for the justification of God, who gave the mind to
+be _used_ in this world,--where it saves us, we are taught, or
+destroys us,--and not to be sunk quietly, overlooked, and forgotten;
+that, under these circumstances, finding ... what, you say, unless he
+thinks he _does_ find, he would close the door of his house instantly;
+a mere sympathizing man, of the same literary tastes, who comes
+good-naturedly, on a proper and unexceptionable introduction, to chat
+with and amuse a little that invalid daughter, once a month, so far as
+is known, for an hour perhaps,--that such a father should show
+himself '_not pleased_ plainly,' at such a circumstance ... my Ba, it
+is SHOCKING! See, I go _wholly_ on the supposition that the real
+relation is not imagined to exist between us. I so completely could
+understand a repugnance to trust you to me were the truth known, that,
+I will confess, I have several times been afraid the very reverse of
+this occurrence would befall; that your father would have at some time
+or other thought himself obliged, by the usual feeling of people in
+such cases, to see me for a few minutes and express some commonplace
+thanks after the customary mode (just as Capt. Domett sent a heap of
+unnecessary thanks to me not long ago for sending now a letter now a
+book to his son in New Zealand--keeping up the spirits of poor dear
+Alfred now he is cut off from the world at large)--and if _this_ had
+been done, I shall not deny that my heart would have accused
+me--unreasonably I _know_ but still, suppression, and reserve, and
+apprehension--the whole of _that is_ horrible always! But this way of
+looking on the endeavour of anybody, however humble, to just preserve
+your life, remedy in some degree the first, if it _was_ the first,
+unjustifiable measure,--this being 'displeased'--is exactly what I did
+_not_ calculate upon. Observe, that in this _only_ instance I am able
+to do as I shall be done by; to take up the arms furnished by the
+world, the usages of society--this is monstrous on the _world's_
+showing! I say this now that I may never need recur to it--that you
+may understand why I keep _such_ entire silence henceforth.
+
+Get but well, keep but _as_ well, and all is easy now. This wonderful
+winter--the spring--the summer--you will take exercise, go up and down
+stairs, get strong. _I pray you, at your feet, to do this, dearest!_
+Then comes Autumn, with the natural expectations, as after _rouge_ one
+expects _noir_: the _likelihood_ of a _severe_ winter after this mild
+one, which to prevent, you reiterate your demand to go and save your
+life in Italy, ought you not to do that? And the matters brought to
+issue, (with even, if possible, less shadow of ground for a refusal
+than before, if you are _well_, plainly well enough to bear the
+voyage) _there_ I _will_ bid you 'be mine in the obvious way'--if you
+shall preserve your belief in me--and you _may_ in much, in all
+important to you. Mr. Kenyon's praise is undeserved enough, but
+yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, _tenax
+propositi_, able to make out a life for himself and abide in
+it--'for,' he went on, 'you really do live without any of this
+_titillation_ and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all
+kinds, they all say they can do without.' That is _more_ true--and I
+_intend_ by God's help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole
+energies in reducing to practice the feeling which occupies me, and in
+the practical operation of which, the other work I had proposed to do
+will be found included, facilitated--I shall be able--but of this
+there is plenty time to speak hereafter--I shall, I believe, be able
+to do this without even allowing the world to _very much_
+misinterpret--against pure lying there is no defence, but all up to
+that I hope to hinder or render unimportant--as you shall know in time
+and place.
+
+I have written myself grave, but write to _me_, dear, dearest, and I
+will answer in a lighter mood--even now I can say how it was
+yesterday's hurry happened. I called on Milnes--who told me Hanmer had
+broken a bone in his leg and was laid up, so I called on him too--on
+Moxon, by the way, (his brother telling me strangely cheering news,
+from the grimmest of faces, about my books selling and likely to sell
+... your wishes, Ba!)--then in Bond Street about some business with
+somebody, then on Mrs. Montagu who was out walking all the time, and
+home too. I found a letter from Mr. Kenyon, perfectly kind, asking me
+to go on Monday to meet friends, and with yours to-day comes another
+confirming the choice of the day. How entirely kind he is!
+
+I am very well, much better, indeed--taking that bath with sensibly
+good effect, to-night I go to Montagu's again; for shame, having kept
+away too long.
+
+And the rest shall answer _yours_--dear! Not 'much to answer?' And
+Beethoven, and Painting and--what _is_ the rest and shall be answered!
+Bless you, now, my darling--I love you, ever shall love you, ever be
+your own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]
+
+Yes, but, dearest, you mistake me, or you mistake yourself. I am sure
+I do not over-care for forms--it is not my way to do it--and in this
+case ... no. Still you must see that here is a fact as well as a form,
+and involving a frightful quantity of social inconvenience (to use the
+mildest word) if too hastily entered on. I deny altogether looking
+for, or 'seeing' any 'security' in it for myself--it is a mere form
+for the heart and the happiness: illusions may pass after as before.
+Still the truth is that if they were to pass with you now, you stand
+free to act according to the wide-awakeness of your eyes, and to
+reform your choice ... see! whereas afterward you could not carry out
+such a reformation while I was alive, even if I helped you. All I
+could do for you would be to walk away. And you pretend not to see
+this broad distinction?--ah. For me I have seen just this and no more,
+and have felt averse to forestall, to seem to forestall even by an
+hour, or a word, that stringency of the legal obligation from which
+there _is_ in a certain sense no redemption. Tie up your drinker under
+the pour of his nine gallons, and in two minutes he will moan and
+writhe (as you perfectly know) like a Brinvilliers under the
+water-torture. That he _asked_ to be tied up, was unwise on his own
+principle of loving ale. And _you_ sha'n't be 'chained' up, if you
+were to ask twenty times: if you have found truth or not in the
+water-well.
+
+You do not see aright what I meant to tell you on another subject. If
+he was displeased, (and it was expressed by a shadow a mere negation
+of pleasure) it was not with you as a visitor and my friend. You must
+not fancy such a thing. It was a sort of instinctive indisposition
+towards seeing you here--unexplained to himself, I have no doubt--of
+course unexplained, or he would have desired me to receive you never
+again, _that_ would have been done at once and unscrupulously. But
+without defining his own feeling, he rather disliked seeing you
+here--it just touched one of his vibratory wires, brushed by and
+touched it--oh, we understand in this house. He is not a nice
+observer, but, at intervals very wide, he is subject to
+lightnings--call them fancies, sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
+Certainly it was not in the character of a 'sympathising friend' that
+you made him a very little cross on Monday. And yet you never were nor
+will be in danger of being _thanked_, he would not think of it. For
+the reserve, the apprehension--dreadful those things are, and
+desecrating to one's own nature--but we did not make this position, we
+only endure it. The root of the evil is the miserable misconception of
+the limits and character of parental rights--it is a mistake of the
+intellect rather than of the heart. Then, after using one's children
+as one's chattels for a time, the children drop lower and lower toward
+the level of the chattels, and the duties of human sympathy to them
+become difficult in proportion. And (it seems strange to say it, yet
+it is true) _love_, he does not conceive of at all. He has feeling, he
+can be moved deeply, he is capable of affection in a peculiar way, but
+_that_, he does not understand, any more than he understands Chaldee,
+respecting it less of course.
+
+And you fancy that I could propose Italy again? after saying too that
+I never would? Oh no, no--yet there is time to think of this, a
+superfluity of time, ... 'time, times and half a time' and to make
+one's head swim with leaning over a precipice is not wise. The roar
+of the world comes up too, as you hear and as I heard from the
+beginning. There will be no lack of 'lying,' be sure--'pure lying'
+too--and nothing you can do, dearest dearest, shall hinder my being
+torn to pieces by most of the particularly affectionate friends I have
+in the world. Which I do not think of much, any more than of Italy.
+You will be mad, and I shall be bad ... and _that_ will be the effect
+of being poets! 'Till when, where are you?'--why in the very deepest
+of my soul--wherever in it is the fountain head of loving! beloved,
+_there_ you are!
+
+Some day I shall ask you 'in form,'--as I care so much for forms, it
+seems,--what your 'faults' are, these immense multitudinous faults of
+yours, which I hear such talk of, and never, never, can get to see.
+Will you give me a catalogue raisonnée of your faults? I should like
+it, I think. In the meantime they seem to be faults of obscurity, that
+is, invisible faults, like those in the poetry which do not keep it
+from selling as I am _so, so_ glad to understand. I am glad too that
+Mr. Milnes knows you a little.
+
+Now I must end, there is no more time to-night. God bless you, very
+dearest! Keep better ... try to be well--as _I_ do for you since you
+ask me. Did I ever think that _you_ would think it worth while to ask
+me _that_? What a dream! reaching out into the morning! To-day however
+I did not go down-stairs, because it was colder and the wind blew its
+way into the passages:--if I can to-morrow without risk, I will, ...
+be sure ... be sure. Till Thursday then!--till eternity!
+
+'Till when, where am I,' but with you? and what, but yours
+
+                                                     Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+I have been writing 'autographs' (save my _mark_) for the North and
+the South to-day ... the Fens, and Golden Square. Somebody asked for
+a verse, ... from either 'Catarina' or 'Flush' ... 'those poems' &c.
+&c.! Such a concatenation of criticisms. So I preferred Flush of
+course--i.e. gave him the preferment.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Wednesday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]
+
+Ah, sweetest, don't mind people and their lies any more than I shall;
+if the toad _does_ 'take it into his toad's head to spit at you'--you
+will not 'drop dead,' I warrant. All the same, if one may make a
+circuit through a flower-bed and see the less of his toad-habits and
+general ugliness, so much the better--no words can express my entire
+indifference (far below _contempt_) for what can be said or done. But
+one thing, only one, I choose to hinder being said, if I can--the
+others I would not if I could--why prevent the toad's puffing himself
+out thrice his black bigness if it amuses him among those wet stones?
+We shall be in the sun.
+
+I dare say I am unjust--hasty certainly, in the other matter--but all
+faults are such inasmuch as they are 'mistakes of the
+intellect'--toads may spit or leave it alone,--but if I ever see it
+right, exercising my intellect, to treat any human beings like my
+'chattels'--I shall pay for that mistake one day or another, I am
+convinced--and I very much fear that you would soon discover what one
+fault of mine is, if you were to hear anyone assert such a right in my
+presence.
+
+Well, I shall see you to-morrow--had I better come a little later, I
+wonder?--half-past three, for instance, staying, as last time, till
+... ah, it is ill policy to count my treasure aloud! Or shall I come
+at the usual time to-morrow? If I do _not_ hear, at the usual
+time!--because, I think you would--am sure you would have considered
+and suggested it, were it necessary.
+
+Bless you, dearest--ever your own.
+
+I said nothing about that Mr. Russell and his proposition--by all
+means, yes--let him do more good with that noble, pathetic 'lay'--and
+do not mind the 'burthen,' if he is peremptory--so that he duly
+specify '_by the singer_'--with _that_ precaution nothing but good can
+come of his using it.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Thursday.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest I lose no time in writing, you see, so as to be written
+to at the soonest--and there is another reason which makes me hasten
+to write ... it is not all mercantile calculation. I want you to
+understand me.
+
+Now listen! I seem to understand myself: it seems to me that every
+word I ever said to you on one subject, is plainly referable to a
+class of feelings of which you could not complain ... could not. But
+this is _my_ impression; and yours is different:--you do not
+understand, you do not see by my light, and perhaps it is natural that
+you should not, as we stand on different steps of the argument. Still
+I, who said what I did, _for you_, and from an absorbing consideration
+of what was best _for you_, cannot consent, even out of anxiety for
+your futurity, to torment you now, to vex you by a form of speech
+which you persist in translating into a want of trust in you ... (_I_,
+want trust in you!!) into a need of more evidence about you from
+others ... (_could_ you say so?) and even into an indisposition on my
+part to fulfil my engagement--no, dearest dearest, it is not right of
+you. And therefore, as you have these thoughts reasonably or
+unreasonably, I shall punish you for them at once, and 'chain' you ...
+(as you wish to be chained), chain you, rivet you--do you feel how the
+little fine chain twists round and round you? do you hear the stroke
+of the riveting? and you may _feel that_ too. Now, it is done--now,
+you are chained--_Bia_ has finished the work--I, _Ba_! (observe the
+anagram!) and not a word do you say, of Prometheus, though you have
+the conscience of it all, I dare say. Well! you must be pleased, ...
+as it was 'the weight of too much liberty' which offended you: and now
+you believe, perhaps, that I trust you, love you, and look to you over
+the heads of the whole living world, without any one head needing to
+stoop; you _must_, if you please, because you belong to me now and
+shall believe as I choose. There's a ukase for you! Cry out ... repent
+... and I will loose the links, and let you go again--_shall_ it be
+'_My dear Miss Barrett_?'
+
+Seriously, you shall not think of me such things as you half said, if
+not whole said, to-day. If all men were to speak evil of you, my heart
+would speak of you the more good--_that_ would be the one result with
+_me_. Do I not know you, soul to soul? should I believe that any of
+them could know you as I know you? Then for the rest, I am not afraid
+of 'toads' now, not being a child any longer. I am not inclined to
+mind, if _you_ do not mind, what may be said about us by the
+benevolent world, nor will other reasons of a graver kind affect me
+otherwise than by the necessary pain. Therefore the whole rests with
+you--unless illness should intervene--and you will be kind and good
+(will you not?) and not think hard thoughts of me ever again--no. It
+wasn't the sense of being less than you had a right to pretend to,
+which made me speak what you disliked--for it is _I_ who am
+'unworthy,' and not another--not certainly that other!
+
+I meant to write more to-night of subjects farther off us, but my
+sisters have come up-stairs and I must close my letter quickly.
+Beloved, take care of your head! Ah, do not write poems, nor read, nor
+neglect the walking, nor take that shower-bath. _Will_ you, instead,
+try the warm bathing? Surely the experiment is worth making for a
+little while. Dearest beloved, do it for your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Friday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]
+
+I am altogether your own, dearest--the words were only words and the
+playful feelings were play--while the _fact_ has always been so
+irresistibly obvious as to make them _break_ on and off it,
+fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a
+great solid rock. _Now_ you call the rock, a rock, but you must have
+known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those
+light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do
+what they could. It _is_ a rock; and may be quite barren of good to
+you,--not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a
+mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real
+rock, that is all.
+
+It is always _I_ who 'torment' _you_--instead of taking the present
+and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares. I certainly
+am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much
+less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own,
+dearest beloved, _that_ is as different in kind as in degree from any
+other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of
+realization. Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us--oh,
+be well, my Ba!
+
+Let me speak of that letter--I am ashamed at having mentioned those
+circumstances, and should not have done so, but for their
+insignificance--for I knew that if you ever _did_ hear of them, all
+any body _would_ say would not amount to enough to be repeated to me
+and so get explained at once. Now that the purpose is gained, it seems
+little worth gaining. You bade me not send the letter: I will not.
+
+As for 'what people say'--ah--Here lies a book, Bartoli's 'Simboli'
+and this morning I dipped into his Chapter XIX. His 'Symbol' is
+'Socrate fatto ritrar su' Boccali' and the theme of his dissertating,
+'L'indegnità del mettere in disprezzo i più degni filosofi
+dell'antichità.' He sets out by enlarging on the horror of it--then
+describes the character of Socrates, then tells the story of the
+representation of the 'Clouds,'and thus gets to his 'symbol'--'le
+pazzie fatte spacciare a Socrate in quella commedia ... il misero in
+tanto scherno e derisione del pubblico, che perfino i vasai
+dipingevano il suo ritratto sopra gli orci, i fiaschi, i boccali, e
+ogni vasellamento da più vile servigio. Così quel sommo filosofo ...
+fu condotto a far di se par le case d'Atene una continua commedia, con
+solamente vederlo comparir così scontraffatto e ridicolo, come i vasai
+sel formavano d'invenzione'--
+
+There you have what a very clever man can say in choice Tuscan on a
+passage in Ælian which he takes care not to quote nor allude to, but
+which is the sole authority for the fact. Ælian, speaking of Socrates'
+magnanimity, says that on the first representation, a good many
+foreigners being present who were at a loss to know 'who could be this
+Socrates'--the sage himself stood up that he might be pointed out to
+them by the auditory at large ... 'which' says Ælian--'was no
+difficulty for them, to whom his features were most familiar,--_the
+very potters being in the habit of decorating their vessels with his
+likeness_'--no doubt out of a pleasant and affectionate admiration.
+Yet see how 'people' can turn this out of its sense,--'say' their say
+on the simplest, plainest word or deed, and change it to its opposite!
+'God's great gift of speech abused' indeed!
+
+But what shall we hear of it _there_, my Siren?
+
+On Monday--is it not? _Who_ was it looked into the room just at our
+leave-taking?
+
+Bless you, my ever dearest,--remember to walk, to go down-stairs--and
+be sure that I will endeavour to get well for my part. To-day I am
+very well--with this letter!
+
+                                                   Your own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Friday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]
+
+Always _you_, is it, who torments me? always _you_? Well! I agree to
+bear the torments as Socrates his persecution by the potters:--and by
+the way he liked those potters, as Plato shows, and was fain to go to
+them for his illustrations ... as I to you for all my light. Also,
+while we are on the subject, I will tell you another fault of your
+Bartoli ... his 'choice Tuscan' filled one of my pages, in the place
+of my English better than Tuscan.
+
+For the letter you mentioned, I meant to have said in mine yesterday,
+that I was grateful to you for telling me of it--_that_ was one of the
+prodigalities of your goodness to me ... not thrown away, in one
+sense, however superfluous. Do you ever think how I must feel when you
+overcome me with all this generous tenderness, only beloved! I cannot
+say it.
+
+Because it is colder to-day I have not been down-stairs but let
+to-morrow be warm enough--_facilis descensus_. There's something
+infernal to me really, in the going down, and now too that our cousin
+is here! Think of his beginning to attack Henrietta the other day....
+'_So_ Mr. C. has retired and left the field to Surtees Cook. Oh ...
+you needn't deny ... it's the news of all the world except your
+father. And as to _him_, I don't blame you--he never will consent to
+the marriage of son or daughter. Only you should consider, you know,
+because he won't leave you a shilling, &c. &c....' You hear the sort
+of man. And then in a minute after ... 'And what is this about Ba?'
+'About Ba' said my sisters, 'why who has been persuading you of such
+nonsense?' 'Oh, my authority is very good,--perfectly unnecessary for
+you to tell any stories, Arabel,--a literary friendship, is it?' ...
+and so on ... after that fashion! This comes from my brothers of
+course, but we need not be afraid of its passing _beyond_, I think,
+though I was a good deal vexed when I heard first of it last night and
+have been in cousinly anxiety ever since to get our Orestes safe away
+from those Furies his creditors, into Brittany again. He is an
+intimate friend of my brothers besides the relationship, and they talk
+to him as to each other, only they oughtn't to have talked _that_, and
+without knowledge too.
+
+I forgot to tell you that Mr. Kenyon was in an immoderate joy the day
+I saw him last, about Mr. Poe's 'Raven' as seen in the _Athenæum_
+extracts, and came to ask what I knew of the poet and his poetry, and
+took away the book. It's the rhythm which has taken him with 'glamour'
+I fancy. Now you will stay on Monday till the last moment, and go to
+him for dinner at six.
+
+Who 'looked in at the door?' Nobody. But Arabel a little way opened
+it, and hearing your voice, went back. There was no harm--_is_ no fear
+of harm. Nobody in the house would find his or her pleasure in running
+the risk of giving me pain. I mean my brothers and sisters would not.
+
+Are you trying the music to charm the brain to stillness? Tell me. And
+keep from that 'Soul's Tragedy' which did so much harm--oh, that I had
+bound you by some Stygian oath not to touch it.
+
+So my rock ... may the birds drop into your crevices the seeds of all
+the flowers of the world--only it is not for _those_, that I cling to
+you as the single rock in the salt sea.
+
+                                              Ever I am
+
+                                                   Your own.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Saturday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]
+
+You call me 'kind'; and by this time I have no heart to call you such
+names--I told you, did I not once? that 'Ba' had got to convey
+infinitely more of you to my sense than 'dearest,' 'sweetest,' all or
+any epithets that break down with their load of honey like bees--to
+say you are 'kind,' you that so entirely and unintermittingly bless
+me,--it will never do now, 'Ba.' All the same, one way there is to
+make even 'Ba' dearer,--'_my_ Ba,' I say to myself!
+
+About my _fears_--whether of opening doors or entering people--one
+thing is observable and prevents the possibility of any
+misconception--I desire, have been in the habit of desiring, to
+_increase_ them, far from diminishing--they relate, of course,
+entirely to _you_--and only through _you_ affect me the least in the
+world. Put your well-being out of the question, so far as I can
+understand it to be involved,--and the pleasure and pride I should
+immediately choose would be that the whole world knew our position.
+What pleasure, what pride! But I endeavour to remember on all
+occasions--and perhaps succeed in too few--that it is very easy for me
+to go away and leave you who cannot go. I only allude to this because
+some people are 'naturally nervous' and all that--and I am quite of
+another kind.
+
+Last evening I went out--having been kept at home in the afternoon to
+see somebody ... went walking for hours. I am quite well to-day and,
+now your letter comes, my Ba, most happy. And, as the sun shines, you
+are perhaps making the perilous descent now, while I write--oh, to
+meet you on the stairs! And I shall really see you on Monday, dearest?
+So soon, it ought to feel, considering the dreary weeks that now get
+to go between our days! For music, I made myself melancholy just now
+with some 'Concertos for the Harpsichord by Mr. Handel'--brought home
+by my father the day before yesterday;--what were light, modern things
+once! Now I read not very long ago a French memoir of 'Claude le
+Jeune' called in his time the Prince of Musicians,--no,
+'_Phoenix_'--the unapproachable wonder to all time--that is, twenty
+years after his death about--and to this pamphlet was prefixed as
+motto this startling axiom--'In Music, the Beau Ideal changes every
+thirty years'--well, is not that _true_? The _Idea_, mind,
+changes--the general standard ... so that it is no answer that a
+single air, such as many one knows, may strike as freshly as
+ever--they were _not_ according to the Ideal of their own time--just
+now, they drop into the ready ear,--next hundred years, who will be
+the Rossini? who is no longer the Rossini even I remember--his early
+overtures are as purely Rococo as Cimarosa's or more. The sounds
+remain, keep their character perhaps--the scale's proportioned notes
+affect the same, that is,--the major third, or minor seventh--but the
+arrangement of these, the sequence the law--for them, if it _should_
+change every thirty years! To Corelli nothing seemed so conclusive in
+Heaven or earth as this
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+I don't believe there is one of his sonatas wherein that formula does
+not do duty. In these things of Handel that seems replaced by
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+--that was the only true consummation! Then,--to go over the hundred
+years,--came Rossini's unanswerable coda:
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+which serves as base to the infinity of songs, gone, gone--_so_ gone
+by! From all of which Ba draws _this_ 'conclusion' that these may be
+worse things than Bartoli's Tuscan to cover a page with!--yet, yet the
+pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his
+letters to his mother as 'mother of the famous composer'--and Henry
+Lawes, and Dowland's Lute, ah me!
+
+Well, my conclusion is the best, the everlasting, here and I trust
+elsewhere--I am your own, my Ba, ever your
+
+                                                          R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
+
+Now I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very
+indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your 'Soul's Tragedy'
+last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a
+mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It
+is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the
+first act of 'Luria' did, though I do not mean to compare such
+dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness 'Luria' is
+unapproachable--will prove so, it seems to me. But this 'Tragedy'
+shows more heat from the first, and then, the words beat down more
+closely ... well! I am struck by it all as you see. If you keep it up
+to this passion, if you justify this high key-note, it is a great
+work, and worthy of a place next 'Luria.' Also do observe how
+excellently balanced the two will be, and how the tongue of this next
+silver Bell will swing from side to side. And _you_ to frighten me
+about it. Yes, and the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the
+worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be
+something inferior--for _you_--and the adviseableness of its
+publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is,
+that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it
+be possible that the same
+
+     'Robert Browning'
+
+who (I heard the other day) said once that he could 'wait three
+hundred years,' should not feel the life of centuries in this work
+too--can it be? Why all the pulses of the life of it are beating in
+even _my_ ears!
+
+Tell me, beloved, how you are--I shall hear it to-night--shall I not?
+To think of your being unwell, and forced to go here and go there to
+visit people to whom your being unwell falls in at best among the
+secondary evils!--makes me discontented--which is one shade more to
+the uneasiness I feel. Will you take care, and not give away your life
+to these people? Because I have a better claim than they ... and shall
+put it in, if provoked ... _shall_. Then you will not use the
+shower-bath again--you promise? I dare say Mr. Kenyon observed
+yesterday how unwell you were looking--tell me if he didn't! Now do
+not work, dearest! Do not think of Chiappino, leave him behind ... he
+has a good strong life of his own, and can wait for you. Oh--but let
+me remember to say of him, that he and the other personages appear to
+me to articulate with perfect distinctness and clearness ... you need
+not be afraid of having been obscure in this first part. It is all as
+lucid as noon.
+
+Shall I go down-stairs to-day? 'No' say the privy-councillors,
+'because it is cold,' but I _shall_ go peradventure, because the sun
+brightens and brightens, and the wind has gone round to the west.
+
+George had come home yesterday before you left me, but the stars were
+favourable to us and kept him out of this room. Now he is at
+Worcester--went this morning, on those never ending 'rounds,' poor
+fellow, which weary him I am sure.
+
+And why should music and the philosophy of it make you 'melancholy,'
+ever dearest, more than the other arts, which each has the seal of the
+age, modifying itself after a fashion and _to_ one? Because it changes
+more, perhaps. Yet all the Arts are mediators between the soul and the
+Infinite, ... shifting always like a mist, between the Breath on this
+side, and the Light on that side ... shifted and coloured; mediators,
+messengers, projected from the Soul, to go and feel, for Her, _out
+there_!
+
+You don't call me 'kind' I confess--but then you call me 'too kind'
+which is nearly as bad, you must allow on your part. Only you were not
+in earnest when you said _that_, as it appeared afterward. _Were_ you,
+yesterday, in pretending to think that I owed you nothing ... _I_?
+
+May God bless you. He knows that to give myself to you, is not to pay
+you. Such debts are not so paid.
+
+                                               Yet I am your
+
+                                                    BA.
+
+_People's Journal_ for March 7th.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
+
+Dear, dear Ba, if you were here I should not much _speak_ to you, not
+at first--nor, indeed, at last,--but as it is, sitting alone, only
+words can be spoken, or (worse) written, and, oh how different to look
+into the eyes and imagine what _might_ be said, what ought to be said,
+though it never can be--and to sit and say and write, and only imagine
+who looks above me, looks down, understanding and pardoning all! My
+love, my Ba, the fault you found once with some expressions of mine
+about the amount of imperishable pleasures already hoarded in my mind,
+the indestructible memories of you; that fault, which I refused to
+acquiesce under the imputation of, at first, you remember--well,
+_what_ a fault it was, by this better light! If all stopped here and
+now; horrible! complete oblivion were the thing to be prayed for,
+rather! As it is, _now_, I must go on, must live the life out, and die
+yours. And you are doing your utmost to advance the event of
+events,--the exercise, and consequently (is it not?) necessarily
+improved sleep, and the projects for the fine days, the walking ... a
+pure bliss to think of! Well, now--I think I shall show seamanship of
+a sort, and 'try another tack'--do not be over bold, my sweetest; the
+cold _is_ considerable,--taken into account the previous mildness. One
+ill-advised (I, the _adviser_, I should remember!) too early, or too
+late descent to the drawing-room, and all might be ruined,--thrown
+back so far ... seeing that our flight is to be prayed for 'not in the
+winter'--and one would be called on to wait, wait--in this world where
+nothing waits, rests, as can be counted on. Now think of this, too,
+dearest, and never mind the slowness, for the sureness' sake! How
+perfectly happy I am as you stand by me, as yesterday you stood, as
+you seem to stand now!
+
+I will write to-morrow more: I came home last night with a head rather
+worse; which in the event was the better, for I took a little medicine
+and all is very much improved to-day. I shall go out presently, and
+return very early and take as much care as is proper--for I thought of
+Ba, and the sublimities of Duty, and that gave myself airs of
+importance, in short, as I looked at my mother's inevitable arrow-root
+this morning. So now I am well; so now, is dearest Ba well? I shall
+hear to-night ... which will have its due effect, that circumstance,
+in quickening my retreat from Forster's Rooms. All was very pleasant
+last evening--and your letter &c. went _à qui de droit_, and Mr. W.
+_Junior_ had to smile good-naturedly when Mr. Burges began laying down
+this general law, that the sons of all men of genius were poor
+creatures--and Chorley and I exchanged glances after the fashion of
+two Augurs meeting at some street-corner in Cicero's time, as he says.
+And Mr. Kenyon was kind, kinder, kindest, as ever, 'and thus ends a
+wooing'!--no, a dinner--my wooing ends never, never; and so prepare
+to be asked to give, and give, and give till all is given in Heaven!
+And all I give _you_ is just my heart's blessing; God bless you, my
+dearest, dearest Ba!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]
+
+You find my letter I trust, for it was written this morning in time;
+and if these two lines should not be flattery ... oh, rank flattery!
+... why happy letter is it, to help to bring you home ten minutes
+earlier, when you never ought to have left home--no, indeed! I knew
+how it would be yesterday, and how you would be worse and not better.
+You are not fit to go out, dear dearest, to sit in the glare of lights
+and talk and listen, and have the knives and forks to rattle all the
+while and remind you of the chains of necessity. Oh--should I bear it,
+do you think? I was thinking, when you went away--_after_ you had
+quite gone. You would laugh to see me at my dinner--Flush and
+me--Flush placing in me such an heroic confidence, that, after he has
+cast one discriminating glance on the plate, and, in the case of
+'chicken,' wagged his tail with an emphasis, ... he goes off to the
+sofa, shuts his eyes and allows a full quarter of an hour to pass
+before he returns to take his share. Did you ever hear of a dog before
+who did not persecute one with beseeching eyes at mealtimes? And
+remember, this is not the effect of _discipline_. Also if another than
+myself happens to take coffee or break bread in the room here, he
+teazes straightway with eyes and paws, ... teazes like a common dog
+and is put out of the door before he can be quieted by scolding. But
+with _me_ he is sublime! Moreover he has been a very useful dog in his
+time (in the point of capacity), causing to disappear supererogatory
+dinners and impossible breakfasts which, to do him justice, is a feat
+accomplished without an objection on his side, always.
+
+So, when you write me such a letter, I write back to you about Flush.
+Dearest beloved, but I have read the letter and felt it in my heart,
+through and through! and it is as wise to talk of Flush foolishly, as
+to fancy that I _could say how_ it is felt ... this letter! Only when
+you spoke last of breaking off with such and such recollections, it
+was the melancholy of the breaking off which I protested against, was
+it not? and _not_ the insufficiency of the recollections. There might
+have been something besides in jest. Ah, but _you_ remember, if you
+please, that _I_ was the first to wish (wishing for my own part, if I
+could wish exclusively) to break off in the middle the silken thread,
+and you told me, not--you forbade me--do you remember? For, as
+happiness goes, the recollections were enough, ... _are_ enough for
+_me_! I mean that I should acknowledge them to be full compensation
+for the bitter gift of life, _such as it was_, to me! if that
+subject-matter were broken off here! 'Bona verba' let me speak
+nevertheless. You mean, you say, to run all risks with me, and I don't
+mean to draw back from my particular risk of ... what am I to do to
+you hereafter to make you vexed with me? What is there in marriage to
+make all these people on every side of us, (who all began, I suppose,
+by talking of love,) look askance at one another from under the silken
+mask ... and virtually hate one another through the tyranny of the
+stronger and the hypocrisy of the weaker party. It never could be so
+with _us_--_I know that_. But you grow awful to me sometimes with the
+very excess of your goodness and tenderness, and still, I think to
+myself, if you do not keep lifting me up quite off the ground by the
+strong faculty of love in you, I shall not help falling short of the
+hope you have placed in me--it must be 'supernatural' of you, to the
+end! or I fall short and disappoint you. Consider this, beloved. Now
+if I could put my soul out of my body, just to stand up before you
+and make it clear.
+
+I did go to the drawing-room to-day ... would ... should ... did. The
+sun came out, the wind changed ... where was the obstacle? I spent a
+quarter of an hour in a fearful solitude, listening for knocks at the
+door, as a ghost-fearer might at midnight, and 'came home' none the
+worse in any way. Be sure that I shall 'take care' better than you do,
+and there, is the worst of it all--for _you_ let people make you ill,
+and do it yourself upon occasion.
+
+You know from my letter how I found you out in the matter of the
+'Soul's Tragedy.' Oh! so bad ... so weak, so unworthy of your name! If
+some other people were half a quarter as much the contrary!
+
+And so, good-night, dear dearest. In spite of my fine speeches about
+'recollections,' I should be unhappy enough to please you, with _only
+those_ ... without you beside! I could not take myself back from being
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]
+
+Dear, dear Ba, but indeed I _did_ return home earlier by two or three
+good hours than the night before--and to find _no_ letter,--none of
+yours! _That_ was reserved for this morning early, and then a rest
+came, a silence, over the thoughts of you--and now again, comes this
+last note! Oh, my love--why--what is it you think to do, or become
+'afterward,' that you may fail in and so disappoint me? It is not very
+unfit that you should thus punish yourself, and that, sinning by your
+own ambition of growing something beyond my Ba even, you should 'fear'
+as you say! For, sweet, why wish, why think to alter ever by a line,
+change by a shade, turn better if that were possible, and so only rise
+the higher above me, get further from instead of nearer to my heart?
+What I expect, what I build my future on, am quite, quite prepared to
+'risk' everything for,--is that one belief that you _will not alter_,
+will just remain as you are--meaning by '_you_,' the love in you, the
+qualities I have _known_ (for you will stop me, if I do not stop
+myself) what I have evidence of in every letter, in every word, every
+look. Keeping these, if it be God's will that the body passes,--what
+is that? Write no new letters, speak no new words, look no new
+looks,--only tell me, years hence that the present is alive, that what
+was once, still is--and I am, must needs be, blessed as ever! You
+speak of my feeling as if it were a pure speculation--as if because I
+_see somewhat_ in you I make a calculation that there must be more to
+see somewhere or other--where bdellium is found, the onyx-stone may be
+looked for in the mystic land of the four rivers! And perhaps ... ah,
+poor human nature!--perhaps I _do_ think at times on what _may_ be to
+find! But what is that to you? I _offer_ for the _bdellium_--the other
+may be found or not found ... what I see glitter on the ground, _that_
+will suffice to make me rich as--rich as--
+
+So bless you my own Ba! I would not wait for paper, and you must
+forgive half-sheets, instead of a whole celestial quire to my love and
+praise. Are you so well? So adventurous? Thank you from my heart of
+hearts. And I am quite well to-day (and have received a note from
+Procter _just_ this _minute_ putting off his dinner on account of the
+death of his wife's sister's husband abroad). Observe _this_ sheet I
+take as I find--I mean, that the tear tells of no improper speech
+repented of--what English, what sense, what a soul's tragedy! but
+then, what real, realest love and more than love for my ever dearest
+Ba possesses her own--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]
+
+When my Orpheus writes '[Greek: Peri lithôn]' he makes a great mistake
+about onyxes--there is more true onyx in this letter of his that I
+have just read, than he will ever find in the desert land he goes to.
+And for what 'glitters on the ground,' it reminds me of the yellow
+metal sparks found in the Malvern Hills, and how we used to laugh
+years ago at one of our geological acquaintances, who looked
+mole-hills up that mountain-range in the scorn of his eyes, saying ...
+'Nothing but mica!!' Is anybody to be rich through 'mica', I wonder?
+through 'Nothing but mica?' 'As rich as--as rich as' ... _Walter the
+Pennyless_?
+
+Dearest, best you are nevertheless, and it is a sorry jest which I can
+break upon your poverty, with that golden heart of yours so
+apprehended of mine! Why if I am 'ambitious'--is it not because you
+love me as if I were worthier of your love, and that, _so_, I get
+frightened of the opening of your eyelids to the _un_worthiness? 'A
+little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to
+sleep'--_there_, is my 'ambition for afterward.' Oh--you do not
+understand how with an unspeakable wonder, an astonishment which keeps
+me from drawing breath, I look to this Dream, and 'see your face as
+the face of an angel,' and fear for the vanishing, ... because dreams
+and angels _do_ pass away in this world. But _you_, _I_ understand
+_you_, and all your goodness past expression, past belief of mine, if
+I had not known you ... just _you_. If it will satisfy you that I
+should know you, love you, love you--why then indeed--because I never
+bowed down to any of the false gods I know the gold from the mica, ...
+I! 'My own beloved'--you should have my soul to stand on if it could
+make you stand higher. Yet you shall not call me 'ambitious.'
+
+To-day I went down-stairs again, and wished to know whether you were
+walking in your proportion--and your letter does call you 'better,'
+whether you walked enough or not, and it bears the Deptford post-mark.
+On Saturday I shall see how you are looking. So pale you were last
+time! I know Mr. Kenyon must have observed it, (dear Mr. Kenyon ...
+for being 'kinder and kindest') and that one of the 'augurs'
+marvelled at the other! By the way I forgot yesterday to tell you how
+Mr. Burges's 'apt remark' did amuse me. And Mr. Kenyon who said much
+the same words to me last week in relation to this very Wordsworth
+junior, writhed, I am sure, and wished the ingenious observer with the
+lost plays of Æschylus--oh, I seem to see Mr. Kenyon's face! He was to
+have come to tell me how you all behaved at dinner that day, but he
+keeps away ... you have given him too much to think of perhaps.
+
+I heard from Miss Mitford to-day that Mr. Chorley's hope is at an end
+in respect to the theatre, and (I must tell you) she praises him
+warmly for his philosophy and fortitude under the disappointment. How
+much philosophy does it take,--please to instruct me,--in order to the
+decent bearing of such disasters? Can I fancy one, shorter than you by
+a whole head of the soul, condescending to '_bear_' such things? No,
+indeed.
+
+Be good and kind, and do not work at the 'Tragedy' ... do not.
+
+So you and I have written out all the paper in London! At least, I
+send and send in vain to have more envelopes 'after my kind,' and the
+last answer is, that a 'fresh supply will arrive in eight days from
+Paris, and that in the meanwhile they are quite _out_ in the article.'
+An awful sign of the times, is this famine of envelopes ... not to
+speak of the scarcity of little sheets:--and the augurs look to it all
+of course.
+
+For _my_ part I think more of Chiappino--Chiappino holds me fast.
+
+But I must let _you_ go--it is too late. This dearest letter, which
+you sent me! I thank you for it with ever so much dumbness. May God
+bless you and keep you, and make you happy for me.
+
+                                                    Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]
+
+How I get to understand this much of Law--that prior possession is
+nine points of it! Just because your infinite adroitness got first
+hold of the point of view whence our connection looks like 'a dream'
+... I find myself shut out of my very own, unable to say what is
+oftenest in my thought; whereas the dear, miraculous dream _you_ were,
+and are, my Ba! Only, _vanish_--_that_ you will never! My own, and for
+ever!
+
+Yesterday I read the poor, inconceivably inadequate notice in the
+_People's Journal_. How curiously wrong, too, in the personal guesses!
+Sad work truly. For my old friend Mrs. Adams--no, I must be silent:
+the lyrics seem doggerel in its utter purity. And so the people are to
+be instructed in the new age of gold! I _heard_ two days ago precisely
+what I told you--that there was a quarrel, &c. which this service was
+to smooth over, no doubt. Chorley told me, in a hasty word only, that
+all was over, Mr. Webster would not have anything to do with his play.
+The said W. is one of the poorest of poor creatures, and as Chorley
+was certainly forewarned, forearmed I will hope him to have been
+likewise--still it is very disappointing--he was apparently nearer
+than most aspirants to the prize,--having the best will of the
+actresses on whose shoulder the burthen was to lie. I hope they have
+been quite honest with him--knowing as I do the easy process of
+transferring all sorts of burthens, in that theatrical world, from
+responsible to irresponsible members of it, actors to manager, manager
+to actors, as the case requires. And it is a 'hope deferred' with
+Chorley; not for the second or third time. I am very glad that he
+cares no more than you tell me.
+
+Still you go down-stairs, and still return safely, and every step
+leads us nearer to _my_ 'hope.' How unremittingly you bless me--a
+visit promises a letter, a letter brings such news, crowns me with
+such words, and speaks of another visit--and so the golden links
+extend. Dearest words, dearest letters--as I add each to my heap, I
+say--I _do_ say--'I was _poor_, it now seems, a minute ago, when I had
+not _this_!' Bless you, dear, dear Ba. On Saturday I shall be with
+you, I trust--may God bless you! Ever your own
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Sunday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest I am going to say one word first of all lest I should
+forget it afterward, of the two or three words which you said
+yesterday and so passingly that you probably forget to-day having said
+them at all. We were speaking of Mr. Chorley and his house, and you
+said that you did not care for such and such things for yourself, but
+that for others--now you remember the rest. And I just want to say
+what it would have been simpler to have said at the time--only not so
+easy--(I _couldn't_ say it at the time) that you are not if you please
+to fancy that because I am a woman I have not the pretension to do
+with as little in any way as you yourself ... no, it is not _that_ I
+mean to say.... I mean that you are not, if you please, to fancy that,
+because I am a woman, I look to be cared for in those outside things,
+or should have the slightest pleasure in any of them. So never wish
+nor regret in your thoughts to be able or not to be able to care this
+and this for _me_; for while you are thinking so, our thoughts go
+different ways, which is wrong. Mr. Fox did me a great deal too much
+honour in calling me 'a religious hermit'; he was 'curiously' in
+fault, as you saw. It is not my vocation to sit on a stone in a
+cave--I was always too fond of lolling upon sofas or in chairs nearly
+as large,--and this, which I sit in, was given to me when I was a
+child by my uncle, the uncle I spoke of to you once, and has been
+lolled in nearly ever since ... when I was well enough. Well--_that_
+is a sort of luxury, of course--but it is more idle than expensive, as
+a habit, and I do believe that it is the 'head and foot of my
+offending' in that matter. Yes--'confiteor tibi' besides, that I do
+hate white dimity curtains, which is highly improper for a religious
+hermit of course, but excusable in _me_ who would accept brown serge
+as a substitute with ever so much indifference. It is the white light
+which comes in the dimity which is so hateful to me. To 'go mad in
+white dimity' seems perfectly natural, and consequential even. Set
+aside these foibles, and one thing is as good as another with me, and
+the more simplicity in the way of living, the better. If I saw Mr.
+Chorley's satin sofas and gilded ceilings I should call them very
+pretty I dare say, but never covet the possession of the like--it
+would never enter my mind to do so. Then Papa has not kept a carriage
+since I have been grown up (they grumble about it here in the house,
+but when people have once had great reverses they get nervous about
+spending money) so I shall not miss the Clarence and greys ... and I
+do entreat you _not_ to put those two ideas together again of _me_ and
+the finery which has nothing to do with me. I have talked a great deal
+too much of all this, you will think, but I want you, once for all, to
+apply it broadly to the whole of the future both in the general view
+and the details, so that we need not return to the subject. Judge for
+me as for yourself--_what is good for you is good for me_. Otherwise I
+shall be humiliated, you know; just as far as I know your thoughts.
+
+Mr. Kenyon has been here to-day--and I have been down-stairs--two
+great events! He was in brilliant spirits and sate talking ever so
+long, and named you as he always does. Something he asked, and then
+said suddenly ... 'But I don't see why I should ask _you_, when I
+ought to know him better than you can.' On which I was wise enough to
+change colour, as I felt, to the roots of my hair. There is the
+effect of a bad conscience! and it has happened to me before, with Mr.
+Kenyon, three times--once particularly, when I could have cried with
+vexation (to complete the effects!), he looked at me with such
+infinite surprise in a dead pause of any speaking. _That_ was in the
+summer; and all to be said for it now, is, that it couldn't be helped:
+couldn't!
+
+Mr. Kenyon asked of 'Saul.' (By the way, you never answered about the
+blue lilies.) He asked of 'Saul' and whether it would be finished in
+the new number. He hangs on the music of your David. Did you read in
+the _Athenæum_ how Jules Janin--no, how the critic on Jules Janin (was
+it the critic? was it Jules Janin? the glorious confusion is gaining
+on me I think) has magnificently confounded places and persons in
+Robert Southey's urn by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord
+Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after
+moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to
+our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme.
+Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in
+fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable
+purity enough, too. It does certainly appear wonderful that we should
+not sufficiently stand abreast here in Europe, to justify and
+necessitate the establishment of an European review--journal
+rather--(the 'Foreign Review,' so called, touching only the summits of
+the hills) a journal which might be on a level with the intelligent
+readers of all the countries of Europe, and take all the rising
+reputations of each, with the national light on them as they rise,
+into observation and judgment. If nobody can do this, it is a pity I
+think to do so much less--both in France and England--to snatch up a
+French book from over the Channel as ever and anon they do in the
+_Athenæum_, and say something prodigiously absurd of it, till people
+cry out 'oh oh' as in the House of Commons.
+
+Oh--oh--and how wise I am to-day, as if I were a critic myself!
+Yesterday I was foolish instead--for I couldn't get out of my head all
+the evening how you said that you would come 'to see a candle held up
+at the window.' Well! but I do not mean to love you any more just
+now--so I tell you plainly. Certainly I will not. I love you already
+too much perhaps. I feel like the turning Dervishes turning in the sun
+when you say such words to me--and I _never shall_ love you any
+'less,' because it is too much to be made less of.
+
+And you write to-morrow? and will tell me how you are? honestly will
+tell me? May God bless you, most dear!
+
+                                  I am yours--'Tota tua est'
+
+                                       BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Sunday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+
+How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent?
+Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard--the
+speaker had _tried_ words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not
+reflect that he did not even try--so with me now, that loving you, Ba,
+with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide
+wondering gratitude and veneration, I press close to you to say so, in
+this imperfect way, my dear dearest beloved! Why do you not help me,
+rather than take my words, my proper word, from me and call them
+yours, when yours they are not? You said lately love of you 'made you
+humble'--just as if to hinder _me_ from saying that earnest
+truth!--entirely true it is, as I feel ever more convincingly. You do
+not choose to understand it should be so, nor do I much care, for the
+one thing you must believe, must resolve to believe in its length and
+breadth, is that I do love you and live only in the love of you.
+
+I will rest on the confidence that you do so believe! You _know_ by
+this that it is no shadowy image of you and _not_ you, which having
+attached myself to in the first instance, I afterward compelled my
+fancy to see reproduced, so to speak, with tolerable exactness to the
+original idea, in you, the dearest real _you_ I am blessed with--you
+_know_ what the eyes are to me, and the lips and the hair. And I, for
+my part, know _now_, while fresh from seeing you, certainly _know_,
+whatever I may have said a short time since, that _you_ will go on to
+the end, that the arm round me will not let me go,--over such a blind
+abyss--I refuse to think, to fancy, _towards_ what it would be to
+loose you now! So I give my life, my soul into your hand--the giving
+is a mere form too, it is yours, ever yours from the first--but ever
+as I see you, sit with you, and come away to think over it all, I find
+more that seems mine to give; you give me more life and it goes back
+to you.
+
+I shall hear from you to-morrow--then, I will go out early and get
+done with some calls, in the joy and consciousness of what waits me,
+and when I return I will write a few words. Are these letters, these
+merest attempts at getting to talk with you through the distance--yet
+always with the consolation of feeling that you will know all,
+interpret all and forgive it and put it right--can such things be
+cared for, expected, as you say? Then, Ba, my life _must_ be better
+... with the closeness to help, and the 'finding out the way' for
+which love was always noted. If you begin making in fancy a lover to
+your mind, I am lost at once--but the one quality of _affection_ for
+you, which would sooner or later have to be placed on his list of
+component graces; _that_ I will dare start supply--the entire love you
+could dream of _is_ here. You think you see some of the other
+adornments, and only too many; and you will see plainer one day, but
+with that I do not concern myself--you shall admire the true
+heroes--but me you shall love for the love's sake. Let me kiss you,
+you, my dearest, dearest--God bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+
+Indeed I would, dearest Ba, go with entire gladness and pride to see a
+light that came from your room--why should that surprise you? Well,
+you will _know_ one day.
+
+We understand each other too about the sofas and gilding--oh, I know
+you, my own sweetest! For me, if I had set those matters to heart, I
+should have turned into the obvious way of getting them--not _out_ of
+it, as I did resolutely from the beginning. All I meant was, to
+express a very natural feeling--if one could give you diamonds for
+flowers, and if you liked diamonds,--then, indeed! As it is, wherever
+we are found shall be, if you please, 'For the love's sake found
+therein--sweetest _house_ was ever seen!'
+
+Mr. Kenyon must be merciful. Lilies are of all colours in
+Palestine--one sort is particularized as _white_ with a dark blue spot
+and streak--the water lily, lotos, which I think I meant, is _blue_
+altogether.
+
+I have walked this morning to town and back--I feel much better,
+'honestly'! The head better--the spirits rising--as how should they
+not, when _you_ think all will go well in the end, when you write to
+me that you go down-stairs and are stronger--and when the rest is
+written?
+
+Not more now, dearest, for time is pressing, but you will answer
+this,--the love that is not here,--not the idle words, and I will
+reply to-morrow. Thursday is so far away yet!
+
+Bless you, my very own, only dearest!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Monday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 17, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, you are dearest always! Talk of Sirens, ... there must be
+some masculine ones 'rari nantes,' I fancy, (though we may not find
+them in unquestionable authorities like your Ælian!) to justify this
+voice I hear. Ah, how you speak, with that pretension, too, to
+dumbness! What should people be made of, in order to bear such words,
+do you think? Will all the wax from all the altar-candles in the
+Sistine Chapel, keep the piercing danger from their ears? Being tied
+up a good deal tighter than Ulysses did not save _me_. Dearest
+dearest: I laugh, you see, as usual, not to cry! But deep down, deeper
+than the Sirens go, deep underneath the tides, _there_, I bless and
+love you with the voice that makes no sound.
+
+Other human creatures (how often I do think it to myself!) have their
+good things scattered over their lives, sown here and sown there, down
+the slopes, and by the waysides. But with me ... I have mine all
+poured down on one spot in the midst of the sands!--if you knew what I
+feel at moments, and at half-hours, when I give myself up to the
+feeling freely and take no thought of red eyes. A woman once was
+killed with gifts, crushed with the weight of golden bracelets thrown
+at her: and, knowing myself, I have wondered more than a little, how
+it was that I could _bear_ this strange and unused gladness, without
+sinking as the emotion rose. Only I was incredulous at first, and the
+day broke slowly ... and the gifts fell like the rain ... softly; and
+God gives strength, by His providence, for sustaining blessings as
+well as stripes. Dearest--
+
+For the rest I understand you perfectly--perfectly. It was simply to
+your _thoughts_, that I replied ... and that you need not say to
+yourself any more, as you did once to me when you brought me flowers,
+that you wished they were diamonds. It was simply to prevent the
+accident of such a _thought_, that I spoke out mine. You would not
+wish accidentally that you had a double-barrelled gun to give me, or a
+cardinal's hat, or a snuff box, and I meant to say that you _might as
+well_--as diamonds and satin sofas à la Chorley. Thoughts are
+something, and _your_ thoughts are something more. To be sure they
+are!
+
+You are better you say, which makes me happy of course. And you will
+not make the 'better' worse again by doing wrong things--_that_ is my
+petition. It was the excess of goodness to write those two letters for
+me in one day, and I thank you, thank you. Beloved, when you write,
+_let_ it be, if you choose, ever so few lines. Do not suffer me (for
+my own sake) to tire you, because two lines or three bring _you_ to me
+... remember ... just as a longer letter would.
+
+But where, pray, did I say, and when, that 'everything would end
+well?' Was _that_ in the dream, when we two met on the stairs? I did
+not really say so I think. And 'well' is how you understand it. If you
+jump out of the window you succeed in getting to the ground, somehow,
+dead or alive ... but whether _that_ means 'ending well,' depends on
+your way of considering matters. I am seriously of opinion
+nevertheless, that if 'the arm,' you talk of, _drops_, it will not be
+for weariness nor even for weakness, but because it is cut off at the
+shoulder. _I_ will not fail to you,--may God so deal with me, so bless
+me, so leave me, as I live only for you and _shall_. Do you doubt
+_that_, my only beloved! Ah, you know well--_too well_, people would
+say ... but I do not think it 'too well' myself, ... knowing _you_.
+
+                                                    Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Here is a gossip which Mr. Kenyon brought me on Sunday--disbelieving
+it himself, he asseverated, though Lady Chantrey said it 'with
+authority,'--that Mr. Harness had offered his hand heart and
+ecclesiastical dignities to Miss Burdett Coutts. It is Lady Chantrey's
+and Mr. Kenyon's _secret_, remember.
+
+And ... will you tell me? How can a man spend four or five successive
+months on the sea, most cheaply--at the least pecuniary expense, I
+mean? Because Miss Mitford's friend Mr. Buckingham is ordered by his
+medical adviser to complete his cure by these means; and he is not
+rich. Could he go with sufficient comfort by a merchant's vessel to
+the Mediterranean ... and might he drift about among the Greek
+islands?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                                    Tuesday.
+
+'Out of window' would be well, as I see the leap, if it ended (_so far
+as I am concerned_) in the worst way imaginable--I would I 'run the
+risk' (Ba's other word) rationally, deliberately,--knowing what the
+ordinary law of chances in this world justifies in such a case; and if
+the result after all _was_ unfortunate, it would be far easier to
+undergo the extremest penalty with so little to reproach myself
+for,--than to put aside the adventure,--waive the wondrous probability
+of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an
+adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an
+eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager
+sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen
+times running--which wager I wisely refused to accept because it was
+not written in the stars that such a sequence might never be. I had
+rather, rather a thousand-fold lose my paltry stake, and be the one
+recorded victim to such an unexampled unluckiness that half a dozen
+mad comets, suns gone wrong, and lunatic moons must have come
+laboriously into conjunction for my special sake to bring it to pass,
+which were no slight honour, properly considered!--And this is _my_
+way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and
+happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don't
+sparkle--underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance,
+chance! there is _no_ chance here! I _have_ gained enough for my life,
+I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change
+altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last
+minute on what I can remember of this past year--I _could_ do that.
+_Now_, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself--all would be
+different, sadly different--But saying what you do say, promising 'the
+strength of arm'--do not wonder that I call it an assurance of all
+being 'well'! All is _best_, as you promise--dear, darling Ba!--and I
+say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, _as you say_,
+promise as you promise--only meaning a worship of you that is solely
+fit for me, fit by position--are not you my 'mistress?' Come, some
+good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the
+Bower's disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the
+house at Loretto, to the Siren's isle where we shall find it preserved
+in a beauty 'very rare and absolute')--is it not right you should be
+my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I
+am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet?
+and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you _wholly_, my Ba! May God
+bless you--
+
+                                              Ever your own,
+
+                                                   R.
+
+It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-ship bound for
+some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another
+and perhaps a third--Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on.
+The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort _enormous_
+for an invalid--the one advantage is the solitariness of the _one_
+passenger among all those rough new creatures. _I_ like it much, and
+soon get deep into their friendship, but another has other ways of
+viewing matters. No one article provided by the ship in the way of
+provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and
+the horrors of dirt and men's ministry are portentous, yet by a little
+arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own
+powers of endurance, and counsel nobody to gain my experience. On the
+other hand, were all to do again, I had rather have seen Venice _so_,
+with the five or six weeks' absolute rest of the mind's eyes, than any
+other imaginable way,--except Balloon-travelling.
+
+Do you think they meant Landor's 'Count Julian'--the 'subject of his
+tragedy' sure enough,--and that _he_ was the friend of Southey? So it
+struck me--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
+
+Ah well--we shall see. Only remember that it is not my fault if I
+throw the double sixes, and if you, on [_some sun-shiny_ day, (a day
+too late to help yourself) stand face to face with a milkwhite
+unicorn.][1] Ah--do not be angry. It is ungrateful of me to write
+so--I put a line through it to prove I have a conscience after all. I
+know that you love me, and I know it so well that I was reproaching
+myself severely not long ago, for seeming to love your love more than
+you. Let me tell you how I proved _that_, or seemed. For ever so long,
+you remember, I have been talking finely about giving you up for your
+good and so on. Which was sincere as far as the words went--but oh,
+the hypocrisy of our souls!--of mine, for instance! 'I would give you
+up for your good'--_but_ when I pressed upon myself the question
+whether (if I had the power) I would consent to make you willing to be
+given up, by throwing away your love into the river, in a ring like
+Charlemagne's, ... why I found directly that I would throw myself
+there sooner. I could not do it in fact--I shrank from the test. A
+very pitiful virtue of generosity, is your Ba's! Still, it is not
+possible, I think, that she should '_love your love more than you_.'
+There must be a mistake in the calculation somewhere--a figure dropt.
+It would be too bad for her!
+
+Your account of your merchantmen, though with Venice in the distance,
+will scarcely be attractive to a confirmed invalid, I fear--and yet
+the steamers will be found expensive beyond his means. The
+sugar-vessels, which I hear most about, give out an insufferable smell
+and steam--let us talk of it a little on Thursday. On Monday I forgot.
+
+For Landor's 'Julian,' oh no, I cannot fancy it to be probable that
+those Parisians should know anything of Landor, even by a mistake. Do
+you not suppose that the play is founded (confounded) on Shelley's
+poem, as the French use materials ... by distraction, into confusion?
+The 'urn by the Adriatic' (which all the French know how to turn
+upside down) fixes the reference to Shelley--does it not?
+
+Not a word of the head--what does _that_ mean, I wonder. I have not
+been down-stairs to-day--the wind is too cold--but you have walked?
+... there was no excuse for you. God bless you, ever dearest. It is my
+last word till Thursday's first. A fine queen you have, by the way!--a
+queen Log, whom you had better leave in the bushes! Witness our
+hand....
+
+                                                 BA--REGINA.
+
+[Footnote 1: The words in brackets are struck out.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
+
+Indeed, dearest, you shall not have _last word_ as you think,--all the
+'risk' shall not be mine, neither; how can I, in the event, throw
+ambs-ace (is not that the old word?) and not peril _your_ stakes too,
+when once we have common stock and are partners? When I see the
+unicorn and grieve proportionately, do you mean to say you are not
+going to grieve too, for my sake? And if so--why, _you_ clearly run
+exactly the same risk,--_must_,--unless you mean to rejoice in my
+sorrow! So your chance is my chance; my success your success, you say,
+and my failure, your failure, will you not say? You see, you see, Ba,
+my own--own! What do you think frightened me in your letter for a
+second or two? You write 'Let us talk on Thursday ... Monday I
+forgot'--which I read,--'no, not on Thursday--I had forgotten! It is
+to be _Monday_ when we meet next'!--whereat
+
+              ... as a goose
+    In death contracts his talons close,
+
+as Hudibras sings--I clutched the letter convulsively--till relief
+came.
+
+So till to-morrow--my all-beloved! Bless you. I am rather hazy in the
+head as Archer Gurney will find in due season--(he comes, I told
+you)--but all the morning I have been going for once and for ever
+through the 'Tragedy,' and it is _done_--(done _for_). Perhaps I may
+bring it to-morrow--if my sister can copy all; I cut out a huge kind
+of sermon from the middle and reserve it for a better time--still it
+is very long; so long! So, if I ask, may I have 'Luria' back to
+morrow? So shall printing begin, and headache end--and 'no more for
+the present from your loving'
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Friday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 20, 1846.]
+
+I shall be late with my letter this morning because my sisters have
+been here talking, talking ... and I did not like to say exactly 'Go
+away that I may write.' Mr. Kenyon shortened our time yesterday too by
+a whole half-hour or three quarters--the stars are against us. He is
+coming on Sunday, however, he says, and if so, Monday will be safe and
+clear--and not a word was said after you went, about you: he was in a
+good joyous humour, as you saw, and the letter he brought was, oh! so
+complimentary to me--I will tell you. The writer doesn't see anything
+'in Browning and Turner,' she confesses--'_may_ perhaps with time and
+study,' but for the present sees nothing,--only has wide-open eyes of
+admiration for E.B.B. ... now isn't it satisfactory to _me_? Do you
+understand the full satisfaction of just that sort of thing ... to be
+praised by somebody who sees nothing in Shakespeare?--to be found on
+the level of somebody so flat? Better the bad-word of the Britannia,
+ten times over! And best, to take no thought of bad or good words! ...
+except such as I shall have to-night, perhaps! Shall I?
+
+Will you be pleased to understand in the meanwhile a little about the
+'risks' I am supposed to run, and not hold to such a godlike
+simplicity ('gods and bulls,' dearest!) as you made show of yesterday?
+If we two went to the gaming-table, and you gave me a purse of gold to
+play with, should I have a right to talk proudly of 'my stakes?' and
+would any reasonable person say of both of us playing together as
+partners, that we ran 'equal risks'? I trow not--and so do _you_ ...
+when you have not predetermined to be stupid, and mix up the rouge and
+noir into 'one red' of glorious confusion. What had I to lose on the
+point of happiness when you knew me first?--and if now I lose (as I
+certainly may according to your calculation) the happiness you have
+given me, why still I am your debtor for _the gift_ ... now see! Yet
+to bring you down into my ashes ... _that_ has been so intolerable a
+possibility to me from the first. Well, perhaps I run _more_ risk than
+you, under that one aspect. Certainly I never should forgive myself
+again if you were unhappy. 'What had _I_ to do,' I should think, 'with
+touching your life?' And if ever I am to think so, I would rather that
+I never had known you, seen your face, heard your voice--which is the
+uttermost sacrifice and abnegation. I could not say or sacrifice any
+more--not even for _you_! _You_, for _you_ ... is all I can!
+
+Since you left me I have been making up my mind to your having the
+headache worse than ever, through the agreement with Moxon. I do, do
+beseech you to spare yourself, and let 'Luria' go as he is, and above
+all things not to care for my infinite foolishnesses as you see them
+in those notes. Remember that if you are ill, it is not so easy to
+say, 'Now I will be well again.' Ever dearest, care for me in
+yourself--say how you are.... I am not unwell to-day, but feel flagged
+and weak rather with the cold ... and look at your flowers for courage
+and an assurance that the summer is within hearing. May God bless you
+... blessing _us_, beloved!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Mr. Poe has sent me his poems and tales--so now I must write to thank
+him for his dedication. Just now I have the book. As to Mr.
+Buckingham, he will go, Constantinople and back, before we talk of
+him.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Saturday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]
+
+Dearest,--it just strikes me that I _might_ by some chance be kept in
+town this morning--(having to go to Milnes' breakfast there)--so as
+not to find the note I venture to expect, in time for an answer by our
+last post to-night. But I will try--this only is a precaution against
+the possibility. Dear, dear Ba! I cannot thank you, know not how to
+thank you for the notes! I adopt every one, of course, not as Ba's
+notes but as Miss Barrett's, not as Miss Barrett's but as anybody's,
+everybody's--such incontestable improvements they suggest. When shall
+I tell you more ... on Monday or Tuesday? _That_ I _must_
+know--because you appointed Monday, 'if nothing happened--' and Mr. K.
+happened--can you let me hear by our early post to-morrow--as on
+Monday I am to be with Moxon early, you know--and no letters arrive
+before 11-1/2 or 12. I was not very well yesterday, but to-day am much
+better--and you,--I say how _I_ am precisely to have a double right to
+know _all_ about you, dearest, in this snow and cold! How do you bear
+it? And Mr. K. spoke of '_that_ being your worst day.' Oh, dear
+dearest Ba, remember how I live in you--on the hopes, with the memory
+of you. Bless you ever!
+
+                                                          R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]
+
+I do not understand how my letters limp so instead of flying as they
+ought with the feathers I give them, and how you did not receive last
+night, nor even early this morning, what left me at two o'clock
+yesterday. But I understand _now_ the not hearing from you--you were
+not well. Not well, not well ... _that_ is always 'happening' at
+least. And Mr. Moxon, who is to have his first sheet, whether you are
+well or ill! It is wrong ... yes, very wrong--and if one point of
+wrongness is touched, we shall not easily get right again--as I think
+mournfully, feeling confident (call me Cassandra, but I cannot jest
+about it) feeling certain that it will end (the means being so
+persisted in) by some serious illness--serious sorrow,--on yours and
+my part.
+
+As to Monday, Mr. Kenyon said he would come again on Sunday--in which
+case, Monday will be clear. If he should not come on Sunday, he will
+or may on Monday,--yet--oh, in every case, perhaps you can come on
+Monday--there will be no time to let you know of Mr. Kenyon--and
+_probably_ we shall be safe, and your being in town seems to fix the
+day. For myself I am well enough, and the wind has changed, which will
+make me better--this cold weather oppresses and weakens me, but it is
+close to April and can't last and won't last--it is warmer already.
+Beware of the notes! They are not Ba's--except for the insolence, nor
+EBB's--because of the carelessness. If I had known, moreover, that you
+were going to Moxon's on Monday, they should have gone to the fire
+rather than provoked you into superfluous work for the short interval.
+Just so much are they despised of both EBB and Ba.
+
+I am glad I did not hear from you yesterday because you were not
+well, and you _must never_ write when you are not well. But if you had
+been quite well, should I have heard?--_I doubt it_. You meant me to
+hear from you only once, from Thursday to Monday. Is it not the truth
+now that you hate writing to me?
+
+The _Athenæum_ takes up the 'Tales from Boccaccio' as if they were
+worth it, and imputes in an underground way the authorship to the
+members of the 'coterie' so called--do you observe _that_? There is an
+implication that persons named in the poem wrote the poem themselves.
+And upon _whom_ does the critic mean to fix the song of 'Constancy'
+... the song which is 'not to puzzle anybody' who knows the tunes of
+the song-writers! The perfection of commonplace it seems to me. It
+might have been written by the 'poet Bunn.' Don't you think so?
+
+While I write this you are in town, but you will not read it till
+Sunday unless I am more fortunate than usual. On Monday then! And no
+word before? No--I shall be sure not to hear to-night. Now do try not
+to suffer through 'Luria.' Let Mr. Moxon wait a week rather. There is
+time enough.
+
+                                                   Ever your
+
+                                                        BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Sunday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 23, 1846.]
+
+Oh, my Ba--how you shall hear of this to-morrow--that is all: _I_ hate
+writing? See when presently I _only_ write to you daily, hourly if you
+let me? Just this _now_--I will be with you to-morrow in any case--I
+can go away _at once_, if need be, or stay--if you like you can stop
+me by sending a note for me _to Moxon's before_ 10 o'clock--if
+anything calls for such a measure.
+
+Now briefly,--I am unwell and entirely irritated with this sad
+'Luria'--I thought it a failure at first, I find it infinitely worse
+than I thought--it is a pure exercise of _cleverness_, even where most
+successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by
+another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry
+the more to get on, with the printing,--it is to throw out and away
+from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected
+it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better
+hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, _unlike_ the woman at her
+spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his _flax_ on the whole far more than
+of his singing'--more of his life's sustainment, of dear, dear Ba he
+hates writing to, than of these wooden figures--no wonder all is as it
+is?
+
+Here is a pure piece of the old Chorley leaven for you, just as it
+reappears ever and anon and throws one back on the mistrust all but
+abandoned! Chorley _knows_ I have not seen that Powell for nearly
+fifteen months--that I never heard of the book till it reached me in a
+blank cover--that I never contributed a line or word to it directly or
+indirectly--and I should think he _also knows_ that all the sham
+learning, notes &c., all that saves the book from the deepest deep of
+contempt, was contributed by Heraud (_a regular critic in the
+'Athenæum'_), who received his pay for the same: he knows I never
+spoke in my life to 'Jones or Stephens'--that there is no 'coterie' of
+which I can, by any extension of the word, form a part--that I am in
+this case at the mercy of a wretched creature who to get into my
+favour again (to speak the plain truth) put in the gross, disgusting
+flattery in the notes--yet Chorley, knowing this, none so well, and
+what the writer's end is--(to have it supposed I, and the others
+named--Talfourd, for instance--ARE his friends and helpers)--he
+condescends to _further_ it by such a notice, written with that
+observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid
+Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie--_so_ clever but _so_
+wicked'!--a kind of _D'Orsay's_ praise--while to the rest of his
+readers, a few depreciatory epithets--slight sneers convey his real
+sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an
+article of him once a quarter and would _expect_ notice. I think I
+hear Chorley--'You know, I _cannot_ praise such a book--it _is_ too
+bad'--as if, as if--oh, it makes one sicker than having written
+'Luria,' there's one comfort! I shall call on Chorley and ask for
+_his_ account of the matter. Meantime nobody will read his foolish
+notice without believing as he and Powell desire! Bless you, my own
+Ba--to-morrow makes amends to R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
+
+How ungrateful I was to your flowers yesterday, never looking at them
+nor praising them till they were put away, and yourself gone away--and
+_that_ was _your_ fault, be it remembered, because you began to tell
+me of the good news from Moxon's, and, in the joy of it, I missed the
+flowers ... for the nonce, you know. Afterward they had their due, and
+all the more that you were not there. My first business when you are
+out of the room and the house, and the street perhaps, is to arrange
+the flowers and to gather out of them all the thoughts you leave
+between the leaves and at the end of the stalks. And shall I tell you
+what happened, not yesterday, but the Thursday before? no, it was the
+Friday morning, when I found, or rather Wilson found and held up from
+my chair, a bunch of dead blue violets. Quite dead they seemed! You
+had dropped them and I had sate on them, and where we murdered them
+they had lain, poor things, all the night through. And Wilson thought
+it the vainest of labours when she saw me set about reviving them,
+cutting the stalks afresh, and dipping them head and ears into
+water--but then she did not know how you, and I, and ours, live under
+a miraculous dispensation, and could only simply be astonished when
+they took to blowing again as if they never had wanted the dew of the
+garden, ... yes, and when at last they outlived all the prosperity of
+the contemporary white violets which flourished in water from the
+beginning, and were free from the disadvantage of having been sate
+upon. Now you shall thank me for this letter, it is at once so amusing
+and instructive. After all, too, it teaches you what the great events
+of my life are, not that the resuscitation of your violets would not
+really be a great event to me, even if I led the life of a pirate,
+between fire and sea, otherwise. But take _you_ away ... out of my
+life!--and what remains? The only greenness I used to have (before you
+brought your flowers) was as the grass growing in deserted streets,
+... which brings a proof, in every increase, of the extending
+desolation.
+
+Dearest, I persist in thinking that you ought not to be too disdainful
+to explain your meaning in the Pomegranates. Surely you might say in a
+word or two that, your title having been doubted about (to your
+surprise, you _might_ say!), you refer the doubters to the Jewish
+priest's robe, and the Rabbinical gloss ... for I suppose it is a
+gloss on the robe ... do you not think so? Consider that Mr. Kenyon
+and I may fairly represent the average intelligence of your
+readers,--and that _he_ was altogether in the clouds as to your
+meaning ... had not the most distant notion of it,--while I, taking
+hold of the priest's garment, missed the Rabbins and the distinctive
+significance, as completely as he did. Then for Vasari, it is not the
+handbook of the whole world, however it may be Mrs. Jameson's. Now why
+should you be too proud to teach such persons as only desire to be
+taught? I persist--I shall teaze you.
+
+This morning my brothers have been saying ... 'Ah you had Mr. Browning
+with you yesterday, I see by the flowers,' ... just as if they said 'I
+see queen Mab has been with you.' Then Stormie took the opportunity of
+swearing to me by all his gods that your name was mentioned lately in
+the House of Commons--_is_ that true? or untrue? He forgot to tell me
+at the time, he says,--and you were named with others and in relation
+to copyright matters. _Is_ it true?
+
+Mr. Hornblower Gill is the author of a Hymn to Passion week, and wrote
+to me as the 'glorifier of pain!' to remind me that the best glory of
+a soul is shown in the joy of it, and that all chief poets except
+Dante have seen, felt, and written it so. Thus and therefore was
+matured his purpose of writing an 'ode to joy,' as I told you. The man
+seems to have very good thoughts, ... but he writes like a colder
+Cowley still ... no impulse, no heat for fusing ... no inspiration, in
+fact. Though I have scarcely done more than glance at his 'Passion
+week,' and have little right to give an opinion.
+
+If you have killed Luria as you helped to kill my violets, what shall
+I say, do you fancy? Well--we shall see! Do not kill yourself,
+beloved, in any case! The [Greek: iostephanoi Mousai] had better die
+themselves first! Ah--what am I writing? What nonsense? I mean, in
+deep earnest, the deepest, that you should take care and exercise, and
+not be vexed for Luria's sake--Luria will have his triumph presently!
+May God bless you--prays your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Afternoon.
+                                [Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
+
+My own dearest, if you _do_--(for I confess to nothing of the kind),
+but if you _should_ detect an unwillingness to write at certain times,
+what would that prove,--I mean, what that one need shrink from
+avowing? If I never had you before me except when writing letters to
+you--then! Why, we do not even _talk_ much now! witness Mr. Buckingham
+and his voyage that ought to have been discussed!--Oh, how coldly I
+should write,--how the bleak-looking paper would seem unpropitious to
+carry my feeling--if all had to begin and try to find words _this_
+way!
+
+Now, this morning I have been out--to town and back--and for all the
+walking my head aches--and I have the conviction that presently when I
+resign myself to think of you wholly, with only the pretext,--the
+make-believe of occupation, in the shape of some book to turn over the
+leaves of,--I shall see you and soon be well; so soon! You must know,
+there is a chair (one of the kind called gond_ó_la-chairs by
+upholsterers--with an emphasized o)--which occupies the precise place,
+stands just in the same relation to this chair I sit on now, that
+yours stands in and occupies--to the left of the fire: and, how often,
+how _always_ I turn in the dusk and _see_ the dearest real Ba with me.
+
+How entirely kind to take that trouble, give those sittings for me! Do
+you think the kindness has missed its due effect? _No, no_, I am
+glad,--(_knowing what I_ now _know_,--what you meant _should be_, and
+did all in your power to prevent) that I have _not_ received the
+picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi--te!'
+But I have set my heart on _seeing_ it--will you remember next time,
+next Saturday?
+
+I will leave off now. To-morrow, dearest, only dearest Ba, I will
+write a longer letter--the clock stops it this afternoon--it is later
+than I thought, and our poor crazy post! This morning, hoping against
+hope, I ran to meet our postman coming meditatively up the lane--with
+_a_ letter, indeed!--but Ba's will come to-night--and I will be happy,
+already _am_ happy, expecting it. Bless you, my own love,
+
+                                                 Ever your--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 25, 1846.]
+
+Ah; if I '_do_' ... if I '_should_' ... if I _shall_ ... if I _will_
+... if I _must_ ... what can all the 'ifs' prove, but a most
+hypothetical state of the conscience? And in brief, I beg you to
+stand convinced of one thing, that whenever the 'certain time' comes
+for to 'hate writing to me' confessedly, 'avowedly,' (oh what words!)
+_I shall not like it at all_--not for all the explanations ... and the
+sights in gondola chairs, which the person seen is none the better
+for! The [Greek: eidôlon] sits by the fire--the real Ba is cold at
+heart through wanting her letter. And that's the doctrine to be
+preached now, ... is it? I 'shrink,' shrink from it. That's your
+word!--and mine! Dearest, I began by half a jest and end by
+half-gravity, which is the fault of your doctrine and not of me I
+think. Yet it is ungrateful to be grave, when practically you are good
+and just about the letters, and generous too sometimes, and I could
+not bear the idea of obliging you to write to me, even once ...
+when.... Now do not fancy that I do not understand. I understand
+perfectly, on the contrary. Only do _you_ try not to dislike writing
+when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... _that_, I ask
+of you, dear dearest--and forgive me for all this over-writing and
+teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It
+is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to
+receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so,
+revolt from thinking it lawful for you to dislike.... Well! the
+Goddess of Dulness herself couldn't have written _this_ better,
+anyway, nor more characteristically.
+
+I will tell you how it is. You have spoilt me just as I have spoilt
+Flush. Flush looks at me sometimes with reproachful eyes 'a fendre le
+coeur,' because I refuse to give him my fur cuffs to tear to pieces.
+And as for myself, I confess to being more than half jealous of the
+[Greek: eidôlon] in the gondola chair, who isn't the real Ba after
+all, and yet is set up there to do away with the necessity 'at certain
+times' of writing to her. Which is worse than Flush. For Flush, though
+he began by shivering with rage and barking and howling and gnashing
+his teeth at the brown dog in the glass, has learnt by experience what
+that image means, ... and now contemplates it, serene in natural
+philosophy. Most excellent sense, all this is!--and dauntlessly
+'delivered!'
+
+Your head aches, dearest. Mr. Moxon will have done his worst, however,
+presently, and then you will be a little better I do hope and
+trust--and the proofs, in the meanwhile, will do somewhat less harm
+than the manuscript. You will take heart again about 'Luria' ... which
+I agree with you, is more diffuse ... that is, less close, than any of
+your works, not diffuse in any bad sense, but round, copious, and
+another proof of that wonderful variety of faculty which is so
+striking in you, and which signalizes itself both in the thought and
+in the medium of the thought. You will appreciate 'Luria' in time--or
+others will do it for you. It is a noble work under every aspect. Dear
+'Luria'! Do you remember how you told me of 'Luria' last year, in one
+of your early letters? Little I thought that ever, ever, I should feel
+so, while 'Luria' went to be printed! A long trail of thoughts, like
+the rack in the sky, follows his going. Can it be the same 'Luria,' I
+think, that 'golden-hearted Luria,' whom you talked of to me, when you
+complained of keeping 'wild company,' in the old dear letter? And I
+have learnt since, that '_golden-hearted_' is not a word for him only,
+or for him most. May God bless you, best and dearest! I am your own to
+live and to die--
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+_Say how you are._ I shall be down-stairs to-morrow if it keeps warm.
+
+Miss Thomson wants me to translate the Hector and Andromache scene
+from the 'Iliad' for her book; and I am going to try it.
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+_Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, New-street Square, London_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846, Edited by Robert B.Browning
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF BROWNING ***
+
+***** This file should be named 16182-8.txt or 16182-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/1/8/16182/
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/16182-8.zip b/16182-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01af305
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-8.zip
diff --git a/16182-h.zip b/16182-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f7ed89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h.zip
diff --git a/16182-h/16182-h.htm b/16182-h/16182-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3e2128
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/16182-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,22610 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+ body { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; }
+    p { text-indent:   2em;
+        margin-top:    .75em;
+        font-size:     100%;
+        text-align:    justify;
+        margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { text-align: center; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; }
+    hr.full { width: 100%; }
+    .foot { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 85%; }
+    .poem { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left; }
+    .poem .stanza { margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; }
+    .poem p     { margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em; }
+    .poem p.i2  { margin-left: 1em; }
+    .poem p.i4  { margin-left: 2em; }
+    .poem p.i6  { margin-left: 3em; }
+    .poem p.i8  { margin-left: 4em; }
+    .poem p.i10 { margin-left: 5em; }
+    .toc  { margin-left: 15%; font-size: 80%; margin-bottom: 0em;}
+    center { padding: 0.8em;}
+    SPAN.sc-ex { font-variant: small-caps }
+    // -->
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846, Edited by
+Robert B. Browning
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846
+
+Author: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
+
+Editor: Robert B.Browning
+
+Release Date: July 2, 2005 [EBook #16182]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF BROWNING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br>
+<h1>
+    THE LETTERS
+</h1>
+<h2>    OF
+</h2>
+<h1>
+    ROBERT BROWNING
+</h1>
+<h2>
+    AND
+</h2>
+<h1>
+    ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT
+</h1>
+<h2>
+    1845-1846
+</h2>
+<center>
+    <i>WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES</i>
+</center>
+<center>
+    IN TWO VOLUMES
+</center>
+<center>
+    VOL. I.
+</center>
+<center>
+    FOURTH IMPRESSION
+</center>
+<center>
+    LONDON
+</center>
+<center>
+    SMITH, ELDER, &amp; CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
+</center>
+<center>
+    1900
+</center>
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image01.png" width="326" height="419"
+alt="Robert Browning">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <b>Robert Browning</b></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    from an oil painting by Gordigiani</p>
+
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+
+<h2>
+    NOTE
+</h2>
+<p>
+    In considering the question of publishing these letters, which are all
+    that ever passed between my father and mother, for after their
+    marriage they were never separated, it seemed to me that my only
+    alternatives were to allow them to be published or to destroy them. I
+    might, indeed, have left the matter to the decision of others after my
+    death, but that would be evading a responsibility which I feel that I
+    ought to accept.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever since my mother's death these letters were kept by my father in a
+    certain inlaid box, into which they exactly fitted, and where they
+    have always rested, letter beside letter, each in its consecutive
+    order and numbered on the envelope by his own hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My father destroyed all the rest of his correspondence, and not long
+    before his death he said, referring to these letters: 'There they are,
+    do with them as you please when I am dead and gone!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few of the letters are of little or no interest, but their omission
+    would have saved only a few pages, and I think it well that the
+    correspondence should be given in its entirety.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wish to express my gratitude to my father's friend and mine, Mrs.
+    Miller Morison, for her unfailing sympathy and assistance in
+    deciphering some words which had become scarcely legible owing to
+    faded ink.
+</p>
+                                                      <p align="right" style="text-align: right">R.B.B.
+    </p>
+
+    <p style="text-indent: 0em; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">1898.</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+
+
+<h2>
+    ADVERTISEMENT
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The correspondence contained in these volumes is printed exactly as it
+    appears in the original letters, without alteration, except in respect
+    of obvious slips of the pen. Even the punctuation, with its
+    characteristic dots and dashes, has for the most part been preserved.
+    The notes in square brackets [] have been added mainly in order to
+    translate the Greek phrases, and to give the references to Greek
+    poets. For these, thanks are due to Mr. F.G. Kenyon, who has revised
+    the proofs with the assistance of Mr. Roger Ingpen, the latter being
+    responsible for the Index.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+
+<h2>
+    ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h2>
+<p>
+
+<br>
+<br><a href="#image-0001">PORTRAIT OF ROBERT BROWNING</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Frontispiece</i>
+<br>  <i>After the picture by Gordigiani</i></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><a href="#image-0004">FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ROBERT BROWNING</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To face p. 578</i></p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+
+
+<h3>
+    THE LETTERS OF</h3>
+
+<h2>
+    ROBERT BROWNING</h2>
+
+<h3>
+    AND </h3>
+
+<h2>ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT</h2>
+
+<h3>
+    1845-1846 </h3>
+    <br>
+    <hr>
+    <br>
+
+
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: right; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">                              New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.<br>
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I <SPAN class="sc-ex">love</span> your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,&mdash;and this is
+    no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,&mdash;whatever else,
+    no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius, and there a
+    graceful and natural end of the thing. Since the day last week when I
+    first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been
+    turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you
+    of their effect upon me, for in the first flush of delight I thought I
+    would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when
+    I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration&mdash;perhaps even,
+    as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some
+    little good to be proud of hereafter!&mdash;but nothing comes of it all&mdash;so
+    into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living
+    poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew&mdash;Oh, how
+    different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat, and prized
+    highly, and put in a book with a proper account at top and bottom,
+    and shut up and put away ... and the book called a 'Flora,' besides!
+    After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time;
+    because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give a reason
+    for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music,
+    the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave
+    thought; but in this addressing myself to you&mdash;your own self, and for
+    the first time, my feeling rises altogether. I do, as I say, love
+    these books with all my heart&mdash;and I love you too. Do you know I was
+    once not very far from seeing&mdash;really seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to
+    me one morning 'Would you like to see Miss Barrett?' then he went to
+    announce me,&mdash;then he returned ... you were too unwell, and now it is
+    years ago, and I feel as at some untoward passage in my travels, as if
+    I had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel or crypt,
+    only a screen to push and I might have entered, but there was some
+    slight, so it now seems, slight and just sufficient bar to admission,
+    and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles,
+    and the sight was never to be?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, these Poems were to be, and this true thankful joy and pride
+    with which I feel myself,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&nbsp;Yours ever faithfully,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Robert Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Miss Barrett,<b><a href="#note-1">1</a></b><br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+50 Wimpole St.<br>
+R. Browning.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 11, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I thank you, dear Mr. Browning, from the bottom of my heart. You meant
+    to give me pleasure by your letter&mdash;and even if the object had not
+    been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly
+    answered. Such a letter from such a hand! Sympathy is dear&mdash;very dear
+    to me: but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the
+    quintessence of sympathy to me! Will you take back my gratitude for
+    it?&mdash;agreeing, too, that of all the commerce done in the world, from
+    Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most
+    princely thing!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest you draw me on with your kindness. It is difficult to get
+    rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure&mdash;<i>that</i>
+    is a fact, and we will not stop for the moral of it. What I was going
+    to say&mdash;after a little natural hesitation&mdash;is, that if ever you emerge
+    without inconvenient effort from your 'passive state,' and will <i>tell</i>
+    me of such faults as rise to the surface and strike you as important
+    in my poems, (for of course, I do not think of troubling you with
+    criticism in detail) you will confer a lasting obligation on me, and
+    one which I shall value so much, that I covet it at a distance. I do
+    not pretend to any extraordinary meekness under criticism and it is
+    possible enough that I might not be altogether obedient to yours. But
+    with my high respect for your power in your Art and for your
+    experience as an artist, it would be quite impossible for me to hear a
+    general observation of yours on what appear to you my master-faults,
+    without being the better for it hereafter in some way. I ask for only
+    a sentence or two of general observation&mdash;and I do not ask even for
+    <i>that</i>, so as to tease you&mdash;but in the humble, low voice, which is so
+    excellent a thing in women&mdash;particularly when they go a-begging! The
+    most frequent general criticism I receive, is, I think, upon the
+    style,&mdash;'if I <i>would</i> but change my style'! But <i>that</i> is an objection
+    (isn't it?) to the writer bodily? Buffon says, and every sincere
+    writer must feel, that '<i>Le style c'est l'homme</i>'; a fact, however,
+    scarcely calculated to lessen the objection with certain critics.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it indeed true that I was so near to the pleasure and honour of
+    making your acquaintance? and can it be true that you look back upon
+    the lost opportunity with any regret? <i>But</i>&mdash;you know&mdash;if you had
+    entered the 'crypt,' you might have caught cold, or been tired to
+    death, and <i>wished</i> yourself 'a thousand miles off;' which would have
+    been worse than travelling them. It is not my interest, however, to
+    put such thoughts in your head about its being 'all for the best'; and
+    I would rather hope (as I do) that what I lost by one chance I may
+    recover by some future one. Winters shut me up as they do dormouse's
+    eyes; in the spring, <i>we shall see</i>: and I am so much better that I
+    seem turning round to the outward world again. And in the meantime I
+    have learnt to know your voice, not merely from the poetry but from
+    the kindness in it. Mr. Kenyon often speaks of you&mdash;dear Mr.
+    Kenyon!&mdash;who most unspeakably, or only speakably with tears in my
+    eyes,&mdash;has been my friend and helper, and my book's friend and helper!
+    critic and sympathiser, true friend of all hours! You know him well
+    enough, I think, to understand that I must be grateful to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am writing too much,&mdash;and notwithstanding that I am writing too
+    much, I will write of one thing more. I will say that I am your
+    debtor, not only for this cordial letter and for all the pleasure
+    which came with it, but in other ways, and those the highest: and I
+    will say that while I live to follow this divine art of poetry, in
+    proportion to my love for it and my devotion to it, I must be a devout
+    admirer and student of your works. This is in my heart to say to
+    you&mdash;and I say it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, for the rest, I am proud to remain</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Your obliged and faithful&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">Elizabeth B. Barrett</span>.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Robert Browning, Esq.<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+  New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.<br>
+Jan. 13, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Miss Barrett,&mdash;I just shall say, in as few words as I can, that
+    you make me very happy, and that, now the beginning is over, I dare
+    say I shall do better, because my poor praise, number one, was nearly
+    as felicitously brought out, as a certain tribute to no less a
+    personage than Tasso, which I was amused with at Rome some weeks ago,
+    in a neat pencilling on the plaister-wall by his tomb at
+    Sant'Onofrio&mdash;'Alla cara memoria&mdash;di&mdash;(please fancy solemn interspaces
+    and grave capital letters at the new lines) di&mdash;Torquato Tasso&mdash;il
+    Dottore Bernardini&mdash;offriva&mdash;il seguente Carme&mdash;<i>O tu</i>'&mdash;and no
+    more,&mdash;the good man, it should seem, breaking down with the overload
+    of love here! But my 'O tu'&mdash;was breathed out most sincerely, and now
+    you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will come after.
+    Only,&mdash;and which is why I write now&mdash;it looks as if I have introduced
+    some phrase or other about 'your faults' so cleverly as to give
+    exactly the opposite meaning to what I meant, which was, that in my
+    first ardour I had thought to tell you of <i>everything</i> which impressed
+    me in your verses, down, even, to whatever 'faults' I could find,&mdash;a
+    good earnest, when I had got to <i>them</i>, that I had left out not much
+    between&mdash;as if some Mr. Fellows were to say, in the overflow of his
+    first enthusiasm of rewarded adventure: 'I will describe you all the
+    outer life and ways of these Lycians, down to their very
+    sandal-thongs,' whereto the be-corresponded one rejoins&mdash;'Shall I get
+    next week, then, your dissertation on sandal-thongs'? Yes, and a
+    little about the 'Olympian Horses,' and God-charioteers as well!
+</p>
+<p>
+    What 'struck me as faults,' were not matters on the removal of which,
+    one was to have&mdash;poetry, or high poetry,&mdash;but the very highest poetry,
+    so I thought, and that, to universal recognition. For myself, or any
+    artist, in many of the cases there would be a positive loss of time,
+    peculiar artist's pleasure&mdash;for an instructed eye loves to see where
+    the brush has dipped twice in a lustrous colour, has lain insistingly
+    along a favourite outline, dwelt lovingly in a grand shadow; for these
+    'too muches' for the everybody's picture are so many helps to the
+    making out the real painter's picture as he had it in his brain. And
+    all of the Titian's Naples Magdalen must have once been golden in its
+    degree to justify that heap of hair in her hands&mdash;the <i>only</i> gold
+    effected now!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But about this soon&mdash;for night is drawing on and I go out, yet cannot,
+    quiet at conscience, till I report (to <i>myself</i>, for I never said it
+    to you, I think) that your poetry must be, cannot but be, infinitely
+    more to me than mine to you&mdash;for you <i>do</i> what I always wanted, hoped
+    to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first time. You speak
+    out, <i>you</i>,&mdash;I only make men and women speak&mdash;give you truth broken
+    into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in
+    me, but I am going to try; so it will be no small comfort to have your
+    company just now, seeing that when you have your men and women
+    aforesaid, you are busied with them, whereas it seems bleak,
+    melancholy work, this talking to the wind (for I have begun)&mdash;yet I
+    don't think I shall let <i>you</i> hear, after all, the savage things about
+    Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.
+</p>
+<p>
+    See how I go on and on to you, I who, whenever now and then pulled, by
+    the head and hair, into letter-writing, get sorrowfully on for a line
+    or two, as the cognate creature urged on by stick and string, and then
+    come down 'flop' upon the sweet haven of page one, line last, as
+    serene as the sleep of the virtuous! You will never more, I hope, talk
+    of 'the honour of my acquaintance,' but I will joyfully wait for the
+    delight of your friendship, and the spring, and my Chapel-sight after
+    all!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Ever yours most faithfully,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Mr. Kenyon&mdash;I have a convenient theory about <i>him</i>, and his
+    otherwise quite unaccountable kindness to me; but 'tis quite night
+    now, and they call me.
+</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 15, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Mr. Browning,&mdash;The fault was clearly with me and not with you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I had an Italian master, years ago, he told me that there was an
+    unpronounceable English word which absolutely expressed me, and which
+    he would say in his own tongue, as he could not in mine&mdash;'<i>testa
+    lunga</i>.' Of course, the signor meant <i>headlong</i>!&mdash;and now I have had
+    enough to tame me, and might be expected to stand still in my stall.
+    But you see I do not. Headlong I was at first, and headlong I
+    continue&mdash;precipitously rushing forward through all manner of nettles
+    and briars instead of keeping the path; guessing at the meaning of
+    unknown words instead of looking into the dictionary&mdash;tearing open
+    letters, and never untying a string,&mdash;and expecting everything to be
+    done in a minute, and the thunder to be as quick as the lightning. And
+    so, at your half word I flew at the whole one, with all its possible
+    consequences, and wrote what you read. Our common friend, as I think
+    he is, Mr. Horne, is often forced to entreat me into patience and
+    coolness of purpose, though his only intercourse with me has been by
+    letter. And, by the way, you will be sorry to hear that during his
+    stay in Germany <i>he</i> has been 'headlong' (out of a metaphor) twice;
+    once, in falling from the Drachenfels, when he only just saved himself
+    by catching at a vine; and once quite lately, at Christmas, in a fall
+    on the ice of the Elbe in skating, when he dislocated his left
+    shoulder in a very painful manner. He is doing quite well, I believe,
+    but it was sad to have such a shadow from the German Christmas tree,
+    and he a stranger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In art, however, I understand that it does not do to be headlong, but
+    patient and laborious&mdash;and there is a love strong enough, even in me, to
+    overcome nature. I apprehend what you mean in the criticism you just
+    intimate, and shall turn it over and over in my mind until I get practical
+    good from it. What no mere critic sees, but what you, an artist, know, is
+    the difference between the thing desired and the thing attained, between the
+    idea in the writer's mind and the <span title="eidôlon">&epsilon;&iota;&delta;&omega;&lambda;&omicron;&nu;</span> cast off in his work. All the effort&mdash;the quick'ning of the
+    breath and beating of the heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and
+    injurious to the general effect of a composition; all which you call
+    'insistency,' and which many would call superfluity, and which <i>is</i>
+    superfluous in a sense&mdash;<i>you</i> can pardon, because you understand. The
+    great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would
+    be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours,
+    if the desire did not master the despondency. 'Oh for a horse with
+    wings!' It is wrong of me to write so of myself&mdash;only you put your
+    finger on the root of a fault, which has, to my fancy, been a little
+    misapprehended. I do not <i>say everything I think</i> (as has been said of
+    me by master-critics) but I <i>take every means to say what I think</i>,
+    which is different!&mdash;or I fancy so!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In one thing, however, you are wrong. Why should you deny the full
+    measure of my delight and benefit from your writings? I could tell you
+    why you should not. You have in your vision two worlds, or to use the
+    language of the schools of the day, you are both subjective and
+    objective in the habits of your mind. You can deal both with abstract
+    thought and with human passion in the most passionate sense. Thus, you
+    have an immense grasp in Art; and no one at all accustomed to consider
+    the usual forms of it, could help regarding with reverence and
+    gladness the gradual expansion of your powers. Then you are
+    'masculine' to the height&mdash;and I, as a woman, have studied some of
+    your gestures of language and intonation wistfully, as a thing beyond
+    me far! and the more admirable for being beyond.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of your new work I hear with delight. How good of you to tell me. And
+    it is not dramatic in the strict sense, I am to understand&mdash;(am I
+    right in understanding so?) and you speak, in your own person 'to the
+    winds'? no&mdash;but to the thousand living sympathies which will awake to
+    hear you. A great dramatic power may develop itself otherwise than in
+    the formal drama; and I have been guilty of wishing, before this hour
+    (for reasons which I will not thrust upon you after all my tedious
+    writing), that you would give the public a poem unassociated directly
+    or indirectly with the stage, for a trial on the popular heart. I
+    reverence the drama, but&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>But</i> I break in on myself out of consideration for you. I might have
+    done it, you will think, before. I vex your 'serene sleep of the
+    virtuous' like a nightmare. Do not say 'No.' I am <i>sure</i> I do! As to
+    the vain parlance of the world, I did not talk of the 'honour of your
+    acquaintance' without a true sense of honour, indeed; but I shall
+    willingly exchange it all (and <i>now</i>, if you please, at this moment,
+    for fear of worldly mutabilities) for the 'delight of your
+    friendship.'
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Believe me, therefore, dear Mr. Browning,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+Faithfully yours, and gratefully,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">Elizabeth B. Barrett</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Mr. Kenyon's kindness, as <i>I</i> see it, no theory will account. I
+    class it with mesmerism for that reason.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">New Cross, Hatcham, Monday Night.<br>
+   [Post-mark, January 28, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Miss Barrett,&mdash;Your books lie on my table here, at arm's length
+    from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches
+    or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance
+    for either green-covered volume, as if it were so much fresh trefoil
+    to feel in one's hands this winter-time,&mdash;and round I turn, and,
+    putting a decisive elbow on three or four half-done-with 'Bells' of
+    mine, read, read, read, and just as I have shut up the book and walked
+    to the window, I recollect that you wanted me to find faults there,
+    and that, in an unwise hour, I engaged to do so. Meantime, the days
+    go by (the whitethroat is come and sings now) and as I would not have
+    you 'look down on me from your white heights' as promise breaker,
+    evader, or forgetter, if I could help: and as, if I am very candid and
+    contrite, you may find it in your heart to write to me again&mdash;who
+    knows?&mdash;I shall say at once that the said faults cannot be lost, must
+    be <i>somewhere</i>, and shall be faithfully brought you back whenever they
+    turn up,&mdash;as people tell one of missing matters. I am rather exacting,
+    myself, with my own gentle audience, and get to say spiteful things
+    about them when they are backward in their dues of appreciation&mdash;but
+    really, <i>really</i>&mdash;could I be quite sure that anybody as good as&mdash;I
+    must go on, I suppose, and say&mdash;as myself, even, were honestly to feel
+    towards me as I do, towards the writer of 'Bertha,' and the 'Drama,'
+    and the 'Duchess,' and the 'Page' and&mdash;the whole two volumes, I should
+    be paid after a fashion, I know.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One thing I can do&mdash;pencil, if you like, and annotate, and dissertate
+    upon that I love most and least&mdash;I think I can do it, that is.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here an odd memory comes&mdash;of a friend who,&mdash;volunteering such a
+    service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality
+    in a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting
+    off the beginning three lines with, of course, 'bad, worse,
+    worst'&mdash;made by a generous mintage of words to meet the sudden run of
+    his epithets, 'worser, worserer, worserest' pay off the second terzet
+    in full&mdash;no 'badder, badderer, badderest' fell to the <i>Second's</i>
+    allowance, and 'worser' &amp;c. answered the demands of the Third;
+    'worster, worsterer, worsterest' supplied the emergency of the Fourth;
+    and, bestowing his last 'worserestest and worstestest' on lines 13 and
+    14, my friend (slapping his forehead like an emptied strong-box)
+    frankly declared himself bankrupt, and honourably incompetent, to
+    satisfy the reasonable expectations of the rest of the series!
+</p>
+<p>
+    What an illustration of the law by which opposite ideas suggest
+    opposite, and contrary images come together!
+</p>
+<p>
+    See now, how, of that 'Friendship' you offer me (and here Juliet's
+    word rises to my lips)&mdash;I feel sure once and for ever. I have got
+    already, I see, into this little pet-handwriting of mine (not anyone
+    else's) which scratches on as if theatrical copyists (ah me!) and
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">Bradbury and Evans' Reader</span> were not! But you shall get something
+    better than this nonsense one day, if you will have patience with
+    me&mdash;hardly better, though, because this does me real good, gives real
+    relief, to write. After all, you know nothing, next to nothing of me,
+    and that stops me. Spring is to come, however!
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you hate writing to me as I hate writing to nearly everybody, I
+    pray you never write&mdash;if you do, as you say, care for anything I have
+    done. I will simply assure you, that meaning to begin work in deep
+    earnest, <i>begin</i> without affectation, God knows,&mdash;I do not know what
+    will help me more than hearing from you,&mdash;and therefore, if you do not
+    so very much hate it, I know I <i>shall</i> hear from you&mdash;and very little
+    more about your 'tiring me.'
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours faithfully,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">Robert Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">50 Walpole Street: Feb. 3, 1845.<br>
+<i>[Transcriber's Note: So in original. Should be "Wimpole Street."] </i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why how could I hate to write to you, dear Mr. Browning? Could you
+    believe in such a thing? If nobody likes writing to everybody (except
+    such professional letter writers as you and I are <i>not</i>), yet
+    everybody likes writing to somebody, and it would be strange and
+    contradictory if I were not always delighted both to hear from <i>you</i>
+    and to write to <i>you</i>, this talking upon paper being as good a social
+    pleasure as another, when our means are somewhat straitened. As for
+    me, I have done most of my talking by post of late years&mdash;as people
+    shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls. Not
+    that I write to many in the way of regular correspondence, as our
+    friend Mr. Horne predicates of me in his romances (which is mere
+    romancing!), but that there are a few who will write and be written to
+    by me without a sense of injury. Dear Miss Mitford, for instance. You
+    do not know her, I think, personally, although she was the first to
+    tell me (when I was very ill and insensible to all the glories of the
+    world except poetry), of the grand scene in 'Pippa Passes.' <i>She</i> has
+    filled a large drawer in this room with delightful letters, heart-warm
+    and soul-warm, ... driftings of nature (if sunshine could drift like
+    snow), and which, if they should ever fall the way of all writing,
+    into print, would assume the folio shape as a matter of course, and
+    take rank on the lowest shelf of libraries, with Benedictine editions
+    of the Fathers, <span title="k.t.l.">&kappa;.&tau;.&lambda;</span>. I write this to you to show how I can
+    have pleasure in letters, and never think them too long, nor too
+    frequent, nor too illegible from being written in little 'pet hands.'
+    I can read any MS. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will
+    only promise to treat me <i>en bon camarade</i>, without reference to the
+    conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen,' taking no thought for
+    your sentences (nor for mine), nor for your blots (nor for mine), nor
+    for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling (nor
+    for mine), and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you
+    are in the mind for it, and with as little ceremony and less
+    legibility than you would think it necessary to employ towards your
+    printer&mdash;why, <i>then</i>, I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to
+    rejoice in being 'articled' as your correspondent. Only <i>don't</i> let us
+    have any constraint, any ceremony! <i>Don't</i> be civil to me when you
+    feel rude,&mdash;nor loquacious when you incline to silence,&mdash;nor yielding
+    in the manners when you are perverse in the mind. See how out of the
+    world I am! Suffer me to profit by it in almost the only profitable
+    circumstance, and let us rest from the bowing and the courtesying,
+    you and I, on each side. You will find me an honest man on the whole,
+    if rather hasty and prejudging, which is a different thing from
+    prejudice at the worst. And we have great sympathies in common, and I
+    am inclined to look up to you in many things, and to learn as much of
+    everything as you will teach me. On the other hand you must prepare
+    yourself to forbear and to forgive&mdash;will you? While I throw off the
+    ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it true, as you say, that I 'know so "little"' of you? And is it
+    true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake
+    of his real nature, ... that in the minor sense, man is not made in
+    the image of God? It is <i>not</i> true, to my mind&mdash;and therefore it is
+    not true that I know little of you, except in as far as it is true
+    (which I believe) that your greatest works are to come. Need I assure
+    you that I shall always hear with the deepest interest every word you
+    will say to me of what you are doing or about to do? I hear of the
+    'old room' and the '"Bells" lying about,' with an interest which you
+    may guess at, perhaps. And when you tell me besides, of <i>my poems
+    being there</i>, and of your caring for them so much beyond the tide-mark
+    of my hopes, the pleasure rounds itself into a charm, and prevents its
+    own expression. Overjoyed I am with this cordial sympathy&mdash;but it is
+    better, I feel, to try to justify it by future work than to thank you
+    for it now. I think&mdash;if I may dare to name myself with you in the
+    poetic relation&mdash;that we both have high views of the Art we follow,
+    and stedfast purpose in the pursuit of it, and that we should not,
+    either of <i>us</i>, be likely to be thrown from the course, by the casting
+    of any Atalanta-ball of speedy popularity. But I do not know, I cannot
+    guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard criticism
+    and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too often
+    exposed to&mdash;or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the
+    exercise of Art the filling joy of your life. Not that praise must not
+    always, of necessity, be delightful to the artist, but that it may be
+    redundant to his content. Do you think so? or not? It appears to me
+    that poets who, like Keats, are highly susceptible to criticism, must
+    be jealous, in their own persons, of the future honour of their works.
+    Because, if a work is worthy, honour must follow it, though the worker
+    should not live to see that following overtaking. Now, is it not
+    enough that the work be honoured&mdash;enough I mean, for the worker? And
+    is it not enough to keep down a poet's ordinary wearing anxieties, to
+    think, that if his work be worthy it will have honour, and, if not,
+    that 'Sparta must have nobler sons than he'? I am writing nothing
+    applicable, I see, to anything in question, but when one falls into a
+    favourite train of thought, one indulges oneself in thinking on. I
+    began in thinking and wondering what sort of artistic constitution you
+    had, being determined, as you may observe (with a sarcastic smile at
+    the impertinence), to set about knowing as much as possible of you
+    immediately. Then you spoke of your 'gentle audience' (<i>you began</i>),
+    and I, who know that you have not one but many enthusiastic
+    admirers&mdash;the 'fit and few' in the intense meaning&mdash;yet not the
+    <i>diffused</i> fame which will come to you presently, wrote on, down the
+    margin of the subject, till I parted from it altogether. But, after
+    all, we are on the proper matter of sympathy. And after all, and after
+    all that has been said and mused upon the 'natural ills,' the anxiety,
+    and wearing out experienced by the true artist,&mdash;is not the <i>good</i>
+    immeasurably greater than the <i>evil</i>? Is it not great good, and great
+    joy? For my part, I wonder sometimes&mdash;I surprise myself wondering&mdash;how
+    without such an object and purpose of life, people find it worth while
+    to live at all. And, for happiness&mdash;why, my only idea of happiness, as
+    far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, (but I have been
+    straightened in some respects and in comparison with the majority of
+    livers!) lies deep in poetry and its associations. And then, the
+    escape from pangs of heart and bodily weakness&mdash;when you throw off
+    <i>yourself</i>&mdash;what you feel to be <i>yourself</i>&mdash;into another atmosphere
+    and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new,
+    and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the
+    sun! Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of
+    depreciating and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible,
+    certainly&mdash;but reasonable, not at all&mdash;and grateful, less than
+    anything!
+</p>
+<p>
+    My faults, my faults&mdash;Shall I help you? Ah&mdash;you see them too well, I
+    fear. And do you know that <i>I</i> also have something of your feeling
+    about 'being about to <i>begin</i>,' or I should dare to praise you for
+    having it. But in you, it is different&mdash;it is, in you, a virtue. When
+    Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io, and
+    declared at last that he was <span title="mêdepô en prooimiois">&mu;&eta;&delta;&epsilon;&pi;&omega; &epsilon;&nu; &pi;&rho;&omicron;&omicron;&iota;&mu;&iota;&omicron;&iota;&sigmaf;</span>,<b><a href="#note-2">2</a></b>
+    poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the
+    'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may
+    well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our
+    hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you <i>will</i> do
+    what is greater. It is my faith for you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to
+    promise and vow' for you,&mdash;and whether you have held true to early
+    tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and
+    what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!&mdash;(if it
+    isn't proved already).
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if
+    I ever write to you again&mdash;I mean, if you wish it&mdash;it may be in the
+    other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of
+    Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,&mdash;you
+    might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet&mdash;which I guessed at
+    once&mdash;and of course&mdash;
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
+    I have no joy in this contract to-day!<br>
+    It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.
+</p>
+
+
+                                      </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">
+    Ever faithfully yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">Elizabeth B. Barrett</span>. </p>
+<br>
+
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Hatcham, Tuesday.<br>
+ [Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Miss Barrett,&mdash;People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a
+    matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is
+    hard to prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance,
+    used certain words and ways to a mother or a father <i>could</i>, even if
+    by the devil's help he <i>would</i>, reproduce or mimic them with any
+    effect to anybody else that was to be won over&mdash;and so, if 'I love
+    you' were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose,
+    be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last
+    night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain
+    ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the
+    fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for <i>that</i> we
+    could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes
+    the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear
+    Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I <i>said</i> (to use a mild word)
+    'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke
+    of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was
+    this&mdash;that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and
+    syllables with a masoretic <i>other</i> sound and sense, make my 'dear'
+    something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a
+    thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came
+    of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &amp;c. &amp;c., which I
+    should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter
+    with its unmistakable eyes. <i>Now</i>, what you say of the 'bowing,' and
+    convention that is to be, and <i>tant de façons</i> that are not to be,
+    helps me once and for ever&mdash;for have I not a right to say simply that,
+    for reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might
+    if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most
+    likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me
+    know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you
+    care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea,
+    nor a troop of true lovers!&mdash;Are not their fates written? there! Don't
+    you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with
+    a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But
+    then&mdash;what I have printed gives <i>no</i> knowledge of me&mdash;it evidences
+    abilities of various kinds, if you will&mdash;and a dramatic sympathy with
+    certain modifications of passion ... <i>that</i> I think&mdash;But I never have
+    begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end&mdash;'R.B. a
+    poem'&mdash;and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you
+    have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it
+    is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so&mdash;these scenes and
+    song-scraps <i>are</i> such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which
+    lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have
+    watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery,
+    bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a
+    moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind
+    wall between it and you; and, no doubt, <i>then</i>, precisely, does the
+    poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim
+    the wick&mdash;for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard&mdash;(this
+    head of mine knows better)&mdash;but the work has been <i>inside</i>, and not
+    when at stated times I held up my light to you&mdash;and, that there is no
+    self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by
+    opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of
+    wood, I <i>could</i> make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the
+    whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the
+    same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have
+    done what was published, and half done what may never be, I say with
+    some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I <i>hope</i> sometimes,
+    though phrenologists will have it that I <i>cannot</i>, and am doing
+    better with this darling 'Luria'&mdash;so safe in my head, and a tiny slip
+    of paper I cover with my thumb!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then you inquire about my 'sensitiveness to criticism,' and I shall be
+    glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a
+    course you might else not understand. I shall live always&mdash;that is for
+    me&mdash;I am living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a
+    thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief
+    that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things
+    considered&mdash;that is for <i>me</i>, and, so being, the not being listened to
+    by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of
+    course I must, if for merely scientific purposes, know all about this
+    1845, its ways and doings, and something I do know, as that for a
+    dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might
+    demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market,&mdash;and that for a
+    dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many
+    plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought
+    to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring
+    me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold currency, seeing the other
+    traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won't pay
+    me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please,
+    say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties 'decamp to the crows,' in
+    Greek phrase, and <i>yet</i> go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of
+    rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens
+    I should have been able to buy the last number of <i>Punch</i>, and go
+    through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind
+    clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they
+    had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of
+    this and the other 'favourable critique,' and&mdash;at least so folks
+    hold&mdash;I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds,
+    whereas&mdash;but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in
+    the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper,
+    'It's nothing to <i>you</i>, critics, hucksters, all of you, if I <i>have</i>
+    this garden and this conscience&mdash;I might go die at Rome, or take to
+    gin and the newspaper, for what <i>you</i> would care!' So I don't quite
+    lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have
+    met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly
+    and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty
+    praisers&mdash;and no bad reviewers&mdash;I am quite content with my share.
+    No&mdash;what I laughed at in my 'gentle audience' is a sad trick the real
+    admirers have of admiring at the wrong place&mdash;enough to make an
+    apostle swear. <i>That</i> does make me savage&mdash;<i>never</i> the other kind of
+    people; why, think now&mdash;take your own 'Drama of Exile' and let <i>me</i>
+    send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your
+    door to-day and after&mdash;of whom the first five are the Postman, the
+    seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders,
+    and the Tax-gatherer&mdash;will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa's
+    assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on,
+    this 'Drama'&mdash;and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair
+    English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the
+    general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to
+    affirm. But then&mdash;once again, I get these people together and give
+    them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the
+    Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats,
+    one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red
+    collar,&mdash;that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into
+    vogue, and so on with the rest&mdash;and won't you just wish for your
+    <i>Spectators</i> and <i>Observers</i> and Newcastle-upon-Tyne&mdash;Hebdomadal
+    <i>Mercuries</i> back again! You see the inference&mdash;I do sincerely esteem
+    it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so
+    well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to
+    'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite
+    inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the
+    <i>Quarterly</i> and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the
+    world&mdash;out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Out comes the sun, in comes the <i>Times</i> and eleven strikes (it <i>does</i>)
+    already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that
+    this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should
+    'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt&mdash;nor will you
+    henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy
+    writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me
+    for yours ever faithfully,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I don't dare&mdash;yet I will&mdash;ask <i>can</i> you read this? Because I <i>could</i>
+    write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as
+    you do now!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">50 Wimpole Street, February 17, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Mr. Browning,&mdash;To begin with the end (which is only
+    characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your
+    handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font.
+    If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I
+    couldn't do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle.
+    Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the
+    making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons
+    ... Mr. Landor, for instance, who writes as if he had the sky for a
+    copybook and dotted his <i>i</i>'s in proportion. People who do such things
+    should wear gauntlets; yes, and have none to wear; or they wouldn't
+    waste their time so. People who write&mdash;by profession&mdash;shall I
+    say?&mdash;never should do it, or what will become of them when most of
+    their strength retires into their head and heart, (as is the case with
+    some of us and may be the case with all) and when they have to write a
+    poem twelve times over, as Mr. Kenyon says I should do if I were
+    virtuous? Not that I do it. Does anybody do it, I wonder? Do <i>you</i>,
+    ever? From what you tell me of the trimming of the light, I imagine
+    not. And besides, one may be laborious as a writer, without copying
+    twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a
+    moment what three times six is, without 'doing it' on their fingers;
+    and in the same way one may work one's verses in one's head quite as
+    laboriously as on paper&mdash;I maintain it. I consider myself a very
+    patient, laborious writer&mdash;though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn
+    when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were
+    netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my
+    stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste,
+    I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by
+    the mind, <i>will</i> draw and concentrate the powers of the mind&mdash;and Art,
+    you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man&mdash;or woman. I
+    cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one&mdash;though
+    one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,&mdash;and though all
+    are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility&mdash;and to
+    entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of
+    facility. You may write twenty lines one day&mdash;or even three like
+    Euripides in three days&mdash;and a hundred lines in one more day&mdash;and yet
+    on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the
+    twenty and the three. And also, as you say, the lamp is trimmed behind
+    the wall&mdash;and the act of utterance is the evidence of foregone study
+    still more than it is the occasion to study. The deep interest with
+    which I read all that you had the kindness to write to me of yourself,
+    you must trust me for, as I find it hard to express it. It is sympathy
+    in one way, and interest every way! And now, see! Although you proved
+    to me with admirable logic that, for reasons which you know and
+    reasons which you don't know, I couldn't possibly know anything about
+    you; though that is all true&mdash;and proven (which is better than
+    true)&mdash;I really did understand of you before I was told, exactly what
+    you told me. Yes, I did indeed. I felt sure that as a poet you fronted
+    the future&mdash;and that your chief works, in your own apprehension, were
+    to come. Oh&mdash;I take no credit of sagacity for it; as I did not long
+    ago to my sisters and brothers, when I professed to have knowledge of
+    all their friends whom I never saw in my life, by the image coming
+    with the name; and threw them into shouts of laughter by giving out
+    all the blue eyes and black eyes and hazel eyes and noses Roman and
+    Gothic ticketed aright for the Mr. Smiths and Miss Hawkinses,&mdash;and hit
+    the bull's eye and the true features of the case, ten times out of
+    twelve! But <i>you</i> are different. <i>You</i> are to be made out by the
+    comparative anatomy system. You have thrown out fragments of <i>os</i> ...
+    <i>sublime</i> ... indicative of soul-mammothism&mdash;and you live to develop
+    your nature,&mdash;<i>if</i> you live. That is easy and plain. You have taken a
+    great range&mdash;from those high faint notes of the mystics which are
+    beyond personality ... to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature,
+    'gr-r-r- you swine'; and when these are thrown into harmony, as in a
+    manner they are in 'Pippa Passes' (which I could find in my heart to
+    covet the authorship of, more than any of your works&mdash;), the
+    combinations of effect must always be striking and noble&mdash;and you must
+    feel yourself drawn on to such combinations more and more. But I do
+    not, you say, know yourself&mdash;you. I only know abilities and faculties.
+    Well, then, teach me yourself&mdash;you. I will not insist on the
+    knowledge&mdash;and, in fact, you have not written the R.B. poem yet&mdash;your
+    rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight. I see you only in
+    your moon. Do tell me all of yourself that you can and will ... before
+    the R.B. poem comes out. And what is 'Luria'? A poem and not a drama?
+    I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you
+    sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works
+    into the great mill of the 'rank, popular' playhouse, to be ground to
+    pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one,
+    would as soon have 'my soul among lions.' 'There is a fascination in
+    it,' says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for
+    it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but to distil the dregs of the
+    public and baptise oneself in that acrid moisture, where can be the
+    temptation? I could swear by Shakespeare, as was once sworn 'by those
+    dead at Marathon,' that I do not see where. I love the drama too. I
+    look to our old dramatists as to our Kings and princes in poetry. I
+    love them through all the deeps of their abominations. But the theatre
+    in those days was a better medium between the people and the poet; and
+    the press in those days was a less sufficient medium than now. Still,
+    the poet suffered by the theatre even then; and the reasons are very
+    obvious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How true&mdash;how true ... is all you say about critics. My convictions
+    follow you in every word. And I delighted to read your views of the
+    poet's right aspect towards criticism&mdash;I read them with the most
+    complete appreciation and sympathy. I have sometimes thought that it
+    would be a curious and instructive process, as illustrative of the
+    wisdom and apprehensiveness of critics, if anyone would collect the
+    critical soliloquies of every age touching its own literature, (as far
+    as such may be extant) and <i>confer</i> them with the literary product of
+    the said ages. Professor Wilson has begun something of the kind
+    apparently, in his initiatory paper of the last <i>Blackwood</i> number on
+    critics, beginning with Dryden&mdash;but he seems to have no design in his
+    notice&mdash;it is a mere critique on the critic. And then, he should have
+    begun earlier than Dryden&mdash;earlier even than Sir Philip Sydney, who in
+    the noble 'Discourse on Poetry,' gives such singular evidence of being
+    stone-critic-blind to the gods who moved around him. As far as I can
+    remember, he saw even Shakespeare but indifferently. Oh, it was in his
+    eyes quite an unillumed age, that period of Elizabeth which <i>we</i> see
+    full of suns! and few can see what is close to the eyes though they
+    run their heads against it; the denial of contemporary genius is the
+    rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest,
+    till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown. And here we
+    speak of understanding men, such as the Sydneys and the Drydens. Of
+    the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better
+    than might be expected of their badness, only the fact of their
+    <i>influence</i> is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not
+    be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the
+    world over. But the influence is for to-day, for this hour&mdash;not for
+    to-morrow and the day after&mdash;unless indeed, as you say, the poet do
+    himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it. Do you know
+    Tennyson?&mdash;that is, with a face to face knowledge? I have great
+    admiration for him. In execution, he is exquisite,&mdash;and, in music, a
+    most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs. That such a poet
+    should submit blindly to the suggestions of his critics, (I do not say
+    that suggestions from without may not be accepted with discrimination
+    sometimes, to the benefit of the acceptor), blindly and implicitly to
+    the suggestions of his critics, is much as if Babbage were to take my
+    opinion and undo his calculating machine by it. Napoleon called poetry
+    <i>science creuse</i>&mdash;which, although he was not scientific in poetry
+    himself, is true enough. But anybody is qualified, according to
+    everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chymistry
+    and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But
+    then these are more serious things.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;and it does delight me to hear of your garden full of roses and
+    soul full of comforts! You have the right to both&mdash;you have the key to
+    both. You have written enough to live by, though only beginning to
+    write, as you say of yourself. And this reminds me to remind you that
+    when I talked of coveting most the authorship of your 'Pippa,' I did
+    not mean to call it your finest work (you might reproach me for
+    <i>that</i>), but just to express a personal feeling. Do you know what it
+    is to covet your neighbour's poetry?&mdash;not his fame, but his poetry?&mdash;I
+    dare say not. You are too generous. And, in fact, beauty is beauty,
+    and, whether it comes by our own hand or another's, blessed be the
+    coming of it! <i>I</i>, besides, feel <i>that</i>. And yet&mdash;and yet, I have been
+    aware of a feeling within me which has spoken two or three times to
+    the effect of a wish, that I had been visited with the vision of
+    'Pippa,' before you&mdash;and <i>confiteor tibi</i>&mdash;I confess the baseness of
+    it. The conception is, to my mind, most exquisite and altogether
+    original&mdash;and the contrast in the working out of the plan, singularly
+    expressive of various faculty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is the poem under your thumb, emerging from it? and in what metre? May
+    I ask such questions?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And does Mr. Carlyle tell you that he has forbidden all 'singing' to
+    this perverse and froward generation, which should work and not sing?
+    And have you told Mr. Carlyle that song is work, and also the
+    condition of work? I am a devout sitter at his feet&mdash;and it is an
+    effort to me to think him wrong in anything&mdash;and once when he told me
+    to write prose and not verse, I fancied that his opinion was I had
+    mistaken my calling,&mdash;a fancy which in infinite kindness and
+    gentleness he stooped immediately to correct. I never shall forget the
+    grace of that kindness&mdash;but then! For <i>him</i> to have thought ill of
+    <i>me</i>, would not have been strange&mdash;I often think ill of myself, as God
+    knows. But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season,
+    the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my
+    thoughts ever since. I do not know him personally at all. But as his
+    disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems,
+    and I heard from him as a consequence. 'Dear and noble' he is
+    indeed&mdash;and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You
+    feel it so&mdash;do you not? And the 'dear sir' has let him have the
+    'letter of Cromwell,' I hope; and satisfied 'the obedient servant.'
+    The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the
+    upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the
+    Romans in the farmyard&mdash;and it seems all quite natural that it should
+    be so, both to geese and Romans!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for
+    reasons which I know and for reasons which I don't know. You will let
+    me be grateful to you,&mdash;will you not? You must, if you will or not.
+    And also&mdash;I would not wait for more leave&mdash;if I could but see your
+    desk&mdash;as I do your death's heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but
+    the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever faithfully yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">Elizabeth B. Barrett</span>.</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning&mdash;Spring!<br>
+[Post-mark, February 26, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in
+    Spring I shall see you, surely see you&mdash;for when did I once fail to
+    get whatever I had set my heart upon? As I ask myself sometimes, with
+    a strange fear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I took up this paper to write a great deal&mdash;now, I don't think I shall
+    write much&mdash;'I shall see you,' I say!
+</p>
+<p>
+    That 'Luria' you enquire about, shall be my last play&mdash;for it is but a
+    play, woe's me! I have one done here, 'A Soul's Tragedy,' as it is
+    properly enough called, but <i>that</i> would not do to end with (end I
+    will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello's country, and devotes himself
+    to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows&mdash;all in
+    my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my
+    Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan,
+    good true fellow, this one), and Domizia the Lady&mdash;loosen all these on
+    dear foolish (ravishing must his folly be), golden-hearted Luria, all
+    these with their worldly-wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways; and, for me,
+    the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with these as with
+    him,&mdash;so there can no good come of keeping this wild company any
+    longer, and 'Luria' and the other sadder ruin of one Chiappino&mdash;these
+    got rid of, I will do as you bid me, and&mdash;say first I have some
+    Romances and Lyrics, all dramatic, to dispatch, and <i>then</i>, I shall
+    stoop of a sudden under and out of this dancing ring of men and women
+    hand in hand, and stand still awhile, should my eyes dazzle, and when
+    that's over, they will be gone and you will be there, <i>pas vrai</i>? For,
+    as I think I told you, I always shiver involuntarily when I look&mdash;no,
+    glance&mdash;at this First Poem of mine to be. '<i>Now</i>,' I call it, what,
+    upon my soul,&mdash;for a solemn matter it is,&mdash;what is to be done <i>now</i>,
+    believed <i>now</i>, so far as it has been revealed to me&mdash;solemn words,
+    truly&mdash;and to find myself writing them to any one else! Enough now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I know Tennyson 'face to face,'&mdash;no more than that. I know Carlyle and
+    love him&mdash;know him so well, that I would have told you he had shaken
+    that grand head of his at 'singing,' so thoroughly does he love and
+    live by it. When I last saw him, a fortnight ago, he turned, from I
+    don't know what other talk, quite abruptly on me with, 'Did you never
+    try to write a <i>Song</i>? Of all things in the world, <i>that</i> I should be
+    proudest to do.' Then came his definition of a song&mdash;then, with an
+    appealing look to Mrs. C., 'I always say that some day in <i>spite of
+    nature and my stars</i>, I shall burst into a song' (he is not
+    mechanically 'musical,' he meant, and the music is the poetry, he
+    holds, and should enwrap the thought as Donne says 'an amber-drop
+    enwraps a bee'), and then he began to recite an old Scotch song,
+    stopping at the first rude couplet, 'The beginning words are merely to
+    set the tune, they tell me'&mdash;and then again at the couplet about&mdash;or,
+    to the effect that&mdash;'give me' (but in broad Scotch) 'give me but my
+    lass, I care not for my cogie.' '<i>He says</i>,' quoth Carlyle
+    magisterially, 'that if you allow him the love of his lass, you may
+    take away all else, even his cogie, his cup or can, and he cares not,'
+    just as a professor expounds Lycophron. And just before I left
+    England, six months ago, did not I hear him croon, if not certainly
+    sing, 'Charlie is my darling' ('my <i>darling</i>' with an adoring
+    emphasis), and then he stood back, as it were, from the song, to look
+    at it better, and said 'How must that notion of ideal wondrous
+    perfection have impressed itself in this old Jacobite's "young
+    Cavalier"&mdash;("They go to save their land, and the <i>young
+    Cavalier</i>!!")&mdash;when I who care nothing about such a rag of a man,
+    cannot but feel as he felt, in speaking his words after him!' After
+    saying which, he would be sure to counsel everybody to get their heads
+    clear of all singing! Don't let me forget to clap hands, we got the
+    letter, dearly bought as it was by the 'Dear Sirs,' &amp;c., and
+    insignificant scrap as it proved, but still it is got, to my
+    encouragement in diplomacy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Who told you of my sculls and spider webs&mdash;Horne? Last year I petted
+    extraordinarily a fine fellow, (a <i>garden</i> spider&mdash;there was the
+    singularity,&mdash;the thin clever-even-for-a-spider-sort, and they are
+    <i>so</i> 'spirited and sly,' all of them&mdash;this kind makes a long cone of
+    web, with a square chamber of vantage at the end, and there he sits
+    loosely and looks about), a great fellow that housed himself, with
+    real gusto, in the jaws of a great scull, whence he watched me as I
+    wrote, and I remember speaking to Horne about his good points.
+    Phrenologists look gravely at that great scull, by the way, and hope,
+    in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end. He looks
+    quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind. I have no little
+    insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with
+    a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for
+    instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same&mdash;portraits
+    obliged to face each other for ever,&mdash;prints put together in
+    portfolios. My Polidoro's perfect Andromeda along with 'Boors
+    Carousing,' by Ostade,&mdash;where I found her,&mdash;my own father's doing, or
+    I would say more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And when I have said I like 'Pippa' better than anything else I have
+    done yet, I shall have answered all you bade me. And now may <i>I</i>
+    begin questioning? No,&mdash;for it is all a pure delight to me, so that
+    you do but write. I never was without good, kind, generous friends and
+    lovers, so they say&mdash;so they were and are,&mdash;perhaps they came at the
+    wrong time&mdash;I never wanted them&mdash;though that makes no difference in my
+    gratitude I trust,&mdash;but I know myself&mdash;surely&mdash;and always have done
+    so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a
+    boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, <i>his</i> marginal note that
+    'the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in
+    a sane human being.' So I never deceived myself much, nor called my
+    feelings for people other than they were. And who has a right to say,
+    if I have not, that I had, but I said that, supernatural or no. Pray
+    tell me, too, of your present doings and projects, and never write
+    yourself 'grateful' to me, who <i>am</i> grateful, very grateful to
+    you,&mdash;for none of your words but I take in earnest&mdash;and tell me if
+    Spring <i>be not</i> coming, come, and I will take to writing the gravest
+    of letters, because this beginning is for gladness' sake, like
+    Carlyle's song couplet. My head aches a little to-day too, and, as
+    poor dear Kirke White said to the moon, from his heap of mathematical
+    papers,
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">'I throw aside the learned sheet;<br>
+I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so&mdash;mildly sweet.'
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>
+    Out on the foolish phrase, but there's hard rhyming without it.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours faithfully,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Robert Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new
+    'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets.
+    To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow&mdash;it feels
+    as cold underfoot&mdash;and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the
+    turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart,
+    and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. <i>That</i> is
+    my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the <i>new style</i>! A little
+    later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from
+    which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at
+    all. How happy you are, to be able to listen to the 'birds' without
+    the commentary of the east wind, which, like other commentaries,
+    spoils the music. And how happy I am to listen to you, when you write
+    such kind open-hearted letters to me! I am delighted to hear all you
+    say to me of yourself, and 'Luria,' and the spider, and to do him no
+    dishonour in the association, of the great teacher of the age,
+    Carlyle, who is also yours and mine. He fills the office of a
+    poet&mdash;does he not?&mdash;by analysing humanity back into its elements, to
+    the destruction of the conventions of the hour. That is&mdash;strictly
+    speaking&mdash;the office of the poet, is it not?&mdash;and he discharges it
+    fully, and with a wider intelligibility perhaps as far as the
+    contemporary period is concerned, than if he did forthwith 'burst into
+    a song.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    But how I do wander!&mdash;I meant to say, and I will call myself back to
+    say, that spring will really come some day I hope and believe, and the
+    warm settled weather with it, and that then I shall be probably fitter
+    for certain pleasures than I can appear even to myself now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, in the meantime, I seem to see 'Luria' instead of you; I have
+    visions and dream dreams. And the 'Soul's Tragedy,' which sounds to me
+    like the step of a ghost of an old Drama! and you are not to think
+    that I blaspheme the Drama, dear Mr. Browning; or that I ever thought
+    of exhorting you to give up the 'solemn robes' and tread of the
+    buskin. It is the theatre which vulgarises these things; the modern
+    theatre in which we see no altar! where the thymelé is replaced by the
+    caprice of a popular actor. And also, I have a fancy that your great
+    dramatic power would work more clearly and audibly in the less
+    definite mould&mdash;but you ride your own faculty as Oceanus did his
+    sea-horse, 'directing it by your will'; and woe to the impertinence,
+    which would dare to say 'turn this way' or 'turn from that way'&mdash;it
+    should not be <i>my</i> impertinence. Do not think I blaspheme the Drama. I
+    have gone through 'all such reading as should never be read' (that is,
+    by women!), through my love of it on the contrary. And the dramatic
+    faculty is strong in you&mdash;and therefore, as 'I speak unto a wise man,
+    judge what I say.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    For myself and my own doings, you shall hear directly what I have been
+    doing, and what I am about to do. Some years ago, as perhaps you may
+    have heard, (but I hope not, for the fewer who hear of it the
+    better)&mdash;some years ago, I translated or rather <i>undid</i> into English,
+    the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus. To speak of this production moderately
+    (not modestly), it is the most miserable of all miserable versions of
+    the class. It was completed (in the first place) in thirteen days&mdash;the
+    iambics thrown into blank verse, the lyrics into rhymed octosyllabics
+    and the like,&mdash;and the whole together as cold as Caucasus, and as flat
+    as the nearest plain. To account for this, the haste may be something;
+    but if my mind had been properly awakened at the time, I might have
+    made still more haste and done it better. Well,&mdash;the comfort is, that
+    the little book was unadvertised and unknown, and that most of the
+    copies (through my entreaty of my father) are shut up in the wardrobe
+    of his bedroom. If ever I get well I shall show my joy by making a
+    bonfire of them. In the meantime, the recollection of this sin of mine
+    has been my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot
+    on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst
+    not say I did it'&mdash;I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away
+    the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an
+    honest straightforward proof of repentance&mdash;was it not? and I have
+    completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If
+    Æschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little
+    breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed according
+    to his claims, but in proportion to my faculty. Whether I shall ever
+    publish or not (remember) remains to be considered&mdash;that is a
+    different side of the subject. If I do, it <i>may</i> be in a
+    magazine&mdash;or&mdash;but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head
+    to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,&mdash;not a long
+    poem, but a monologue of Æschylus as he sate a blind exile on the
+    flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before
+    the eagle cracked his great massy skull with a stone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But my chief <i>intention</i> just now is the writing of a sort of
+    novel-poem&mdash;a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,'
+    running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into
+    drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so,
+    meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and
+    speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my
+    intention. It is not mature enough yet to be called a plan. I am
+    waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one,
+    and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties
+    with them in the treatment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Who told me of your skulls and spiders? Why, couldn't I know it
+    without being told? Did Cornelius Agrippa know nothing without being
+    told? Mr. Horne never spoke it to my ears&mdash;(I never saw him face to
+    face in my life, although we have corresponded for long and long), and
+    he never wrote it to my eyes. Perhaps he does not know that I know it.
+    Well, then! if I were to say that <i>I heard it from you yourself</i>, how
+    would you answer? <i>And it was so.</i> Why, are you not aware that these
+    are the days of mesmerism and clairvoyance? Are you an infidel? I have
+    believed in your skulls for the last year, for my part.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I have some sympathy in your habit of feeling for chairs and
+    tables. I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little
+    clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly
+    because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I
+    was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the
+    pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses
+    written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them,
+    but from pure gratitude. Other books I used to treat in a like
+    manner&mdash;and to talk to the trees and the flowers, was a natural
+    inclination&mdash;but between me and that time, the cypresses grow thick
+    and dark.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they <i>do</i>, are
+    they not bitter to your taste&mdash;do you not wish them <i>un</i>fulfilled? Oh,
+    this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost
+    believe&mdash;but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of
+    the window&mdash;at least, for me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course you are <i>self-conscious</i>&mdash;How could you be a poet otherwise?
+    Tell me.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever faithfully yours,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+E.B.B.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+    And was the little book written with Mr. Mill, pure metaphysics, or
+    what?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Miss Barrett,&mdash;I seem to find of a sudden&mdash;surely I knew
+    before&mdash;anyhow, I <i>do</i> find now, that with the octaves on octaves of
+    quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp
+    with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you
+    touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this
+    morning, 'just escaping' &amp;c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as
+    they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do!
+    See now, this sad feeling is so strange to me, that I must write it
+    out, <i>must</i>, and you might give me great, the greatest pleasure for
+    years and yet find me as passive as a stone used to wine libations,
+    and as ready in expressing my sense of them, but when I am pained, I
+    find the old theory of the uselessness of communicating the
+    circumstances of it, singularly untenable. I have been 'spoiled' in
+    this world&mdash;to such an extent, indeed, that I often <i>reason</i> out&mdash;make
+    clear to myself&mdash;that I might very properly, so far as myself am
+    concerned, take any step that would peril the whole of my future
+    happiness&mdash;because the past is gained, secure, and on record; and,
+    though not another of the old days should dawn on me, I shall not have
+    lost my life, no! Out of all which you are&mdash;please&mdash;to make a sort of
+    sense, if you can, so as to express that I have been deeply struck to
+    find a new real unmistakable sorrow along with these as real but not
+    so new joys you have given me. How strangely this connects itself in
+    my mind with another subject in your note! I looked at that
+    translation for a minute, not longer, years ago, knowing nothing about
+    it or you, and I <i>only</i> looked to see what rendering a passage had
+    received that was often in my thoughts.<a href="#note-3"><b><u>3</u></b></a> I forget your version (it
+    was not <i>yours</i>, my <i>'yours' then</i>; I mean I had no extraordinary
+    interest about it), but the original makes Prometheus (telling over
+    his bestowments towards human happiness) say, as something <span title="peraiterô tônde">&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&alpha;&iota;&tau;&epsilon;&rho;&omega; &tau;&omega;&nu;&delta;&epsilon;</span>,
+    that he stopped mortals <span title="mê proderkesthai moron--to poion eurôn">&mu;&eta; &pi;&rho;&omicron;&delta;&epsilon;&rho;&kappa;&epsilon;&sigma;&theta;&alpha;&iota; &mu;&omicron;&rho;&omicron;&nu;&mdash;&tau;&omicron; &pi;&omicron;&iota;&omicron;&nu; &epsilon;&upsilon;&rho;&omega;&nu;</span>, asks the Chorus,
+    <span title="têsde pharmakon nosou">&tau;&eta;&sigma;&delta;&epsilon; &phi;&alpha;&rho;&mu;&alpha;&kappa;&omicron;&nu; &nu;&omicron;&sigma;&omicron;&upsilon;</span>?
+    Whereto he replies, <span title="tuphlas en autois elpidas katôkisa">
+    &tau;&upsilon;&phi;&lambda;&alpha;&sigmaf; &epsilon;&nu; &alpha;&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&iota;&sigmaf; &epsilon;&lambda;&pi;&iota;&delta;&alpha;&sigmaf; &kappa;&alpha;&tau;&omega;&kappa;&iota;&sigma;&alpha;</span>
+    (what you hear men dissertate upon by the hour, as proving
+    the immortality of the soul apart from revelation, undying yearnings,
+    restless longings, instinctive desires which, unless to be eventually
+    indulged, it were cruel to plant in us, &amp;c. &amp;c.). But,
+    <span title="meg' ôphelêma tout' edôrêsô brotois">&mu;&epsilon;&gamma;' &omega;&phi;&epsilon;&lambda;&eta;&mu;&alpha; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&tau;' &epsilon;&delta;&omega;&rho;&eta;&sigma;&omega; &beta;&rho;&omicron;&tau;&omicron;&iota;&sigmaf;</span>! concludes the chorus, like a sigh
+    from the admitted Eleusinian Æschylus was! You cannot think how this
+    foolish circumstance struck me this evening, so I thought I would e'en
+    tell you at once and be done with it. Are you not my dear friend
+    already, and shall I not use you? And pray you not to 'lean out of the
+    window' when my own foot is only on the stair; do wait a little for
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours <i>ever</i>,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">March 5, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I did not mean to strike a 'tragic chord'; indeed I did not!
+    Sometimes one's melancholy will be uppermost and sometimes one's
+    mirth,&mdash;the world goes round, you know&mdash;and I suppose that in that
+    letter of mine the melancholy took the turn. As to 'escaping with my
+    life,' it was just a phrase&mdash;at least it did not signify more than
+    that the sense of mortality, and discomfort of it, is peculiarly
+    strong with me when east winds are blowing and waters freezing. For
+    the rest, I am <i>essentially better</i>, and have been for several
+    winters; and I feel as if it were intended for me to live and not die,
+    and I am reconciled to the feeling. Yes! I am satisfied to 'take up'
+    with the blind hopes again, and have them in the house with me, for
+    all that I sit by the window. By the way, did the chorus utter scorn
+    in the <span title="meg' ôphelêma">&mu;&epsilon;&gamma;' &omega;&phi;&epsilon;&lambda;&eta;&mu;&alpha;</span>. I think not. It is well to fly towards
+    the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of
+    wings against the windowpanes, is it not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is an obscurer passage, on which I covet your thoughts, where
+    Prometheus, after the sublime declaration that, with a full knowledge
+    of the penalty reserved for him, he had sinned of free will and
+    choice&mdash;goes on to say&mdash;or to seem to say&mdash;that he had <i>not</i>, however,
+    foreseen the extent and detail of the torment, the skiey rocks, and
+    the friendless desolation. See v. 275. The intention of the poet
+    might have been to magnify to his audience the torment of the
+    martyrdom&mdash;but the heroism of the martyr diminishes in proportion&mdash;and
+    there appears to be a contradiction, and oversight. Or is my view
+    wrong? Tell me. And tell me too, if Æschylus not the divinest of all
+    the divine Greek souls? People say after Quintilian, that he is savage
+    and rude; a sort of poetic Orson, with his locks all wild. But I will
+    not hear it of my master! He is strong as Zeus is&mdash;and not as a
+    boxer&mdash;and tender as Power itself, which always is tenderest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not
+    to think&mdash;whatever I may have written or implied&mdash;that I lean either
+    to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through
+    darkness instead of light, and speaks of it wailingly. Now, may God
+    forbid that it should be so with me. I am not desponding by nature,
+    and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily
+    seclusion, I come out with two learnt lessons (as I sometimes say and
+    oftener feel),&mdash;the wisdom of cheerfulness&mdash;and the duty of social
+    intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in
+    society; it has been a wholesome and not unnatural reaction. And
+    altogether, I may say that the earth looks the brighter to me in
+    proportion to my own deprivations. The laburnum trees and rose trees
+    are plucked up by the roots&mdash;but the sunshine is in their places, and
+    the root of the sunshine is above the storms. What we call Life is a
+    condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and
+    wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these
+    faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to <i>happiness</i>, and I
+    feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.
+    Still, it is obvious too that you have been spared, up to this time,
+    the great natural afflictions, against which we are nearly all called,
+    sooner or later, to struggle and wrestle&mdash;or your step would not be
+    'on the stair' quite so lightly. And so, we turn to you, dear Mr.
+    Browning, for comfort and gentle spiriting! Remember that as you owe
+    your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. And I
+    thank you for some of it already.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also, writing as from friend to friend&mdash;as you say rightly that we
+    are&mdash;I ought to confess that of one class of griefs (which has been
+    called too the bitterest), I know as little as you. The cruelty of the
+    world, and the treason of it&mdash;the unworthiness of the dearest; of
+    these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal
+    experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions,
+    and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the
+    moralists. People have been kind to <i>me</i>, even without understanding
+    me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:&mdash;nay, have not the
+    very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as
+    sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world,
+    though I am not of it, as you see. And I have the cream of it in your
+    friendship, and a little more, and I do not envy much the milkers of
+    the cows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How kind you are!&mdash;how kindly and gently you speak to me! Some things
+    you say are very touching, and some, surprising; and although I am
+    aware that you unconsciously exaggerate what I can be to you, yet it
+    is delightful to be broad awake and think of you as my friend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Faithfully yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">Elizabeth B. Barrett</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+ [Post-mark, March 12, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter made me so happy, dear Miss Barrett, that I have kept
+    quiet this while; is it too great a shame if I begin to want more
+    good news of you, and to say so? Because there has been a bitter wind
+    ever since. Will you grant me a great favour? Always when you write,
+    though about your own works, not Greek plays merely, put me in,
+    <i>always</i>, a little official bulletin-line that shall say 'I am better'
+    or 'still better,' will you? That is done, then&mdash;and now, what do I
+    wish to tell you first? The poem you propose to make, for the times;
+    the fearless fresh living work you describe, is the <i>only</i> Poem to be
+    undertaken now by you or anyone that <i>is</i> a Poet at all; the only
+    reality, only effective piece of service to be rendered God and man;
+    it is what I have been all my life intending to do, and now shall be
+    much, much nearer doing, since you will along with me. And you <i>can</i>
+    do it, I know and am sure&mdash;so sure, that I could find in my heart to
+    be jealous of your stopping in the way even to translate the
+    Prometheus; though the accompanying monologue will make amends too. Or
+    shall I set you a task I meant for myself once upon a time?&mdash;which,
+    oh, how you would fulfil! Restore the Prometheus <span title="purphoros">&pi;&upsilon;&rho;&phi;&omicron;&rho;&omicron;&sigmaf;</span> as
+    Shelley did the <span title="Lyomenos">&Lambda;&upsilon;&omicron;&mu;&epsilon;&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf;</span>; when I say 'restore,' I know, or
+    very much fear, that the <span title="purphoros">&pi;&upsilon;&rho;&phi;&omicron;&rho;&omicron;&sigmaf;</span> was the same with the
+    <span title="purkaeus">&pi;&upsilon;&rho;&kappa;&alpha;&epsilon;&upsilon;&sigmaf;</span> which, by a fragment, we sorrowfully ascertain to
+    have been a Satyric Drama; but surely the capabilities of the subject
+    are much greater than in this, we now wonder at; nay, they include all
+    those of this last&mdash;for just see how magnificently the story unrolls
+    itself. The beginning of Jupiter's dynasty, the calm in Heaven after
+    the storm, the ascending&mdash;(stop, I will get the book and give the
+    words), <span title="opôs tachista ton patrôon eis thronon kathezet', euthus daimosin nemei gera alloisin alla--k.t.l.">&omicron;&pi;&omega;&sigmaf; &tau;&alpha;&chi;&iota;&sigma;&tau;&alpha; &tau;&omicron;&nu; &pi;&alpha;&tau;&rho;&omega;&omicron;&nu; &epsilon;&iota;&sigmaf; &theta;&rho;&omicron;&nu;&omicron;&nu; &kappa;&alpha;&theta;&epsilon;&zeta;&epsilon;&tau;', &epsilon;&upsilon;&theta;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &delta;&alpha;&iota;&mu;&omicron;&sigma;&iota;&nu; &nu;&epsilon;&mu;&epsilon;&iota; &gamma;&epsilon;&rho;&alpha; &alpha;&lambda;&lambda;&omicron;&iota;&sigma;&iota;&nu; &alpha;&lambda;&lambda;&alpha;&mdash;&kappa;.&tau;.&lambda;.</span>,<u><b><a href="#note-4">4</a></b></u> all the while
+    Prometheus being the first among the first in honour, as
+    <span title="kaitoi theoisi tois neois toutois gera tis allos, ê 'gô, pantelôs diôrise">&kappa;&alpha;&iota;&tau;&omicron;&iota; &theta;&epsilon;&omicron;&iota;&sigma;&iota; &tau;&omicron;&iota;&sigmaf; &nu;&epsilon;&omicron;&iota;&sigmaf; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&iota;&sigmaf; &gamma;&epsilon;&rho;&alpha; &tau;&iota;&sigmaf; &alpha;&lambda;&lambda;&omicron;&sigmaf;, &eta; '&gamma;&omega;, &pi;&alpha;&nu;&tau;&epsilon;&lambda;&omega;&sigmaf; &delta;&iota;&omega;&rho;&iota;&sigma;&epsilon;</span>?<u><b><a href="#note-5">5</a></b></u>
+    then the one black hand-cloudlet storming the joyous
+    blue and gold everywhere, <span title="brotôn de tôn talaipôrôn logon ouk eschen oudena">&beta;&rho;&omicron;&tau;&omega;&nu; &delta;&epsilon; &tau;&omega;&nu; &tau;&alpha;&lambda;&alpha;&iota;&pi;&omega;&rho;&omega;&nu; &lambda;&omicron;&gamma;&omicron;&nu; &omicron;&upsilon;&kappa; &epsilon;&sigma;&chi;&epsilon;&nu; &omicron;&upsilon;&delta;&epsilon;&nu;&alpha;</span>,<u><b><a href="#note-6">6</a></b></u> and the design of Zeus to blot out the whole race,
+    and plant a new one. And Prometheus with his grand solitary
+    <span title="egô d' etolmêsa">&epsilon;&gamma;&omega; &delta;' &epsilon;&tau;&omicron;&lambda;&mu;&eta;&sigma;&alpha;</span>,<u><b><a href="#note-7">7</a></b></u> and his saving them, as the <i>first</i> good, from
+    annihilation. <a name="39"></a>Then comes the darkening brow of Zeus, and estrangement
+    from the benign circle of grateful gods, and the dissuasion of old
+    confederates, and all the Right that one may fancy in Might, the
+    strongest reasons <span title="pauesthai tropou philanthrôpou">&pi;&alpha;&upsilon;&epsilon;&sigma;&theta;&alpha;&iota; &tau;&rho;&omicron;&pi;&omicron;&upsilon; &phi;&iota;&lambda;&alpha;&nu;&theta;&rho;&omega;&pi;&omicron;&upsilon;</span><u><b><a href="#note-8">8</a></b></u> coming
+    from the own mind of the Titan, if you will, and all the while he
+    shall be proceeding steadily in the alleviation of the sufferings of
+    mortals whom, <span title="nêpious ontas to prin, ennous kai phrenôn epêbolous ethêke">&nu;&eta;&pi;&iota;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &omicron;&nu;&tau;&alpha;&sigmaf; &tau;&omicron; &pi;&rho;&iota;&nu;, &epsilon;&nu;&nu;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &kappa;&alpha;&iota; &phi;&rho;&epsilon;&nu;&omega;&nu; &epsilon;&pi;&eta;&beta;&omicron;&lambda;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &epsilon;&theta;&eta;&kappa;&epsilon;</span>,<u><b><a href="#note-9">9</a></b></u> while still, in proportion, shall the doom he is
+    about to draw on himself, manifest itself more and more distinctly,
+    till at the last, he shall achieve the salvation of man, body (by the
+    gift of fire) and soul (by even those <span title="tuphlai elpides">&tau;&upsilon;&phi;&lambda;&alpha;&iota; &epsilon;&lambda;&pi;&iota;&delta;&epsilon;&sigmaf;</span>,<u><b><a href="#note-10">10</a></b></u>
+    hopes of immortality), and so having rendered him utterly, according
+    to the mythos here, <i>independent</i> of Jove&mdash;for observe, Prometheus in
+    the play never talks of helping mortals more, of fearing for them
+    more, of even benefiting them more by his sufferings. The rest is
+    between Jove and himself; he will reveal the master-secret to Jove
+    when he shall have released him, &amp;c. There is no stipulation that the
+    gifts to mortals shall be continued; indeed, by the fact that it is
+    Prometheus who hangs on Caucasus while 'the ephemerals possess fire,'
+    one sees that somehow mysteriously <i>they</i> are past Jove's harming now.
+    Well, this wholly achieved, the price is as wholly accepted, and off
+    into the darkness passes in calm triumphant grandeur the Titan, with
+    Strength and Violence, and Vulcan's silent and downcast eyes, and then
+    the gold clouds and renewed flushings of felicity shut up the scene
+    again, with Might in his old throne again, yet with a new element of
+    mistrust, and conscious shame, and fear, that writes significantly
+    enough above all the glory and rejoicing that all is not as it was,
+    nor will ever be. Such might be the framework of your Drama, just what
+    cannot help striking one at first glance, and would not such a Drama
+    go well before your translation? Do think of this and tell me&mdash;it
+    nearly writes itself. You see, I meant the <span title="meg' ôphelêma">&mu;&epsilon;&gamma;' &omega;&phi;&epsilon;&lambda;&eta;&mu;&alpha;</span><u><b><a href="#note-11">11</a></b></u>
+    to be a deep great truth; if there were no life beyond this, I think
+    the hope in one would be an incalculable blessing <i>for</i> this life,
+    which is melancholy for one like Æschylus to feel, if he could <i>only</i>
+    hope, because the argument as to the ulterior good of those hopes is
+    cut clean away, and what had he left?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I do not find it take away from my feeling of the magnanimity of
+    Prometheus that he should, in truth, complain (as he does from
+    beginning to end) of what he finds himself suffering. He could have
+    prevented all, and can stop it now&mdash;of that he never thinks for a
+    moment. That was the old Greek way&mdash;they never let an antagonistic
+    passion neutralise the other which was to influence the man to his
+    praise or blame. A Greek hero fears exceedingly and battles it out,
+    cries out when he is wounded and fights on, does not say his love or
+    hate makes him see no danger or feel no pain. Æschylus from first word
+    to last (<span title="idesthe me, oia paschô">&iota;&delta;&epsilon;&sigma;&theta;&epsilon; &mu;&epsilon;, &omicron;&iota;&alpha; &pi;&alpha;&sigma;&chi;&omega;</span><b><a href="#note-12">12</a></b>
+    to <span title="esoras me, hôs ekdika paschô">
+    &epsilon;&sigma;&omicron;&rho;&alpha;&sigmaf; &mu;&epsilon;, &omega;&sigmaf;
+
+&epsilon;&kappa;&delta;&iota;&kappa;&alpha; &pi;&alpha;&sigma;&chi;&omega;</span><b><a href="#note-13">13</a></b>) insists on the unmitigated reality of the
+    punishment which only the sun, and divine ether, and the godhead of
+    his mother can comprehend; still, still that is only what I suppose
+    Æschylus to have done&mdash;in your poem you shall make Prometheus our way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now enough of Greek, which I am fast forgetting (for I never look
+    at books I loved once)&mdash;it was your mention of the translation that
+    brought out the old fast fading outlines of the Poem in my brain&mdash;the
+    Greek poem, that is. You think&mdash;for I must get to <i>you</i>&mdash;that I
+    'unconsciously exaggerate what you are to me.' Now, you don't know
+    what <i>that</i> is, nor can I very well tell you, because the language
+    with which I talk to myself of these matters is spiritual Attic, and
+    'loves contractions,' as grammarians say; but I read it myself, and
+    well know what it means, that's why I told you I was self-conscious&mdash;I
+    meant that I never yet mistook my own feelings, one for
+    another&mdash;there! Of what use is talking? Only do you stay here with me
+    in the 'House' these few short years. Do you think I shall see you in
+    two months, three months? I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to
+    like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated
+    it&mdash;have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by
+    foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true
+    time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I
+    have done most of what is to be done, <i>any</i> lodge in a garden of
+    cucumbers for me! I don't even care about reading now&mdash;the world, and
+    pictures of it, rather than writings about the world! But you must
+    read books in order to get words and forms for 'the public' if you
+    <i>write</i>, and <i>that</i> you needs must do, if you fear God. I have no
+    pleasure in writing myself&mdash;none, in the mere act&mdash;though all pleasure
+    in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real
+    best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a
+    poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other! But I think
+    you like the operation of writing as I should like that of painting or
+    making music, do you not? After all, there is a great delight in the
+    heart of the thing; and use and forethought have made me ready at all
+    times to set to work&mdash;but&mdash;I don't know why&mdash;my heart sinks whenever I
+    open this desk, and rises when I shut it. Yet but for what I have
+    written you would never have heard of me&mdash;and <i>through</i> what you have
+    written, not properly <i>for</i> it, I love and wish you well! Now, will
+    you remember what I began my letter by saying&mdash;how you have promised
+    to let me know if my wishing takes effect, and if you still continue
+    better? And not even ... (since we are learned in magnanimity) don't
+    even tell me that or anything else, if it teases you,&mdash;but wait your
+    own good time, and know me for ... if these words were but my own, and
+    fresh-minted for this moment's use!...
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours ever faithfully,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">50 Wimpole Street: March 20, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whenever I delay to write to you, dear Mr. Browning, it is not, be
+    sure, that I take my 'own good time,' but submit to my own bad time.
+    It was kind of you to wish to know how I was, and not unkind of me to
+    suspend my answer to your question&mdash;for indeed I have not been very
+    well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather!
+    this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be
+    well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been
+    nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be&mdash;I only grow
+    weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a
+    corner&mdash;and then all this must end! April is coming. There will be
+    both a May and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps,
+    after all, we may. And as to seeing <i>you</i> besides, I observe that you
+    distrust me, and that perhaps you penetrate my morbidity and guess how
+    when the moment comes to see a living human face to which I am not
+    accustomed, I shrink and grow pale in the spirit. Do you? You are
+    learned in human nature, and you know the consequences of leading such
+    a secluded life as mine&mdash;notwithstanding all my fine philosophy about
+    social duties and the like&mdash;well&mdash;if you have such knowledge or if you
+    have it not, I cannot say, but I do say that I will indeed see you
+    when the warm weather has revived me a little, and put the earth 'to
+    rights' again so as to make pleasures of the sort possible. For if you
+    think that I shall not <i>like</i> to see you, you are wrong, for all your
+    learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first&mdash;though I am not, in
+    writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that
+    have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely&mdash;quivering at a
+    step and breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And what you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts
+    of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life
+    full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with
+    <i>sorrow</i>, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I
+    was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the
+    world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than
+    I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the
+    country&mdash;had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and
+    poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards
+    the ground like an untrained honeysuckle&mdash;and but for <i>one</i>, in my own
+    house&mdash;but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green
+    like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in&mdash;and
+    domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about
+    the grass. And so time passed, and passed&mdash;and afterwards, when my
+    illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all
+    done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the
+    threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some
+    bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life had given me room and
+    time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was about to
+    leave&mdash;that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters
+    of the earth were <i>names</i> to me, that I had beheld no great mountain
+    or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read
+    Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also
+    know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live
+    on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that
+    I labour under signal disadvantages&mdash;that I am, in a manner, as a
+    <i>blind poet</i>? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have
+    had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness
+    and self-analysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main.
+    But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering,
+    ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life
+    and man, for some....
+</p>
+<p>
+    But all grumbling is a vile thing. We should all thank God for our
+    measures of life, and think them enough for each of us. I write so,
+    that you may not mistake what I wrote before in relation to society,
+    although you do not see from my point of view; and that you may
+    understand what I mean fully when I say, that I have lived all my
+    chief <i>joys</i>, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that
+    name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone.
+    Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I
+    write&mdash;it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink
+    and breathe,&mdash;but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of
+    being, passionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition
+    surely&mdash;not always&mdash;but when the wheel goes round and the procession
+    is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? oh&mdash;it must be so. For the
+    rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular
+    case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly
+    transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of
+    power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment;
+    and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote
+    a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took
+    me at the right moment! I have a <i>seasonable</i> humility, I do assure
+    you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How delightful to talk about oneself; but as you 'tempted me and I did
+    eat,' I entreat your longsuffering of my sin, and ah! if you would
+    but sin back so in turn! You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious
+    harmony ... as in the 'si no, si no' of an Italian duet. I want to see
+    more of men, and you have seen too much, you say. I am in ignorance,
+    and you, in satiety. 'You don't even care about reading now.' Is it
+    possible? And I am as 'fresh' about reading, as ever I was&mdash;as long as
+    I keep out of the shadow of the dictionaries and of theological
+    controversies, and the like. Shall I whisper it to you under the
+    memory of the last rose of last summer? <i>I am very fond of romances</i>;
+    yes! and I read them not only as some wise people are known to do, for
+    the sake of the eloquence here and the sentiment there, and the
+    graphic intermixtures here and there, but for the story! just as
+    little children would, sitting on their papa's knee. My childish love
+    of a story never wore out with my love of plum cake, and now there is
+    not a hole in it. I make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the
+    romances that other people are kind enough to write&mdash;and woe to the
+    miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in
+    you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If
+    you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself&mdash;I give you
+    notice,&mdash;with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite
+    laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,'
+    with a sort of deprecating reference to the <i>descriptions</i> in the
+    book, just as if I never read a novel&mdash;<i>I!</i> I wrote a confession back
+    to him which made him shake his head perhaps, and now I confess to
+    <i>you</i>, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague,
+    listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not
+    even 'see the better part,' I am so silly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah! you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! <i>I</i>, who have just
+    escaped with my life, after treading Milton's ground, you would send
+    me to Æschylus's. No, <i>I do not dare</i>. And besides ... I am inclined
+    to think that we want new <i>forms</i>, as well as thoughts. The old gods
+    are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds, classical
+    moulds, as they are so improperly called? If it is a necessity of Art
+    to do so, why then those critics are right who hold that Art is
+    exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my
+    part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be
+    the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to <i>Life</i>,
+    and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these
+    conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it
+    instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For
+    there is poetry <i>everywhere</i>; the 'treasure' (see the old fable) lies
+    all over the field. And then Christianity is a worthy <i>myth</i>, and
+    poetically acceptable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had much to say to you, or at least something, of the 'blind hopes'
+    &amp;c., but am ashamed to take a step into a new sheet. If you mean 'to
+    travel,' why, I shall have to miss you. Do you really mean it? How is
+    the play going on? and the poem?
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever and truly yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+E.B.B.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 31, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When you read Don Quixote, my dear romance-reader, do you ever notice
+    that flower of an incident of good fellowship where the friendly
+    Squire of Him of the Moon, or the Looking glasses, (I forget which)
+    passes to Sancho's dry lips, (all under a cork-tree one morning)&mdash;a
+    plump wine-skin,&mdash;and do you admire dear brave Miguel's knowledge of
+    thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously
+    considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be,
+    fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a
+    deep musing of an hour's length, or thereabouts, and then ... mark ...
+    only <i>then</i>, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with ... such a
+    piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and
+    the Teian (if he wasn't a Byzantine monk, alas!) and our Mr. Kenyon's
+    stately self&mdash;(since my own especial poet <i>à moi</i>, that can do all
+    with anybody, only 'sips like a fly,' she says, and so cares not to
+    compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)&mdash;Well, then ...
+    (oh, I must get quick to the sentence's end, and be brief as an
+    oracle-explainer!)&mdash;the giver is you and the taker is I, and the
+    letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and
+    the brown study is&mdash;how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this
+    new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among
+    men, that have each and all their friend, so they say (... not that I
+    believe all they say&mdash;they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,&mdash;I once
+    was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion
+    'Dere Smith,&mdash;I calls you "<i>dere</i>" ... because you are so in your
+    shop!')&mdash;and the great sigh is,&mdash;there is no deserving nor being
+    grateful at all,&mdash;and the breaking silence is, and the praise is ...
+    ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for
+    you&mdash;10 strikes by the clock now&mdash;tell me if at 10 this morning you
+    feel any good from my heart's wishes for you&mdash;I would give you all you
+    want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that
+    should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at
+    me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid ...
+    and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its
+    owner 'travels' next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port
+    wine&mdash;<i>Dii meliora piis</i>, and, among them to
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours every where, and at all times yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have all to say yet&mdash;next letter. R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, April 16, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the
+    other evening, of Mr. Kenyon&mdash;how this wind must hurt you! And
+    yesterday I had occasion to go your way&mdash;past, that is, Wimpole
+    Street, the end of it,&mdash;and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave
+    from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I
+    came to yours,&mdash;much least than less, look up when I did come there.
+    So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather
+    loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of
+    certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the 'Athenæum'
+    last night,&mdash;one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it&mdash;'to such
+    little purpose' said my friend&mdash;'for he is so inoffensive&mdash;now, if one
+    were to style <i>you</i> that&mdash;' 'Or you'&mdash;I said&mdash;and so we hugged
+    ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the
+    papers to-day about Maynooth, and a meeting presided over by Lord
+    Mayor Gibbs, and the Reverend Mr. Somebody's speech. And Mrs. Norton
+    has gone and book-made at a great rate about the Prince of Wales,
+    pleasantly putting off till his time all that used of old to be put
+    off till his mother's time;&mdash;altogether, I should dearly like to hear
+    from you, but not till the wind goes, and sun comes&mdash;because I shall
+    see Mr. Kenyon next week and get him to tell me some more. By the way,
+    do you suppose anybody else looks like him? If you do, the first room
+    full of real London people you go among you will fancy to be lighted
+    up by a saucer of burning salt and spirits of wine in the back ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Monday&mdash;last night when I could do nothing else I began to write to
+    you, such writing as you have seen&mdash;strange! The proper time and
+    season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech&mdash;when
+    ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of
+    mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you
+    should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and <i>that</i> is
+    sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and
+    sorrow,&mdash;and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little
+    stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw
+    breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But <i>you</i> are
+    the real deep wonder of a creature,&mdash;and I sail these paper-boats on
+    you rather impudently. But I always mean to be very grave one
+    day,&mdash;when I am in better spirits and can go <i>fuori di me</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that all you gain
+    by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done
+    rightly in trusting to your innate ideas&mdash;or not rightly in
+    distrusting them, as the case may be. You get, too, a little ...
+    perhaps a considerable, good, in finding the world's accepted <i>moulds</i>
+    everywhere, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal,&mdash;but
+    not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After
+    this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to
+    yourself, that's all. Three scratches with a pen,<a href="#note-14"><b>14</b></a> even with this
+    pen,&mdash;and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and
+    heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I
+    have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not
+    this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ...
+    in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that
+    the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the
+    great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind;
+    for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once
+    to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all
+    your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good
+    to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was
+    better that day&mdash;and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so
+    long since. And <i>therefore</i>, I was logically bound to believe that you
+    had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me!
+    <i>That</i> was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not
+    been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your
+    kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism.
+    In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything&mdash;it
+    <i>doesn't</i>, you know.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and
+    <i>motiving</i>, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was
+    conclusive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah&mdash;but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well,
+    for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view,
+    and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say
+    that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and
+    act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one
+    does&mdash;but every life requires a full experience, a various
+    experience&mdash;and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has
+    been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a
+    lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the
+    results in you from the external influences at work around you, that
+    you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not
+    <i>directly</i>, I know&mdash;but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever
+    acts upon you, becomes <i>you</i>&mdash;and whatever you love or hate, whatever
+    charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes <i>you</i>. Have
+    you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel,
+    just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his
+    soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but
+    what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance&mdash;what a
+    strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or
+    something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin <i>manners</i>,
+    ... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account
+    of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying
+    that many can look like him or talk like him or <i>be</i> like him. I know
+    enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that
+    I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true&mdash;I am
+    getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel
+    stronger in myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music&mdash;and for the rest, there
+    are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without
+    being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! <i>if you think it worth
+    while</i>!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Elizabeth B. Barrett</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And <i>is it</i> nothing to be 'justified to one's self in one's
+    resources?' '<i>That's all</i>,' indeed! For the 'soul's country' we will
+    have it also&mdash;and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was
+    by the way to see your letter!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the 'full stop' after
+    'Morning' just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,&mdash;and how
+    for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been
+    reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it,
+    and the folly of it....
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time you see what you have got in me&mdash;You ask me questions,
+    'if I like novels,' 'if the "Improvisatore" is not good,' 'if travel
+    and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,' and 'what I am
+    devising&mdash;play or poem,'&mdash;and I shall not say I could not answer at
+    all manner of lengths&mdash;but, let me only begin some good piece of
+    writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was
+    going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,&mdash;in a parallel
+    case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the
+    meaning&mdash;There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode
+    of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,&mdash;well, you go
+    breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last
+    the end <i>must</i> come, you feel&mdash;and the tangled threads draw to one,
+    and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps
+    them, the people, wonderfully on,&mdash;and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian
+    Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,&mdash;and a detachment of the party is
+    drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop
+    behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady's
+    uncle, 'in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a
+    small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted
+    wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the
+    characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature'&mdash;this ends the
+    page,&mdash;which you don't turn at once! But when you <i>do</i>, in bitterness
+    of soul, turn it, you read&mdash;'On consideration, I' (Ben, himself)
+    'shall keep them for Mr. Colburn's <i>New Magazine</i>'&mdash;and deeply you
+    draw thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty
+    sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings&mdash;you will ask what it
+    means&mdash;and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and
+    reasoning and all,&mdash;that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about
+    whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I
+    think of another)&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I think I will really write verse to you some day&mdash;<i>this</i> day, it is
+    quite clear I had better give up trying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as
+    Ophelia with her swan's-song,&mdash;for it grows too absurd. But remember
+    that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and
+    much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of
+    truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in
+    Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old
+    belief&mdash;that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no
+    more&mdash;pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante
+    even&mdash;material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their
+    thousands, on the contrary&mdash;strange that those great wide black eyes
+    should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri,
+    with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen
+    tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with
+    matting over it&mdash;as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of
+    the soil they are said to spring from,&mdash;think of 'Saulle,' and his
+    Greek attempts!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he
+    kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am
+    sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the
+    quarter to pray for&mdash;But surely the weather was a little better last
+    week, and you, were you not better? And do you know&mdash;but it's all
+    self-flattery I believe,&mdash;still I cannot help fancying the East wind
+    does my head harm too!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours faithfully,&nbsp; </p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the
+    darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk
+    a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once
+    I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an
+    argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor <i>you</i> up) for a mere
+    mystery. Nor that I can '<i>see what you have got in you</i>,' from a mere
+    guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not
+    because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our
+    sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the
+    lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see
+    <i>you</i> by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and
+    because I am willing for you to know <i>me</i> from the beginning, with all
+    my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people
+    who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you
+    were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to <i>Colburn's
+    Magazine</i>, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a
+    perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in
+    my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the
+    right&mdash;why the end would be that <i>you</i> would take to 'running after
+    the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ...
+    then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my
+    desk...! (<i>Not</i> a 'full stop'!.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making
+    conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I
+    wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps.
+    Certainly not to <i>you</i>. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards
+    to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you
+    know,&mdash;and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of
+    'making conversation' in a letter to <i>you</i>&mdash;never. Women are said to
+    partake of the nature of children&mdash;and my brothers call me 'absurdly
+    childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest'
+    about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's!
+    Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as
+    you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of
+    course. <i>But</i>&mdash;give me something to vow by&mdash;whatever you meant in the
+    'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be
+    much more wrong&mdash;which is a comfortable reflection.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown&mdash;or you do not leap, ... you
+    simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel
+    leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for
+    the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ...
+    before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail,
+    rather than in rain&mdash;but count me the drops congealed in one
+    hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the Duchess'&mdash;do let us hear more of
+    her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a
+    flatterer.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 3, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now shall you see what you shall see&mdash;here shall be 'sound speech not
+    to be reproved,'&mdash;for this morning you are to know that the soul of me
+    has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool
+    nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me
+    who only coaxed my good-natured&mdash;(really)&mdash;body up, after its
+    three-hours' night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about,
+    incognito and without consequences&mdash;and so it shall, all but my
+    right-hand which is half-spirit and 'cuts' its poor relation, and
+    passes itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly
+    active and ready on such occasions&mdash;Now I shall tell you all about it,
+    first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then
+    that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought
+    not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an
+    uninterrupted clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least
+    having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your
+    dogs&mdash;but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further
+    that when I <i>did</i> think I might go modestly on, ... <span title="ômoi">&omega;&mu;&omicron;&iota;</span>, let
+    me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what
+    dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away
+    (not from <i>you</i>, but from you in your special capacity of being
+    <i>written</i>-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown
+    formidable somehow&mdash;though that's not the word,&mdash;nor are you the
+    person, either,&mdash;it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend
+    this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of
+    than taking it up with talk about books and I don't know what. Write
+    what I will, you would read for once, I think&mdash;well, then,&mdash;what I
+    shall write shall be&mdash;something on this book, and the other book, and
+    my own books, and Mary Hewitt's books, and at the end of it&mdash;good bye,
+    and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the
+    thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast
+    with what I suppose I ought to say ... all these things are against
+    me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told&mdash;and is
+    part and parcel of an older&mdash;indeed primitive body of mine, which I
+    shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot
+    do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no
+    seeing and getting and enjoying <i>wholly</i>&mdash;and in this case, moreover,
+    you are <i>you</i>, and know something about me, if not much, and have read
+    Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have
+    confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will <i>subaudire</i> when
+    I pull out my Mediæval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (so it was, I
+    remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives ... though,
+    after all, it was none of Vivian's doing, that,&mdash;all the uncle kind or
+    man's, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say
+    some nonsense (I very vaguely think <i>what</i>) about Dante&mdash;some
+    desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as
+    when a painter at his wits' end and hunger's beginning says 'Here
+    shall the figure's hand be'&mdash;and spots <i>that</i> down, meaning to reach
+    it naturally from the other end of his canvas,&mdash;and leaving off tired,
+    there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and
+    rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and
+    leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their
+    old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,&mdash;anyhow
+    Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head
+    and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine
+    passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being
+    made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a
+    man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just
+    under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the
+    sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern
+    writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of
+    those who never did anything else,&mdash;and try and make out, for
+    yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk
+    under,&mdash;as you might bid <i>them</i>, those tree and flower loving
+    creatures, pick out of <i>our</i> North poetry a notion of what <i>our</i>
+    daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are&mdash;'Odorosi
+    fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you
+    eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Shelley' and so told me years
+    ago that in the mountains it was a feast
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">When one should find those globes of deep red gold&mdash;<br>
+Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,<br>
+Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
+</p>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer
+    over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little
+    ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so
+    well&mdash;'Niursi&mdash;sorbi!' No, no,&mdash;does not all Naples-bay and half
+    Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta
+    fête only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in
+    their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring
+    the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet
+    dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it
+    out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the
+    founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows
+    he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never
+    enough of telling you&mdash;bring all your sympathies, come with loosest
+    sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find 'elbow
+    room,' oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek,
+    Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it,
+    but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir
+    of its fellow, so that I don't go about now wanting the fixed stars
+    before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and&mdash;what
+    other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all,
+    though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without
+    it;&mdash;perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other
+    people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have
+    been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late&mdash;I
+    have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only
+    very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my 'Luria' and much
+    besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is
+    gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight
+    to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I
+    said 'this must <i>go</i>, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss
+    Barrett why this and this is not done,'&mdash;but I mean to tell you all,
+    or more of the truth, because you call me 'flatterer,' so that my eyes
+    widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of <i>you</i>, at all
+    events,&mdash;of whom then? <i>Do</i> tell me, because I want to stand with
+    you&mdash;and am quite in earnest there. And 'The Flight of the Duchess,'
+    to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some
+    time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's
+    notice,&mdash;the true stuff and story is all to come, the 'Flight,' and
+    what you allude to is the mere introduction&mdash;but the Magazine has
+    passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some 'Bell' or
+    other&mdash;it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain 'Saul' I
+    should like to show you one day&mdash;an ominous liking&mdash;for nobody ever
+    sees what I do till it is printed. But as you <i>do</i> know the printed
+    little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all
+    I have <i>really</i> done,&mdash;written in the portfolio there,&mdash;though that
+    would be far enough from <i>this</i> me, that wishes to you now. I should
+    like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the
+    difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of 'reproaching you
+    for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else'&mdash;but that
+    ... why, '<i>that</i>' which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I
+    will tell you&mdash;Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or
+    other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to
+    open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his
+    soul&mdash;Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely
+    ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of
+    glebe-land,&mdash;and I <i>could</i> say such&mdash;'could,'&mdash;the plague of it! So no
+    more at present from your loving.... Or, let me tell you I am going to
+    see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.&mdash;that you do not tell me how you are,
+    and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ... I shall
+    not see you&mdash;not&mdash;not&mdash;not&mdash;what 'knots' to untie! Surely the wind
+    that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green
+    now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,&mdash;that is
+    South West, surely! God bless you, and me in that&mdash;and do write to me
+    soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday&mdash;and Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 6, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    So when wise people happen to be ill, they sit up till six o'clock in
+    the morning and get up again at nine? Do tell me how Lurias can ever
+    be made out of such ungodly imprudences. If the wind blows east or
+    west, where can any remedy be, while such evil deeds are being
+    committed? And what is to be the end of it? And what is the
+    reasonableness of it in the meantime, when we all know that thinking,
+    dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear
+    instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others, ...
+    throwing over and buckling in that fold of death, to stroke the
+    life-purple smoother. You have to live your own personal life, and
+    also Luria's life&mdash;and therefore you should sleep for both. It is
+    logical indeed&mdash;and rational, ... which logic is not always ... and if
+    I had 'the tongue of men and of angels,' I would use it to persuade
+    you. Polka, for the rest, may be good; but sleep is better. I think
+    better of sleep than I ever did, now that she will not easily come
+    near me except in a red hood of poppies. And besides, ... praise your
+    'goodnatured body' as you like, ... it is only a seeming goodnature!
+    Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!&mdash;appear mild and
+    smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and
+    the <i>soul has it</i>, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase!
+    You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or
+    tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really,
+    really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by
+    it&mdash;and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. <i>What
+    do you mean about your manuscripts ... about 'Saul' and the
+    portfolio?</i> for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses&mdash;and
+    your 'Bos' comes to <span title="bous epi glôssê">&beta;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &epsilon;&pi;&iota; &gamma;&lambda;&omega;&sigma;&sigma;&eta;</span>.<b><a href="#note-15">15</a></b> I get half bribed to
+    silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible
+    that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I
+    reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am
+    afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being
+    flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I
+    should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ...
+    however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask
+    impudently of them now? Is that plain?
+</p>
+<p>
+    It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if <i>you</i> would like to 'write
+    something together' with me, <i>I</i> should like it still better. I should
+    like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the
+    less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical
+    Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting
+    into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? <i>you</i> would
+    not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations
+    deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes&mdash;but I dare not do it, ... I
+    mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a
+    Mediæval-Gothic-architectural manuscript.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with
+    whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to
+    'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of
+    one of Miss Mitford's annual editorships; and ever since, he has had
+    the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to
+    write at all, in my dreary Devonshire days, I was his debtor for
+    various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my
+    opinion he is a truehearted and generous man. Do you not think so?
+    Well&mdash;long and long ago, he asked me to write a drama with him on the
+    Greek model; that is, for me to write the choruses, and for him to do
+    the dialogue. Just then it was quite doubtful in my own mind, and
+    worse than doubtful, whether I ever should write again; and the very
+    doubtfulness made me speak my 'yes' more readily. Then I was desired
+    to make a subject, ... to conceive a plan; and my plan was of a man,
+    haunted by his own soul, ... (making her a separate personal Psyche, a
+    dreadful, beautiful Psyche)&mdash;the man being haunted and terrified
+    through all the turns of life by her. Did you ever feel afraid of your
+    own soul, as I have done? I think it is a true wonder of our
+    humanity&mdash;and fit subject enough for a wild lyrical drama. I should
+    like to write it by myself at least, well enough. But with him I will
+    not now. It was delayed ... delayed. He cut the plan up into scenes
+    ... I mean into a list of scenes ... a sort of ground-map to work
+    on&mdash;and there it lies. Nothing more was done. It all lies in one
+    sheet&mdash;and I have offered to give up my copyright of idea in it&mdash;if he
+    likes to use it alone&mdash;or I should not object to work it out alone on
+    my own side, since it comes from me: only I will not consent now to a
+    <i>double work</i> in it. There are objections&mdash;none, be it well
+    understood, in Mr. Horne's disfavour,&mdash;for I think of him as well at
+    this moment, and the same in all essential points, as I ever did. He
+    is a man of fine imagination, and is besides good and generous. In the
+    course of our acquaintance (on paper&mdash;for I never saw him) I never was
+    angry with him except once; and then, <i>I</i> was quite wrong and had to
+    confess it. But this is being too 'mediæval.' Only you will see from
+    it that I am a little entangled on the subject of compound works, and
+    must look where I tread ... and you will understand (if you ever hear
+    from Mr. Kenyon or elsewhere that I am going to write a compound-poem
+    with Mr. Horne) how it <i>was</i> true, and isn't true any more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;you are going to Mr. Kenyon's on the 12th&mdash;and yes&mdash;my brother
+    and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to
+    dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me,
+    I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May&mdash;it can't be May
+    after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but
+    for a few hours&mdash;the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest
+    opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub
+    with a bearde,' even so has the east wind had a 'bearde' of late, in a
+    full growth of bristling exaggerations&mdash;the English spring-winds have
+    excelled themselves in evil this year; and I have not been down-stairs
+    yet.&mdash;<i>But</i> I am certainly stronger and better than I was&mdash;that is
+    undeniable&mdash;and I <i>shall</i> be better still. You are not going away
+    soon&mdash;are you? In the meantime you do not know what it is to be ... a
+    little afraid of Paracelsus. So right about the Italians! and the
+    'rose porporine' which made me smile. How is the head?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is the 'Flight of the Duchess' in the portfolio? Of course you must
+    ring the Bell. That poem has a strong heart in it, to begin <i>so</i>
+    strongly. Poor Hood! And all those thoughts fall mixed together. May
+    God bless you.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday&mdash;in the last hour of it.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    May I ask how the head is? just under the bag? Mr. Kenyon was here
+    to-day and told me such bad news that I cannot sleep to-night
+    (although I did think once of doing it) without asking such a question
+    as this, dear Mr. Browning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me hear how you are&mdash;Will you? and let me hear (if I can) that it
+    was prudence or some unchristian virtue of the sort, and not a dreary
+    necessity, which made you put aside the engagement for Tuesday&mdash;for
+    Monday. I had been thinking so of seeing you on Tuesday ... with my
+    sister's eyes&mdash;for the first sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now if you have done killing the mules and the dogs, let me have
+    a straight quick arrow for myself, if you please. Just a word, to say
+    how you are. I ask for no more than a word, lest the writing should be
+    hurtful to you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you always.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it&mdash;but this is
+    how it was,&mdash;I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to
+    ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it;
+    and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner
+    somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my
+    friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no
+    better&mdash;and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear
+    kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were
+    broken with as little warning,&mdash;so I thought it best to forego all
+    hopes of seeing him, at such a risk. And that done, I got rid of every
+    other promise to pay visits for next week and next, and told
+    everybody, with considerable dignity, that my London season was over
+    for this year, as it assuredly is&mdash;and I shall be worried no more, and
+    let walk in the garden, and go to bed at ten o'clock, and get done
+    with what is most expedient to do, and my 'flesh shall come again like
+    a little child's,' and one day, oh the day, I shall see you with my
+    own, own eyes ... for, how little you understand me; or rather,
+    yourself,&mdash;if you think I would dare see you, without your leave, that
+    way! Do you suppose that your power of giving and refusing ends when
+    you have shut your room-door? Did I not tell you I turned down another
+    street, even, the other day, and why not down yours? And often as I
+    see Mr. Kenyon, have I ever dreamed of asking any but the merest
+    conventional questions about you; your health, and no more?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will answer your letter, the last one, to-morrow&mdash;I have said
+    nothing of what I want to say.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear
+    Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began
+    reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a 'more' or a 'most'
+    in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about
+    you&mdash;as, do you not know?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thank you, from my soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, let me never pass occasion of speaking well of Horne, who
+    deserves your opinion of him,&mdash;it is my own, too.&mdash;He has unmistakable
+    genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow&mdash;it is
+    the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think&mdash;the people he
+    has praised fancying that they 'pose' themselves sculpturesquely in
+    playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each
+    other's hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a
+    dishonour: <i>I</i> feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous
+    criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's
+    standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man
+    too,&mdash;for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature,
+    which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer
+    'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done
+    over blue)&mdash;and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a
+    'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite
+    an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a
+    jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of
+    grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;&mdash;a thing he cannot
+    understand&mdash;<i>so</i>, I am not the one he would have picked out to
+    praise, had he not been <i>loyal</i>. I know he admires your poetry
+    properly. God help him, and send some great artist from the country,
+    (who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who
+    'exasperates his H's' when the feat is to be done)&mdash;to undertake the
+    part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The
+    subject of your play is tempting indeed&mdash;and reminds one of that wild
+    Drama of Calderon's which frightened Shelley just before his
+    death&mdash;also, of Fuseli's theory with reference to his own Picture of
+    Macbeth in the witches' cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed
+    head from the cauldron is Macbeth's own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'If you ask me, I must ask myself'&mdash;that is, when I am to see you&mdash;I
+    will <i>never</i> ask you! You do <i>not</i> know what I shall estimate that
+    permission at,&mdash;nor do I, quite&mdash;but you do&mdash;do not you? know so much
+    of me as to make my 'asking' worse than a form&mdash;I do not 'ask' you to
+    write to me&mdash;not <i>directly</i> ask, at least.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will tell you&mdash;I ask you <i>not</i> to see me so long as you are unwell,
+    or mistrustful of&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me
+    not be only writing myself
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are
+    to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly
+    well&mdash;all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image01a.png" width="150" height="81"
+alt="Music: bass clef, B-flat, sostenuto">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    That you are better I am most thankful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Next letter' to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and
+    Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them
+    and mend them!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But how 'mistrustfulness'? And how 'that way?' What have I said or
+    done, <i>I</i>, who am not apt to <i>be</i> mistrustful of anybody and should be
+    a miraculous monster if I began with <i>you</i>! What can I have said, I
+    say to myself again and again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One thing, at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have
+    made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed
+    to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:&mdash;and by position and
+    experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by
+    leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by
+    others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not
+    mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do
+    not write as I write, surely! for wasn't it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or
+    who?) who said that with five lines from anyone's hand, he could take
+    off his head for a corollary? I think so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well!&mdash;but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say,
+    that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my
+    gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You
+    will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am
+    'fast bound' to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself,
+    whom I receive of choice and willingly) I <i>cannot</i> admit visitors in a
+    general way&mdash;and putting the question of health quite aside, it would
+    be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an
+    infirmity, and hold a beggar's hat for sympathy. I should blame it in
+    another woman&mdash;and the sense of it has had its weight with me
+    sometimes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest, ... when you write, that <i>I</i> do not know how you would
+    value, &amp;c. <i>nor yourself quite</i>, you touch very accurately on the
+    truth ... and <i>so</i> accurately in the last clause, that to read it,
+    made me smile 'tant bien que mal.' Certainly you cannot 'quite know,'
+    or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from
+    knowing me otherwise than on this paper&mdash;and I, for my part, 'quite
+    know' my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely
+    to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me&mdash;I
+    never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that
+    brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is
+    worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most
+    and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of
+    me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I
+    write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel
+    ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because
+    you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be
+    nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so
+    at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall
+    understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in
+    any case; and a friend. And do not answer this&mdash;I do not write it as a
+    fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much.
+    Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot
+    be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that
+    dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of
+    coming until <i>that</i> is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is
+    done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr.
+    Kenyon or to come alone&mdash;and if you would come alone, you must just
+    tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should
+    be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And
+    my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or <i>you</i>
+    will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as
+    you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon,
+    you must wait, I imagine, till June,&mdash;because he goes away on Monday
+    and is not likely immediately to return&mdash;no, on Saturday, to-morrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the meantime, why I should be '<i>thanked</i>,' is an absolute mystery
+    to me&mdash;but I leave it!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are generous and impetuous; <i>that</i>, I can see and feel; and so far
+    from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do
+    profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had
+    known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius.
+    Believe this of me&mdash;for it is spoken truly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the matter of Shakespeare's 'poor players' you are severe&mdash;and yet
+    I was glad to hear you severe&mdash;it is a happy excess, I think. When men
+    of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to
+    be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there
+    will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of
+    such things&mdash;but I have <i>heard</i>. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from
+    Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a
+    writer's medium&mdash;<i>not at all</i>, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what
+    he has printed on the subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;he has been infamously used on the point of the 'New
+    Spirit'&mdash;only he should have been prepared for the infamy&mdash;it was
+    leaping into a gulph, ... not to 'save the republic,' but '<i>pour
+    rire</i>': it was not merely putting one's foot into a hornet's nest, but
+    taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of Dickens being
+    dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson's friends grumbling!&mdash;he himself
+    did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately
+    treated&mdash;and above all, you were not placed with your <i>peers</i> in that
+    chapter&mdash;but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that
+    there <i>is</i> a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and
+    am sure,&mdash;and that <i>you</i> should be sensible to this, is only what I
+    should know and be sure of <i>you</i>. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow,
+    vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached,
+    too justly sometimes, on men of letters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I go on writing as if I were not going to see you&mdash;soon perhaps.
+    Remember that the how and the when rest with you&mdash;except that it
+    cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Always your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My friend is not 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I
+    shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or
+    turn an article for <i>Colburn's</i> on her sayings and doings
+    up-stairs,&mdash;but spite of that, she does mistrust ... <i>so</i> mistrust my
+    common sense,&mdash;nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on
+    asserting it!&mdash;all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch
+    struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with
+    name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I
+    won't, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole
+    tribe into the Red Sea&mdash;and those horns and tails and scalewings are
+    best forgotten altogether. And now will I say a cutting thing and have
+    done. Have I trusted <i>my</i> friend so,&mdash;or said even to myself, much
+    less to her, she is even as&mdash;'Mr. Simpson' who desireth the honour of
+    the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his,
+    Simpson's, especial solace in private&mdash;and who accordingly is led to
+    that personage by a mutual friend&mdash;Simpson blushing as only adorable
+    ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor
+    giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the
+    rooms are growing hot&mdash;or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if
+    there will be another adjournment of the House to-night&mdash;whereupon Mr.
+    S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his
+    sleeve, and takes to his assurance once more, in something of a huff,
+    and after staying his five minutes out for decency's sake, noddeth
+    familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel ejaculateth
+    mentally&mdash;'Well, I <i>did</i> expect to see something different from that
+    little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there
+    <i>was</i> some precious trash in that book of his'&mdash;Have <i>I</i> said 'so will
+    Miss Barrett ejaculate?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Miss Barrett, I thank you for the leave you give me, and for the
+    infinite kindness of the way of giving it. I will call at 2 on
+    Tuesday&mdash;not sooner, that you may have time to write should any
+    adverse circumstances happen ... not that they need inconvenience you,
+    because ... what I want particularly to tell you for now and
+    hereafter&mdash;do not mind my coming in the least, but&mdash;should you be
+    unwell, for instance,&mdash;just send or leave word, and I will come again,
+    and again, and again&mdash;my time is of <i>no</i> importance, and I have
+    acquaintances thick in the vicinity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now if I do not seem grateful enough to you, <i>am</i> I so much to blame?
+    You see it is high time you <i>saw</i> me, for I have clearly written
+    myself <i>out</i>!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall be ready on Tuesday I hope, but I hate and protest against
+    your horrible 'entomology.' Beginning to explain, would thrust me
+    lower and lower down the circles of some sort of an 'Inferno'; only
+    with my dying breath I would maintain that I never could, consciously
+    or unconsciously, mean to distrust you; or, the least in the world, to
+    Simpsonize you. What I said, ... it was <i>you</i> that put it into my head
+    to say it&mdash;for certainly, in my usual disinclination to receive
+    visitors, such a feeling does not enter. There, now! There, I am a
+    whole 'giro' lower! Now, you will say perhaps that I distrust <i>you</i>,
+    and nobody else! So it is best to be silent, and bear all the 'cutting
+    things' with resignation! <i>that</i> is certain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Still I must really say, under this dreadful incubus-charge of
+    Simpsonism, ... that you, who know everything, or at least make awful
+    guesses at everything in one's feelings and motives, and profess to be
+    able to pin them down in a book of classified inscriptions, ... should
+    have been able to understand better, or misunderstand less, in a
+    matter like this&mdash;Yes! I think so. I think you should have made out
+    the case in some such way as it was in nature&mdash;viz. that you had
+    lashed yourself up to an exorbitant wishing to see me, ... (you who
+    could see, any day, people who are a hundredfold and to all social
+    purposes, my superiors!) because I was unfortunate enough to be shut
+    up in a room and silly enough to make a fuss about opening the door;
+    and that I grew suddenly abashed by the consciousness of this. How
+    different from a distrust of <i>you</i>! how different!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah&mdash;if, after this day, you ever see any interpretable sign of
+    distrustfulness in me, you may be 'cutting' again, and I will not cry
+    out. In the meantime here is a fact for your 'entomology.' I have not
+    so much <i>distrust</i>, as will make a <i>doubt</i>, as will make a <i>curiosity</i>
+    for next Tuesday. Not the simplest modification of <i>curiosity</i> enters
+    into the state of feeling with which I wait for Tuesday:&mdash;and if you
+    are angry to hear me say so, ... why, you are more unjust than ever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    (Let it be three instead of two&mdash;if the hour be as convenient to
+    yourself.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before you come, try to forgive me for my 'infinite kindness' in the
+    manner of consenting to see you. Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when
+    you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?
+    Well! but we are friends till Tuesday&mdash;and after perhaps.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If on Tuesday you should be not well, <i>pray do not come</i>&mdash;Now, that is
+    my request to your kindness.<a href="#note-16"><b>16</b></a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 21, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I trust to you for a true account of how you are&mdash;if tired, if not
+    tired, if I did wrong in any thing,&mdash;or, if you please, <i>right</i> in any
+    thing&mdash;(only, not one more word about my 'kindness,' which, to get
+    done with, I will grant is exceptive)&mdash;but, let us so arrange matters
+    if possible,&mdash;and why should it not be&mdash;that my great happiness, such
+    as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be
+    obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can
+    contrive. For an instance&mdash;just what strikes me&mdash;they all say here I
+    speak very loud&mdash;(a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf
+    relative of mine). And did I stay too long?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will tell <i>you</i> unhesitatingly of such 'corrigenda'&mdash;nay, I will
+    again say, do not humiliate me&mdash;<i>do not</i> again,&mdash;by calling me 'kind'
+    in that way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am proud and happy in your friendship&mdash;now and ever. May God bless
+    you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 22, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed there was nothing wrong&mdash;how could there be? And there was
+    everything right&mdash;as how should there not be? And as for the 'loud
+    speaking,' I did not hear any&mdash;and, instead of being worse, I ought to
+    be better for what was certainly (to speak it, or be silent of it,)
+    happiness and honour to me yesterday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Which reminds me to observe that you are so restricting our
+    vocabulary, as to be ominous of silence in a full sense, presently.
+    First, one word is not to be spoken&mdash;and then, another is not. And
+    why? Why deny me the use of such words as have natural feelings
+    belonging to them&mdash;and how can the use of such be 'humiliating' to
+    <i>you</i>? If my heart were open to you, you could see nothing offensive
+    to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been
+    there&mdash;but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology
+    (and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of
+    some poems by some Mr. Gurney where he speaks of 'the reflective
+    wisdom of a Wordsworth and the profound psychological utterances of a
+    Browning') it is hard for you to understand what my mental position is
+    after the peculiar experience I have suffered, and what <span title="ti emoi kai soi">&tau;&iota; &epsilon;&mu;&omicron;&iota; &kappa;&alpha;&iota; &sigma;&omicron;&iota;</span><b><a href="#note-17">17</a></b> a sort of feeling is irrepressible from me to you,
+    when, from the height of your brilliant happy sphere, you ask, as you
+    did ask, for personal intercourse with me. What words but 'kindness'
+    ... but 'gratitude'&mdash;but I will not in any case be <i>un</i>kind and
+    <i>un</i>grateful, and do what is displeasing to you. And let us both leave
+    the subject with the words&mdash;because we perceive in it from different
+    points of view; we stand on the black and white sides of the shield;
+    and there is no coming to a conclusion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But you will come really on Tuesday&mdash;and again, when you like and can
+    together&mdash;and it will not be more 'inconvenient' to me to be pleased,
+    I suppose, than it is to people in general&mdash;will it, do you think?
+    Ah&mdash;how you misjudge! Why it must obviously and naturally be
+    delightful to me to receive you here when you like to come, and it
+    cannot be necessary for me to say so in set words&mdash;believe it of
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [Mr. Browning's letter, to which the following is in answer was
+    destroyed, see <a href="#268">page 268</a> of the present volume.]
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I intended to write to you last night and this morning, and could
+    not,&mdash;you do not know what pain you give me in speaking so wildly. And
+    if I disobey you, my dear friend, in speaking, (I for my part) of your
+    wild speaking, I do it, not to displease you, but to be in my own
+    eyes, and before God, a little more worthy, or less unworthy, of a
+    generosity from which I recoil by instinct and at the first glance,
+    yet conclusively; and because my silence would be the most disloyal of
+    all means of expression, in reference to it. Listen to me then in
+    this. You have said some intemperate things ... fancies,&mdash;which you
+    will not say over again, nor unsay, but <i>forget at once</i>, and <i>for
+    ever, having said at all</i>; and which (so) will die out between <i>you
+    and me alone</i>, like a misprint between you and the printer. And this
+    you will do <i>for my sake</i> who am your friend (and you have none
+    truer)&mdash;and this I ask, because it is a condition necessary to our
+    future liberty of intercourse. You remember&mdash;surely you do&mdash;that I am
+    in the most exceptional of positions; and that, just <i>because of it</i>,
+    I am able to receive you as I did on Tuesday; and that, for me to
+    listen to 'unconscious exaggerations,' is as unbecoming to the
+    humilities of my position, as unpropitious (which is of more
+    consequence) to the prosperities of yours. Now, if there should be one
+    word of answer attempted to this; or of reference; <i>I must not</i> ... I
+    <i>will not see you again</i>&mdash;and you will justify me later in your heart.
+    So for my sake you will not say it&mdash;I think you will not&mdash;and spare me
+    the sadness of having to break through an intercourse just as it is
+    promising pleasure to me; to me who have so many sadnesses and so few
+    pleasures. You will!&mdash;and I need not be uneasy&mdash;and I shall owe you
+    that tranquillity, as one gift of many. For, that I have much to
+    receive from you in all the free gifts of thinking, teaching,
+    master-spirits, ... <i>that</i>, I know!&mdash;it is my own praise that I
+    appreciate you, as none can more. Your influence and help in poetry
+    will be full of good and gladness to me&mdash;for with many to love me in
+    this house, there is no one to judge me ... <i>now</i>. Your friendship and
+    sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed
+    leave them with me so long or so little. Your mistakes in me ... which
+    <i>I</i> cannot mistake (&mdash;and which have humbled me by too much
+    honouring&mdash;) I put away gently, and with grateful tears in my eyes;
+    because <i>all that hail</i> will beat down and spoil crowns, as well as
+    'blossoms.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    If I put off next Tuesday to the week after&mdash;I mean your visit,&mdash;shall
+    you care much? For the relations I named to you, are to be in London
+    next week; and I am to see one of my aunts whom I love, and have not
+    met since my great affliction&mdash;and it will all seem to come over
+    again, and I shall be out of spirits and nerves. On Tuesday week you
+    can bring a tomahawk and do the criticism, and I shall try to have my
+    courage ready for it&mdash;Oh, you will do me so much good&mdash;and Mr. Kenyon
+    calls me 'docile' sometimes I assure you; when he wants to flatter me
+    out of being obstinate&mdash;and in good earnest, I believe I shall do
+    everything you tell me. The 'Prometheus' is done&mdash;but the monodrama is
+    where it was&mdash;and the novel, not at all. But I think of some half
+    promises half given, about something I read for 'Saul'&mdash;and the
+    'Flight of the Duchess'&mdash;where is she?
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are not displeased with me? <i>no, that</i> would be hail and lightning
+    together&mdash;I do not write as I might, of some words of yours&mdash;but you
+    know that I am not a stone, even if silent like one. And if in the
+    <i>un</i>silence, I have said one word to vex you, pity me for having had
+    to say it&mdash;and for the rest, may God bless you far beyond the reach of
+    vexation from my words or my deeds!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your friend in grateful regard,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Don't you remember I told you, once on a time that you 'knew nothing
+    of me'? whereat you demurred&mdash;but I meant what I said, and knew it was
+    so. To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a
+    Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of
+    black cold water&mdash;and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes,
+    because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction&mdash;and
+    the ice grows and grows&mdash;still this last is true part of me, most
+    characteristic part, <i>best</i> part perhaps, and I disown
+    nothing&mdash;only,&mdash;when you talked of '<i>knowing</i> me'! Still, I am utterly
+    unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating
+    anything about <i>that</i> to another person (all my writings are purely
+    dramatic as I am always anxious to say) that when I make never so
+    little an attempt, no wonder if I <i>bungle</i> notably&mdash;'language,' too is
+    an organ that never studded this heavy heavy head of mine. Will you
+    not think me very brutal if I tell you I could almost smile at your
+    misapprehension of what I meant to write?&mdash;Yet I <i>will</i> tell you,
+    because it will undo the bad effect of my thoughtlessness, and at the
+    same time exemplify the point I have all along been honestly earnest
+    to set you right upon ... my real inferiority to you; just that and no
+    more. I wrote to you, in an unwise moment, on the spur of being again
+    'thanked,' and, unwisely writing just as if thinking to myself, said
+    what must have looked absurd enough as seen apart from the horrible
+    counterbalancing never-to-be-written <i>rest of me</i>&mdash;by the side of
+    which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to
+    its proper and relative place, and become a mere 'thank you' for your
+    good opinion&mdash;which I assure you is far too generous&mdash;for I really
+    believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable
+    till <i>you</i> see that, too&mdash;since I hope for your sympathy and
+    assistance, and 'frankness is everything in such a case.' I do assure
+    you, that had you read my note, <i>only</i> having '<i>known</i>' so much of me
+    as is implied in having inspected, for instance, the contents, merely,
+    of that fatal and often-referred-to 'portfolio' there (<i>Dii meliora
+    piis!</i>), you would see in it, (the note not the portfolio) the
+    blandest utterance ever mild gentleman gave birth to. But I forgot
+    that one may make too much noise in a silent place by playing the few
+    notes on the 'ear-piercing fife' which in Othello's regimental band
+    might have been thumped into decent subordination by his
+    'spirit-stirring drum'&mdash;to say nothing of gong and ophicleide. Will
+    you forgive me, on promise to remember for the future, and be more
+    considerate? Not that you must too much despise me, neither; nor, of
+    all things, apprehend I am attitudinizing à la Byron, and giving you
+    to understand unutterable somethings, longings for Lethe and all
+    that&mdash;far from it! I never committed murders, and sleep the soundest
+    of sleeps&mdash;but 'the heart is desperately wicked,' that is true, and
+    though I dare not say 'I know' mine, yet I have had signal
+    opportunities, I who began life from the beginning, and can forget
+    nothing (but names, and the date of the battle of Waterloo), and have
+    known good and wicked men and women, gentle and simple, shaking hands
+    with Edmund Kean and Father Mathew, you and&mdash;Ottima! Then, I had a
+    certain faculty of self-consciousness, years and years ago, at which
+    John Mill wondered, and which ought to be improved by this time, if
+    constant use helps at all&mdash;and, meaning, on the whole, to be a Poet,
+    if not <i>the</i> Poet ... for I am vain and ambitious some nights,&mdash;I do
+    myself justice, and dare call things by their names to myself, and say
+    boldly, this I love, this I hate, this I would do, this I would not
+    do, under all kinds of circumstances,&mdash;and talking (thinking) in this
+    style <i>to myself</i>, and beginning, however tremblingly, in spite of
+    conviction, to write in this style <i>for myself</i>&mdash;on the top of the
+    desk which contains my 'Songs of the Poets&mdash;<SPAN class="sc-ex">no. i</span> M.P.', I
+    wrote,&mdash;what you now forgive, I know! Because I am, from my heart,
+    sorry that by a foolish fit of inconsideration I should have given
+    pain for a minute to you, towards whom, on every account, I would
+    rather soften and 'sleeken every word as to a bird' ... (and, not such
+    a bird as my black self that go screeching about the world for 'dead
+    horse'&mdash;corvus (picus)&mdash;mirandola!) I, too, who have been at such
+    pains to acquire the reputation I enjoy in the world,&mdash;(ask Mr.
+    Kenyon,) and who dine, and wine, and dance and enhance the company's
+    pleasure till they make me ill and I keep house, as of late: Mr.
+    Kenyon, (for I only quote where you may verify if you please) <i>he</i>
+    says my common sense strikes him, and its contrast with my muddy
+    metaphysical poetry! And so it shall strike you&mdash;for though I am glad
+    that, since you <i>did</i> misunderstand me, you said so, and have given me
+    an opportunity of doing by another way what I wished to do in
+    <i>that</i>,&mdash;yet, if you had <i>not</i> alluded to my writing, as I meant you
+    should not, you would have certainly understood <i>something</i> of its
+    drift when you found me next Tuesday precisely the same quiet (no, for
+    I feel I speak too loudly, in spite of your kind disclaimer, but&mdash;)
+    the same mild man-about-town you were gracious to, the other
+    morning&mdash;for, indeed, my own way of worldly life is marked out long
+    ago, as precisely as yours can be, and I am set going with a hand,
+    winker-wise, on each side of my head, and a directing finger before my
+    eyes, to say nothing of an instinctive dread I have that a certain
+    whip-lash is vibrating somewhere in the neighbourhood in playful
+    readiness! So 'I hope here be proofs,' Dogberry's satisfaction that,
+    first, I am but a very poor creature compared to you and entitled by
+    my wants to look up to you,&mdash;all I meant to say from the first of the
+    first&mdash;and that, next, I shall be too much punished if, for this piece
+    of mere inconsideration, you deprive me, more or less, or sooner or
+    later, of the pleasure of seeing you,&mdash;a little over boisterous
+    gratitude for which, perhaps, caused all the mischief! The reasons you
+    give for deferring my visits next week are too cogent for me to
+    dispute&mdash;that is too true&mdash;and, being now and henceforward 'on my good
+    behaviour,' I will at once cheerfully submit to them, if needs
+    must&mdash;but should your mere kindness and forethought, as I half
+    suspect, have induced you to take such a step, you will now smile with
+    me, at this new and very unnecessary addition to the 'fears of me' I
+    have got so triumphantly over in your case! Wise man, was I not, to
+    clench my first favourable impression so adroitly ... like a recent
+    Cambridge worthy, my sister heard of; who, being on his theological
+    (or rather, scripture-historical) examination, was asked by the Tutor,
+    who wished to let him off easily, 'who was the first King of
+    Israel?'&mdash;'Saul' answered the trembling youth. 'Good!' nodded
+    approvingly the Tutor. 'Otherwise called <i>Paul</i>,' subjoined the youth
+    in his elation! Now I have begged pardon, and blushingly assured you
+    <i>that</i> was only a slip of the tongue, and that I did really <i>mean</i> all
+    the while, (Paul or no Paul), the veritable son of Kish, he that owned
+    the asses, and found listening to the harp the best of all things for
+    an evil spirit! Pray write me a line to say, 'Oh ... if <i>that's</i> all!'
+    and remember me for good (which is very compatible with a moment's
+    stupidity) and let me not for one fault, (and that the only one that
+    shall be), lose <i>any pleasure</i> ... for your friendship I am sure I
+    have not lost&mdash;God bless you, my dear friend!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">R. Browning</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And by the way, will it not be better, as co-operating with you more
+    effectually in your kind promise to forget the 'printer's error' in my
+    blotted proof, to send me back that same 'proof,' if you have not
+    inflicted proper and summary justice on it? When Mephistopheles last
+    came to see us in this world outside here, he counselled sundry of us
+    'never to write a letter,&mdash;and never to burn one'&mdash;do you know that?
+    But I never mind what I am told! Seriously, I am ashamed.... I shall
+    next ask a servant for my paste in the 'high fantastical' style of my
+    own 'Luria.'
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday<br>
+[May 25, 1845].
+</p>
+<p>
+    I owe you the most humble of apologies dear Mr. Browning, for having
+    spent so much solemnity on so simple a matter, and I hasten to pay it;
+    confessing at the same time (as why should I not?) that I am quite as
+    much ashamed of myself as I ought to be, which is not a little. You
+    will find it difficult to believe me perhaps when I assure you that I
+    never made such a mistake (I mean of over-seriousness to indefinite
+    compliments), no, never in my life before&mdash;indeed my sisters have
+    often jested with me (in matters of which they were cognizant) on my
+    supernatural indifference to the superlative degree in general, as if
+    it meant nothing in grammar. I usually know well that 'boots' may be
+    called for in this world of ours, just as you called for yours; and
+    that to bring '<i>Bootes</i>,' were the vilest of mal-à-pro-pos-ities.
+    Also, I should have understood 'boots' where you wrote it, in the
+    letter in question; if it had not been for <i>the relation of two
+    things</i> in it&mdash;and now I perfectly seem to see <i>how</i> I mistook that
+    relation; ('<i>seem to see</i>'; because I have not looked into the letter
+    again since your last night's commentary, and will not&mdash;) inasmuch as
+    I have observed before in my own mind, that a good deal of what is
+    called obscurity in you, arises from a habit of very subtle
+    association; so subtle, that you are probably unconscious of it, ...
+    and the effect of which is to throw together on the same level and in
+    the same light, things of likeness and unlikeness&mdash;till the reader
+    grows confused as I did, and takes one for another. I may say however,
+    in a poor justice to myself, that I wrote what I wrote so
+    unfortunately, <i>through reverence for you</i>, and not at all from vanity
+    in my own account ... although I do feel palpably while I write these
+    words here and now, that I might as well leave them unwritten; for
+    that no man of the world who ever lived in the world (not even <i>you</i>)
+    could be expected to believe them, though said, sung, and sworn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest, it is scarcely an apposite moment for you to talk, even
+    'dramatically,' of my 'superiority' to you, ... unless you mean, which
+    perhaps you do mean, my superiority in <i>simplicity</i>&mdash;and, verily, to
+    some of the 'adorable ingenuousness,' sacred to the shade of Simpson,
+    I may put in a modest claim, ... 'and have my claim allowed.' 'Pray do
+    not mock me' I quote again from your Shakespeare to you who are a
+    dramatic poet; ... and I will admit anything that you like, (being
+    humble just now)&mdash;even that I <i>did not know you</i>. I was certainly
+    innocent of the knowledge of the 'ice and cold water' you introduce me
+    to, and am only just shaking my head, as Flush would, after a first
+    wholesome plunge. Well&mdash;if I do not know you, I shall learn, I
+    suppose, in time. I am ready to try humbly to learn&mdash;and I may
+    perhaps&mdash;if you are not done in Sanscrit, which is too hard for me,
+    ... notwithstanding that I had the pleasure yesterday to hear, from
+    America, of my profound skill in 'various languages less known than
+    Hebrew'!&mdash;a liberal paraphrase on Mr. Horne's large fancies on the
+    like subject, and a satisfactory reputation in itself&mdash;as long as it
+    is not necessary to deserve it. So I here enclose to you your letter
+    back again, as you wisely desire; although you never could doubt, I
+    hope, for a moment, of its safety with me in the completest of senses:
+    and then, from the heights of my superior ... stultity, and other
+    qualities of the like order, ... I venture to advise you ... however
+    (to speak of the letter critically, and as the dramatic composition it
+    is) it is to be admitted to be very beautiful, and well worthy of the
+    rest of its kin in the portfolio, ... 'Lays of the Poets,' or
+    otherwise, ... I venture to advise you to burn it at once. And then,
+    my dear friend, I ask you (having some claim) to burn at the same time
+    the letter I was fortunate enough to write to you on Friday, and this
+    present one&mdash;don't send them back to me; I hate to have letters sent
+    back&mdash;but burn them for me and never mind Mephistopheles. After which
+    friendly turn, you will do me the one last kindness of forgetting all
+    this exquisite nonsense, and of refraining from mentioning it, by
+    breath or pen, <i>to me or another</i>. Now I trust you so far:&mdash;you will
+    put it with the date of the battle of Waterloo&mdash;and I, with every date
+    in chronology; seeing that I can remember none of them. And we will
+    shuffle the cards and take patience, and begin the game again, if you
+    please&mdash;and I shall bear in mind that you are a dramatic poet, which
+    is not the same thing, by any means, with <i>us</i> of the primitive
+    simplicities, who don't tread on cothurns nor shift the mask in the
+    scene. And I will reverence you both as 'a poet' and as '<i>the</i> poet';
+    because it is no false 'ambition,' but a right you have&mdash;and one which
+    those who live longest, will see justified to the uttermost.... In the
+    meantime I need not ask Mr. Kenyon if you have any sense, because I
+    have no doubt that you have quite sense enough&mdash;and even if I had a
+    doubt, I shall prefer judging for myself without interposition; which
+    I can do, you know, as long as you like to come and see me. And you
+    can come this week if you do like it&mdash;because our relations don't come
+    till the end of it, it appears&mdash;not that I made a pretence 'out of
+    kindness'&mdash;pray don't judge me so outrageously&mdash;but if you like to
+    come ... not on Tuesday ... but on Wednesday at three o'clock, I shall
+    be very glad to see you; and I, for one, shall have forgotten
+    everything by that time; being quick at forgetting my own faults
+    usually. If Wednesday does not suit you, I am not sure that I <i>can</i>
+    see you this week&mdash;but it depends on circumstances. Only don't think
+    yourself <i>obliged</i> to come on Wednesday. You know I <i>began</i> by
+    entreating you to be open and sincere with me&mdash;and no more&mdash;I
+    <i>require</i> no 'sleekening of every word.' I love the truth and can bear
+    it&mdash;whether in word or deed&mdash;and those who have known me longest would
+    tell you so fullest. Well!&mdash;May God bless you. We shall know each
+    other some day perhaps&mdash;and I am
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Always and faithfully your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, May 26, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nay&mdash;I <i>must</i> have last word&mdash;as all people in the wrong desire to
+    have&mdash;and then, no more of the subject. You said I had given you
+    <i>great pain</i>&mdash;so long as I stop <i>that</i>, think anything of me you
+    choose or can! But <i>before</i> your former letter came, I saw the
+    pre-ordained uselessness of mine. Speaking is to some <i>end</i>, (apart
+    from foolish self-relief, which, after all, I can do without)&mdash;and
+    where there is <i>no</i> end&mdash;you see! or, to finish
+    characteristically&mdash;since the offering to cut off one's right-hand to
+    save anybody a headache, is in vile taste, even for our melodramas,
+    seeing that it was never yet believed in on the stage or off it,&mdash;how
+    much worse to really make the ugly chop, and afterwards come
+    sheepishly in, one's arm in a black sling, and find that the
+    delectable gift had changed aching to nausea! There! And now, 'exit,
+    prompt-side, nearest door, Luria'&mdash;and enter R.B.&mdash;next Wednesday,&mdash;as
+    boldly as he suspects most people do just after they have been soundly
+    frightened!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall be most happy to see you on the day and at the hour you
+    mention.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you, my dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will think me the most changeable of all the changeable; but
+    indeed it is <i>not</i> my fault that I cannot, as I wished, receive you on
+    Wednesday. There was a letter this morning; and our friends not only
+    come to London but come to this house on Tuesday (to-morrow) to pass
+    two or three days, until they settle in an hotel for the rest of the
+    season. Therefore you see, it is doubtful whether the two days may not
+    be three, and the three days four; but if they go away in time, and
+    if Saturday should suit you, I will let you know by a word; and you
+    can answer by a yea or nay. While they are in the house, I must give
+    them what time I can&mdash;and indeed, it is something to dread altogether.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I send you the note I had begun before receiving yours of last night,
+    and also a fragment<a href="#note-18"><b>18</b></a> from Mrs. Hedley's herein enclosed, a full and
+    complete certificate, ... that you may know ... quite <i>know</i>, ... what
+    the real and only reason of the obstacle to Wednesday is. On Saturday
+    perhaps, or on Monday more certainly, there is likely to be no
+    opposition, ... at least not on the 'côté gauche' (<i>my</i> side!) to our
+    meeting&mdash;but I will let you know more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest, we have both been a little unlucky, there's no denying,
+    in overcoming the embarrassments of a first acquaintance&mdash;but suffer
+    me to say as one other last word, (and <i>quite, quite the last this
+    time</i>!) in case there should have been anything approaching, however
+    remotely, to a distrustful or unkind tone in what I wrote on Sunday,
+    (and I have a sort of consciousness that in the process of my
+    self-scorning I was not in the most sabbatical of moods perhaps&mdash;)
+    that I do recall and abjure it, and from my heart entreat your pardon
+    for it, and profess, notwithstanding it, neither to 'choose' nor 'to
+    be able' to think otherwise of you than I have done, ... as of one
+    <i>most</i> generous and <i>most</i> loyal; for that if I chose, I could not;
+    and that if I could, I should not choose.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever and gratefully your friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;And now we shall hear of 'Luria,' shall we not? and much besides.
+    And Miss Mitford has sent me the most high comical of letters to
+    read, addressed to her by 'R.B. Haydon historical painter' which has
+    made me quite laugh; and would make <i>you</i>; expressing his righteous
+    indignation at the 'great fact' and gross impropriety of any man who
+    has 'thoughts too deep for tears' agreeing to wear a 'bag-wig' ... the
+    case of poor Wordsworth's going to court, you know.&mdash;Mr. Haydon being
+    infinitely serious all the time, and yet holding the doctrine of the
+    divine right of princes in his left hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How is your head? may I be hoping the best for it? May God bless you.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, May 28, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Saturday, Monday, as you shall appoint&mdash;no need to say that, or my
+    thanks&mdash;but this note troubles you, out of my bounden duty to help
+    you, or Miss Mitford, to make the Painter run violently down a steep
+    place into the sea, if that will amuse you, by further informing him,
+    what I know on the best authority, that Wordsworth's 'bag-wig,' or at
+    least, the more important of his court-habiliments, were considerately
+    furnished for the nonce by <i>Mr. Rogers</i> from his own wardrobe, to the
+    manifest advantage of the Laureate's pocket, but more problematic
+    improvement of his person, when one thinks on the astounding
+    difference of 'build' in the two Poets:&mdash;the fact should be put on
+    record, if only as serving to render less chimerical a promise
+    sometimes figuring in the columns of provincial newspapers&mdash;that the
+    two apprentices, some grocer or other advertises for, will be 'boarded
+    and <i>clothed</i> like <i>one</i> of the family.' May not your unfinished
+    (really good) head of the great man have been happily kept waiting for
+    the body which can now be added on, with all this picturesqueness of
+    circumstances. Precept on precept ... but then, <i>line upon line</i>, is
+    allowed by as good authority, and may I not draw <i>my</i> confirming black
+    line after yours, yet not break pledge? I am most grateful to you for
+    doing me justice&mdash;doing yourself, your own judgment, justice, since
+    even the play-wright of Theseus and the Amazon found it one of his
+    hardest devices to 'write me a speech, lest the lady be frightened,
+    wherein it shall be said that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but &amp;c. &amp;c.'
+    God bless you&mdash;one thing more, but one&mdash;you <i>could never have</i>
+    misunderstood the <i>asking for the letter again</i>, I feared you might
+    refer to it 'pour constater le fait'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">And now I am yours&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My head is all but well now; thank you.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, May 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just one word to say that if Saturday, to-morrow, should be
+    fine&mdash;because in the case of its raining I <i>shall not expect you</i>; you
+    will find me at three o'clock.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;the circumstances of the costume were mentioned in the letter;
+    Mr. Rogers' bag-wig and the rest, and David Wilkie's sword&mdash;and also
+    that the Laureate, so equipped, fell down upon both knees in the
+    superfluity of etiquette, and had to be picked up by two
+    lords-in-waiting. It is a large exaggeration I do not doubt&mdash;and then
+    I never sympathised with the sighing kept up by people about that
+    acceptance of the Laureateship which drew the bag-wig as a corollary
+    after it. Not that the Laureateship honoured <i>him</i>, but that he
+    honoured it; and that, so honouring it, he preserves a symbol
+    instructive to the masses, who are children and to be taught by
+    symbols now as formerly. Isn't it true? or at least may it not be
+    true? And won't the court laurel (such as it is) be all the worthier
+    of <i>you</i> for Wordsworth's having worn it first?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And in the meantime I shall see you to-morrow perhaps? or if it should
+    rain, on Monday at the same hour.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours, my dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I see all you have done for me in this 'Prometheus,' I feel more
+    than half ashamed both of it and of me for using your time so, and
+    forced to say in my own defence (not to you but myself) that I never
+    thought of meaning to inflict such work on you who might be doing so
+    much better things in the meantime both for me and for
+    others&mdash;because, you see, it is not the mere reading of the MS., but
+    the 'comparing' of the text, and the melancholy comparisons between
+    the English and the Greek, ... quite enough to turn you from your
+    <span title="philanthrôpou tropou">&phi;&iota;&lambda;&alpha;&nu;&theta;&rho;&omega;&pi;&omicron;&upsilon; &tau;&rho;&omicron;&pi;&omicron;&upsilon;</span><b><a href="#note-19">19</a></b> that I brought upon you; and indeed I
+    did not mean so much, nor so soon! Yet as you have done it for me&mdash;for
+    me who expected a few jottings down with a pencil and a general
+    opinion; it is of course of the greatest value, besides the pleasure
+    and pride which come of it; and I must say of the translation, (before
+    putting it aside for the nonce), that the circumstance of your paying
+    it so much attention and seeing any good in it, is quite enough reward
+    for the writer and quite enough motive for self-gratulation, if it
+    were all torn to fragments at this moment&mdash;which is a foolish thing to
+    say because it is so obvious, and because you would know it if I said
+    it or not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not
+    to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very
+    princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest
+    of the small family of distrust&mdash;or of hypocrisy ... who knows? Well!
+    but you are wrong ... wrong ... to think so; and you will let me say
+    one word to show where you are wrong&mdash;not for you to controvert, ...
+    because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your
+    cognizance, and is something which I <i>must know best</i> after all. And
+    it is, ... that you persist in putting me into a false position, with
+    respect to <i>fixing days</i> and the like, and in making me feel somewhat
+    as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the
+    chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I
+    did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly 'was 'ware' (as we
+    say in the ballads) of the walls' growing alive behind me and
+    extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to
+    the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and
+    I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised
+    bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the
+    chimney-piece's, ... is the necessity you provide for me in the shape
+    of my having to name this day, or that day, ... and of your coming
+    because I name it, and of my having to think and remember that you
+    come because I name it. Through a weakness, perhaps, or morbidness, or
+    one knows not how to define it, I <i>cannot help</i> being uncomfortable in
+    having to do this,&mdash;it is impossible. Not that I distrust <i>you</i>&mdash;you
+    are the last in the world I could distrust: and then (although you may
+    be sceptical) I am naturally given to trust ... to a fault ... as some
+    say, or to a sin, as some reproach me:&mdash;and then again, if I were ever
+    such a distruster, it could not be of <i>you</i>. But if you knew me&mdash;! I
+    will tell you! if one of my brothers omits coming to this room for two
+    days, ... I never ask why it happened! if my own father omits coming
+    up-stairs to say 'good night,' I never say a word; and not from
+    indifference. Do try to make out these readings of me as a <i>dixit
+    Casaubonus</i>; and don't throw me down as a corrupt text, nor convict me
+    for an infidel which I am not. On the contrary I am grateful and happy
+    to believe that you like to come here; and even if you came here as a
+    pure act of charity and pity to me, as long as you <i>chose to come</i> I
+    should not be too proud to be grateful and happy still. I could not be
+    proud to <i>you</i>, and I hope you will not fancy such a possibility,
+    which is the remotest of all. Yes, and <i>I</i> am anxious to ask you to be
+    wholly generous and leave off such an interpreting philosophy as you
+    made use of yesterday, and forgive me when I beg you to fix your own
+    days for coming for the future. Will you? It is the same thing in one
+    way. If you like to come really every week, there is no hindrance to
+    it&mdash;you can do it&mdash;and the privilege and obligation remain equally
+    mine:&mdash;and if you name a day for coming on any week, where there is an
+    obstacle on my side, you will learn it from me in a moment. Why I
+    might as well charge <i>you</i> with distrusting <i>me</i>, because you persist
+    in making me choose the days. And it is not for me to do it, but for
+    you&mdash;I must feel that&mdash;and I cannot help chafing myself against the
+    thought that for me to begin to fix days in this way, just because you
+    have quick impulses (like all imaginative persons), and wish me to do
+    it now, may bring me to the catastrophe of asking you to come when you
+    would rather not, ... which, as you say truly, would not be an
+    important vexation to you; but to me would be worse than vexation; to
+    <i>me</i>&mdash;and therefore I shrink from the very imagination of the
+    possibility of such a thing, and ask you to bear with me and let it be
+    as I prefer ... left to your own choice of the moment. And bear with
+    me above all&mdash;because this shows no want of faith in you ... none ...
+    but comes from a simple fact (with its ramifications) ... that you
+    know little of me personally yet, and that <i>you guess</i>, even, but very
+    little of the influence of a peculiar experience over me and out of
+    me; and if I wanted a proof of this, we need not seek further than the
+    very point of discussion, and the hard worldly thoughts you thought I
+    was thinking of you yesterday,&mdash;I, who thought not one of them! But I
+    am so used to discern the correcting and ministering angels by the
+    same footsteps on the ground, that it is not wonderful I should look
+    down there at any approach of a <span title="philia taxis">&phi;&iota;&lambda;&iota;&alpha; &tau;&alpha;&xi;&iota;&sigmaf;</span> whatever to this
+    personal <i>me</i>. Have I not been ground down to browns and blacks? and
+    is it my fault if I am not green? Not that it is my <i>complaint</i>&mdash;I
+    should not be justified in complaining; I believe, as I told you, that
+    there is more gladness than sadness in the world&mdash;that is, generally:
+    and if some natures have to be refined by the sun, and some by the
+    furnace (the less genial ones) both means are to be recognised as
+    <i>good</i>, ... however different in pleasurableness and painfulness, and
+    though furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit. I assured
+    you there was nothing I had any power of teaching you: and there <i>is</i>
+    nothing, except grief!&mdash;which I would not teach you, you know, if I
+    had the occasion granted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a multitude of words about nothing at all, ... this&mdash;but I am
+    like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the
+    mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can&mdash;and believe how
+    profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all,
+    much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as
+    you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get up
+    enough pomp and circumstance to write on purpose to certify the
+    important fact of my being a little stronger or a little weaker on one
+    particular morning. That I am always ready and rejoiced to write to
+    you, you know perfectly well, and I have proved, by 'superfluity of
+    naughtiness' and prolixity through some twenty posts:&mdash;and this, and
+    therefore, you will agree altogether to attribute no more to me on
+    these counts, and determine to read me no more backwards with your
+    Hebrew, putting in your own vowel points without my leave! Shall it be
+    so?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a letter grown from a note which it meant to be&mdash;and I have
+    been interrupted in the midst of it, or it should have gone to you
+    earlier. Let what I have said in it of myself pass unquestioned and
+    unnoticed, because it is of <i>me</i> and not of <i>you</i>, ... and, if in any
+    wise lunatical, all the talking and writing in the world will not put
+    the implied moon into another quarter. Only be patient with me a
+    little, ... and let us have a smooth ground for the poems which I am
+    foreseeing the sight of with such pride and delight&mdash;Such pride and
+    delight!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And one thing ... which is chief, though it seems to come last!... you
+    <i>will</i> have advice (will you not?) if that pain does not grow much
+    better directly? It cannot be prudent or even <i>safe</i> to let a pain in
+    the head go on so long, and no remedy be attempted for it, ... and you
+    cannot be sure that it is a merely nervous pain and that it may not
+    have consequences; and this, quite apart from the consideration of
+    suffering. So you will see some one with an opinion to give, and take
+    it? <i>Do</i>, I beseech you. You will not say 'no'? Also ... if on
+    Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come on
+    Thursday instead, I hope, ... seeing that it must be right for you to
+    be quiet and silent when you suffer so, and a journey into London can
+    let you be neither. Otherwise, I hold to my day, ... Wednesday. And
+    may God bless you my dear friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are right I see, nearly everywhere, if not quite everywhere in the
+    criticisms&mdash;but of course I have not looked very closely&mdash;that is, I
+    have read your papers but not in connection with a <i>my</i> side of the
+    argument&mdash;but I shall lose the post after all.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I ventured to hope this morning might bring me news of you&mdash;First
+    East-winds on you, then myself, then those criticisms!&mdash;I do assure
+    you I am properly apprehensive. How are you? May I go on Wednesday
+    without too much <span title="anthadia">&alpha;&nu;&theta;&alpha;&delta;&iota;&alpha;</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Pray remember what I said and wrote, to the effect that my exceptions
+    were, in almost every case, to the 'reading'&mdash;not to your version of
+    it: but I have not specified the particular ones&mdash;not written down the
+    Greek, of my suggested translations&mdash;have I? And if you do not find
+    them in the margin of your copy, how you must wonder! Thus, in the
+    last speech but one, of Hermes, I prefer Porson and Blomfield's
+    <span title="ei mêd' atychôn ti chala maniôn">&epsilon;&iota; &mu;&eta;&delta;' &alpha;&tau;&upsilon;&chi;&omega;&nu; &tau;&iota; &chi;&alpha;&lambda;&alpha; &mu;&alpha;&nu;&iota;&omega;&nu;</span>;&mdash;to the old combinations
+    that include <span title="eutychê">&epsilon;&upsilon;&tau;&upsilon;&chi;&eta;</span>&mdash;though there is no MS. authority for
+    emendation, it seems. But in what respect does Prometheus 'fare
+    <i>well</i>,' or 'better' even, since the beginning? And is it not the old
+    argument over again, that when a man <i>fails</i> he should repent of his
+    ways?&mdash;And while thinking of Hermes, let me say that '<span title="mêde moi diplas odous prosbalês">&mu;&eta;&delta;&epsilon; &mu;&omicron;&iota; &delta;&iota;&pi;&lambda;&alpha;&sigmaf; &omicron;&delta;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &pi;&rho;&omicron;&sigma;&beta;&alpha;&lambda;&eta;&sigmaf;</span>' is surely&mdash;'Don't subject me to the trouble
+    of a second journey ... by paying no attention to the first.' So says
+    Scholiast A, and so backs him Scholiast B, especially created, it
+    should appear, to show there could be <i>in rerum naturâ</i> such another
+    as his predecessor. A few other remarks occur to me, which I will tell
+    you if you please; <i>now</i>, I really want to know how you are, and write
+    for that.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, June 9, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just after my note left, yours came&mdash;I will try so to answer it as to
+    please you; and I begin by promising cheerfully to do all you bid me
+    about naming days &amp;c. I do believe we are friends now and for ever.
+    There can be no reason, therefore, that I should cling tenaciously to
+    any one or other time of meeting, as if, losing that, I lost
+    everything&mdash;and, for the future, I will provide against sudden
+    engagements, outrageous weather &amp;c., to your heart's content. Nor am I
+    going to except against here and there a little wrong I could get up,
+    as when you <i>imply</i> from my quick impulses and the like. No, my dear
+    friend&mdash;for I seem sure I shall have quite, quite time enough to do
+    myself justice in your eyes&mdash;Let time show!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Perhaps I feel none the less sorely, when you 'thank' me for such
+    company as mine, that I cannot avoid confessing to myself that it
+    would not be so absolutely out of my power, perhaps, to contrive
+    really and deserve thanks in a certain acceptation&mdash;I <i>might</i> really
+    <i>try</i>, at all events, and amuse you a little better, when I do have
+    the opportunity,&mdash;and I <i>do not</i>&mdash;but there is the thing! It is all of
+    a piece&mdash;I <i>do not</i> seek your friendship in order to do you good&mdash;any
+    good&mdash;only to do myself good. Though I <i>would</i>, God knows, do that
+    too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Enough of this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am much better, indeed,&mdash;but will certainly follow your advice
+    should the pain return. And you&mdash;you have tried a new journey from
+    your room, have you not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do recollect, at any turn, any chance so far in my favour,&mdash;that I am
+    here and yours should you want any fetching and carrying in this
+    outside London world. Your brothers may have their own business to
+    mind, Mr. Kenyon is at New York, we will suppose; here am I&mdash;what
+    else, <i>what else</i> makes me count my cleverness to you, as I know I
+    have done more than once, by word and letter, but the real wish to be
+    set at work? I should have, I hope, better taste than to tell any
+    everyday acquaintance, who could not go out, one single morning even,
+    on account of a headache, that the weather was delightful, much less
+    that I had been walking five miles and meant to run ten&mdash;yet to you I
+    boasted once of polking and waltzing and more&mdash;but then would it not
+    be a very superfluous piece of respect in the four-footed bird to keep
+    his wings to himself because his Master Oceanos could fly forsooth?
+    Whereas he begins to wave a flap and show how ready they are to be
+    off&mdash;for what else were the good of him? Think of this&mdash;and
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Know me for yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For good you are, to those notes&mdash;you shall have more,&mdash;that is, the
+    rest&mdash;on Wednesday then, at 3, except as you except. God bless you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh, let me tell you&mdash;I suppose Mr. Horne must be in town&mdash;as I
+    received a letter two days ago, from the contriver of some literary
+    society or other who had before written to get me to belong to it,
+    protesting <i>against</i> my reasons for refusing, and begging that 'at all
+    events I would suspend my determination till I had been visited by Mr.
+    H. on the subject'&mdash;and, as they can hardly mean to bring him express
+    from the Drachenfels for just that, he is returned no doubt&mdash;and as he
+    is your friend, I take the opportunity of mentioning the course I
+    shall pursue with him or any other friend of yours I may meet,&mdash;(and
+    everybody else, I may add&mdash;) the course I understand you to desire,
+    with respect to our own intimacy. While I may acknowledge, I believe,
+    that I correspond with you, I shall not, in any case, suffer it to be
+    known that I see, or have seen you. This I just remind you of, lest
+    any occasion of embarrassment should arise, for a moment, from your
+    not being quite sure how <i>I</i> had acted in any case.&mdash;Con che, le bacio
+    le mani&mdash;a rivederla!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 10, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must thank you by one word for all your kindness and
+    consideration&mdash;which could not be greater; nor more felt by me. In the
+    first place, afterwards (if that should not be Irish dialect) do
+    understand that my letter passed from my hands to go to yours on
+    <i>Friday</i>, but was thrown aside carelessly down stairs and 'covered up'
+    they say, so as not to be seen until late on Saturday; and I can only
+    humbly hope to have been cross enough about it (having conscientiously
+    tried) to secure a little more accuracy another time.&mdash;And then, ...
+    if ever I should want anything done or found, ... (a roc's egg or the
+    like) you may believe me that I shall not scruple to ask you to be the
+    finder; but at this moment I want nothing, indeed, except your poems;
+    and that is quite the truth. Now do consider and think what I could
+    possibly want in your 'outside London world'; you, who are the 'Genius
+    of the lamp'!&mdash;Why if you light it and let me read your romances, &amp;c.,
+    by it, is not that the best use for it, and am I likely to look for
+    another? Only I shall remember what you say, gratefully and seriously;
+    and if ever I should have a good fair opportunity of giving you
+    trouble (as if I had not done it already!), you may rely upon my evil
+    intentions; even though dear Mr. Kenyon should not actually be at New
+    York, ... which he is not, I am glad to say, as I saw him on Saturday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Which reminds me that <i>he</i> knows of your having been here, of course!
+    and will not mention it; as he understood from me that <i>you</i> would
+    not.&mdash;Thank you! Also there was an especial reason which constrained
+    me, on pain of appearing a great hypocrite, to tell Miss Mitford the
+    bare fact of my having seen you&mdash;and reluctantly I did it, though
+    placing some hope in her promise of discretion. And how necessary the
+    discretion is, will appear in the awful statistical fact of our having
+    at this moment, as my sisters were calculating yesterday, some forty
+    relations in London&mdash;to say nothing of the right wing of the enemy.
+    For Mr. Horne, I could have told you, and really I thought I <i>had</i>
+    told you of his being in England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last paragraph of all is, that I <i>don't want to be amused</i>, ... or
+    rather that I <i>am</i> amused by everything and anything. Why surely,
+    surely, you have some singular ideas about me! So, till to-morrow,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Instead of writing this note to you yesterday, as should have been, I
+    went down-stairs&mdash;or rather was carried&mdash;and am not the worse.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, the poem <i>is</i> too good in certain respects for the prizes given
+    in colleges, (when all the pure parsley goes naturally to the
+    rabbits), and has a great deal of beauty here and there in image and
+    expression. Still I do not quite agree with you that it reaches the
+    Tennyson standard any wise; and for the blank verse, I cannot for a
+    moment think it comparable to one of the grand passages in 'Oenone,'
+    and 'Arthur' and the like. In fact I seem to hear more in that latter
+    blank verse than you do, ... to hear not only a 'mighty line' as in
+    Marlowe, but a noble full orbicular wholeness in complete
+    passages&mdash;which always struck me as the mystery of music and great
+    peculiarity in Tennyson's versification, inasmuch as he attains to
+    these complete effects without that shifting of the pause practised by
+    the masters, ... Shelley and others. A 'linked music' in which there
+    are no links!&mdash;<i>that</i>, you would take to be a contradiction&mdash;and yet
+    something like that, my ear has always seemed to perceive; and I have
+    wondered curiously again and again how there could be so much union
+    and no fastening. Only of course it is not model versification&mdash;and
+    for dramatic purposes, it must be admitted to be bad.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Which reminds me to be astonished for the second time how you could
+    think such a thing of me as that I wanted to read only your lyrics,
+    ... or that I 'preferred the lyrics' ... or something barbarous in
+    that way? You don't think me 'ambidexter,' or 'either-handed' ... and
+    both hands open for what poems you will vouchsafe to me; and yet if
+    you would let me see anything you may have in a readable state by you,
+    ... 'The Flight of the Duchess' ... or act or scene of 'The Soul's
+    Tragedy,' ... I shall be so glad and grateful to you! Oh&mdash;if you
+    change your mind and choose to be <i>bien prié</i>, I will grant it is your
+    right, and begin my liturgy directly. But this is not teazing (in the
+    intention of it!) and I understand all about the transcription, and
+    the inscrutableness of rough copies,&mdash;that is, if you write as I do,
+    so that my guardian angel or M. Champollion cannot read what is
+    written. Only whatever they can, (remember!) <i>I</i> can: and you are not
+    to mind trusting me with the cacistography possible to mortal readers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sun shines so that nobody dares complain of the east wind&mdash;and
+    indeed I am better altogether. May God bless you, my dear friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I ask my wise self what I really do remember of the Prize poem,
+    the answer is&mdash;both of Chapman's lines a-top, quite worth any prize
+    for their quoter&mdash;then, the good epithet of 'Green Europe' contrasting
+    with Africa&mdash;then, deep in the piece, a picture of a Vestal in a
+    vault, where I see a dipping and winking lamp plainest, and last of
+    all the ominous 'all was dark' that dismisses you. I read the poem
+    many years ago, and never since, though I have an impression that the
+    versification is good, yet from your commentary I see I must have said
+    a good deal more in its praise than that. But have you not discovered
+    by this time that I go on talking with my thoughts away?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I know, I have always been jealous of my own musical faculty (I can
+    write music).&mdash;Now that I see the uselessness of such jealousy, and am
+    for loosing and letting it go, it may be cramped possibly. Your music
+    is more various and exquisite than any modern writer's to my ear. One
+    should study the mechanical part of the art, as nearly all that there
+    is to be studied&mdash;for the more one sits and thinks over the creative
+    process, the more it confirms itself as 'inspiration,' nothing more
+    nor less. Or, at worst, you write down old inspirations, what you
+    remember of them ... but with <i>that</i> it begins. 'Reflection' is
+    exactly what it names itself&mdash;a <i>re</i>-presentation, in scattered rays
+    from every angle of incidence, of what first of all became present in
+    a great light, a whole one. So tell me how these lights are born, if
+    you can! But I can tell anybody how to make melodious verses&mdash;let him
+    do it therefore&mdash;it should be exacted of all writers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You do not understand what a new feeling it is for me to have someone
+    who is to like my verses or I shall not ever like them after! So far
+    differently was I circumstanced of old, that I used rather to go about
+    for a subject of offence to people; writing ugly things in order to
+    warn the ungenial and timorous off my grounds at once. I shall never
+    do so again at least! As it is, I will bring all I dare, in as great
+    quantities as I can&mdash;if not next time, after then&mdash;certainly. I must
+    make an end, print this Autumn my last four 'Bells,' Lyrics, Romances,
+    'The Tragedy,' and 'Luna,' and then go on with a whole heart to my own
+    Poem&mdash;indeed, I have just resolved not to begin any new song, even,
+    till this grand clearance is made&mdash;I will get the Tragedy transcribed
+    to bring&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    'To bring!' Next Wednesday&mdash;if you know how happy you make me! may I
+    not say <i>that</i>, my dear friend, when I feel it from my soul?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I thank God that you are better: do pray make fresh endeavours to
+    profit by this partial respite of the weather! All about you must urge
+    that: but even from my distance some effect might come of such wishes.
+    But you <i>are</i> better&mdash;look so and speak so! God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You let 'flowers be sent you in a letter,' every one knows, and this
+    hot day draws out our very first yellow rose.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, I quite believe as you do that what is called the 'creative
+    process' in works of Art, is just inspiration and no less&mdash;which made
+    somebody say to me not long since; And so you think that Shakespeare's
+    'Othello' was of the effluence of the Holy Ghost?'&mdash;rather a startling
+    deduction, ... only not quite as final as might appear to somebodies
+    perhaps. At least it does not prevent my going on to agree with the
+    saying of <i>Spiridion</i>, ... do you remember?... 'Tout ce que l'homme
+    appelle inspiration, je l'appelle aussi revelation,' ... if there is
+    not something too self-evident in it after all&mdash;my sole objection! And
+    is it not true that your inability to analyse the mental process in
+    question, is one of the proofs of the fact of inspiration?&mdash;as the
+    gods were known of old by not being seen to move their feet,&mdash;coming
+    and going in an equal sweep of radiance.&mdash;And still more wonderful
+    than the first transient great light you speak of, ... and far beyond
+    any work of <i>re</i>flection, except in the pure analytical sense in which
+    you use the word, ... appears that gathering of light on light upon
+    particular points, as you go (in composition) step by step, till you
+    get intimately near to things, and see them in a fullness and
+    clearness, and an intense trust in the truth of them which you have
+    not in any sunshine of noon (called <i>real</i>!) but which you have <i>then</i>
+    ... and struggle to communicate:&mdash;an ineffectual struggle with most
+    writers (oh, how ineffectual!) and when effectual, issuing in the
+    'Pippa Passes,' and other master-pieces of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will tell me what you mean exactly by being jealous of your own
+    music? You said once that you had had a false notion of music, or had
+    practised it according to the false notions of other people: but did
+    you mean besides that you ever had meant to despise music
+    altogether&mdash;because <i>that</i>, it is hard to set about trying to believe
+    of you indeed. And then, you <i>can</i> praise my verses for music?&mdash;Why,
+    are you aware that people blame me constantly for wanting
+    harmony&mdash;from Mr. Boyd who moans aloud over the indisposition of my
+    'trochees' ... and no less a person than Mr. Tennyson, who said to
+    somebody who repeated it, that in the want of harmony lay the chief
+    defect of the poems, 'although it might verily be retrieved, as he
+    could fancy that I had an ear by nature.' Well&mdash;but I am pleased that
+    you should praise me&mdash;right or wrong&mdash;I mean, whether I am right or
+    wrong in being pleased! and I say so to you openly, although my belief
+    is that you are under a vow to our Lady of Loretto to make giddy with
+    all manner of high vanities, some head, ... not too strong for such
+    things, but too low for them, ... before you see again the embroidery
+    on her divine petticoat. Only there's a flattery so far beyond praise
+    ... even <i>your</i> praise&mdash;as where you talk of your verses being liked
+    &amp;c., and of your being happy to bring them here, ... that is scarcely
+    a lawful weapon; and see if the Madonna may not signify so much to
+    you!&mdash;Seriously, you will not hurry too uncomfortably, or
+    uncomfortably at all, about the transcribing? Another day, you know,
+    will do as well&mdash;and patience is possible to me, if not 'native to the
+    soil.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also I am behaving very well in going out into the noise; not quite
+    out of doors yet, on account of the heat&mdash;and I am better as you say,
+    without any doubt at all, and stronger&mdash;only my looks are a little
+    deceitful; and people are apt to be heated and flushed in this
+    weather, one hour, to look a little more ghastly an hour or two after.
+    Not that it <i>is</i> not true of me that I am better, mind! Because I am.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The 'flower in the letter' was from one of my sisters&mdash;from Arabel
+    (though many of these poems are <i>ideal</i> ... will you understand?) and
+    your rose came quite alive and fresh, though in act of dropping its
+    beautiful leaves, because of having to come to me instead of living on
+    in your garden, as it intended. But I thank you&mdash;for this, and all, my
+    dear friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 19, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I next see you, do not let me go on and on to my confusion about
+    matters I am more or less ignorant of, but always ignorant. I tell
+    you plainly I only trench on them, and intrench in them, from
+    gaucherie, pure and respectable ... I should certainly grow
+    instructive on the prospects of hay-crops and pasture-land, if
+    deprived of this resource. And now here is a week to wait before I
+    shall have any occasion to relapse into Greek literature when I am
+    thinking all the while, 'now I will just ask simply, what flattery
+    there was,' &amp;c. &amp;c., which, as I had not courage to say then, I keep
+    to myself for shame now. This I will say, then&mdash;wait and know me
+    better, as you will one long day at the end.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why I write now, is because you did not promise, as before, to let me
+    know how you are&mdash;this morning is miserably cold again&mdash;Will you tell
+    me, at your own time?
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you, my dear friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 20, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If on Greek literature or anything else it is your pleasure to
+    cultivate a reputation for ignorance, I will respect your desire&mdash;and
+    indeed the point of the deficiency in question being far above my
+    sight I am not qualified either to deny or assert the existence of it;
+    so you are free to have it all your own way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    About the 'flattery' however, there is a difference; and I must deny a
+    little having ever used such a word ... as far as I can recollect, and
+    I have been trying to recollect, ... as that word of flattery. Perhaps
+    I said something about your having vowed to make me vain by writing
+    this or that of my liking your verses and so on&mdash;and perhaps I said it
+    too lightly ... which happened because when one doesn't know whether
+    to laugh or to cry, it is far best, as a general rule, to laugh. But
+    the serious truth is that it was all nonsense together what I wrote,
+    and that, instead of talking of your making me vain, I should have
+    talked (if it had been done sincerely) of your humbling me&mdash;inasmuch
+    as nothing does humble anybody so much as being lifted up too high.
+    You know what vaulting Ambition did once for himself? and when it is
+    done for him by another, his fall is still heavier. And one moral of
+    all this general philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you
+    persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to
+    say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I
+    shall have no help for my dumbness. So I tell you beforehand&mdash;nothing
+    extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so
+    much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence'
+    which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness'
+    which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems
+    gradually going and going&mdash;and really it would not be very strange
+    (without that) if <i>I</i> who was born a hero worshipper and have so
+    continued, and who always recognised your genius, should find it
+    impossible to bring out critical doxies on the workings of it. Well&mdash;I
+    shall do what I can&mdash;as far as <i>impressions</i> go, you understand&mdash;and
+    <i>you</i> must promise not to attach too much importance to anything said.
+    So that is a covenant, my dear friend!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I am really gaining strength&mdash;and I will not complain of the
+    weather. As long as the thermometer keeps above sixty I am content for
+    one; and the roses are not quite dead yet, which they would have been
+    in the heat. And last and not least&mdash;may I ask if you were told that
+    the pain in the head was not important (or was) in the causes, ... and
+    was likely to be well soon? or was not? I am at the end.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Upon second or third thoughts, isn't it true that you are a little
+    suspicious of me? suspicious at least of suspiciousness?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 23, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if I am 'suspicious of your suspiciousness,' who gives cause,
+    pray? The matter was long ago settled, I thought, when you first took
+    exception to what I said about higher and lower, and I consented to
+    this much&mdash;that you should help seeing, if you could, our true
+    intellectual and moral relation each to the other, so long as you
+    would allow <i>me</i> to see what <i>is</i> there, fronting me. 'Is my eye evil
+    because yours is not good?' My own friend, if I wished to 'make you
+    vain,' if having 'found the Bower' I did really address myself to the
+    wise business of spoiling its rose-roof,&mdash;I think that at least where
+    there was such a will, there would be also something not unlike a
+    way,&mdash;that I should find a proper hooked stick to tear down flowers
+    with, and write you other letters than these&mdash;quite, quite others, I
+    feel&mdash;though I am far from going to imagine, even for a moment, what
+    might be the precise prodigy&mdash;like the notable Son of Zeus, that <i>was</i>
+    to have been, and done the wonders, only he did not, because &amp;c. &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I have a restless head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well,
+    you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being
+    positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are
+    neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special
+    naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to
+    signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more than that ... you
+    will know exactly why it happens. I will finish and transcribe the
+    'Flight of the Duchess' since you spoke of that first.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am truly happy to hear that your health improves still.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For me, going out does me good&mdash;reading, writing, and, what is
+    odd,&mdash;infinitely most of all, <i>sleeping</i> do me the harm,&mdash;never any
+    very great harm. And all the while I am yours
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had begun to be afraid that I did not deserve to have my questions
+    answered; and I was afraid of asking them over again. But it is worse
+    to be afraid that you are not better at all in any essential manner
+    (after all your assurances) and that the medical means have failed so
+    far. Did you go to somebody who knows anything?&mdash;because there is no
+    excuse, you see, in common sense, for not having the best and most
+    experienced opinion when there is a choice of advice&mdash;and I am
+    confident that that pain should not be suffered to go on without
+    something being done. What I said about <i>nerves</i>, related to what you
+    had told me of your mother's suffering and what you had fancied of the
+    relation of it to your own, and not that I could be thinking about
+    imaginary complaints&mdash;I wish I could. Not (either) that I believe in
+    the relation ... because such things are not hereditary, are they? and
+    the bare coincidence is improbable. Well, but, I wanted particularly
+    to say this&mdash;<i>Don't bring the 'Duchess' with you on Wednesday.</i> I
+    shall not expect anything, I write distinctly to tell you&mdash;and I would
+    far far rather that you did not bring it. You see it is just as I
+    thought&mdash;for that whether too much thought or study did or did not
+    bring on the illness, ... yet you admit that reading and writing
+    increase it ... as they would naturally do any sort of pain in the
+    head&mdash;therefore if you will but be in earnest and try to get well
+    <i>first</i>, we will do the 'Bells' afterwards, and there will be time for
+    a whole peal of them, I hope and trust, before the winter. Now do
+    admit that this is reasonable, and agree reasonably to it. And if it
+    does you good to go out and take exercise, why not go out and take it?
+    nay, why not go <i>away</i> and take it? Why not try the effect of a little
+    change of air&mdash;or even of a great change of air&mdash;if it should be
+    necessary, or even expedient? Anything is better, you know ... or if
+    you don't know, <i>I</i> know&mdash;than to be ill, really, seriously&mdash;I mean
+    for <i>you</i> to be ill, who have so much to do and to enjoy in the world
+    yet ... and all those bells waiting to be hung! So that if you will
+    agree to be well first, I will promise to be ready afterwards to help
+    you in any thing I can do ... transcribing or anything ... to get the
+    books through the press in the shortest of times&mdash;and I am capable of
+    a great deal of that sort of work without being tired, having the
+    habit of writing in any sort of position, and the long habit, ...
+    since, before I was ill even, I never used to write at a table (or
+    scarcely ever) but on the arm of a chair, or on the seat of one,
+    sitting myself on the floor, and calling myself a Lollard for dignity.
+    So you will put by your 'Duchess' ... will you not? or let me see just
+    that one sheet&mdash;if one should be written&mdash;which is finished? ... up to
+    this moment, you understand? finished <i>now</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if I have tired and teazed you with all these words it is a bad
+    opportunity to take&mdash;and yet I will persist in saying through good and
+    bad opportunities that I never did 'give cause' as you say, to your
+    being 'suspicious of my suspiciousness' as I believe I said before. I
+    deny my 'suspiciousness' altogether&mdash;it is not one of my faults. Nor
+    is it quite my fault that you and I should always be quarrelling about
+    over-appreciations and under-appreciations&mdash;and after all I have no
+    interest nor wish, I do assure you, to depreciate myself&mdash;and you are
+    not to think that I have the remotest claim to the Monthyon prize for
+    good deeds in the way of modesty of self-estimation. Only when I know
+    you better, as you talk of ... and when <i>you</i> know <i>me</i> too well, ...
+    the right and the wrong of these conclusions will appear in a fuller
+    light than ever so much arguing can produce now. Is it unkindly
+    written of me? <i>no</i>&mdash;I <i>feel</i> it is not!&mdash;and that 'now and ever we
+    are friends,' (just as you think) <i>I</i> think besides and am happy in
+    thinking so, and could not be distrustful of you if I tried. So may
+    God bless you, my ever dear friend&mdash;and mind to forget the 'Duchess'
+    and to remember every good counsel!&mdash;Not that I do particularly
+    confide in the medical oracles. They never did much more for <i>me</i>
+    than, when my pulse was above a hundred and forty with fever, to give
+    me digitalis to make me weak&mdash;and, when I could not move without
+    fainting (with weakness), to give me quinine to make me feverish
+    again. Yes&mdash;and they could tell from the stethoscope, how very little
+    was really wrong in me ... if it were not on a vital organ&mdash;and how I
+    should certainly live ... if I didn't die sooner. But then, nothing
+    <i>has</i> power over affections of the chest, except God and his
+    winds&mdash;and I do hope that an obvious quick remedy may be found for
+    your head. But <i>do</i> give up the writing and all that does harm!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours, my dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Miss Mitford talked of spending Wednesday with me&mdash;and I have put it
+    off to Thursday:&mdash;and if you should hear from Mr. Chorley that he is
+    coming to see <i>her and me together on any day</i>, do understand that it
+    was entirely her proposition and not mine, and that certainly it won't
+    be acceded to, as far as <i>I</i> am concerned; as I have explained to her
+    finally. I have been vexed about it&mdash;but she can see him down-stairs
+    as she has done before&mdash;and if she calls me perverse and capricious
+    (which she will do) I shall stop the reflection by thanking her again
+    and again (as I can do sincerely) for her kindness and goodness in
+    coming to see me herself, so far!&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning,<br>
+[Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    (So my friend did not in the spirit see me write that <i>first</i> letter,
+    on Friday, which was too good and true to send, and met, five minutes
+    after, its natural fate accordingly. Then on Saturday I thought to
+    take health by storm, and walked myself half dead all the
+    morning&mdash;about town too: last post-hour from this Thule of a
+    suburb&mdash;4 P.M. on Saturdays, next expedition of letters, 8 A.M. on
+    Mondays;&mdash;and then my real letter set out with the others&mdash;and, it
+    should seem, set at rest a 'wonder whether thy friend's questions
+    deserved answering'&mdash;de-served&mdash;answer-ing&mdash;!)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parenthetically so much&mdash;I want most, though, to tell you&mdash;(leaving
+    out any slightest attempt at thanking you) that I am much better,
+    quite well to-day&mdash;that my doctor has piloted me safely through two or
+    three illnesses, and knows all about me, I do think&mdash;and that he talks
+    confidently of getting rid of all the symptoms complained of&mdash;and
+    <i>has</i> made a good beginning if I may judge by to-day. As for going
+    abroad, that is just the thing I most want to avoid (for a reason not
+    so hard to guess, perhaps, as why my letter was slow in arriving).
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, till to-morrow,&mdash;my light through the dark week.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God ever bless you, dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    What will you think when I write to ask you <i>not</i> to come to-morrow,
+    Wednesday; but ... on Friday perhaps, instead? But do see how it is;
+    and judge if it is to be helped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have waited hour after hour, hoping to hear from Miss Mitford that
+    she would agree to take Thursday in change for Wednesday,&mdash;and just as
+    I begin to wonder whether she can have received my letter at all, or
+    whether she may not have been vexed by it into taking a vengeance and
+    adhering to her own devices; (for it appealed to her esprit de sexe on
+    the undeniable axiom of women having their way ... and she might
+    choose to act it out!) just as I wonder over all this, and consider
+    what a confusion of the elements it would be if you came and found her
+    here, and Mr. Chorley at the door perhaps, waiting for some of the
+    light of her countenance;&mdash;comes a note from Mr. Kenyon, to the
+    effect that <i>he</i> will be here at four o'clock P.M.&mdash;and comes a final
+    note from my aunt Mrs. Hedley (supposed to be at Brighton for several
+    months) to the effect that <i>she</i> will be here at twelve o'clock, M.!!
+    So do observe the constellation of adverse stars ... or the covey of
+    'bad birds,' as the Romans called them, and that there is no choice,
+    but to write as I am writing. It can't be helped&mdash;can it? For take
+    away the doubt about Miss Mitford, and Mr. Kenyon remains&mdash;and take
+    away Mr. Kenyon, and there is Mrs. Hedley&mdash;and thus it <i>must be for
+    Friday</i> ... which will learn to be a fortunate day for the
+    nonce&mdash;unless Saturday should suit you better. I do not speak of
+    Thursday, because of the doubt about Miss Mitford&mdash;and if any harm
+    should happen to Friday, I will write again; but if you do not hear
+    again, and are able to come then, you <i>will</i> come perhaps then.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the meantime I thank you for the better news in your note&mdash;if it is
+    really, really to be trusted in&mdash;but you know, you have said so often
+    that you were better and better, without being really better, that it
+    makes people ... 'suspicious.' Yet it is full amends for the
+    disappointment to hope ... here I must break off or be too late. May
+    God bless you my dear friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">12. Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Pomegranates you may cut deep down the middle and see into, but not
+    hearts,&mdash;so why should I try and speak?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Friday is best day because nearest, but Saturday is next best&mdash;it is
+    next near, you know: if I get no note, therefore, Friday is my day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now is Post-time,&mdash;which happens properly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you, and so your own
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all it must be for Saturday, as Mrs. Hedley comes again on
+    Friday, to-morrow, from <i>New Cross</i>,&mdash;or just beyond it, Eltham
+    Park&mdash;to London for a few days, on account of the illness of one of
+    her children. I write in the greatest haste after Miss Mitford has
+    left me ... and <i>so</i> tired! to say this, that if you can and will come
+    on Saturday, ... or if not on Monday or Tuesday, there is no reason
+    against it.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your friend always,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me make haste and write down <i>To-morrow</i>, Saturday, and not later,
+    lest my selfishness be thoroughly got under in its struggle with a
+    better feeling that tells me you must be far too tired for another
+    visitor this week.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What shall I decide on?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well&mdash;Saturday is said&mdash;but I will stay not quite so long, nor talk
+    nearly so loud as of old-times; nor will you, if you understand
+    anything of me, fail to send down word should you be at all
+    indisposed. I should not have the heart to knock at the door unless I
+    really believed you would do that. Still saying this and providing
+    against the other does not amount, I well know, to the generosity, or
+    justice rather, of staying away for a day or two altogether. But&mdash;what
+    'a day or two' may not bring forth! Change to you, change to me&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not all of me, however, can change, thank God&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours ever</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Or, write, as last night, if needs be: Monday, Tuesday is not so long
+    to wait. Will you write?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, June 28, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are very kind and always&mdash;but really <i>that</i> does not seem a good
+    reason against your coming to-morrow&mdash;so come, if it should not rain.
+    If it rains, it <i>concludes</i> for Monday ... or Tuesday; whichever may
+    be clear of rain. I was tired on Wednesday by the confounding
+    confusion of more voices than usual in this room; but the effect
+    passed off, and though Miss Mitford was with me for hours yesterday I
+    am not unwell to-day. And pray speak <i>bona verba</i> about the awful
+    things which are possible between this now and Wednesday. You continue
+    to be better, I do hope? I am forced to the brevity you see, by the
+    post on one side, and my friends on the other, who have so long
+    overstayed the coming of your note&mdash;but it is enough to assure you
+    that you will do no harm by coming&mdash;only give pleasure.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours, my dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[June 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I send back the prize poems which have been kept far too long even if
+    I do not make excuses for the keeping&mdash;but our sins are not always to
+    be measured by our repentance for them. Then I am well enough this
+    morning to have thought of going out till they told me it was not at
+    all a right day for it ... too windy ... soft and delightful as the
+    air seems to be&mdash;particularly after yesterday, when we had some winter
+    back again in an episode. And the roses do not die; which is quite
+    magnanimous of them considering their reverses; and their buds are
+    coming out in most exemplary resignation&mdash;like birds singing in a
+    cage. Now that the windows may be open, the flowers take heart to live
+    a little in this room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And think of my forgetting to tell you on Saturday that I had known of
+    a letter being received by somebody from Miss Martineau, who is at
+    Ambleside at this time and so entranced with the lakes and mountains
+    as to be dreaming of taking or making a house among them, to live in
+    for the rest of her life. Mrs. Trollope, you may have heard, had
+    something of the same nympholepsy&mdash;no, her daughter was 'settled' in
+    the neighbourhood&mdash;<i>that</i> is the more likely reason for Mrs. Trollope!
+    and the spirits of the hills conspired against her the first winter
+    and almost slew her with a fog and drove her away to your Italy where
+    the Oreadocracy has gentler manners. And Miss Martineau is practising
+    mesmerism and miracles on all sides she says, and counts on Archbishop
+    Whately as a new adherent. I even fancy that he has been to see her in
+    the character of a convert. All this from Mr. Kenyon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There's a strange wild book called the Autobiography of Heinrich
+    Stilling ... one of those true devout deep-hearted Germans who believe
+    everything, and so are nearer the truth, I am sure, than the wise who
+    believe nothing; but rather over-German sometimes, and redolent of
+    sauerkraut&mdash;and <i>he</i> gives a tradition ... somewhere between mesmerism
+    and mysticism, ... of a little spirit with gold shoebuckles, who was
+    his familiar spirit and appeared only in the sunshine I think ...
+    mottling it over with its feet, perhaps, as a child might snow. Take
+    away the shoebuckles and I believe in the little spirit&mdash;don't <i>you</i>?
+    But these English mesmerists make the shoebuckles quite conspicuous
+    and insist on them broadly; and the Archbishops Whately may be drawn
+    by <i>them</i> (who can tell?) more than by the little spirit itself. How
+    is your head to-day? now really, and nothing extenuating? I will not
+    ask of poems, till the 'quite well' is <i>authentic</i>. May God bless you
+    always! my dear friend!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all the book must go another day. I live in chaos do you know?
+    and I am too hurried at this moment ... yes it is here.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How are you&mdash;may I hope to hear soon?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I don't know exactly what possessed me to set my next day so far off
+    as Saturday&mdash;as it was said, however, so let it be. And I will bring
+    the rest of the 'Duchess'&mdash;four or five hundred lines,&mdash;'heu, herba
+    mala crescit'&mdash;(as I once saw mournfully pencilled on a white wall at
+    Asolo)&mdash;but will you tell me if you quite remember the main of the
+    <i>first</i> part&mdash;(<i>parts</i> there are none except in the necessary process
+    of chopping up to suit the limits of a magazine&mdash;and I gave them as
+    much as I could transcribe at a sudden warning)&mdash;because, if you
+    please, I can bring the whole, of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After seeing <i>you</i>, that Saturday, I was caught up by a friend and
+    carried to see Vidocq&mdash;who did the honours of his museum of knives and
+    nails and hooks that have helped great murderers to their purposes&mdash;he
+    scarcely admits, I observe, an implement with only one attestation to
+    its efficacy; but the one or two exceptions rather justify his
+    latitude in their favour&mdash;thus one little sort of dessert knife <i>did</i>
+    only take <i>one</i> life.... 'But then,' says Vidocq, 'it was the man's
+    own mother's life, with fifty-two blows, and all for' (I think)
+    'fifteen francs she had got?' So prattles good-naturedly Vidocq&mdash;one
+    of his best stories of that Lacénaire&mdash;'jeune homme d'un caractère
+    fort avenant&mdash;mais c'était un poète,' quoth he, turning sharp on <i>me</i>
+    out of two or three other people round him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here your letter breaks in, and sunshine too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why do you send me that book&mdash;not let me take it? What trouble for
+    nothing!
+</p>
+<p>
+    An old French friend of mine, a dear foolish, very French heart and
+    soul, is coming presently&mdash;his poor brains are whirling with mesmerism
+    in which he believes, as in all other unbelief. He and I are to dine
+    alone (I have not seen him these two years)&mdash;and I shall never be able
+    to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast and
+    descending lower, from riveting his two foolish legs to the wintry
+    chasm; for I that stammer and answer hap-hazard with you, get
+    proportionately valiant and voluble with a mere cupful of Diderot's
+    rinsings, and a man into the bargain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you were prevented from leaving the house yesterday, assuredly
+    to-day you will never attempt such a thing&mdash;the wind, rain&mdash;all is
+    against it: I trust you will not make the first experiment except
+    under really favourable auspices ... for by its success you will
+    naturally be induced to go on or leave off&mdash;Still you are <i>better</i>! I
+    fully believe, dare to believe, <i>that</i> will continue. As for me, since
+    you ask&mdash;find me but something <i>to do</i>, and see if I shall not be
+    well!&mdash;Though I <i>am</i> well now almost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How good you are to my roses&mdash;they are not of my making, to be sure.
+    Never, by the way, did Miss Martineau work such a miracle as I now
+    witness in the garden&mdash;I gathered at Rome, close to the fountain of
+    Egeria, a handful of <i>fennel</i>-seeds from the most indisputable plant
+    of fennel I ever chanced upon&mdash;and, lo, they are come up ... hemlock,
+    or something akin! In two places, moreover. Wherein does hemlock
+    resemble fennel? How could I mistake? No wonder that a stone's cast
+    off from that Egeria's fountain is the Temple of the God Ridiculus.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, on Saturday then&mdash;at three: and I will certainly bring the
+    verses you mention&mdash;and trust to find you still better.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vivi felice&mdash;my dear friend, God bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday-Thursday Evening<br>
+[Post-mark, July 4, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;I know the first part of the 'Duchess' and have it here&mdash;and for
+    the rest of the poem, don't mind about being very legible, or even
+    legible in the usual sense; and remember how it is my boast to be able
+    to read all such manuscript writing as never is read by people who
+    don't like caviare. Now you won't mind? really I rather like blots
+    than otherwise&mdash;being a sort of patron-saint of all manner of
+    untidyness ... if Mr. Kenyon's reproaches (of which there's a
+    stereotyped edition) are justified by the fact&mdash;and he has a great
+    organ of order, and knows 'disorderly persons' at a glance, I suppose.
+    But you won't be particular with <i>me</i> in the matter of transcription?
+    <i>that</i> is what I want to make sure of. And even if you are not
+    particular, I am afraid you are not well enough to be troubled by
+    writing, and writing and the thinking that comes with it&mdash;it would be
+    wiser to wait till you are quite well&mdash;now wouldn't it?&mdash;and my fear
+    is that the 'almost well' means 'very little better.' And why, when
+    there is no motive for hurrying, run any risk? Don't think that I will
+    help you to make yourself ill. That I refuse to do even so much work
+    as the 'little dessert-knife' in the way of murder, ... <i>do</i> think! So
+    upon the whole, I expect nothing on Saturday from this distance&mdash;and
+    if it comes unexpectedly (I mean the Duchess and not Saturday) <i>let</i>
+    it be at no cost, or at the least cost possible, will you? I am
+    delighted in the meanwhile to hear of the quantity of 'mala herba';
+    and hemlock does not come up from every seed you sow, though you call
+    it by ever such bad names.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Talking of poetry, I had a newspaper 'in help of social and political
+    progress' sent to me yesterday from America&mdash;addressed to&mdash;just my
+    name ... <i>poetess, London</i>! Think of the simplicity of those wild
+    Americans in 'calculating' that 'people in general' here in England
+    know what a poetess is!&mdash;Well&mdash;the post office authorities, after
+    deep meditation, I do not doubt, on all probable varieties of the
+    chimpanzee, and a glance to the Surrey Gardens on one side, and the
+    Zoological department of Regent's Park on the other, thought of
+    'Poet's Corner,' perhaps, and wrote at the top of the parcel, 'Enquire
+    at Paternoster Row'! whereupon the Paternoster Row people wrote again,
+    'Go to Mr. Moxon'&mdash;and I received my newspaper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And talking of poetesses, I had a note yesterday (again) which quite
+    touched me ... from Mr. Hemans&mdash;Charles, the son of Felicia&mdash;written
+    with so much feeling, that it was with difficulty I could say my
+    perpetual 'no' to his wish about coming to see me. His mother's memory
+    is surrounded to him, he says, 'with almost a divine lustre'&mdash;and 'as
+    it cannot be to those who knew the writer alone and not the woman.' Do
+    you not like to hear such things said? and is it not better than your
+    tradition about Shelley's son? and is it not pleasant to know that
+    that poor noble pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our
+    country, should be so loved and comprehended by some ... by one at
+    least ... of her own house? Not that, in naming Shelley, I meant for a
+    moment to make a comparison&mdash;there is not equal ground for it.
+    Vittoria Colonna does not walk near Dante&mdash;no. And if you promised
+    never to tell Mrs. Jameson ... nor Miss Martineau ... I would confide
+    to you perhaps my secret profession of faith&mdash;which is ... which is
+    ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there <i>is</i> a
+    natural inferiority of mind in women&mdash;of the intellect ... not by any
+    means, of the moral nature&mdash;and that the history of Art and of genius
+    testifies to this fact openly. Oh&mdash;I would not say so to Mrs. Jameson
+    for the world. I believe I was a coward to her altogether&mdash;for when
+    she denounced carpet work as 'injurious to the mind,' because it led
+    the workers into 'fatal habits of reverie,' I defended the carpet work
+    as if I were striving <i>pro aris et focis</i>, (<i>I</i>, who am so innocent of
+    all that knowledge!) and said not a word for the poor reveries which
+    have frayed away so much of silken time for me ... and let her go
+    away repeating again and again ... 'Oh, but <i>you</i> may do carpet work
+    with impunity&mdash;yes! <i>because</i> you can be writing poems all the
+    while.'!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Think of people making poems and rugs at once. There's complex
+    machinery for you!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I told you that I had a sensation of cold blue steel from her
+    eyes!&mdash;And yet I really liked and like and shall like her. She is very
+    kind I believe&mdash;and it was my mistake&mdash;and I correct my impressions of
+    her more and more to perfection, as <i>you</i> tell me who know more of her
+    than I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Only I should not dare, ... <i>ever</i>, I think ... to tell her that I
+    believe women ... all of us in a mass ... to have minds of quicker
+    movement, but less power and depth ... and that we are under your
+    feet, because we can't stand upon our own. Not that we should either
+    be quite under your feet! so you are not to be too proud, if you
+    please&mdash;and there is certainly some amount of wrong&mdash;: but it never
+    will be righted in the manner and to the extent contemplated by
+    certain of our own prophetesses ... nor ought to be, I hold in
+    intimate persuasion. One woman indeed now alive ... and only <i>that</i>
+    one down all the ages of the world&mdash;seems to me to justify for a
+    moment an opposite opinion&mdash;that wonderful woman George Sand; who has
+    something monstrous in combination with her genius, there is no
+    denying at moments (for she has written one book, Leila, which I could
+    not read, though I am not easily turned back,) but whom, in her good
+    and evil together, I regard with infinitely more admiration than all
+    other women of genius who are or have been. Such a colossal nature in
+    every way,&mdash;with all that breadth and scope of faculty which women
+    want&mdash;magnanimous, and loving the truth and loving the people&mdash;and
+    with that 'hate of hate' too, which you extol&mdash;so eloquent, and yet
+    earnest as if she were dumb&mdash;so full of a living sense of beauty, and
+    of noble blind instincts towards an ideal purity&mdash;and so proving a
+    right even in her wrong. By the way, what you say of the Vidocq museum
+    reminds me of one of the chamber of masonic trial scenes in
+    'Consuelo.' Could you like to see those knives?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I began with the best intentions of writing six lines&mdash;and see what is
+    written! And all because I kept my letter back ... from a <i>doubt about
+    Saturday</i>&mdash;but it has worn away, and the appointment stands good ...
+    for me: I have nothing to say against it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But belief in mesmerism is not the same thing as general unbelief&mdash;to
+    do it justice&mdash;now is it? It may be super-belief as well. Not that
+    there is not something ghastly and repelling to me in the thought of
+    Dr. Elliotson's great bony fingers seeming to 'touch the stops' of a
+    whole soul's harmonies&mdash;as in phreno-magnetism. And I should have
+    liked far better than hearing and seeing <i>that</i>, to have heard <i>you</i>
+    pour the 'cupful of Diderot's rinsings,' out,&mdash;and indeed I can fancy
+    a little that you and how you could do it&mdash;and break the cup too
+    afterwards!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another sheet&mdash;and for what?
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is written already, if you read, you do so meritoriously&mdash;and
+    it's an example of bad writing, if you want one in the poems. I am
+    ashamed, you may see, of having written too much, (besides)&mdash;which is
+    <i>much</i> worse&mdash;but one writes and writes: <i>I</i> do at least&mdash;for <i>you</i>
+    are irreproachable. Ever yours my dear friend, as if I had not written
+    ... or <i>had</i>!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark July 7, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I write this,&mdash;3 o'clock you may be going out, I will hope, for
+    the day is very fine, perhaps all the better for the wind: yet I got
+    up this morning sure of bad weather. I shall not try to tell you how
+    anxious I am for the result and to know it. You will of course feel
+    fatigued at first&mdash;but persevering, as you mean to do, do you
+    not?&mdash;persevering, the event must be happy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I thought, and still think, to write to you about George Sand, and
+    the vexed question, a very Bermoothes of the 'Mental Claims of the
+    Sexes Relatively Considered' (so was called the, ... I do believe, ...
+    worst poem I ever read in my life), and Mrs. Hemans, and all and some
+    of the points referred to in your letter&mdash;but 'by my fay, I cannot
+    reason,' to-day: and, by a consequence, I feel the more&mdash;so I say how
+    I want news of you ... which, when they arrive, I shall read
+    'meritoriously'&mdash;do you think? My friend, what ought I to tell you on
+    that head (or the reverse rather)&mdash;of your discourse? I should like to
+    match you at a fancy-flight; if I could, give you nearly as pleasant
+    an assurance that 'there's no merit in the case,' but the hot weather
+    and lack of wit get the better of my good will&mdash;besides, I remember
+    once to have admired a certain enticing simplicity in the avowal of
+    the Treasurer of a Charitable Institution at a Dinner got up in its
+    behalf&mdash;the Funds being at lowest, Debt at highest ... in fact, this
+    Dinner was the last chance of the Charity, and this Treasurer's speech
+    the main feature in the chance&mdash;and our friend, inspired by the
+    emergency, went so far as to say, with a bland smile&mdash;'Do not let it
+    be supposed that we&mdash;<i>despise</i> annual contributors,&mdash;we
+    <i>rather</i>&mdash;solicit their assistance.' All which means, do not think
+    that I take any 'merit' for making myself supremely happy, I rather
+    &amp;c. &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Always rather mean to deserve it a little better&mdash;but never shall: so
+    it should be, for you and me&mdash;and as it was in the beginning so it is
+    still. You are the&mdash;But you know and why should I tease myself with
+    words?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me send this off now&mdash;and to-morrow some more, because I trust to
+    hear you have made the first effort and with success.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours, my dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well&mdash;I have really been out; and am really alive after it&mdash;which is
+    more surprising still&mdash;alive enough I mean, to write even <i>so</i>,
+    to-night. But perhaps I say so with more emphasis, to console myself
+    for failing in my great ambition of getting into the Park and of
+    reaching Mr. Kenyon's door just to leave a card there vaingloriously,
+    ... all which I did fail in, and was forced to turn back from the
+    gates of Devonshire Place. The next time it will be better
+    perhaps&mdash;and this time there was no fainting nor anything very wrong
+    ... not even cowardice on the part of the victim (be it recorded!) for
+    one of my sisters was as usual in authority and ordered the turning
+    back just according to her own prudence and not my selfwill. Only you
+    will not, any of you, ask me to admit that it was all
+    delightful&mdash;pleasanter work than what you wanted to spare me in taking
+    care of your roses on Saturday! don't ask <i>that</i>, and I will try it
+    again presently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I ought to be ashamed of writing this I and me-ism&mdash;but since your
+    kindness made it worth while asking about I must not be over-wise and
+    silent on my side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Tuesday.</i>&mdash;Was it fair to tell me to write though, and be silent of
+    the 'Duchess,' and when I was sure to be so delighted&mdash;and <i>you knew
+    it</i>? <i>I</i> think not indeed. And, to make the obedience possible, I go
+    on fast to say that I heard from Mr. Horne a few days since and that
+    <i>he</i> said&mdash;'your envelope reminds me of'&mdash;<i>you</i>, he said ... and so,
+    asked if you were in England still, and meant to write to you. To
+    which I have answered that I believe you to be in England&mdash;thinking it
+    strange about the envelope; which, as far as I remember, was one of
+    those long ones, used, the more conveniently to enclose to him back
+    again a MS. of his own I had offered with another of his, by his
+    desire, to <i>Colburn's Magazine</i>, as the productions of a friend of
+    mine, when he was in Germany and afraid of his proper fatal
+    onymousness, yet in difficulty how to approach the magazines as a
+    nameless writer (you will not mention this of course). And when he was
+    in Germany, I remember, ... writing just as your first letter came ...
+    that I mentioned it to him, and was a little frankly proud of it! but
+    since, your name has not occurred once&mdash;not once, certainly!&mdash;and it
+    is strange.... Only he <i>can't</i> have heard of your having been here,
+    and it <i>must</i> have been a chance-remark&mdash;altogether! taking an
+    imaginary emphasis from my evil conscience perhaps. Talking of evils,
+    how wrong of you to make that book for me! and how ill I thanked you
+    after all! Also, I couldn't help feeling more grateful still for the
+    Duchess ... who is under ban: and for how long I wonder?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">My dear friend, I am ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 9, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are all that is good and kind: I am happy and thankful the
+    beginning (and worst of it) is over and so well. The Park and Mr.
+    Kenyon's all in good time&mdash;and your sister was most prudent&mdash;and you
+    mean to try again: God bless you, all to be said or done&mdash;but, as I
+    say it, no vain word. No doubt it was a mere chance-thought, and <i>à
+    propos de bottes</i> of Horne&mdash;neither he or any other <i>can</i> know or even
+    fancy how it is. Indeed, though on other grounds I should be all so
+    proud of being known for your friend by everybody, yet there's no
+    denying the deep delight of playing the Eastern Jew's part here in
+    this London&mdash;they go about, you know by travel-books, with the tokens
+    of extreme destitution and misery, and steal by blind ways and
+    by-paths to some blank dreary house, one obscure door in it&mdash;which
+    being well shut behind them, they grope on through a dark corridor or
+    so, and then, a blaze follows the lifting a curtain or the like, for
+    they are in a palace-hall with fountains and light, and marble and
+    gold, of which the envious are never to dream! And I, too, love to
+    have few friends, and to live alone, and to see you from week to week.
+    Do you not suppose I am grateful?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you do like the 'Duchess,' as much as you have got of it? that
+    delights me, too&mdash;for every reason. But I fear I shall not be able to
+    bring you the rest to-morrow&mdash;Thursday, my day&mdash;because I have been
+    broken in upon more than one morning; nor, though much better in my
+    head, can I do anything at night just now. All will come right
+    eventually, I hope, and I shall transcribe the other things you are to
+    judge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow then&mdash;only (and that is why I would write) do, do <i>know</i> me
+    for what I am and treat me as I deserve in that <i>one</i> respect, and <i>go
+    out</i>, without a moment's thought or care, if to-morrow should suit
+    you&mdash;leave word to that effect and I shall be as glad as if I saw you
+    or more&mdash;<i>reasoned</i> gladness, you know. Or you can write&mdash;though that
+    is not necessary at all,&mdash;do think of all this!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am yours ever, dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, July 12, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You understand that it was not a resolution passed in favour of
+    formality, when I said what I did yesterday about not going out at the
+    time you were coming&mdash;surely you do; whatever you might signify to a
+    different effect. If it were necessary for me to go out every day, or
+    most days even, it would be otherwise; but as it is, I may certainly
+    keep the day you come, free from the fear of carriages, let the sun
+    shine its best or worst, without doing despite to you or injury to
+    me&mdash;and that's all I meant to insist upon indeed and indeed. You see,
+    Jupiter Tonans was good enough to come to-day on purpose to deliver
+    me&mdash;one evil for another! for I confess with shame and contrition,
+    that I never wait to enquire whether it thunders to the left or the
+    right, to be frightened most ingloriously. Isn't it a disgrace to
+    anyone with a pretension to poetry? Dr. Chambers, a part of whose
+    office it is, Papa says, 'to reconcile foolish women to their
+    follies,' used to take the side of my vanity, and discourse at length
+    on the passive obedience of some nervous systems to electrical
+    influences; but perhaps my faint-heartedness is besides traceable to a
+    half-reasonable terror of a great storm in Herefordshire, where great
+    storms most do congregate, (such storms!) round the Malvern Hills,
+    those mountains of England. We lived four miles from their roots,
+    through all my childhood and early youth, in a Turkish house my father
+    built himself, crowded with minarets and domes, and crowned with metal
+    spires and crescents, to the provocation (as people used to observe)
+    of every lightning of heaven. Once a storm of storms happened, and we
+    all thought the house was struck&mdash;and a tree was so really, within two
+    hundred yards of the windows while I looked out&mdash;the bark, rent from
+    the top to the bottom ... torn into long ribbons by the dreadful fiery
+    hands, and dashed out into the air, over the heads of other trees, or
+    left twisted in their branches&mdash;torn into shreds in a moment, as a
+    flower might be, by a child! Did you ever see a tree after it has been
+    struck by lightning? The whole trunk of that tree was bare and
+    peeled&mdash;and up that new whiteness of it, ran the finger-mark of the
+    lightning in a bright beautiful rose-colour (none of your roses
+    brighter or more beautiful!) the fever-sign of the certain
+    death&mdash;though the branches themselves were for the most part
+    untouched, and spread from the peeled trunk in their full summer
+    foliage; and birds singing in them three hours afterwards! And, in
+    that same storm, two young women belonging to a festive party were
+    killed on the Malvern Hills&mdash;each sealed to death in a moment with a
+    sign on the chest which a common seal would cover&mdash;only the sign on
+    them was not rose-coloured as on our tree, but black as charred wood.
+    So I get 'possessed' sometimes with the effects of these impressions,
+    and so does one, at least, of my sisters, in a lower degree&mdash;and
+    oh!&mdash;how amusing and instructive all this is to you! When my father
+    came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the
+    lightning, he was quite angry and called 'it disgraceful to anybody
+    who had ever learnt the alphabet'&mdash;to which I answered humbly that 'I
+    knew it was'&mdash;but if I had been impertinent, I <i>might</i> have added that
+    wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it? Don't you
+    think so in a measure? <i>non obstantibus</i> Bradbury and Evans? There's a
+    profane question&mdash;and ungrateful too ... after the Duchess&mdash;I except
+    the Duchess and her peers&mdash;and be sure she will be the world's Duchess
+    and received as one of your most striking poems. Full of various power
+    the poem is.... I cannot say how deeply it has impressed me&mdash;but
+    though I want the conclusion, I don't <i>wish</i> for it; and in this, am
+    reasonable for once! You will not write and make yourself ill&mdash;will
+    you? or read 'Sybil' at unlawful hours even? Are you better at all?
+    What a letter! and how very foolishly to-day
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Very well&mdash;I shall say no more on the subject&mdash;though it was not any
+    piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your
+    over-kindness exactly&mdash;I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind,
+    and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you
+    must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest
+    obligation. I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom
+    your well-being is of deeper interest than to me. Well, if that be
+    so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of
+    proving serviceable to you; nor <i>set yourself against</i> any little
+    irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the
+    beginning; and you may say, if you like, 'how I shall delight those
+    friends, if I can make this newest one grateful'&mdash;and, as from the
+    known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be
+    one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips
+    and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen
+    'Duchesses': why ought I not to say this when it is so true? Besides,
+    people profess as much to their merest friends&mdash;for I have been
+    looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of
+    Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die
+    too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so on. I wonder
+    whether they have since wanted to borrow money of him on the strength
+    of his professions. But you must remember we are in July; the 13th it
+    is, and summer will go and cold weather stay ('<i>come</i>' forsooth!)&mdash;and
+    now is the time of times. Still I feared the rain would hinder you on
+    Friday&mdash;but the thunder did not frighten me&mdash;for you: your father must
+    pardon me for holding most firmly with Dr. Chambers&mdash;his theory is
+    quite borne out by my own experience, for I have seen a man it were
+    foolish to call a coward, a great fellow too, all but die away in a
+    thunderstorm, though he had quite science enough to explain why there
+    was no immediate danger at all&mdash;whereupon his younger brother
+    suggested that he should just go out and treat us to a repetition of
+    Franklin's experiment with the cloud and the kite&mdash;a well-timed
+    proposition which sent the Explainer down with a white face into the
+    cellar. What a grand sight your tree was&mdash;<i>is</i>, for I see it. My
+    father has a print of a tree so struck&mdash;torn to ribbons, as you
+    describe&mdash;but the rose-mark is striking and new to me. We had a good
+    storm on our last voyage, but I went to bed at the end, as I
+    thought&mdash;and only found there had been lightning next day by the bare
+    poles under which we were riding: but the finest mountain fit of the
+    kind I ever saw has an unfortunately ludicrous association. It was at
+    Possagno, among the Euganean Hills, and I was at a poor house in the
+    town&mdash;an old woman was before a little picture of the Virgin, and at
+    every fresh clap she lighted, with the oddest sputtering muttering
+    mouthful of prayer imaginable, an inch of guttery candle, which, the
+    instant the last echo had rolled away, she as constantly blew out
+    again for saving's sake&mdash;having, of course, to <i>light the smoke</i> of
+    it, about an instant after that: the expenditure in wax at which the
+    elements might be propitiated, you see, was a matter for curious
+    calculation. I suppose I ought to have bought the whole taper for some
+    four or five centesimi (100 of which make 8d. English) and so kept the
+    countryside safe for about a century of bad weather. Leigh Hunt tells
+    you a story he had from Byron, of kindred philosophy in a Jew who was
+    surprised by a thunderstorm while he was dining on bacon&mdash;he tried to
+    eat between-whiles, but the flashes were as pertinacious as he, so at
+    last he pushed his plate away, just remarking with a compassionate
+    shrug, 'all this fuss about a piece of pork!' By the way, what a
+    characteristic of an Italian <i>late</i> evening is Summer-lightning&mdash;it
+    hangs in broad slow sheets, dropping from cloud to cloud, so long in
+    dropping and dying off. The 'bora,' which you only get at Trieste,
+    brings wonderful lightning&mdash;you are in glorious June-weather, fancy,
+    of an evening, under green shock-headed acacias, so thick and green,
+    with the cicalas stunning you above, and all about you men, women,
+    rich and poor, sitting standing and coming and going&mdash;and through all
+    the laughter and screaming and singing, the loud clink of the spoons
+    against the glasses, the way of calling for fresh 'sorbetti'&mdash;for all
+    the world is at open-coffee-house at such an hour&mdash;when suddenly there
+    is a stop in the sunshine, a blackness drops down, then a great white
+    column of dust drives straight on like a wedge, and you see the acacia
+    heads snap off, now one, then another&mdash;and all the people scream 'la
+    bora, la bora!' and you are caught up in their whirl and landed in
+    some interior, the man with the guitar on one side of you, and the boy
+    with a cageful of little brown owls for sale, on the other&mdash;meanwhile,
+    the thunder claps, claps, with such a persistence, and the rain, for a
+    finale, falls in a mass, as if you had knocked out the whole bottom of
+    a huge tank at once&mdash;then there is a second stop&mdash;out comes the
+    sun&mdash;somebody clinks at his glass, all the world bursts out laughing,
+    and prepares to pour out again,&mdash;but <i>you</i>, the stranger, <i>do</i> make
+    the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you
+    infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really
+    that, of rainwater&mdash;that's a <i>Bora</i> (and that comment of yours, a
+    justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better,
+    the best of all things you do not (<i>I</i> do not) get those. And I shall
+    see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the
+    poem&mdash;that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to
+    say, but then, do not you be tempted by that pleasure of pleasing
+    which I think is your besetting sin&mdash;may it not be?&mdash;and so cut me off
+    from the other pleasure of being profited. As I told you, I like so
+    much to fancy that you see, and will see, what I do as <i>I</i> see it,
+    while it is doing, as nobody else in the world should, certainly, even
+    if they thought it worth while to want&mdash;but when I try and build a
+    great building I shall want you to come with me and judge it and
+    counsel me before the scaffolding is taken down, and while you have to
+    make your way over hods and mortar and heaps of lime, and trembling
+    tubs of size, and those thin broad whitewashing brushes I always had a
+    desire to take up and bespatter with. And now goodbye&mdash;I am to see you
+    on Wednesday I trust&mdash;and to hear you say you are better, still
+    better, much better? God grant that, and all else good for you, dear
+    friend, and so for R.B.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">ever yours.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, July 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I suppose nobody is ever expected to acknowledge his or her 'besetting
+    sin'&mdash;it would be unnatural&mdash;and therefore you will not be surprised
+    to hear me deny the one imputed to me for mine. I deny it quite and
+    directly. And if my denial goes for nothing, which is but reasonable,
+    I might call in a great cloud of witnesses, ... a thundercloud, ...
+    (talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a
+    first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me
+    see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold
+    hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women always are when
+    men grow humble' ... there's a charge against all possible and
+    probable petticoats beyond mine and through it! Not that either they
+    or mine deserve the charge&mdash;we do not; to the lowest hem of us! for I
+    don't pass to the other extreme, mind, and adopt besetting sins 'over
+    the way' and in antithesis. It's an undeserved charge, and unprovoked!
+    and in fact, the very flower of self-love self-tormented into ill
+    temper; and shall remain unanswered, for <i>me</i>, ... and <i>should</i>, ...
+    even if I could write mortal epigrams, as your Lamia speaks them. Only
+    it serves to help my assertion that people in general who know
+    something of me, my dear friend, are not inclined to agree with you in
+    particular, about my having an 'over-pleasure in pleasing,' for a
+    besetting sin. If you had spoken of my sister Henrietta indeed, you
+    would have been right&mdash;<i>so</i> right! but for <i>me</i>, alas, my sins are not
+    half as amiable, nor given to lean to virtue's side with half such a
+    grace. And then I have a pretension to speak the truth like a Roman,
+    even in matters of literature, where Mr. Kenyon says falseness is a
+    fashion&mdash;and really and honestly I should not be afraid ... I should
+    have no reason to be afraid, ... if all the notes and letters written
+    by my hand for years and years about presentation copies of poems and
+    other sorts of books were brought together and 'conferred,' as they
+    say of manuscripts, before my face&mdash;I should not shrink and be
+    ashamed. Not that I always tell the truth as I see it&mdash;<i>but</i> I <i>never
+    do</i> speak falsely with intention and consciousness&mdash;never&mdash;and I do
+    not find that people of letters are sooner offended than others are,
+    by the truth told in gentleness;&mdash;I do not remember to have offended
+    anyone in this relation, and by these means. Well!&mdash;but <i>from me to
+    you</i>; it is all different, you know&mdash;you must know how different it
+    is. I can tell you truly what I think of this thing and of that thing
+    in your 'Duchess'&mdash;but I must of a necessity hesitate and fall into
+    misgiving of the adequacy of my truth, so called. To judge at all of a
+    work of yours, I must <i>look up to it</i>, and <i>far up</i>&mdash;because whatever
+    faculty <i>I</i> have is included in your faculty, and with a great rim all
+    round it besides! And thus, it is not at all from an over-pleasure in
+    pleasing <i>you</i>, not at all from an inclination to depreciate myself,
+    that I speak and feel as I do and must on some occasions; it is simply
+    the consequence of a true comprehension of you and of me&mdash;and apart
+    from it, I should not be abler, I think, but less able, to assist you
+    in anything. I do wish you would consider all this reasonably, and
+    understand it as a third person would in a moment, and consent not to
+    spoil the real pleasure I have and am about to have in your poetry, by
+    nailing me up into a false position with your gold-headed nails of
+    chivalry, which won't hold to the wall through this summer. Now you
+    will not answer this?&mdash;you will only understand it and me&mdash;and that I
+    am not servile but sincere, but earnest, but meaning what I say&mdash;and
+    when I say I am afraid, you will believe that I am afraid; and when I
+    say I have misgivings, you will believe that I have misgivings&mdash;you
+    will <i>trust</i> me so far, and give me liberty to breathe and feel
+    naturally ... according to my own nature. Probably, or certainly
+    rather, I have one advantage over you, ... one, of which women are not
+    fond of boasting&mdash;that of <i>being older by years</i>&mdash;for the 'Essay on
+    Mind,' which was the first poem published by me (and rather more
+    printed than published after all), the work of my earliest youth, half
+    childhood, half womanhood, was published in 1826 I see. And if I told
+    Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but
+    because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's
+    exercise'; because it is just <i>that</i> and no more, ... no expression
+    whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things
+    pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I
+    would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are
+    never like their writers, you know&mdash;and those under-age books are
+    generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to <i>get into
+    expression</i>, though I began rhyming from my very infancy, much as you
+    did (and this, with no sympathy near to me&mdash;I have had to do without
+    sympathy in the full sense&mdash;), and even in my 'Seraphim' days, my
+    tongue clove to the roof of my mouth,&mdash;from leading so conventual
+    recluse a life, perhaps&mdash;and all my better poems were written last
+    year, the very best thing to come, if there should be any life or
+    courage to come; I scarcely know. Sometimes&mdash;it is the real truth&mdash;I
+    have haste to be done with it all. It is the real truth; however to
+    say so may be an ungrateful return for your kind and generous words,
+    ... which I <i>do</i> feel gratefully, let me otherwise feel as I will, ...
+    or must. But then you know you are liable to such prodigious mistakes
+    about besetting sins and even besetting virtues&mdash;to such a set of
+    small delusions, that are sure to break one by one, like other
+    bubbles, as you draw in your breath, ... as I see by the law of my own
+    star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star
+    <i>Wormwood</i>, ... on the opposite side of the heavens from the
+    constellations of 'the Lyre and the Crown.' In the meantime, it is
+    difficult to thank you, or <i>not</i> to thank you, for all your
+    kindnesses&mdash;<span title="algos de sigan">&alpha;&lambda;&gamma;&omicron;&sigmaf; &delta;&epsilon; &sigma;&iota;&gamma;&alpha;&nu;</span>. Only Mrs. Jameson told me of Lady
+    Byron's saying 'that she knows she is burnt every day in effigy by
+    half the world, but that the effigy is so unlike herself as to be
+    inoffensive to her,' and just so, or rather just in the converse of
+    <i>so</i>, is it with me and your kindnesses. They are meant for quite
+    another than I, and are too far to be so near. The comfort is ... in
+    seeing you throw all those ducats out of the window, (and how many
+    ducats go in a figure to a 'dozen Duchesses,' it is profane to
+    calculate) the comfort is that you will not be the poorer for it in
+    the end; since the people beneath, are honest enough to push them back
+    under the door. Rather a bleak comfort and occupation though!&mdash;and you
+    may find better work for your friends, who are (some of them) weary
+    even unto death of the uses of this life. And now, you who are
+    generous, <i>be</i> generous, and take no notice of all this. I speak of
+    myself, not of you so there is nothing for you to contradict or
+    discuss&mdash;and if there were, you would be really kind and give me my
+    way in it. Also you may take courage; for I promise not to vex you by
+    thanking you against <i>your</i> will,&mdash;more than may be helped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some of this letter was written before yesterday and in reply of
+    course to yours&mdash;so it is to pass for two letters, being long enough
+    for just six. Yesterday you must have wondered at me for being in such
+    a maze altogether about the poems&mdash;and so now I rise to explain that
+    it was assuredly the wine song and no other which I read of yours in
+    <i>Hood's</i>. And then, what did I say of the Dante and Beatrice? Because
+    what I referred to was the exquisite page or two or three on that
+    subject in the 'Pentameron.' I do not remember anything else of
+    Landor's with the same bearing&mdash;do you? As to Montaigne, with the
+    threads of my thoughts smoothly disentangled, I can see nothing
+    coloured by him ... nothing. Do bring all the <i>Hood</i> poems of your
+    own&mdash;inclusive of the 'Tokay,' because I read it in such haste as to
+    whirl up all the dust you saw, from the wheels of my chariot. The
+    'Duchess' is past speaking of here&mdash;but you will see how I am
+    delighted. And we must make speed&mdash;only taking care of your head&mdash;for
+    I heard to-day that Papa and my aunt are discussing the question of
+    sending me off either to Alexandria or Malta for the winter. Oh&mdash;it
+    is quite a passing talk and thought, I dare say! and it would not <i>be</i>
+    in any case, until September or October; though in every case, I
+    suppose, <i>I</i> should not be much consulted ... and all cases and places
+    would seem better to me (if I were) than Madeira which the physicians
+    used to threaten me with long ago. So take care of your headache and
+    let us have the 'Bells' rung out clear before the summer ends ... and
+    pray don't say again anything about clear consciences or unclear ones,
+    in granting me the privilege of reading your manuscripts&mdash;which is all
+    clear privilege to me, with pride and gladness waiting on it. May God
+    bless you always my dear friend!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You left behind your sister's little basket&mdash;but I hope you did not
+    forget to thank her for my carnations.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[no date]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours
+    <i>ever</i>, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath
+    breaks bubbles,&mdash;ought you to write thus having restricted me as you
+    once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a
+    stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my
+    head it goes&mdash;I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly
+    the same horror once before. 'I was to see you&mdash;and you were to
+    understand'&mdash;<i>Do</i> you? do you understand&mdash;my own friend&mdash;with that
+    superiority in years, too! For I confess to that&mdash;you need not throw
+    that in my teeth ... as soon as I read your 'Essay on Mind'&mdash;(which of
+    course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K's positive refusal
+    to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the 'Vision
+    of Fame' at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time,
+    1826&mdash;I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in
+    years&mdash;what then? I have got nearer you considerably&mdash;(if only
+    nearer)&mdash;since then&mdash;and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable
+    times&mdash;such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to
+    see&mdash;written some time ago&mdash;which advises nobody who thinks nobly of
+    the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the
+    materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it
+    is born to make and which&mdash;(in its determining, as it must, the whole
+    future course and impulses of that soul)&mdash;which must endure for ever,
+    even though the object that induced the choice should
+    disappear&mdash;owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically
+    determined and produced, at any operator's pleasure, by a definite
+    number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent
+    &amp;c. &amp;c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of
+    operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel
+    filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul
+    than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does <i>that</i>, is
+    for this world's immediate uses; and were this world <i>all, all</i> in us
+    would be producible and available for use, as it <i>is</i> with the body
+    now&mdash;but with the soul, what is to be developed <i>afterward</i> is the
+    main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights&mdash;so that when you
+    hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain 'why' ('You' is the
+    ordinary creature enough of my poem&mdash;<i>he</i> might not be so able.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    There, I will write no more. You will never drop <i>me</i> off the golden
+    hooks, I dare believe&mdash;and the rest is with God&mdash;whose finger I see
+    every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask
+    leave to come 'to-morrow at the Muezzin' as next Wednesday at three?
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you&mdash;do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it
+    costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as
+    truthfuller&mdash;this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not
+    have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of
+    commission with <i>Hood</i>,&mdash;blame <i>them</i>, tell me about them, and
+    meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I never <i>did</i> strike you or touch you&mdash;and you are not in earnest
+    in the complaint you make&mdash;and this is really all I am going to say
+    to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part,
+    while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go
+    deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to
+    bear without deprecation:&mdash;as when, for instance, you talk of being
+    'grateful' to <i>me</i>!!&mdash;Well! I will try that there shall be no more of
+    it&mdash;no more provocation of generosities&mdash;and so, (this once) as you
+    express it, I 'will not have the heart to blame' you&mdash;except for
+    reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr.
+    Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook
+    literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was
+    roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember
+    he asked me ... 'Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?'; to which I answered
+    that nobody was to be excepted&mdash;and thus he was quite right in
+    resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were
+    quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious?
+    Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins
+    and yours gladly, to get into the <i>Hood</i> poems which have delighted me
+    so&mdash;and first to the St. Praxed's which is of course the finest and
+    most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of
+    death. It has impressed me very much. Then the 'Angel and Child,' with
+    all its beauty and significance!&mdash;and the 'Garden Fancies' ... some of
+    the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in
+    them, and grace of every kind&mdash;and with that beautiful and musical use
+    of the word 'meandering,' which I never remember having seen used in
+    relation to <i>sound</i> before. It does to mate with your '<i>simmering</i>
+    quiet' in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure
+    as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much!&mdash;you
+    have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things
+    through and through it. And the 'Laboratory' is hideous as you meant
+    to make it:&mdash;only I object a little to your tendency ... which is
+    almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think, ... of
+    making lines difficult for the reader to read ... see the opening
+    lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in
+    <i>them</i> certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the
+    reader's mind off the <i>rail</i> ... and interrupts his progress with you
+    and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from
+    rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the
+    changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to <i>forget it
+    altogether</i>; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps&mdash;but you see how
+    I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my
+    sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing
+    ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of
+    them&mdash;never!&mdash;except the 'Tokay,' which is inferior to all; and that I
+    was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood&mdash;or at all,
+    except this 'Tokay,' and this 'Duchess'! The world is very deaf and
+    dumb, I think&mdash;but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not
+    learning its lesson.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Could you come&mdash;for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay
+    to write of your poems even, any more to-day&mdash;could you come on
+    Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on
+    Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so&mdash;it is not a caprice.
+    And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria
+    seems discredited just now for Malta&mdash;and 'anything but Madeira,' I go
+    on saying to myself. These <i>Hood</i> poems are all to be in the next
+    'Bells' of course&mdash;of necessity?
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you my dear friend, my ever dear friend!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 22, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything
+    else without your leave).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The temptation of reading the 'Essay' was more than I could bear: and
+    a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their
+    music&mdash;wonderful!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you go out still&mdash;so continue better!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I cannot write this morning&mdash;I should say too much and have to be
+    sorry and afraid&mdash;let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am but too proud of your praise&mdash;when will the blame come&mdash;at Malta?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and
+    not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm&mdash;nor of the
+    reading even, which may do harm&mdash;and something does harm to you, you
+    see&mdash;and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm
+    ... now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you
+    did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think
+    that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I
+    will not indeed&mdash;and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous
+    queries yesterday ... and to have omitted to say in relation to them,
+    too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just passing thoughts
+    of mine for <i>your</i> passing thoughts, ... some right, it may be ...
+    some wrong, it must be ... and none, insisted on even by the thinker!
+    just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments&mdash;now
+    <i>will</i> you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to
+    strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you&mdash;so
+    <i>whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be
+    what I meant to strike out</i>&mdash;(there's ingenuity for you!). The poem
+    did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very
+    greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways ... by the
+    versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful
+    evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the
+    sin of the boar-pinner&mdash;successfully evolved, without softening one
+    hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now&mdash;you will
+    not write any more&mdash;no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the
+    roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help
+    thinking it must&mdash;and you were not well yesterday morning, you
+    admitted. You <i>will</i> take care? And if there should be a wisdom in
+    going away...!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very
+    imprudent, I am afraid&mdash;but I never knew how to be prudent&mdash;and then,
+    there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable
+    measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the
+    thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker, ... just as I might give
+    away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I
+    did not do&mdash;and would not have done, ... one of those papers singly.
+    It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a
+    writing of notes ... of slips of paper ... now on one subject, and now
+    on another ... which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up
+    with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed
+    a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed
+    at&mdash;except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and
+    were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx&mdash;or ever betrayed;
+    because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the
+    editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being
+    silent and secret. And nothing <i>is mine</i> ... if something is <i>of me</i>
+    ... or <i>from</i> me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see
+    plainly&mdash;wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against
+    time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature
+    of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the
+    booksellers were barking distraction on every side!&mdash;I had some of the
+    mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was
+    consulted about&mdash;or in <i>one particular way</i> it would have been
+    better,&mdash;as easily it might have been. May God bless you, my dear
+    friend,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You would let me <i>now</i>, I dare say, call myself grateful to you&mdash;yet
+    such is my jealousy in these matters&mdash;so do I hate the material when
+    it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship;
+    that I could almost tell you I was <i>not</i> grateful, and try if that way
+    I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you
+    refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not
+    admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw
+    none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this
+    <i>also</i>&mdash;this last kindness. And you know its value, too&mdash;how if there
+    were another <i>you</i> in the world, who had done all you have done and
+    whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a
+    criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you
+    know how I would have told you, my <i>you</i> I saw yesterday, all about
+    it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:&mdash;but the two in one!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating&mdash;all
+    the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so
+    thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this
+    beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I
+    could coöperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the
+    effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed&mdash;<i>that</i>
+    would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,&mdash;so
+    that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute
+    one point. All is for best.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So much for this 'Duchess'&mdash;which I shall ever rejoice in&mdash;wherever
+    was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs
+    now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and
+    then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places
+    where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact,
+    yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that
+    of <i>the poem</i>, the real conception of an evening (two years ago,
+    fully)&mdash;of <i>that</i>, not a line is written,&mdash;though perhaps after all,
+    what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though
+    indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly
+    enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as
+    I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy's description
+    of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover&mdash;a <i>real</i>
+    life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to
+    write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the
+    insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only&mdash;as
+    the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing,
+    for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as
+    not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I
+    <i>think</i> before writing&mdash;or just after writing&mdash;such a sentence&mdash;but
+    reflection only justifies my first feeling; I <i>would</i> rather go
+    without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged
+    you&mdash;my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now&mdash;surely I
+    might dare say you may if you please get well through God's
+    goodness&mdash;with persevering patience, surely&mdash;and this next winter
+    abroad&mdash;which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you
+    not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the
+    cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that 'there was a tide
+    in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.' led on to the
+    fortune of
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4
+    o'clock&mdash;that clock I enquired about&mdash;and that, ... no, I shall never
+    say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that
+    you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the
+    East you give a beggar something for a few days running&mdash;then you miss
+    him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and
+    murmurs&mdash;'And, for yesterday?'&mdash;Do I stay too long, I <i>want</i> to
+    know,&mdash;too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may
+    not so soon tire,&mdash;knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 28, 1845]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine&mdash;and
+    particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to
+    know and want to know ... <i>how you are</i>&mdash;for you must observe, if you
+    please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written
+    after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my
+    'Prometheus' (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for
+    me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there
+    can be gratitude from you to me!&mdash;or rather, do not judge&mdash;but listen
+    when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I
+    wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single
+    wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look
+    again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is
+    the suggestion about the line
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Was it singing, was it saying,
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate
+    'or.' Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were
+    right, and that there should be and must be no 'or' to disturb the
+    listening pause. Now <i>should</i> there? And there was something else,
+    which I forget at this moment&mdash;and something more than the something
+    else. Your account of the production of the poem interests me very
+    much&mdash;and proves just what I wanted to make out from your statements
+    the other day, and they refused, I thought, to let me, ... that you
+    are more faithful to your first <i>Idea</i> than to your first <i>plan</i>. Is
+    it so? or not? 'Orange' is orange&mdash;but <i>which half</i> of the orange is
+    not predestinated from all eternity&mdash;: is it <i>so</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Sunday.</i>&mdash;I wrote so much yesterday and then went out, not knowing
+    very well how to speak or how to be silent (is it better to-day?) of
+    some expressions of yours ... and of your interest in me&mdash;which are
+    deeply affecting to my feelings&mdash;whatever else remains to be said of
+    them. And you know that you make great mistakes, ... of fennel for
+    hemlock, of four o'clocks for five o'clocks, and of other things of
+    more consequence, one for another; and may not be quite right besides
+    as to my getting well '<i>if I please</i>!' ... which reminds me a little
+    of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly
+    and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily
+    that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition,
+    and that if I <i>pleased</i> to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I
+    should be as well as ever I was, in a month!... But where is the need
+    of talking of it? What I wished to say was this&mdash;that if I get better
+    or worse ... as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall
+    remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the
+    generous interest and feeling you have spent on me&mdash;<i>wasted</i> on me I
+    was going to write&mdash;but I would not provoke any answering&mdash;and in one
+    obvious sense, it need not be so. I never shall forget these things,
+    my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly. God's goodness!&mdash;I
+    believe in it, as in His sunshine here&mdash;which makes my head ache a
+    little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people
+    gayer&mdash;it does <i>me</i> good too in a different way. And so, may God bless
+    you! and me in this ... just this, ... that I may never have the
+    sense, ... intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it ... of
+    being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your
+    smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones!&mdash;In the meantime you
+    do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do
+    not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if
+    the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most
+    grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How could you think that I should speak to Mr. Kenyon of the book? All
+    I ever said to him has been that you had looked through my
+    'Prometheus' for me&mdash;and that I was <i>not disappointed in you</i>, these
+    two things on two occasions. I do trust that your head is better.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, July 28, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How must I feel, and what can, or could I say even if you let me say
+    all? I am most grateful, most happy&mdash;most happy, come what will!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow&mdash;before Wednesday
+    when I am to see you? I will not hide from you that my head aches now;
+    and I have let the hours go by one after one&mdash;I am better all the
+    same, and will write as I say&mdash;'Am I better' you ask!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, July 31, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to
+    your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human
+    capacity&mdash;but as I began, so I shall end. I shall believe you remember
+    what I am forced to remember&mdash;you who do me the superabundant justice
+    on every possible occasion,&mdash;you will never do me injustice when I sit
+    by you and talk about Italy and the rest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;To-day I cannot write&mdash;though I am very well otherwise&mdash;but I shall
+    soon get into my old self-command and write with as much 'ineffectual
+    fire' as before: but meantime, <i>you</i> will write to me, I hope&mdash;telling
+    me how you are? I have but one greater delight in the world than in
+    hearing from you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you, my best, dearest friend&mdash;think what I would speak&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 2, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me write one word ... not to have it off my mind ... because it is
+    by no means heavily <i>on</i> it; but lest I should forget to write it at
+    all by not writing it at once. What could you mean, ... I have been
+    thinking since you went away ... by applying such a grave expression
+    as having a thing 'off your mind' to that foolish subject of the
+    stupid book (mine), and by making it worth your while to account
+    logically for your wish about my not mentioning it to Mr. Kenyon? You
+    could not fancy for one moment that I was vexed in the matter of the
+    book? or in the other matter of your wish? Now just hear me. I
+    explained to you that I had been silent to Mr. Kenyon, first because
+    the fact was so; and next and a little, because I wanted to show how I
+    anticipated your wish by a wish of my own ... though from a different
+    motive. <i>Your</i> motive I really did take to be (never suspecting my
+    dear kind cousin of treason) to be a natural reluctancy of being
+    convicted (forgive me!) of such an arch-womanly curiosity. For my own
+    motive ... motives ... they are more than one ... you must trust me;
+    and refrain as far as you can from accusing me of an over-love of
+    Eleusinian mysteries when I ask you to say just as little about your
+    visits here and of me as you find possible ... <i>even to Mr. Kenyon</i>
+    ... as <i>to every other person whatever</i>. As you know ... and yet more
+    than you know ... I am in a peculiar position&mdash;and it does not follow
+    that you should be ashamed of my friendship or that I should not be
+    proud of yours, if we avoid making it a subject of conversation in
+    high places, or low places. There! <i>that</i> is my request to you&mdash;or
+    commentary on what you put 'off your mind' yesterday&mdash;probably quite
+    unnecessary as either request or commentary; yet said on the chance of
+    its not being so, because you seemed to mistake my remark about Mr.
+    Kenyon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And your head, how is it? And do consider if it would not be wise and
+    right on that account of your health, to go with Mr. Chorley? You can
+    neither work nor enjoy while you are subject to attacks of the
+    kind&mdash;and besides, and without reference to your present suffering and
+    inconvenience, you <i>ought not</i> to let them master you and gather
+    strength from time and habit; I am sure you ought not. Worse last week
+    than ever, you see!&mdash;and no prospect, perhaps, of bringing out your
+    "Bells" this autumn, without paying a cost too heavy!&mdash;Therefore ...
+    the <i>therefore</i> is quite plain and obvious!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Friday.</i>&mdash;Just as it is how anxious Flush and I are, to be delivered
+    from you; by these sixteen heads of the discourse of one of us,
+    written before your letter came. Ah, but I am serious&mdash;and you will
+    consider&mdash;will you not? what is best to be done? and do it. You could
+    write to me, you know, from the end of the world; if you could take
+    the thought of me so far.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And <i>for</i> me, no, and yet yes,&mdash;I <i>will</i> say this much; that I am not
+    inclined to do you injustice, but justice, when you come here&mdash;the
+    justice of wondering to myself how you can possibly, possibly, care to
+    come. Which is true enough to be <i>unanswerable</i>, if you please&mdash;or I
+    should not say it. '<i>As I began, so I shall end</i>&mdash;' Did you, as I hope
+    you did, thank your sister for Flush and for me? When you were gone,
+    he graciously signified his intention of eating the cakes&mdash;brought the
+    bag to me and emptied it without a drawback, from my hand, cake after
+    cake. And I forgot the basket once again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And talking of Italy and the cardinals, and thinking of some cardinal
+    points you are ignorant of, did you ever hear that I was one of
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p>'those schismatiques<br>
+of Amsterdam'
+</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    whom your Dr. Donne would have put into the dykes? unless he meant the
+    Baptists, instead of the Independents, the holders of the Independent
+    church principle. No&mdash;not '<i>schismatical</i>,' I hope, hating as I do
+    from the roots of my heart all that rending of the garment of Christ,
+    which Christians are so apt to make the daily week-day of this
+    Christianity so called&mdash;and caring very little for most dogmas and
+    doxies in themselves&mdash;too little, as people say to me sometimes, (when
+    they send me 'New Testaments' to learn from, with very kind
+    intentions)&mdash;and believing that there is only one church in heaven and
+    earth, with one divine High Priest to it; let exclusive religionists
+    build what walls they please and bring out what chrisms. But I used to
+    go with my father always, when I was able, to the nearest dissenting
+    chapel of the Congregationalists&mdash;from liking the simplicity of that
+    praying and speaking without books&mdash;and a little too from disliking
+    the theory of state churches. There is a narrowness among the
+    dissenters which is wonderful; an arid, grey Puritanism in the clefts
+    of their souls: but it seems to me clear that they know what the
+    'liberty of Christ' <i>means</i>, far better than those do who call
+    themselves 'churchmen'; and stand altogether, as a body, on higher
+    ground. And so, you see, when I talked of the sixteen points of my
+    discourse, it was the foreshadowing of a coming event, and you have
+    had it at last in the whole length and breadth of it. But it is not my
+    fault if the wind began to blow so that I could not go out&mdash;as I
+    intended&mdash;as I shall do to-morrow; and that you have received my
+    dulness in a full libation of it, in consequence. My sisters said of
+    the roses you blasphemed, yesterday, that they 'never saw such flowers
+    anywhere&mdash;anywhere here in London&mdash;' and therefore if I had thought so
+    myself before, it was not so wrong of me. I put your roses, you see,
+    against my letter, to make it seem less dull&mdash;and yet I do not forget
+    what you say about caring to hear from me&mdash;I mean, I do not <i>affect</i>
+    to forget it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, far longer than I can say so.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 4, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said what you comment on, about Mr. Kenyon, because I feel I <i>must</i>
+    always tell you the simple truth&mdash;and not being quite at liberty to
+    communicate the whole story (though it would at once clear me from the
+    charge of over-curiosity ... if I much cared for <i>that</i>!)&mdash;I made my
+    first request in order to prevent your getting at any part of it from
+    <i>him</i> which should make my withholding seem disingenuous for the
+    moment&mdash;that is, till my explanation came, if it had an opportunity of
+    coming. And then, when I fancied you were misunderstanding the reason
+    of that request&mdash;and supposing I was ambitious of making a higher
+    figure in <i>his</i> eyes than your own,&mdash;I then felt it 'on my mind' and
+    so spoke ... a natural mode of relief surely! For, dear friend, I have
+    <i>once</i> been <i>untrue</i> to you&mdash;when, and how, and why, you know&mdash;but I
+    thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their
+    fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it
+    now because if you should ever make <i>that</i> a precedent, and put any
+    least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would
+    wrong me as you never wronged human being:&mdash;and that is done with. For
+    the other matter,&mdash;the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any
+    hint of them can ooze out of the only three persons in the world to
+    whom I ever speak of them&mdash;my father, mother and sister&mdash;to whom my
+    appreciation of your works is no novelty since some years, and whom I
+    made comprehend exactly your position and the necessity for the
+    absolute silence I enjoined respecting the permission to see you. You
+    may depend on them,&mdash;and Miss Mitford is in your keeping, mind,&mdash;and
+    dear Mr. Kenyon, if there should be never so gentle a touch of
+    'garrulous God-innocence' about those kind lips of his. Come, let me
+    snatch at <i>that</i> clue out of the maze, and say how perfect, absolutely
+    perfect, are those three or four pages in the 'Vision' which present
+    the Poets&mdash;a line, a few words, and the man there,&mdash;one twang of the
+    bow and the arrowhead in the white&mdash;Shelley's 'white ideal all
+    statue-blind' is&mdash;perfect,&mdash;how can I coin words? And dear deaf old
+    Hesiod&mdash;and&mdash;all, all are perfect, perfect! But 'the Moon's regality
+    will hear no praise'&mdash;well then, will she hear blame? Can it be you,
+    my own you past putting away, <i>you</i> are a schismatic and frequenter of
+    Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to <i>me</i>&mdash;whose
+    father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel
+    where they took me, all those years back, to be baptised&mdash;and where
+    they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who
+    officiated on that other occasion! Now will you be particularly
+    encouraged by this successful instance to bring forward any other
+    point of disunion between us that may occur to you? Please do not&mdash;for
+    so sure as you begin proving that there is a gulf fixed between us, so
+    sure shall I end proving that ... Anne Radcliffe avert it!... that you
+    are just my sister: not that I am much frightened, but there are such
+    surprises in novels!&mdash;Blame the next,&mdash;yes, now this <i>is</i> to be real
+    blame!&mdash;And I meant to call your attention to it before. Why, why, do
+    you blot out, in that unutterably provoking manner, whole lines, not
+    to say words, in your letters&mdash;(and in the criticism on the
+    'Duchess')&mdash;if it is a fact that you have a second thought, does it
+    cease to be as genuine a fact, that first thought you please to
+    efface? Why give a thing and take a thing? Is there no significance in
+    putting on record that your first impression was to a certain effect
+    and your next to a certain other, perhaps completely opposite one? If
+    any proceeding of yours could go near to deserve that harsh word
+    'impertinent' which you have twice, in speech and writing, been
+    pleased to apply to your observations on me; certainly <i>this</i> does go
+    as near as can be&mdash;as there is but one step to take from Southampton
+    pier to New York quay, for travellers Westward. Now will you lay this
+    to heart and perpend&mdash;lest in my righteous indignation I [some words
+    effaced here]! For my own health&mdash;it improves, thank you! And I shall
+    go abroad all in good time, never fear. For my 'Bells,' Mr. Chorley
+    tells me there is no use in the world of printing them before November
+    at earliest&mdash;and by that time I shall get done with these Romances and
+    certainly one Tragedy (<i>that</i> could go to press next week)&mdash;in proof
+    of which I will bring you, if you let me, a few more hundreds of lines
+    next Wednesday. But, 'my poet,' if I would, as is true, sacrifice all
+    my works to do your fingers, even, good&mdash;what would I not offer up to
+    prevent you staying ... perhaps to correct my very verses ... perhaps
+    read and answer my very letters ... staying the production of more
+    'Berthas' and 'Caterinas' and 'Geraldines,' more great and beautiful
+    poems of which I shall be&mdash;how proud! Do not be punctual in paying
+    tithes of thyme, mint, anise and cummin, and leaving unpaid the real
+    weighty dues of the Law; nor affect a scrupulous acknowledgment of
+    'what you owe me' in petty manners, while you leave me to settle such
+    a charge, as accessory to the hiding the Talent, as best I can! I have
+    thought of this again and again, and would have spoken of it to you,
+    had I ever felt myself fit to speak of any subject nearer home and me
+    and you than Rome and Cardinal Acton. For, observe, you have not done
+    ... yes, the 'Prometheus,' no doubt ... but with that exception <i>have</i>
+    you written much lately, as much as last year when 'you wrote all your
+    best things' you said, I think? Yet you are better now than then.
+    Dearest friend, <i>I</i> intend to write more, and very likely be praised
+    more, now I care less than ever for it, but still more do I look to
+    have you ever before me, in your place, and with more poetry and more
+    praise still, and my own heartfelt praise ever on the top, like a
+    flower on the water. I have said nothing of yesterday's storm ...
+    <i>thunder</i> ... may you not have been out in it! The evening draws in,
+    and I will walk out. May God bless you, and let you hold me by the
+    hand till the end&mdash;Yes, dearest friend!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just to show what may be lost by my crossings out, I will tell you the
+    story of the one in the 'Duchess'&mdash;and in fact it is almost worth
+    telling to a metaphysician like you, on other grounds, that you may
+    draw perhaps some psychological good from the absurdity of it. Hear,
+    then. When I had done writing the sheet of annotations and reflections
+    on your poem I took up my pencil to correct the passages reflected on
+    with the reflections, by the crosses you may observe, just glancing
+    over the writing as I did so. Well! and, where that erasure is, I
+    found a line purporting to be extracted from your 'Duchess,' with
+    sundry acute criticisms and objections quite undeniably strong,
+    following after it; only, to my amazement, as I looked and looked, the
+    line so acutely objected to and purporting, as I say, to, be taken
+    from the 'Duchess,' was by no means to be found in the 'Duchess,' ...
+    nor anything like it, ... and I am certain indeed that, in the
+    'Duchess' or out of it, you never wrote such a bad line in your life.
+    And so it became a proved thing to me that I had been enacting, in a
+    mystery, both poet and critic together&mdash;and one so neutralizing the
+    other, that I took all that pains you remark upon to cross myself out
+    in my double capacity, ... and am now telling the story of it
+    notwithstanding. And there's an obvious moral to the myth, isn't
+    there? for critics who bark the loudest, commonly bark at their own
+    shadow in the glass, as my Flush used to do long and loud, before he
+    gained experience and learnt the <span title="gnôthi seauton">&gamma;&nu;&omega;&theta;&iota; &sigma;&epsilon;&alpha;&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&nu;</span> in the
+    apparition of the brown dog with the glittering dilating eyes, ... and
+    as <i>I</i> did, under the erasure. And another moral springs up of itself
+    in this productive ground; for, you see, ... '<i>quand je m'efface il
+    n'ya pas grand mal</i>.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I am to be made to work very hard, am I? But you should remember
+    that if I did as much writing as last summer, I should not be able to
+    do much else, ... I mean, to go out and walk about ... for really I
+    think I <i>could</i> manage to read your poems and write as I am writing
+    now, with ever so much head-work of my own going on at the same time.
+    But the bodily exercise is different, and I do confess that the
+    novelty of living more in the outer life for the last few months than
+    I have done for years before, make me idle and inclined to be
+    idle&mdash;and everybody is idle sometimes&mdash;even <i>you</i> perhaps&mdash;are you
+    not? For me, you know, I do carpet-work&mdash;ask Mrs. Jameson&mdash;and I never
+    pretend to be in a perpetual motion of mental industry. Still it may
+    not be quite as bad as you think: I have done some work since
+    'Prometheus'&mdash;only it is nothing worth speaking of and not a part of
+    the romance-poem which is to be some day if I live for it&mdash;lyrics for
+    the most part, which lie written illegibly in pure Egyptian&mdash;oh, there
+    is time enough, and too much perhaps! and so let me be idle a little
+    now, and enjoy your poems while I can. It is pure enjoyment and must
+    be&mdash;but you do not know how much, or you would not talk as you do
+    sometimes ... so wide of any possible application.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And do <i>not</i> talk again of what you would 'sacrifice' for <i>me</i>. If you
+    affect me by it, which is true, you cast me from you farther than ever
+    in the next thought. <i>That</i> is true.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The poems ... yours ... which you left with me,&mdash;are full of various
+    power and beauty and character, and you must let me have my own
+    gladness from them in my own way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must end this letter. Did you go to Chelsea and hear the divine
+    philosophy?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Tell me the truth always</i> ... will you? I mean such truths as may be
+    painful to me <i>though</i> truths....
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you, ever dear friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then there is one more thing 'off my mind': I thought it might be with
+    you as with <i>me</i>&mdash;not remembering how different are the causes that
+    operate against us; different in kind as in degree:&mdash;<i>so</i> much reading
+    hurts me, for instance,&mdash;whether the reading be light or heavy,
+    fiction or fact, and <i>so</i> much writing, whether my own, such as you
+    have seen, or the merest compliment-returning to the weary tribe that
+    exact it of one. But your health&mdash;that before all!... as assuring all
+    eventually ... and on the other accounts you must know! Never, pray,
+    <i>pray</i>, never lose one sunny day or propitious hour to 'go out or walk
+    about.' But do not surprise <i>me</i>, one of these mornings, by 'walking'
+    up to me when I am introduced' ... or I shall infallibly, in spite of
+    all the after repentance and begging pardon&mdash;I shall [words effaced].
+    So here you learn the first 'painful truth' I have it in my power to
+    tell you!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I sent you the last of our poor roses this morning&mdash;considering that I
+    fairly owed that kindness to them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone&mdash;his wife is in
+    the country where he will join her as soon as his book's last sheet
+    returns corrected and fit for press&mdash;which will be at the month's end
+    about. He was all kindness and talked like his own self while he made
+    me tea&mdash;and, afterward, brought chairs into the little yard, rather
+    than garden, and smoked his pipe with apparent relish; at night he
+    would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge on my way home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If I used the word 'sacrifice,' you do well to object&mdash;I can imagine
+    nothing ever to be done by me worthy such a name.
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you, dearest friend&mdash;shall I hear from you before Tuesday?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is very kind to send these flowers&mdash;too kind&mdash;why are they sent?
+    and without one single word ... which is not too kind certainly. I
+    looked down into the heart of the roses and turned the carnations over
+    and over to the peril of their leaves, and in vain! Not a word do I
+    deserve to-day, I suppose! And yet if I don't, I don't deserve the
+    flowers either. There should have been an equal justice done to my
+    demerits, O Zeus with the scales!
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all I do thank you for these flowers&mdash;and they are
+    beautiful&mdash;and they came just in a right current of time, just when I
+    wanted them, or something like them&mdash;so I confess <i>that</i> humbly, and
+    do thank you, at last, rather as I ought to do. Only you ought not to
+    give away all the flowers of your garden to <i>me</i>; and your sister
+    thinks so, be sure&mdash;if as silently as you sent them. Now I shall not
+    write any more, not having been written to. What with the Wednesday's
+    flowers and these, you may think how I in this room, look down on the
+    gardens of Damascus, let <i>your Jew</i><a href="#note-20"><b>20</b></a> say what he pleases of
+    <i>them</i>&mdash;and the Wednesday's flowers are as fresh and beautiful, I must
+    explain, as the new ones. They were quite supererogatory ... the new
+    ones ... in the sense of being flowers. Now, the sense of what I am
+    writing seems questionable, does it not?&mdash;at least, more so, than the
+    nonsense of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not a word, even under the little blue flowers!!!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How good you are to the smallest thing I try and do&mdash;(to show I
+    <i>would</i> please you for an instant if I could, rather than from any
+    hope such poor efforts as I am restricted to, can please you or
+    ought.) And that you should care for the note that was not there!&mdash;But
+    I was surprised by the summons to seal and deliver, since time and the
+    carrier were peremptory&mdash;and so, I dared divine, almost, I should hear
+    from you by our mid-day post&mdash;which happened&mdash;and the answer to
+    <i>that</i>, you received on Friday night, did you not? I had to go to
+    Holborn, of all places,&mdash;not to pluck strawberries in the Bishop's
+    Garden like Richard Crouchback, but to get a book&mdash;and there I carried
+    my note, thinking to expedite its delivery: this notelet of yours,
+    quite as little in its kind as my blue flowers,&mdash;this came last
+    evening&mdash;and here are my thanks, dear E.B.B.&mdash;dear friend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the former note there is a phrase I must not forget to call on you
+    to account for&mdash;that where it confesses to having done 'some
+    work&mdash;only nothing worth speaking of.' Just see,&mdash;will you be first
+    and only compact-breaker? Nor misunderstand me here, please, ... as I
+    said, I am quite rejoiced that you go out now, 'walk about' now, and
+    put off the writing that will follow thrice as abundantly, all because
+    of the stopping to gather strength ... so I want no new word, not to
+    say poem, not to say the romance-poem&mdash;let the 'finches in the
+    shrubberies grow restless in the dark'&mdash;<i>I</i> am inside with the lights
+    and music: but what is done, is done, <i>pas vrai</i>? And 'worth' is, dear
+    my friend, pardon me, not in your arbitration quite.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me tell you an odd thing that happened at Chorley's the other
+    night. I must have mentioned to you that I forget my own verses so
+    surely after they are once on paper, that I ought, without
+    affectation, to mend them infinitely better, able as I am to bring
+    fresh eyes to bear on them&mdash;(when I say 'once on paper' that is just
+    what I mean and no more, for after the sad revising begins they do
+    leave their mark, distinctly or less so according to circumstances).
+    Well, Miss Cushman, the new American actress (clever and
+    truthful-looking) was talking of a new novel by the Dane Andersen, he
+    of the 'Improvisatore,' which will reach us, it should seem, in
+    translation, <i>viâ</i> America&mdash;she had looked over two or three proofs of
+    the work in the press, and Chorley was anxious to know something about
+    its character. The title, she said, was capital&mdash;'Only a
+    Fiddler!'&mdash;and she enlarged on that word, 'Only,' and its
+    significance, so put: and I quite agreed with her for several minutes,
+    till first one reminiscence flitted to me, then another and at last I
+    was obliged to stop my praises and say 'but, now I think of it, <i>I</i>
+    seem to have written something with a similar title&mdash;nay, a play, I
+    believe&mdash;yes, and in five acts&mdash;'Only an Actress'&mdash;and from that
+    time, some two years or more ago to this, I have been every way
+    relieved of it'!&mdash;And when I got home, next morning, I made a dark
+    pocket in my russet horror of a portfolio give up its dead, and there
+    fronted me 'Only a Player-girl' (the real title) and the sayings and
+    doings of her, and the others&mdash;such others! So I made haste and just
+    tore out one sample-page, being Scene the First, and sent it to our
+    friend as earnest and proof I had not been purely dreaming, as might
+    seem to be the case. And what makes me recall it now is, that it was
+    Russian, and about a fair on the Neva, and booths and droshkies and
+    fish-pies and so forth, with the Palaces in the back ground. And in
+    Chorley's <i>Athenæum</i> of yesterday you may read a paper of <i>very</i>
+    simple moony stuff about the death of Alexander, and that Sir James
+    Wylie I have seen at St. Petersburg (where he chose to mistake me for
+    an Italian&mdash;'M. l'Italien' he said another time, looking up from his
+    cards).... So I think to tell you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I may leave off&mdash;I shall see you start, on Tuesday&mdash;hear perhaps
+    something definite about your travelling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you know, 'Consuelo' wearies me&mdash;oh, wearies&mdash;and the fourth volume
+    I have all but stopped at&mdash;there lie the three following, but who
+    cares about Consuelo after that horrible evening with the Venetian
+    scamp, (where he bullies her, and it does answer, after all she says)
+    as we say? And Albert wearies too&mdash;it seems all false, all
+    writing&mdash;not the first part, though. And what easy work these
+    novelists have of it! a Dramatic poet has to <i>make</i> you love or admire
+    his men and women,&mdash;they must <i>do</i> and <i>say</i> all that you are to see
+    and hear&mdash;really do it in your face, say it in your ears, and it is
+    wholly for <i>you</i>, in <i>your</i> power, to <i>name</i>, characterize and so
+    praise or blame, <i>what</i> is so said and done ... if you don't perceive
+    of yourself, there is no standing by, for the Author, and telling you.
+    But with these novelists, a scrape of the pen&mdash;out blurting of a
+    phrase, and the miracle is achieved&mdash;'Consuelo possessed to perfection
+    this and the other gift'&mdash;what would you more? Or, to leave dear
+    George Sand, pray think of Bulwer's beginning a 'character' by
+    informing you that lone, or somebody in 'Pompeii,' 'was endowed with
+    <i>perfect</i> genius'&mdash;'genius'! What though the obliging informer might
+    write his fingers off before he gave the pitifullest proof that the
+    poorest spark of that same, that genius, had ever visited <i>him</i>?
+    <i>Ione</i> has it '<i>perfectly</i>'&mdash;perfectly&mdash;and that is enough! Zeus with
+    the scales? with the false weights!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now&mdash;till Tuesday good-bye, and be willing to get well as (letting
+    me send <i>porter</i> instead of flowers&mdash;and beefsteaks too!) soon as may
+    be! and may God bless you, ever dear friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But if it 'hurts' you to read and write ever so little, why should I
+    be asked to write ... for instance ... 'before Tuesday?' And I did
+    mean to say before to-day, that I wish you never would write to me
+    when you are not <i>quite well</i>, as once or twice you have done if not
+    much oftener; because there is not a necessity, ... and I do not
+    choose that there should ever be, or <i>seem</i> a necessity, ... do you
+    understand? And as a matter of personal preference, it is natural for
+    me to like the silence that does not hurt you, better than the speech
+    that does. And so, remember.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And talking of what may 'hurt' you and me, you would smile, as I have
+    often done in the midst of my vexation, if you knew the persecution I
+    have been subjected to by the people who call themselves (<i>lucus a non
+    lucendo</i>) 'the faculty,' and set themselves against the exercise of
+    other people's faculties, as a sure way to death and destruction. The
+    modesty and simplicity with which one's physicians tell one not to
+    think or feel, just as they would tell one not to walk out in the dew,
+    would be quite amusing, if it were not too tryingly stupid sometimes.
+    I had a doctor once who thought he had done everything because he had
+    carried the inkstand out of the room&mdash;'Now,' he said, 'you will have
+    such a pulse to-morrow.' He gravely thought poetry a sort of
+    disease&mdash;a sort of fungus of the brain&mdash;and held as a serious opinion,
+    that nobody could be properly well who exercised it as an art&mdash;which
+    was true (he maintained) even of men&mdash;he had studied the physiology of
+    poets, 'quotha'&mdash;but that for women, it was a mortal malady and
+    incompatible with any common show of health under any circumstances.
+    And then came the damnatory clause in his experience ... that he had
+    never known 'a system' approaching mine in 'excitability' ... except
+    Miss Garrow's ... a young lady who wrote verses for Lady Blessington's
+    annuals ... and who was the only other female rhymer he had had the
+    misfortune of attending. And she was to die in two years, though she
+    was dancing quadrilles then (and has lived to do the same by the
+    polka), and <i>I</i>, of course, much sooner, if I did not ponder these
+    things, and amend my ways, and take to reading 'a course of history'!!
+    Indeed I do not exaggerate. And just so, for a long while I was
+    persecuted and pestered ... vexed thoroughly sometimes ... my own
+    family, instructed to sing the burden out all day long&mdash;until the time
+    when the subject was suddenly changed by my heart being broken by that
+    great stone that fell out of Heaven. Afterwards I was let do anything
+    I could best ... which was very little, until last year&mdash;and the
+    working, last year, did much for me in giving me stronger roots down
+    into life, ... much. But think of that absurd reasoning that went
+    before!&mdash;the <i>niaiserie</i> of it! For, granting all the premises all
+    round, it is not the <i>utterance</i> of a thought that <i>can</i> hurt anybody;
+    while only the utterance is dependent on the will; and so, what can
+    the taking away of an inkstand do? Those physicians are such
+    metaphysicians! It's curious to listen to them. And it's wise to leave
+    off listening: though I have met with excessive kindness among them,
+    ... and do not refer to Dr. Chambers in any of this, of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am very glad you went to Chelsea&mdash;and it seemed finer afterwards, on
+    purpose to make room for the divine philosophy. Which reminds me (the
+    going to Chelsea) that my brother Henry confessed to me yesterday,
+    with shame and confusion of face, to having mistaken and taken your
+    umbrella for another belonging to a cousin of ours then in the house.
+    He saw you ... without conjecturing, just at the moment, who you were.
+    Do <i>you</i> conjecture sometimes that I live all alone here like Mariana
+    in the moated Grange? It is not quite so&mdash;: but where there are many,
+    as with us, every one is apt to follow his own devices&mdash;and my father
+    is out all day and my brothers and sisters are in and out, and with
+    too large a public of noisy friends for me to bear, ... and I see them
+    only at certain hours, ... except, of course, my sisters. And then as
+    you have 'a reputation' and are opined to talk generally in blank
+    verse, it is not likely that there should be much irreverent rushing
+    into this room when you are known to be in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The flowers are ... so beautiful! Indeed it was wrong, though, to send
+    me the last. It was not just to the lawful possessors and enjoyers of
+    them. That it was kind to <i>me</i> I do not forget.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are too teachable a pupil in the art of obliterating&mdash;and <i>omne
+    ignotum pro terrifico</i> ... and therefore I won't frighten you by
+    walking to meet you for fear of being frightened myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So good-bye until Tuesday. I ought not to make you read all this, I
+    know, whether you like to read it or not: and I ought not to have
+    written it, having no better reason than because I like to write on
+    and on. <i>You</i> have better reasons for thinking me very weak&mdash;and I,
+    too good ones for not being able to reproach you for that natural and
+    necessary opinion.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you my dearest friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    What can I say, or hope to say to you when I see what you do for me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>This</i>&mdash;for myself, (nothing for <i>you</i>!)&mdash;<i>this</i>, that I think the
+    great, great good I get by your kindness strikes me less than that
+    kindness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All is right, too&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Come, I <SPAN class="sc-ex">will</span> have my fault-finding at last! So you can decypher my
+    <i>utterest</i> hieroglyphic? Now droop the eyes while I triumph: the
+    plains cower, cower beneath the mountains their masters&mdash;and the
+    Priests stomp over the clay ridges, (a palpable plagiarism from two
+    lines of a legend that delighted my infancy, and now instruct my
+    maturer years in pretty nearly all they boast of the semi-mythologic
+    era referred to&mdash;'In London town, when reigned King Lud, His lords
+    went stomping thro' the mud'&mdash;would all historic records were half as
+    picturesque!)
+</p>
+<p>
+    But you know, yes, <i>you</i> know you are too indulgent by far&mdash;and treat
+    these roughnesses as if they were advanced to many a stage! Meantime
+    the pure gain is mine, and better, the kind generous spirit is mine,
+    (mine to profit by)&mdash;and best&mdash;best&mdash;best, the dearest friend is mine,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">So be happy</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, I admit that it was stupid to read that word so wrong. I thought
+    there was a mistake somewhere, but that it was <i>yours</i>, who had
+    written one word, meaning to write another. 'Cower' puts it all right
+    of course. But is there an English word of a significance different
+    from 'stamp,' in 'stomp?' Does not the old word King Lud's men
+    stomped withal, claim identity with our 'stamping.' The <i>a</i> and <i>o</i>
+    used to 'change about,' you know, in the old English writers&mdash;see
+    Chaucer for it. Still the 'stomp' with the peculiar significance, is
+    better of course than the 'stamp' even with a rhyme ready for it, and
+    I dare say you are justified in daring to put this old wine into the
+    new bottle; and we will drink to the health of the poem in it. It <i>is</i>
+    'Italy in England'&mdash;isn't it? But I understand and understood
+    perfectly, through it all, that it is <i>unfinished</i>, and in a rough
+    state round the edges. I could not help seeing <i>that</i>, even if I were
+    still blinder than when I read 'Lower' for 'Cower.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    But do not, I ask of you, speak of my 'kindness' ... my
+    kindness!&mdash;mine! It is 'wasteful and ridiculous excess' and
+    mis-application to use such words of me. And therefore, talking of
+    'compacts' and the 'fas' and 'nefas' of them, I entreat you to know
+    for the future that whatever I write of your poetry, if it isn't to be
+    called 'impertinence,' isn't to be called 'kindness,' any more, ... <i>a
+    fortiori</i>, as people say when they are sure of an argument. Now, will
+    you try to understand?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And talking still of compacts, how and where did I break any compact?
+    I do not see.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was very curious, the phenomenon about your 'Only a Player-Girl.'
+    What an un-godlike indifference to your creatures though&mdash;your worlds,
+    breathed away from you like soap bubbles, and dropping and breaking
+    into russet portfolios unobserved! Only a god for the Epicurean, at
+    best, can you be? That Miss Cushman went to Three Mile Cross the other
+    day, and visited Miss Mitford, and pleased her a good deal, I fancied
+    from what she said, ... and with reason, from what <i>you</i> say. And
+    'Only a Fiddler,' as I forgot to tell you yesterday, is announced, you
+    may see in any newspaper, as about to issue from the English press by
+    Mary Howitt's editorship. So we need not go to America for it. But if
+    you complain of George Sand for want of art, how could you bear
+    Andersen, who can see a thing under his eyes and place it under yours,
+    and take a thought separately into his soul and express it insularly,
+    but has no sort of instinct towards wholeness and unity; and writes a
+    book by putting so many pages together, ... just so!&mdash;For the rest,
+    there can be no disagreeing with you about the comparative difficulty
+    of novel-writing and drama-writing. I disagree a little, lower down in
+    your letter, because I could not deny (in my own convictions) a
+    certain proportion of genius to the author of 'Ernest Maltravers,' and
+    'Alice' (did you ever read those books?), even if he had more
+    impotently tried (supposing it to be possible) for the dramatic
+    laurel. In fact his poetry, dramatic or otherwise, is 'nought'; but
+    for the prose romances, and for 'Ernest Maltravers' above all, I must
+    lift up my voice and cry. And I read the <i>Athenæum</i> about your Sir
+    James Wylie who took you for an Italian....
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">'Poi vi dirò Signor, che ne fu causa<br>
+Ch' avio fatto al scriver debita pausa.'&mdash;
+</p>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+Ever your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 15, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you know, dear friend, it is no good policy to stop up all the
+    vents of my feeling, nor leave one for safety's sake, as you will do,
+    let me caution you never so repeatedly. I know, quite well enough,
+    that your 'kindness' is not <i>so</i> apparent, even, in this instance of
+    correcting my verses, as in many other points&mdash;but on such points, you
+    lift a finger to me and I am dumb.... Am I not to be allowed a word
+    here neither?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I remember, in the first season of German Opera here, when 'Fidelio's'
+    effects were going, going up to the gallery in order to get the best
+    of the last chorus&mdash;get its oneness which you do&mdash;and, while perched
+    there an inch under the ceiling, I was amused with the enormous
+    enthusiasm of an elderly German (we thought,&mdash;I and a cousin of
+    mine)&mdash;whose whole body broke out in billow, heaved and swayed in the
+    perfection of his delight, hands, head, feet, all tossing and striving
+    to utter what possessed him. Well&mdash;next week, we went again to the
+    Opera, and again mounted at the proper time, but the crowd was
+    <i>greater</i>, and our mild great faced white haired red cheeked German
+    was not to be seen, not at first&mdash;for as the glory was at its full, my
+    cousin twisted me round and made me see an arm, only an arm, all the
+    body of its owner being amalgamated with a dense crowd on each side,
+    before, and&mdash;not behind, because they, the crowd, occupied the last
+    benches, over which we looked&mdash;and this arm waved and exulted as if
+    'for the dignity of the whole body,'&mdash;relieved it of its dangerous
+    accumulation of repressed excitability. When the crowd broke up all
+    the rest of the man disengaged itself by slow endeavours, and there
+    stood our friend confessed&mdash;as we were sure!
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;Now, you would have bade him keep his arm quiet? 'Lady Geraldine,
+    you <i>would</i>!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have read those novels&mdash;but I must keep that word of words,
+    'genius'&mdash;for something different&mdash;'talent' will do here surely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There lies 'Consuelo'&mdash;done with!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall tell you frankly that it strikes me as precisely what in
+    conventional language with the customary silliness is styled a
+    <i>woman's</i> book, in its merits and defects,&mdash;and supremely timid in all
+    the points where one wants, and has a right to expect, some <i>fruit</i> of
+    all the pretence and George Sand<i>ism</i>. These are occasions when one
+    does say, in the phrase of her school, 'que la Femme parle!' or what
+    is better, let her act! and how does Consuelo comfort herself on such
+    an emergency? Why, she bravely lets the uninspired people throw down
+    one by one their dearest prejudices at her feet, and then, like a
+    very actress, picks them up, like so many flowers, returning them to
+    the breast of the owners with a smile and a courtesy and trips off the
+    stage with a glance at the Pit. Count Christian, Baron Frederic,
+    Baroness&mdash;what is her name&mdash;all open their arms, and Consuelo will not
+    consent to entail disgrace &amp;c. &amp;c. No, you say&mdash;she leaves them in
+    order to solve the problem of her true feeling, whether she can really
+    love Albert; but remember that this is done, (that is, so much of it
+    as ever <i>is</i> done, and as determines her to accept his hand at the
+    very last)&mdash;this is solved sometime about the next morning&mdash;or
+    earlier&mdash;I forget&mdash;and in the meantime, Albert gets that 'benefit of
+    the doubt' of which chapter the last informs you. As for the
+    hesitation and self examination on the matter of that Anzoleto&mdash;the
+    writer is turning over the leaves of a wrong dictionary, seeking help
+    from Psychology, and pretending to forget there is such a thing as
+    Physiology. Then, that horrible Porpora:&mdash;if George Sand gives <i>him</i>
+    to a Consuelo for an absolute master, in consideration of his services
+    specified, and is of opinion that <i>they</i> warrant his conduct, or at
+    least, oblige submission to it,&mdash;then, I find her objections to the
+    fatherly rule of Frederic perfectly impertinent&mdash;he having a few
+    claims upon the gratitude of Prussia also, in his way, I believe! If
+    the strong ones <i>will make</i> the weak ones lead them&mdash;then, for
+    Heaven's sake, let this dear old all-abused world keep on its course
+    without these outcries and tearings of hair, and don't be for ever
+    goading the Karls and other trodden-down creatures till they get their
+    carbines in order (very rationally) to abate the nuisance&mdash;when you
+    make the man a long speech against some enormity he is about to
+    commit, and adjure and beseech and so forth, till he throws down the
+    aforesaid carbine, falls on his knees, and lets the Frederic go
+    quietly on his way to keep on killing his thousands after the fashion
+    that moved your previous indignation. Now is that right,
+    consequential&mdash;that is, <i>inferential</i>; logically deduced, going
+    straight to the end&mdash;<i>manly</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The accessories are not the Principal, the adjuncts&mdash;the essence, nor
+    the ornamental incidents the book's self, so what matters it if the
+    portraits are admirable, the descriptions eloquent, (eloquent, there
+    it is&mdash;that is her characteristic&mdash;what she <i>has</i> to speak, she
+    <i>speaks out</i>, speaks volubly <i>forth</i>, too well, inasmuch as you say,
+    advancing a step or two, 'And now speak as completely <i>here</i>'&mdash;and she
+    says nothing)&mdash;but all <i>that</i>, another could do, as others have
+    done&mdash;but 'la femme qui parle'&mdash;Ah, that, is <i>this</i> all? So I am not
+    George Sand's&mdash;she teaches me nothing&mdash;I look to her for nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am ever yours, dearest friend. How I write to you&mdash;page on page! But
+    Tuesday&mdash;who could wait till then! Shall I not hear from you?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you ever</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 16, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But what likeness is there between opposites; and what has 'M.
+    l'Italien' to do with the said 'elderly German'? See how little! For
+    to bring your case into point, somebody should have been playing on a
+    Jew's harp for the whole of the orchestra; and the elderly German
+    should have quoted something about 'Harp of Judah' to the Venetian
+    behind him! And there, you would have proved your analogy!&mdash;Because
+    you see, my dear friend, it was not the expression, but the thing
+    expressed, I cried out against&mdash;the exaggeration in your mind. I am
+    sorry when I write what you do not like&mdash;but I have instincts and
+    impulses too strong for me when you say things which put me into such
+    a miserably false position in respect to you&mdash;as for instance, when in
+    this very last letter (oh, I <i>must</i> tell you!) you talk of my
+    'correcting your verses'! My correcting your verses!!!&mdash;Now is <i>that</i>
+    a thing for you to say?&mdash;And do you really imagine that if I kept that
+    happily imagined phrase in my thoughts, I should be able to tell you
+    one word of my impressions from your poetry, ever, ever again? Do you
+    not see at once what a disqualifying and paralysing phrase it must be,
+    of simple necessity? So it is <i>I</i> who have reason to complain, ... it
+    appears to <i>me</i>, ... and by no means <i>you</i>&mdash;and in your 'second
+    consideration' you become aware of it, I do not at all doubt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to 'Consuelo' I agree with nearly all that you say of it&mdash;though
+    George Sand, we are to remember, is greater than 'Consuelo,' and not
+    to be depreciated according to the defects of that book, nor
+    classified as 'femme qui parle' ... she who is man and woman together,
+    ... judging her by the standard of even that book in the nobler
+    portions of it. For the inconsequency of much in the book, I admit it
+    of course&mdash;and <i>you</i> will admit that it is the rarest of phenomena
+    when men ... men of logic ... follow their own opinions into their
+    obvious results&mdash;nobody, you know, ever thinks of doing such a thing:
+    to pursue one's own inferences is to rush in where angels ... perhaps
+    ... do <i>not</i> fear to tread, ... but where there will not be much other
+    company. So the want of practical logic shall be a human fault rather
+    than a womanly one, if you please: and you must please also to
+    remember that 'Consuelo' is only 'half the orange'; and that when you
+    complain of its not being a whole one, you overlook that hand which is
+    holding to you the 'Comtesse de Rudolstadt' in three volumes! Not that
+    I, who have read the whole, profess a full satisfaction about Albert
+    and the rest&mdash;and Consuelo is made to be happy by a mere clap-trap at
+    last: and Mme. Dudevant has her specialities,&mdash;in which, other women,
+    I fancy, have neither part nor lot, ... even <i>here</i>!&mdash;Altogether, the
+    book is a sort of rambling 'Odyssey,' a female 'Odyssey,' if you like,
+    but full of beauty and nobleness, let the faults be where they may.
+    And then, I like those long, long books, one can live away into ...
+    leaving the world and above all oneself, quite at the end of the
+    avenue of palms&mdash;quite out of sight and out of hearing!&mdash;Oh, I have
+    felt something like <i>that</i> so often&mdash;so often! and <i>you</i> never felt
+    it, and never will, I hope.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But if Bulwer had written nothing but the 'Ernest Maltravers' books,
+    you would think perhaps more highly of him. Do you <i>not</i> think it
+    possible now? It is his most impotent struggling into poetry, which
+    sets about proving a negative of genius on him&mdash;<i>that</i>, which the
+    <i>Athenæum praises</i> as 'respectable attainment in various walks of
+    literature'&mdash;! <i>like</i> the <i>Athenæum</i>, isn't it? and worthy praise, to
+    be administered by professed judges of art? What is to be expected of
+    the public, when the teachers of the public teach <i>so</i>?&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    When you come on Tuesday, do not forget the MS. if any is done&mdash;only
+    don't let it be done so as to tire and hurt you&mdash;mind! And good-bye
+    until Tuesday, from
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am going to propose to you to give up Tuesday, and to take your
+    choice of two or three other days, say Friday, or Saturday, or
+    to-morrow ... Monday. Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and talked of leaving
+    London on Friday, and of visiting me again on 'Tuesday' ... he said,
+    ... but that is an uncertainty, and it may be Tuesday or Wednesday or
+    Thursday. So I thought (wrong or right) that out of the three
+    remaining days you would not mind choosing one. And if you do choose
+    the Monday, there will be no need to write&mdash;nor time indeed&mdash;; but if
+    the Friday or Saturday, I shall hear from you, perhaps. Above all
+    things remember, my dear friend, that I shall not expect you
+    to-morrow, except as by a <i>bare possibility</i>. In great haste, signed
+    and sealed this Sunday evening by
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday, 7 P.M.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 19, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I this moment get your note&mdash;having been out since the early
+    morning&mdash;and I must write just to catch the post. You are pure
+    kindness and considerateness, <i>no</i> thanks to you!&mdash;(since you will
+    have it so&mdash;). I choose Friday, then,&mdash;but I shall hear from you
+    before Thursday, I dare hope? I have all but passed your house
+    to-day&mdash;with an Italian friend, from Rome, whom I must go about with a
+    little on weariful sight seeing, so I shall earn Friday.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I fancied it was just <i>so</i>&mdash;as I did not hear and did not see you on
+    Monday. Not that you were expected particularly&mdash;but that you would
+    have written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the
+    day, if you had received my note in time. It happened well too,
+    altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not
+    come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at
+    the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any
+    visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases,
+    go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at
+    that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you
+    before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not,
+    should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn
+    to write, ... did you think it was?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not a word of Malta! except from Mr. Kenyon who talked homilies of it
+    last Sunday and wanted to speak them to Papa&mdash;but it would not do in
+    any way&mdash;now especially&mdash;and in a little time there will be a
+    decision for or against; and I am afraid of <i>both</i> ... which is a
+    happy state of preparation. Did I not tell you that early in the
+    summer I did some translations for Miss Thomson's 'Classical Album,'
+    from Bion and Theocritus, and Nonnus the author of that large (not
+    great) poem in some forty books of the 'Dionysiaca' ... and the
+    paraphrases from Apuleius? Well&mdash;I had a letter from her the other
+    day, full of compunction and ejaculation, and declaring the fact that
+    Mr. Burges had been correcting all the proofs of the poems; leaving
+    out and emending generally, according to his own particular idea of
+    the pattern in the mount&mdash;is it not amusing? I have been wicked enough
+    to write in reply that it is happy for her and all readers ... <i>sua si
+    bona norint</i> ... if during some half hour which otherwise might have
+    been dedicated by Mr. Burges to patting out the lights of Sophocles
+    and his peers, he was satisfied with the humbler devastation of E.B.B.
+    upon Nonnus. You know it is impossible to help being amused. This
+    correcting is a mania with that man! And then I, who wrote what I did
+    from the 'Dionysiaca,' with no respect for 'my author,' and an
+    arbitrary will to 'put the case' of Bacchus and Ariadne as well as I
+    could, for the sake of the art-illustrations, ... those subjects Miss
+    Thomson sent me, ... and did it all with full liberty and persuasion
+    of soul that nobody would think it worth while to compare English with
+    Greek and refer me back to Nonnus and detect my wanderings from the
+    text!! But the critic was not to be cheated so! And I do not doubt
+    that he has set me all 'to rights' from beginning to end; and combed
+    Ariadne's hair close to her cheeks for me. Have <i>you</i> known Nonnus,
+    ... <i>you</i> who forget nothing? and have known everything, I think? For
+    it is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and
+    humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts of
+    experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of the world and
+    the arts of it; curious knowledge as well as general knowledge ... and
+    deep thinking as well as wide acquisition, ... and you, looking none
+    the older for it all!&mdash;yes, and being besides a man of genius and
+    working your faculty and not wasting yourself over a surface or away
+    from an end. Dugald Stewart said that genius made naturally a
+    lop-sided mind&mdash;did he not? He ought to have known <i>you</i>. And <i>I</i> who
+    do ... a little ... (for I grow more loth than I was to assume the
+    knowledge of you, my dear friend)&mdash;<i>I</i> do not mean to use that word
+    'humiliation' in the sense of having felt the thing myself in any
+    <i>painful</i> way, ... because I never for a moment did, or <i>could</i>, you
+    know,&mdash;never could ... never did ... except indeed when you have over
+    praised me, which forced another personal feeling in. Otherwise it has
+    always been quite pleasant to me to be 'startled and humiliated'&mdash;and
+    more so perhaps than to be startled and exalted, if I might choose....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to
+    you. But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring
+    on ... and you must endure as you can or will. Also ... as you have a
+    friend with you 'from Italy' ... 'from Rome,' and commended me for my
+    'kindness and considerateness' in changing Tuesday to Friday ...
+    (wasn't it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the
+    visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to
+    be&mdash;I mean, as is most convenient 'for the nonce' to you and your
+    friend&mdash;because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience,
+    to your other friend of this ilk,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that
+    your 'kindness and considerateness' consisted, not in putting off
+    Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my
+    coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and <i>I</i> might
+    call another time! And you are <SPAN class="sc-ex">not, not</span> my 'other friend,' any more
+    than this head of mine is my <i>other</i> head, seeing that I have got a
+    violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told
+    in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my
+    Romans&mdash;who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have
+    left the house for a few minutes with my sister&mdash;but are not 'with
+    me,' as you seem to understand it,&mdash;in the house to stay. They were
+    kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what
+    use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and
+    praying you to cry 'hands off' to that dreadful Burgess; have not I
+    got a ... but I will tell you to-night&mdash;or on Friday which is my day,
+    please&mdash;Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings&mdash;what have I
+    done? God bless you ever dearest friend.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday, 7 o'clock.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write
+    (or, <i>speak</i>, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those
+    'other friends'&mdash;dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve,
+    and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a
+    few more hours of 'social joy,' 'kindly intercourse,' &amp;c., fall to my
+    portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw
+    her, not yesterday) by asking 'if I had got as much money as I
+    expected by any works published of late?'&mdash;to which I answered, of
+    course, 'exactly as much'&mdash;<i>è grazioso</i>! (All the same, if you were to
+    ask her, or the like of her, 'how much the stone-work of the Coliseum
+    would fetch, properly burned down to lime?'&mdash;she would shudder from
+    head to foot and call you 'barbaro' with good Trojan heart.) Now you
+    suppose&mdash;(watch my rhetorical figure here)&mdash;you suppose I am going to
+    congratulate myself on being so much for the better, <i>en pays de
+    connaissance</i>, with my 'other friend,' E.B.B., number 2&mdash;or 200, why
+    not?&mdash;whereas I mean to 'fulmine over Greece,' since thunder frightens
+    you, for all the laurels,&mdash;and to have reason for your taking my own
+    part and lot to yourself&mdash;I do, will, must, and <i>will</i>, again, wonder
+    at <i>you</i> and admire <i>you</i>, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed,
+    immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But
+    if to talk you once begin, 'the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly)
+    his own again'&mdash;I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or
+    Panoplite, as I think you call Nonnus, nor ever, like Leigh Hunt's
+    'Johnny, ever blythe and bonny, went singing Nonny, nonny' and see
+    to-morrow, what a vengeance I will take for your 'mere suspicion in
+    that kind'! But to the serious matter ... nay, I said yesterday, I
+    believe&mdash;keep off that Burgess&mdash;he is stark staring mad&mdash;mad, do you
+    know? The last time I met him he told me he had recovered I forget how
+    many of the lost books of Thucydides&mdash;found them imbedded in Suidas (I
+    think), and had disengaged them from <i>his</i> Greek, without loss of a
+    letter, 'by an instinct he, Burgess, had'&mdash;(I spell his name wrongly
+    to help the proper <i>hiss</i> at the end). Then, once on a time, he found
+    in the 'Christus Patiens,' an odd dozen of lines, clearly dropped out
+    of the 'Prometheus,' and proving that Æschylus was aware of the
+    invention of gunpowder. He wanted to help Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in his
+    'Museum'&mdash;and scared him, as Schmitz told me. What business has he,
+    Burges, with English verse&mdash;and what on earth, or under it, has Miss
+    Thomson to do with <i>him</i>. If she must displease one of two, why is Mr.
+    B. not to be thanked and 'sent to feed,' as the French say prettily?
+    At all events, do pray see what he has presumed to alter ... you can
+    alter at sufficient warrant, profit by suggestion, I should think! But
+    it is all Miss Thomson's shame and fault: because she is quite in her
+    propriety, saying to such intermeddlers, gently for the sake of their
+    poor weak heads, 'very good, I dare say, very desirable emendations,
+    only the work is not mine, you know, but my friend's, and you must no
+    more alter it without her leave, than alter this sketch, this
+    illustration, because you think you could mend Ariadne's face or
+    figure,&mdash;Fecit Tizianus, scripsit E.B.B.' Dear friend, you will tell
+    Miss Thomson to stop further proceedings, will you not? There! only,
+    do mind what I say?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now&mdash;till to-morrow! It seems an age since I saw you. I want to
+    catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped&mdash;I
+    need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I
+    trust. 'Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the
+    door!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you,&mdash;my one friend, without an 'other'&mdash;bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But what have <i>I</i> done that you should ask what have <i>you</i> done? I
+    have not brought any accusation, have I ... no, nor <i>thought</i> any, I
+    am sure&mdash;and it was only the 'kindness and considerateness'&mdash;argument
+    that was irresistible as a thing to be retorted, when your thanks came
+    so naturally and just at the corner of an application. And then, you
+    know, it is gravely true, seriously true, sadly true, that I am always
+    expecting to hear or to see how tired you are at last of me!&mdash;sooner
+    or later, you know!&mdash;But I did not mean any seriousness in that
+    letter. No, nor did I mean ... (to pass to another question ...) to
+    provoke you to the
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Mister Hayley ... so are <i>you</i>....
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    reply complimentary. All I observed concerning yourself, was the
+    <i>combination</i>&mdash;which not an idiom in chivalry could treat
+    grammatically as a thing common to <i>me</i> and you, inasmuch as everyone
+    who has known me for half a day, may know that, if there is anything
+    peculiar in me, it lies for the most part in an extraordinary
+    deficiency in this and this and this, ... there is no need to describe
+    what. Only nuns of the strictest sect of the nunneries are rather
+    wiser in some points, and have led less restricted lives than I have
+    in others. And if it had not been for my 'carpet-work'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well&mdash;and do you know that I have, for the last few years, taken quite
+    to despise book-knowledge and its effect on the mind&mdash;I mean when
+    people <i>live by it</i> as most readers by profession do, ... cloistering
+    their souls under these roofs made with heads, when they might be
+    under the sky. Such people grow dark and narrow and low, with all
+    their pains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Friday.</i>&mdash;I was writing you see before you came&mdash;and now I go on in
+    haste to speak 'off my mind' some things which are on it. First ... of
+    yourself; how can it be that you are unwell again, ... and that you
+    should talk (now did you not?&mdash;did I not hear you say so?) of being
+    'weary in your soul' ... <i>you</i>? What should make <i>you</i>, dearest
+    friend, weary in your soul; or out of spirits in any way?&mdash;Do ... tell
+    me.... I was going to write without a pause&mdash;and almost I might,
+    perhaps, ... even as one of the two hundred of your friends, ...
+    almost I might say out that 'Do tell me.' Or is it (which I am
+    inclined to think most probable) that you are tired of a same life and
+    want change? It may happen to anyone sometimes, and is independent of
+    your will and choice, you know&mdash;and I know, and the whole world knows:
+    and would it not therefore be wise of you, in that case, to fold your
+    life new again and go abroad at once? What can make you weary in your
+    soul, is a problem to me. You are the last from whom I should have
+    expected such a word. And you did say so, I <i>think</i>. I <i>think</i> that it
+    was not a mistake of mine. And <i>you</i>, ... with a full liberty, and the
+    world in your hand for every purpose and pleasure of it!&mdash;Or is it
+    that, being unwell, your spirits are affected by <i>that</i>? But then you
+    might be more unwell than you like to admit&mdash;. And I am teasing you
+    with talking of it ... am I not?&mdash;and being disagreeable is only one
+    third of the way towards being useful, it is good to remember in time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then the next thing to write off my mind is ... that you must not,
+    you must not, make an unjust opinion out of what I said to-day. I have
+    been uncomfortable since, lest you should&mdash;and perhaps it would have
+    been better if I had not said it apart from all context in that way;
+    only that you could not long be a friend of mine without knowing and
+    seeing what so lies on the surface. But then, ... as far as I am
+    concerned, ... no one cares less for a 'will' than I do (and this
+    though I never had one, ... in clear opposition to your theory which
+    holds generally nevertheless) for a will in the common things of life.
+    Every now and then there must of course be a crossing and
+    vexation&mdash;but in one's mere pleasures and fantasies, one would rather
+    be crossed and vexed a little than vex a person one loves ... and it
+    is possible to get used to the harness and run easily in it at last;
+    and there is a side-world to hide one's thoughts in, and 'carpet-work'
+    to be immoral on in spite of Mrs. Jameson, ... and the word
+    'literature' has, with me, covered a good deal of liberty as you must
+    see ... real liberty which is never enquired into&mdash;and it has happened
+    throughout my life by an accident (as far as anything is accident)
+    that my own sense of right and happiness on any important point of
+    overt action, has never run contrariwise to the way of obedience
+    required of me ... while in things not exactly <i>overt</i>, I and all of
+    us are apt to act sometimes up to the limit of our means of acting,
+    with shut doors and windows, and no waiting for cognisance or
+    permission. Ah&mdash;and that last is the worst of it all perhaps! to be
+    forced into concealments from the heart naturally nearest to us; and
+    forced away from the natural source of counsel and strength!&mdash;and
+    then, the disingenuousness&mdash;the cowardice&mdash;the 'vices of
+    slaves'!&mdash;and everyone you see ... all my brothers, ... constrained
+    <i>bodily</i> into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that
+    worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of <i>living</i>,
+    everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters
+    on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do <i>not</i> see, what
+    you <i>cannot</i> see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all
+    those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children 'in the way
+    they <i>must</i> go!' and there never was (under the strata) a truer
+    affection in a father's heart ... no, nor a worthier heart in itself
+    ... a heart loyaller and purer, and more compelling to gratitude and
+    reverence, than his, as I see it! The evil is in the system&mdash;and he
+    simply takes it to be his duty to rule, and to make happy according to
+    his own views of the propriety of happiness&mdash;he takes it to be his
+    duty to rule like the Kings of Christendom, by divine right. But he
+    loves us through and through it&mdash;and <i>I</i>, for one, love <i>him</i>! and
+    when, five years ago, I lost what I loved best in the world beyond
+    comparison and rivalship ... far better than himself as he knew ...
+    for everyone who knew <i>me</i> could not choose but know what was my first
+    and chiefest affection ... when I lost <i>that</i>, ... I felt that he
+    stood the nearest to me on the closed grave ... or by the unclosing
+    sea ... I do not know which nor could ask. And I will tell you that
+    not only he has been kind and patient and forbearing to me through the
+    tedious trial of this illness (far more trying to standers by than you
+    have an idea of perhaps) but that he was generous and forbearing in
+    that hour of bitter trial, and never reproached me as he might have
+    done and as my own soul has not spared&mdash;never once said to me then or
+    since, that if it had not been for <i>me</i>, the crown of his house would
+    not have fallen. He <i>never did</i> ... and he might have said it, and
+    more&mdash;and I could have answered nothing. Nothing, except that I had
+    paid my own price&mdash;and that the price I paid was greater than his
+    <i>loss</i> ... his!! For see how it was; and how, 'not with my hand but
+    heart,' I was the cause or occasion of that misery&mdash;and though not
+    with the intention of my heart but with its weakness, yet the
+    <i>occasion</i>, any way!
+</p>
+<p>
+    They sent me down you know to Torquay&mdash;Dr. Chambers saying that I
+    could not live a winter in London. The worst&mdash;what people call the
+    worst&mdash;was apprehended for me at that time. So I was sent down with my
+    sister to my aunt there&mdash;and he, my brother whom I loved so, was sent
+    too, to take us there and return. And when the time came for him to
+    leave me, <i>I</i>, to whom he was the dearest of friends and brothers in
+    one ... the only one of my family who ... well, but I cannot write of
+    these things; and it is enough to tell you that he was above us all,
+    better than us all, and kindest and noblest and dearest to <i>me</i>,
+    beyond comparison, any comparison, as I said&mdash;and when the time came
+    for him to leave me <i>I</i>, weakened by illness, could not master my
+    spirits or drive back my tears&mdash;and my aunt kissed them away instead
+    of reproving me as she should have done; and said that <i>she</i> would
+    take care that I should not be grieved ... <i>she</i>! ... and so she sate
+    down and wrote a letter to Papa to tell him that he would 'break my
+    heart' if he persisted in calling away my brother&mdash;As if hearts were
+    broken <i>so</i>! I have thought bitterly since that my heart did not break
+    for a good deal more than <i>that</i>! And Papa's answer was&mdash;burnt into
+    me, as with fire, it is&mdash;that 'under such circumstances he did not
+    refuse to suspend his purpose, but that he considered it to be <i>very
+    wrong in me to exact such a thing</i>.' So there was no separation
+    <i>then</i>: and month after month passed&mdash;and sometimes I was better and
+    sometimes worse&mdash;and the medical men continued to say that they would
+    not answer for my life ... they! if I were agitated&mdash;and so there was
+    no more talk of a separation. And once <i>he</i> held my hand, ... how I
+    remember! and said that he 'loved me better than them all and that he
+    <i>would not</i> leave me ... till I was well,' he said! how I remember
+    <i>that</i>! And ten days from that day the boat had left the shore which
+    never returned; never&mdash;and he <i>had</i> left me! gone! For three days we
+    waited&mdash;and I hoped while I could&mdash;oh&mdash;that awful agony of three days!
+    And the sun shone as it shines to-day, and there was no more wind than
+    now; and the sea under the windows was like this paper for
+    smoothness&mdash;and my sisters drew the curtains back that I might see for
+    myself how smooth the sea was, and how it could hurt nobody&mdash;and other
+    boats came back one by one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Remember how you wrote in your 'Gismond'
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">What says the body when they spring<br>
+Some monstrous torture-engine's whole<br>
+Strength on it? No more says the soul,
+</p>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and you never wrote anything which <i>lived</i> with me more than <i>that</i>.
+    It is such a dreadful truth. But you knew it for truth, I hope, by
+    your genius, and not by such proof as mine&mdash;I, who could not speak or
+    shed a tear, but lay for weeks and months half conscious, half
+    unconscious, with a wandering mind, and too near to God under the
+    crushing of His hand, to pray at all. I expiated all my weak tears
+    before, by not being able to shed then one tear&mdash;and yet they were
+    forbearing&mdash;and no voice said 'You have done this.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have
+    never said so much to a living being&mdash;I never <i>could</i> speak or write
+    of it. I asked no question from the moment when my last hope went: and
+    since then, it has been impossible for me to speak what was in me. I
+    have borne to do it to-day and to you, but perhaps if you were to
+    write&mdash;so do not let this be noticed between us again&mdash;<i>do not</i>! And
+    besides there is no need! I do not reproach myself with such acrid
+    thoughts as I had once&mdash;I <i>know</i> that I would have died ten times over
+    for <i>him</i>, and that therefore though it was wrong of me to be weak,
+    and I have suffered for it and shall learn by it I hope; <i>remorse</i> is
+    not precisely the word for me&mdash;not at least in its full sense. Still
+    you will comprehend from what I have told you how the spring of life
+    must have seemed to break within me <i>then</i>; and how natural it has
+    been for me to loathe the living on&mdash;and to lose faith (even without
+    the loathing), to lose faith in myself ... which I have done on some
+    points utterly. It is not from the cause of illness&mdash;no. And you will
+    comprehend too that I have strong reasons for being grateful to the
+    forbearance.... It would have been <i>cruel</i>, you think, to reproach me.
+    Perhaps so! yet the kindness and patience of the desisting from
+    reproach, are positive things all the same.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I be too late for the post, I wonder? Wilson tells me that you
+    were followed up-stairs yesterday (I write on Saturday this latter
+    part) by somebody whom you probably took for my father. Which is
+    Wilson's idea&mdash;and I hope not yours. No&mdash;it was neither father nor
+    other relative of mine, but an old friend in rather an ill temper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so good-bye until Tuesday. Perhaps I shall ... not ... hear from
+    you to-night. Don't let the tragedy or aught else do you harm&mdash;will
+    you? and try not to be 'weary in your soul' any more&mdash;and forgive me
+    this gloomy letter I half shrink from sending you, yet will send.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning,<br>
+[Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the subject of your letter&mdash;quite irrespective of the injunction in
+    it&mdash;I would not have dared speak; now, at least. But I may permit
+    myself, perhaps, to say I am <i>most</i> grateful, <i>most grateful</i>, dearest
+    friend, for this admission to participate, in my degree, in these
+    feelings. There is a better thing than being happy in your happiness;
+    I feel, now that you teach me, it is so. I will write no more now;
+    though that sentence of 'what you are <i>expecting</i>,&mdash;that I shall be
+    tired of you &amp;c.,'&mdash;though I <i>could</i> blot that out of your mind for
+    ever by a very few words <i>now</i>,&mdash;for you <i>would believe</i> me at this
+    moment, close on the other subject:&mdash;but I will take no such
+    advantage&mdash;I will wait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have many things (indifferent things, after those) to say; will you
+    write, if but a few lines, to change the associations for that
+    purpose? Then I will write too.&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you,&mdash;in what is past and to come! I pray that from my
+    heart, being yours
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning,<br>
+[Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But your 'Saul' is unobjectionable as far as I can see, my dear
+    friend. He was tormented by an evil spirit&mdash;but how, we are not told
+    ... and the consolation is not obliged to be definite, ... is it? A
+    singer was sent for as a singer&mdash;and all that you are called upon to
+    be true to, are the general characteristics of David the chosen,
+    standing between his sheep and his dawning hereafter, between
+    innocence and holiness, and with what you speak of as the 'gracious
+    gold locks' besides the chrism of the prophet, on his own head&mdash;and
+    surely you have been happy in the tone and spirit of these lyrics ...
+    broken as you have left them. Where is the wrong in all this? For the
+    right and beauty, they are more obvious&mdash;and I cannot tell you how the
+    poem holds me and will not let me go until it blesses me ... and so,
+    where are the 'sixty lines' thrown away? I do beseech you ... you who
+    forget nothing, ... to remember them directly, and to go on with the
+    rest ... <i>as</i> directly (be it understood) as is not injurious to your
+    health. The whole conception of the poem, I like ... and the execution
+    is exquisite up to this point&mdash;and the sight of Saul in the tent, just
+    struck out of the dark by that sunbeam, 'a thing to see,' ... not to
+    say that afterwards when he is visibly 'caught in his fangs' like the
+    king serpent, ... the sight is grander still. How could you doubt
+    about this poem....
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the moment of writing which, I receive your note. Do <i>you</i> receive
+    my assurances from the deepest of my heart that I never did otherwise
+    than <i>'believe' you</i> ... never did nor shall do ... and that you
+    completely misinterpreted my words if you drew another meaning from
+    them. Believe <i>me</i> in this&mdash;will you? I could not believe <i>you</i> any
+    more for anything you could say, now or hereafter&mdash;and so do not
+    avenge yourself on my unwary sentences by remembering them against me
+    for evil. I did not mean to vex you ... still less to suspect
+    you&mdash;indeed I did not! and moreover it was quite your fault that I did
+    not blot it out after it was written, whatever the meaning was. So you
+    forgive me (altogether) for your own sins: you must:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    For my part, though I have been sorry since to have written you such a
+    gloomy letter, the sorrow unmakes itself in hearing you speak so
+    kindly. Your sympathy is precious to me, I may say. May God bless you.
+    Write and tell me among the 'indifferent things' something not
+    indifferent, how you are yourself, I mean ... for I fear you are not
+    well and thought you were not looking so yesterday.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Dearest friend, I remain yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, August 30, 1845].
+</p>
+<p>
+    I do not hear; and come to you to ask the alms of just one line,
+    having taken it into my head that something is the matter. It is not
+    so much exactingness on my part, as that you spoke of meaning to write
+    as soon as you received a note of mine ... which went to you five
+    minutes afterwards ... which is three days ago, or will be when you
+    read this. Are you not well&mdash;or what? Though I have tried and <i>wished</i>
+    to remember having written in the last note something very or even a
+    little offensive to you, I failed in it and go back to the worse fear.
+    For you could not be vexed with me for talking of what was 'your
+    fault' ... 'your own fault,' viz. in having to read sentences which,
+    but for your commands, would have been blotted out. You could not very
+    well take <i>that</i> for serious blame! from <i>me</i> too, who have so much
+    reason and provocation for blaming the archangel Gabriel.&mdash;No&mdash;you
+    could not misinterpret so,&mdash;and if you could not, and if you are not
+    displeased with me, you must be unwell, I think. I took for granted
+    yesterday that you had gone out as before&mdash;but to-night it is
+    different&mdash;and so I come to ask you to be kind enough to write one
+    word for me by some post to-morrow. Now remember ... I am not asking
+    for a letter&mdash;but for a <i>word</i> ... or line strictly speaking.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours, dear friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This sweet Autumn Evening, Friday, comes all golden into the room and
+    makes me write to you&mdash;not think of you&mdash;yet what shall I write?
+</p>
+<p>
+    It must be for another time ... after Monday, when I am to see you,
+    you know, and hear if the headache be gone, since your note would not
+    round to the perfection of kindness and comfort, and tell me so.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless my dearest friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am much better&mdash;well, indeed&mdash;thank you.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Can you understand me <i>so</i>, dearest friend, after all? Do you see
+    me&mdash;when I am away, or with you&mdash;'taking offence' at words, 'being
+    vexed' at words, or deeds of yours, even if I could not immediately
+    trace them to their source of entire, pure kindness; as I have
+    hitherto done in every smallest instance?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I believe in <i>you</i> absolutely, utterly&mdash;I believe that when you bade
+    me, that time, be silent&mdash;that such was your bidding, and I was
+    silent&mdash;dare I say I think you did not know at that time the power I
+    have over myself, that I could sit and speak and listen as I have done
+    since? Let me say now&mdash;<i>this only once</i>&mdash;that I loved you from my
+    soul, and gave you my life, so much of it as you would take,&mdash;and all
+    that is <i>done</i>, not to be altered now: it was, in the nature of the
+    proceeding, wholly independent of any return on your part. I will not
+    think on extremes you might have resorted to; as it is, the assurance
+    of your friendship, the intimacy to which you admit me, <i>now</i>, make
+    the truest, deepest joy of my life&mdash;a joy I can never think fugitive
+    while we are in life, because I <SPAN class="sc-ex">know</span>, as to me, I <i>could</i> not
+    willingly displease you,&mdash;while, as to you, your goodness and
+    understanding will always see to the bottom of involuntary or ignorant
+    faults&mdash;always help me to correct them. I have done now. If I thought
+    you were like other women I have known, I should say so
+    much!&mdash;but&mdash;(my first and last word&mdash;I <i>believe</i> in you!)&mdash;what you
+    could and would give me, of your affection, you would give nobly and
+    simply and as a giver&mdash;you would not need that I tell you&mdash;(<i>tell</i>
+    you!)&mdash;what would be supreme happiness to me in the event&mdash;however
+    distant&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I repeat ... I call on your justice to remember, on your intelligence
+    to believe ... that this is merely a more precise stating the <i>first</i>
+    subject; to put an end to any possible misunderstanding&mdash;to prevent
+    your henceforth believing that because I <i>do not write</i>, from thinking
+    too deeply of you, I am offended, vexed &amp;c. &amp;c. I will never recur to
+    this, nor shall you see the least difference in my manner next Monday:
+    it is indeed, always before me ... how I know nothing of you and
+    yours. But I think I ought to have spoken when I did&mdash;and to speak
+    clearly ... or more clearly what I do, as it is my pride and duty to
+    fall back, now, on the feeling with which I have been in the
+    meantime&mdash;Yours&mdash;God bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me write a few words to lead into Monday&mdash;and say, you have
+    probably received my note. I am much better&mdash;with a little headache,
+    which is all, and fast going this morning. Of yours you say nothing&mdash;I
+    trust you see your ... dare I say your <i>duty</i> in the Pisa affair, as
+    all else <i>must</i> see it&mdash;shall I hear on Monday? And my 'Saul' that you
+    are so lenient to.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[August 31, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I did not think you were angry&mdash;I never said so. But you might
+    reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of
+    blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the
+    amount of my fear&mdash;or rather hope ... since I conjectured most that
+    you were not well. And after all you did think ... do think ... that
+    in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you,
+    distrusted you&mdash;or why this letter? How have I provoked this letter?
+    Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and
+    will you believe me that if for the past's sake you sent it, it was
+    unnecessary, and if for the future's, irrelevant? Which I say from no
+    want of sensibility to the words of it&mdash;your words always make
+    themselves felt&mdash;but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold
+    to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be
+    holden by them. Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to
+    me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to
+    choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a
+    probability, in my sight and yours? Can you help my sitting with the
+    doors all open if I think it right? I do attest to you&mdash;while I trust
+    you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that
+    no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than
+    you do in mine,&mdash;that you would still stand high and remain
+    unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact,
+    as now at this moment. And this I must say, since you have said other
+    things: and this alone, which <i>I</i> have said, concerns the future, I
+    remind you earnestly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My dearest friend&mdash;you have followed the most <i>generous</i> of impulses
+    in your whole bearing to me&mdash;and I have recognised and called by its
+    name, in my heart, each one of them. Yet I cannot help adding that, of
+    us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part ... I mean, to a
+    generous nature like your own, to which every sort of nobleness comes
+    easily. Mine has been more difficult&mdash;and I have sunk under it again
+    and again: and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a
+    lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and
+    lightness, unworthy at least of <i>you</i>, and perhaps of both of us.
+    Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of
+    you, to believe in me&mdash;in my truth&mdash;because I have never failed to you
+    in it, nor been capable of <i>such</i> failure: the thing I have said, I
+    have meant ... always: and in things I have not said, the silence has
+    had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it.
+    And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in
+    me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I
+    required of you on one occasion&mdash;and that if I had 'known your power
+    over yourself,' I should not have minded ... no! In other words you
+    believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall I call it
+    for a motive base and small enough?) my own scrupulousness ... freedom
+    from embarrassment! of myself in the least of me; in the tying of my
+    shoestrings, say!&mdash;so much and no more! Now this is so wrong, as to
+    make me impatient sometimes in feeling it to be your impression: I
+    asked for silence&mdash;but <i>also</i> and chiefly for the putting away of ...
+    you know very well what I asked for. And this was sincerely done, I
+    attest to you. You wrote once to me ... oh, long before May and the
+    day we met: that you 'had been so happy, you should be now justified
+    to yourself in taking any step most hazardous to the happiness of your
+    life'&mdash;but if you were justified, could <i>I</i> be therefore justified in
+    abetting such a step,&mdash;the step of wasting, in a sense, your best
+    feelings ... of emptying your water gourds into the sand? What I
+    thought then I think now&mdash;just what any third person, knowing you,
+    would think, I think and feel. I thought too, at first, that the
+    feeling on your part was a mere generous impulse, likely to expand
+    itself in a week perhaps. It affects me and has affected me, very
+    deeply, more than I dare attempt to say, that you should persist
+    <i>so</i>&mdash;and if sometimes I have felt, by a sort of instinct, that after
+    all you would not go on to persist, and that (being a man, you know)
+    you might mistake, a little unconsciously, the strength of your own
+    feeling; you ought not to be surprised; when I felt it was more
+    advantageous and happier for you that it should be so. <i>In any case</i>,
+    I shall never regret my own share in the events of this summer, and
+    your friendship will be dear to me to the last. You know I told you
+    so&mdash;not long since. And as to what you say otherwise, you are right in
+    thinking that I would not hold by unworthy motives in avoiding to
+    speak what you had any claim to hear. But what could I speak that
+    would not be unjust to you? Your life! if you gave it to me and I put
+    my whole heart into it; what should I put but anxiety, and more
+    sadness than you were born to? What could I give you, which it would
+    not be ungenerous to give? Therefore we must leave this subject&mdash;and I
+    must trust you to leave it without one word more; (too many have been
+    said already&mdash;but I could not let your letter pass quite silently ...
+    as if I had nothing to do but to receive all as matter of course
+    <i>so</i>!) while you may well trust <i>me</i> to remember to my life's end, as
+    the grateful remember; and to feel, as those do who have felt sorrow
+    (for where these pits are dug, the water will stand), the full price
+    of your regard. May God bless you, my dearest friend. I shall send
+    this letter after I have seen you, and hope you may not have expected
+    to hear sooner.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Monday, 6 p.m.</i>&mdash;I send in <i>dis</i>obedience to your commands, Mrs.
+    Shelley's book&mdash;but when books accumulate and when besides, I want to
+    let you have the American edition of my poems ... famous for all
+    manner of blunders, you know; what is to be done but have recourse to
+    the parcel-medium? You were in jest about being at Pisa <i>before or as
+    soon as we were</i>?&mdash;oh no&mdash;that must not be indeed&mdash;we must wait a
+    little!&mdash;even if you determine to go at all, which is a question of
+    doubtful expediency. Do take more exercise, this week, and make war
+    against those dreadful sensations in the head&mdash;now, will you?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 3, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I rather hoped ... with no right at all ... to hear from you this
+    morning or afternoon&mdash;to know how you are&mdash;that, 'how are you,' there
+    is no use disguising, is,&mdash;vary it how one may&mdash;my own life's
+    question.&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had better write no more, now. Will you not tell me something about
+    you&mdash;the head; and that too, <i>too</i> warm hand ... or was it my fancy?
+    Surely the report of Dr. Chambers is most satisfactory,&mdash;all seems to
+    rest with yourself: you know, in justice to me, you <i>do</i> know that <i>I</i>
+    know the all but mockery, the absurdity of anyone's counsel 'to be
+    composed,' &amp;c. &amp;c. But try, dearest friend!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 3, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before you leave London, I will answer your letter&mdash;all my attempts
+    end in nothing now&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Dearest friend&mdash;I am yours ever</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But meantime, you will tell me about yourself, will you not? The
+    parcel came a few minutes after my note left&mdash;Well, I can thank you
+    for <i>that</i>; for the Poems,&mdash;though I cannot wear them round my
+    neck&mdash;and for the too great trouble. My heart's friend! Bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 4, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed my headaches are not worth enquiring about&mdash;I mean, they are
+    not of the slightest consequence, and seldom survive the remedy of a
+    cup of coffee. I only wish it were the same with everybody&mdash;I mean,
+    with every <i>head</i>! Also there is nothing the matter otherwise&mdash;and I
+    am going to prove my right to a 'clean bill of health' by going into
+    the park in ten minutes. Twice round the inner enclosure is what I can
+    compass now&mdash;which is equal to once round the world&mdash;is it not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had just time to be afraid that the parcel had not reached you. The
+    reason why I sent you the poems was that I had a few copies to give to
+    my personal friends, and so, wished you to have one; and it was quite
+    to please myself and not to please <i>you</i> that I made you have it; and
+    if you put it into the 'plum-tree' to hide the errata, I shall be
+    pleased still, if not rather more. Only let me remember to tell you
+    this time in relation to those books and the question asked of
+    yourself by your noble Romans, that just as I was enclosing my
+    sixty-pounds debt to Mr. Moxon, I did actually and miraculously
+    receive a remittance of fourteen pounds from the selfsame bookseller
+    of New York who agreed last year to print my poems at his own risk and
+    give me 'ten per cent on the profit.' Not that I ever asked for such a
+    thing! They were the terms offered. And I always considered the 'per
+    centage' as quite visionary ... put in for the sake of effect, to make
+    the agreement look better! But no&mdash;you see! One's poetry has a real
+    'commercial value,' if you do but take it far away enough from the
+    'civilization of Europe.' When you get near the backwoods and the red
+    Indians, it turns out to be nearly as good for something as
+    'cabbages,' after all! Do you remember what you said to me of cabbages
+    <i>versus</i> poems, in one of the first letters you ever wrote to me?&mdash;of
+    selling cabbages and buying <i>Punches</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    People complain of Dr. Chambers and call him rough and
+    unfeeling&mdash;neither of which <i>I</i> ever found him for a moment&mdash;and I
+    like him for his truthfulness, which is the nature of the man, though
+    it is essential to medical morality never to let a patient think
+    himself mortal while it is possible to prevent it, and even Dr.
+    Chambers may incline to this on occasion. Still he need not have said
+    all the good he said to me on Saturday&mdash;he <i>used</i> not to say any of
+    it; and he must have thought some of it: and, any way, the Pisa-case
+    is strengthened all round by his opinion and injunction, so that all
+    my horror and terror at the thoughts of his visit, (and it's really
+    true that I would rather <i>suffer</i> to a certain extent than be <i>cured</i>
+    by means of those doctors!) had some compensation. How are you? do not
+    forget to say! I found among some papers to-day, a note of yours which
+    I asked Mr. Kenyon to give me for an autograph, two years ago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, dearest friend. And I have a dispensation from
+    'beef and porter' <span title="eis tous aiônas">&epsilon;&iota;&sigmaf; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &alpha;&iota;&omega;&nu;&alpha;&sigmaf;</span>. 'On no account' was the
+    answer!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 5, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    What you tell me of Dr. Chambers, 'all the good of you' he said, and
+    all I venture to infer; this makes me most happy and thankful. Do you
+    use to attach our old <span title="tuphlas elpidas">&tau;&upsilon;&phi;&lambda;&alpha;&sigmaf;
+
+&epsilon;&lambda;&pi;&iota;&delta;&alpha;&sigmaf;</span> (and the practice of
+    instilling them) to that medical science in which Prometheus boasted
+    himself proficient? I had thought the 'faculty' dealt in fears, on the
+    contrary, and scared you into obedience: but I know most about the
+    doctors in Molière. However the joyous truth is&mdash;must be, that you are
+    better, and if one could transport you quietly to Pisa, save you all
+    worry,&mdash;what might one not expect!
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I know your own intentions&mdash;measures, I should say, respecting
+    your journey&mdash;mine will of course be submitted to you&mdash;it will just be
+    'which day next&mdash;month'?&mdash;Not week, alas.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can thank you now for this edition of your poems&mdash;I have not yet
+    taken to read it, though&mdash;for it does not, each volume of it, open
+    obediently to a thought, here, and here, and here, like my green books
+    ... no, my Sister's they are; so these you give me are really mine.
+    And America, with its ten per cent., shall have my better word
+    henceforth and for ever ... for when you calculate, there must have
+    been a really extraordinary circulation; and in a few months: it is
+    what newspapers call 'a great fact.' Have they reprinted the
+    'Seraphim'? Quietly, perhaps!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall see you on Monday, then&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And my all-important headaches are tolerably kept under&mdash;headaches
+    proper they are not&mdash;but the noise and slight turning are less
+    troublesome&mdash;will soon go altogether.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you ever&mdash;ever dearest friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Oh, oh, oh!</i> As many thanks for that precious card-box and jewel of
+    a flower-holder as are consistent with my dismay at finding you <i>only</i>
+    return <i>them</i> ... and not the costly brown paper wrappages also ... to
+    say nothing of the inestimable pins with which my sister uses to
+    fasten the same!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am in the greatest difficulty about the steamers. Will you think a
+    little for me and tell me what is best to do? It appears that the
+    direct Leghorn steamer will not sail on the third, and may not until
+    the middle of October, and if forced to still further delay, which is
+    possible, will not at all. One of my brothers has been to Mr. Andrews
+    of St. Mary Axe and heard as much as this. What shall I do? The middle
+    of October, say my sisters ... and I half fear that it may prove so
+    ... is too late for me&mdash;to say nothing for the uncertainty which
+    completes the difficulty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 20th of September (on the other hand) sails the Malta vessel;
+    and I hear that I may go in it to Gibraltar and find a French steamer
+    there to proceed by. Is there an objection to this&mdash;except the change
+    of steamers ... repeated ... for I must get down to Southampton&mdash;and
+    the leaving England so soon? Is any better to be done? Do think for me
+    a little. And now that the doing comes so near ... and in this dead
+    silence of Papa's ... it all seems impossible, ... and I seem to see
+    the stars <i>constellating</i> against me, and give it as my serious
+    opinion to you that I shall not go. Now, mark.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I have had the kindest of letters from dear Mr. Kenyon, urging
+    it&mdash;.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well&mdash;I have no time for writing any more&mdash;and this is only a note of
+    business to bespeak your thoughts about the steamers. My wisdom looks
+    back regretfully ... only rather too late ... on the Leghorn vessel
+    of the third of September. It would have been wise if I had gone
+    <i>then</i>.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you, dearest friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But if your head turns still, ... <i>do</i> you walk enough? Is there not
+    fault in your not walking, by your own confession? Think of this
+    first&mdash;and then, if you please, of the steamers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, till Monday!&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 9, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well
+    enough for the necessary work connected with them, ... a sure reason
+    and strong ... nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work
+    now&mdash;and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them
+    through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so,
+    why you will not do it&mdash;will you?&mdash;you will wait for another year,&mdash;or
+    at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old
+    size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no
+    retouching. 'Saul' for instance, you might leave&mdash;! You will not let
+    me hear when I am gone, of your being ill&mdash;you will take care ... will
+    you not? Because you see ... or rather <i>I</i> see ... you are <i>not</i>
+    looking well at all&mdash;no, you are not! and even if you do not care for
+    that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be
+    for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute
+    hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck
+    down before the gate ... should you lose the physical power while
+    keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and
+    sufficient things in your case&mdash;but after all we carry a barrow-full
+    of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we
+    mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the
+    garden. A figure which reminds me ... and I wanted no figure to remind
+    me ... to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her
+    kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not.
+    When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week,
+    and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very
+    kind&mdash;and I take the liberty of saying so moreover ... <i>as I am not
+    thanking you</i>. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you
+    disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when
+    they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to
+    just <i>so</i>. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July ...
+    or November ... two months before or after: and that this journey were
+    thrown behind or in front ... anywhere to be out of sight. You do not
+    know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through
+    what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me
+    only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn.
+    Well!&mdash;but I want you to see. George's letter, and how he and Mrs.
+    Hedley, when she saw Papa's note of consent to me, give unhesitating
+    counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me ...
+    which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps ... seeing that it
+    goes <span title="ba ... rbarizôn">&beta;&alpha; ... &rho;&beta;&alpha;&rho;&iota;&zeta;&omega;&nu;</span>. We are famous in this house for what
+    are called nick-names ... though a few of us have escaped rather by a
+    caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at
+    all) except by the nom de <i>paix</i> which you find written in the
+    letter:&mdash;proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just 'half a Ba-by' ...
+    no more nor less;&mdash;and in fact the name has that precise definition.
+    Burn the note when you have read it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters,
+    you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in
+    these enclosed 'sonnets' which were written a few weeks ago, and
+    though only pretending to be 'sketches,' pretend to be like, as far as
+    they go, and <i>are</i> like&mdash;my brothers thought&mdash;when I 'showed them
+    against' a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I
+    was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his&mdash;and
+    he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting&mdash;and you
+    who are in 'high art,' must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the
+    elder, and the one who brought you into this room first&mdash;and Arabel,
+    who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my
+    illness and is the least wanted in the house here, ... and perhaps ...
+    perhaps&mdash;is my favourite&mdash;though my heart smites me while I write that
+    unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all
+    things, and good and lovable in their own beings&mdash;very unlike, for the
+    rest; one, most caring for the Polka, ... and the other for the sermon
+    preached at Paddington Chapel, ... <i>that</i> is Arabel ... so if ever you
+    happen to know her you must try not to say before her how 'much you
+    hate &amp;c.' Henrietta always 'managed' everything in the house even
+    before I was ill, ... because she liked it and I didn't, and I waived
+    my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have been thinking much of your 'Sordello' since you spoke of
+    it&mdash;and even, I <i>had</i> thought much of it before you spoke of it
+    yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your
+    hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble
+    picture with its face to the wall just now&mdash;or at least, in the
+    shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all
+    through: you have <i>made</i> even the darkness of it! And such a work as
+    it might become if you chose ... if you put your will to it! What I
+    meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses
+    than the 'ten per cent' you spoke of ... though it does perhaps ... so
+    much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in
+    the connections and associations ... which hang as loosely every here
+    and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists
+    in thinking himself awake.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How do you mean that I am 'lenient'? Do you not believe that I tell
+    you what I think, and as I think it? I may <i>think wrong</i>, to be
+    sure&mdash;but <i>that</i> is not my fault:&mdash;and so there is no use reproaching
+    me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same
+    time:&mdash;is there, now?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and
+    receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly
+    <i>himself always</i>&mdash;which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps.
+    And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see&mdash;and what he
+    expects from you&mdash;notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to
+    write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle's letter&mdash;thank you
+    for letting me see it. I admire <i>that</i> too! It is as ingenious 'a
+    case' against poor Keats, as could well be drawn&mdash;but nobody who knew
+    very deeply what poetry <i>is</i>, <i>could</i>, you know, draw any case against
+    him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says&mdash;but
+    then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a 'store-room'
+    would ever be like the 'Eve of St. Agnes,' unless dreamed by some
+    'animosus infans,' like Keats himself. Still it is all true ... isn't
+    it?... what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a
+    <i>seer</i> strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions&mdash;(to go back to
+    Carlyle's letters) ... he writes to the things you were speaking of
+    yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton's picture for
+    convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men
+    of our day and 'the giants which were on the earth,' less ... far less
+    ... in the faculty ... in the gift, ... or in the general intellect,
+    ... than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in
+    what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton
+    if [we] lived them like Milton.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as
+    you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be ...
+    packing trunks perhaps ... or what else in the way of 'active
+    usefulness.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Say how you are&mdash;will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is
+    good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh,
+    this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here are your beautiful, and I am sure <i>true</i> sonnets; they look
+    true&mdash;I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares
+    exhibit, E.B.B.'s self? And surely 'Alfred's' pencil has not foregone
+    its best privilege, not left <i>the</i> face unsketched? Italians call such
+    an 'effect defective'&mdash;'l'andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.' He must
+    have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and ... <i>he</i> will not trust
+    me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are
+    strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the
+    proper price for it&mdash;but <i>you</i> would lend it to me, I think, nor need
+    I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent
+    way&mdash;for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do
+    you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all
+    my pride is gone, pride in that sense&mdash;and I mean to take of you for
+    ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would,
+    you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever
+    since I knew you if nothing in the way of <i>good</i> portrait existed&mdash;and
+    this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you
+    have also quieted&mdash;have you not?&mdash;another old obstinate and very
+    likely impertinent questioning of mine&mdash;as to the little name which
+    was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is
+    never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and
+    write it&mdash;'Ba'&mdash;and thank you, and your brother George, and only
+    burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by
+    wish, one gets one's wishes&mdash;at least I do&mdash;for one instance, you will
+    go to Italy
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image01b.png" width="500" height="86"
+alt="Music followed by ? ">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Why, 'lean and harken after it' as Donne says&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Don't expect Neapolitan Scenery at Pisa, quite in the North, remember.
+    Mrs. Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy, at Sorrento,
+    she says. Oh that book&mdash;does one wake or sleep? The 'Mary dear' with
+    the brown eyes, and Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and who
+    surely was something better once upon a time&mdash;and to go through Rome
+    and Florence and the rest, after what I suppose to be Lady
+    Londonderry's fashion: the intrepidity of the commonplace quite
+    astounds me. And then that way, when she and the like of her are put
+    in a new place, with new flowers, new stones, faces, walls, all
+    new&mdash;of looking wisely up at the sun, clouds, evening star, or
+    mountain top and wisely saying 'who shall describe <i>that</i> sight!'&mdash;Not
+    <i>you</i>, we very well see&mdash;but why don't you tell us that at Rome they
+    eat roasted chestnuts, and put the shells into their aprons, the women
+    do, and calmly empty the whole on the heads of the passengers in the
+    street below; and that at Padua when a man drives his waggon up to a
+    house and stops, all the mouse-coloured oxen that pull it from a beam
+    against their foreheads sit down in a heap and rest. But once she
+    travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, Rogers in
+    hand&mdash;to such things and uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art,
+    once she lets go of Rio's skirts, are amazing&mdash;Fra Angelico, for
+    instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &amp;c., she had no eyes for the
+    divine <i>bon-bourgeoisie</i> of his pictures; the dear common folk of his
+    crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a
+    comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint&mdash;and the
+    children, and women,&mdash;divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the
+    streets and market place&mdash;but she is wrong every where, that is, not
+    right, not seeing what is to see, speaking what one expects to hear&mdash;I
+    quarrel with her, for ever, I think.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am much better, and mean to be well as you desire&mdash;shall correct the
+    verses you have seen, and make them do for the present.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Saturday, then! And one other time only, do you say?
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you, my own, best friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours ever</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will you come on Friday ... to-morrow ... instead of Saturday&mdash;will it
+    be the same thing? Because I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who is to be
+    in London on Friday evening he says, and therefore may mean to visit
+    me on Saturday I imagine. So let it be Friday&mdash;if you should not, for
+    any reason, prove Monday to be better still.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 13, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in
+    reply to your letter of last week&mdash;and first of all I have to entreat
+    you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words
+    the feelings behind them&mdash;(should <i>speak</i> rather more easily, I
+    think&mdash;but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be
+    just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and
+    again. I will tell you&mdash;no, not <i>you</i>, but any imaginary other person,
+    who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most
+    sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that
+    avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I
+    never dreamed of winning your <i>love</i>. I can hardly write this word, so
+    incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places
+    does it imply&mdash;nor, next to that, though long after, <i>would</i> I, if I
+    <i>could</i>, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have
+    taken root in you&mdash;<i>that</i> great and solemn one, for instance. I feel
+    that if I could get myself <i>remade</i>, as if turned to gold, I <SPAN class="sc-ex">would</span> not
+    even then desire to become more than the mere setting to <i>that</i>
+    diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me,
+    in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is
+    all I can take and all too embarrassing, using <i>all</i> my gratitude. And
+    yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it
+    is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all
+    the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand
+    the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is
+    recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I
+    would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which
+    your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak
+    presently)&mdash;I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it
+    there, surely there. I could no more 'bind <i>you</i> by words,' than you
+    have bound me, as you say&mdash;but if I misunderstand you, one assurance
+    to that effect will be but too intelligible to me&mdash;but, as it <i>is</i>, I
+    have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which
+    I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily
+    conceives; while <i>any one</i> of those reasons would impose silence on me
+    <i>for ever</i> (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and <i>would</i>
+    not remove one affection that is already part of you,)&mdash;<i>would</i> you,
+    being able to speak <i>so</i>, only say <i>that you</i> desire not to put 'more
+    sadness than I was born to,' into my life?&mdash;that you 'could give me
+    only what it were ungenerous to give'?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that
+    you bid me 'leave this subject'? I think if it were so, I would for
+    once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous
+    self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out&mdash;but it is
+    not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to
+    look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would
+    turn to its good or its loss&mdash;and I <i>know</i>, if one may know anything,
+    that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours,
+    would render me <i>supremely happy</i>, as I said, and say, and feel. My
+    whole suit to you is, in that sense, <i>selfish</i>&mdash;not that I am ignorant
+    that <i>your</i> nature would most surely attain happiness in being
+    conscious that it made another happy&mdash;but <i>that best, best end of
+    all</i>, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of
+    your own gift.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, I will end here&mdash;words, persuasion, arguments, if they were
+    at my service I would not use them&mdash;I believe in you, altogether have
+    faith in you&mdash;in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to
+    reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might
+    at first glance seem to imply&mdash;you do not understand me to be living
+    and labouring and writing (and <i>not</i> writing) in order to be
+    successful in the world's sense? I even convinced the people <i>here</i>
+    what was my true 'honourable position in society,' &amp;c. &amp;c. therefore I
+    shall not have to inform <i>you</i> that I desire to be very rich, very
+    great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil
+    Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;&mdash;much less&mdash;enough of
+    this nonsense.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Tell me what I have a claim to hear': I can hear it, and be as
+    grateful as I was before and am now&mdash;your friendship is my pride and
+    happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that
+    it was in my power to serve you <i>there</i>, to serve you there would
+    still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of
+    my love, it is all <i>on</i>wards&mdash;and all possible forms of unkindness ...
+    I quite laugh to think how they are <i>behind</i> ... cannot be encountered
+    in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you
+    implicitly&mdash;obey what I am able to conceive of your least desire, much
+    more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal,
+    among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My
+    whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely
+    cut down) was long ago calculated&mdash;and it supposed <i>you</i>, the finding
+    such an one as you, utterly impossible&mdash;because in calculating one
+    goes upon <i>chances</i>, not on providence&mdash;how could I expect you? So for
+    my own future way in the world I have always refused to care&mdash;any one
+    who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did
+    once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I
+    now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and
+    who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events
+    would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the
+    Solicitor-Generalship,&mdash;such an one need not very much concern himself
+    beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near
+    this life, all changes&mdash;and at a word, I will do all that ought to be
+    done, that every one used to say could be done, and let 'all my powers
+    find sweet employ' as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be
+    got&mdash;not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away,
+    and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news&mdash;at Pisa where
+    one may live for some £100 a year&mdash;while, lo, I seem to remember, I
+    <i>do</i> remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those
+    pounds for any play that might suit him&mdash;to say nothing of Mr. Colburn
+    saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner 'a novel on
+    the subject of <i>Napoleon</i>'! So may one make money, if one does not
+    live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess's
+    Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one's faculty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest&mdash;all you shall say
+    will be best&mdash;I am yours&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and
+    will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 16, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it
+    is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain&mdash;and you are
+    waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am
+    happy&mdash;but ungrateful nowhere&mdash;and I thank you from my
+    heart&mdash;profoundly from the depths of my heart ... which is nearly all
+    I can do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to
+    speak at all if '<i>from the beginning and at this moment you never
+    dreamed of</i>' ... and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I
+    felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a
+    moment's advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering
+    branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the
+    fence of a woman's caution and reserve. You will not say that you have
+    not acted as if you 'dreamed'&mdash;and I will answer therefore to the
+    general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once
+    that I <i>did</i> state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself
+    ... though not all ... and that if I had been worthier of you I should
+    have been proportionably less in haste to 'bid you leave that
+    subject.' I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to
+    have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I
+    may not have felt a preference for another ... which you are ready
+    'to serve,' you say. Which is generous in you&mdash;but in <i>me</i>, where were
+    the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you
+    think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for
+    me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall
+    I shrink from telling you besides ... you, who have been generous to
+    me and have a right to hear it ... and have spoken to me in the name
+    of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same
+    letter ... that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my
+    feelings what you are ... and that if I were different in some
+    respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept
+    the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully;
+    and give away my own life and soul to that end. I <i>would</i> do it ...
+    <i>not, I do</i> ... observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only
+    meaning that I am not all stone&mdash;only proving that I am not likely to
+    consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is
+    not:&mdash;<i>that</i>, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you
+    ... <i>that</i> I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a
+    strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to
+    the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that
+    you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own
+    unworthiness between you and me&mdash;not being heroic, you know, nor
+    pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of
+    unworthiness, <i>God</i> has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat
+    your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but
+    pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you ...
+    judge! The present is here to be seen ... speaking for itself! and the
+    best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be
+    ... a thing for making burdens out of ... only not for your carrying,
+    as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day
+    in his smiling kindness ... 'In ten years you may be strong
+    perhaps'&mdash;or 'almost strong'! that being the encouragement of my best
+    friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or
+    guess...! what <i>could</i> he say but that you were ... a poet!&mdash;and I ...
+    still worse! <i>Never</i> let him know or guess!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent
+    practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave
+    me&mdash;these thoughts of me, I mean ... for if we might not be true
+    friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth.
+    But we may be friends always ... and cannot be so separated, that your
+    happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you
+    will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded <i>thus</i> ...
+    and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into
+    another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which
+    you tell me 'would silence you for ever.' I might certainly tell you
+    that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me <i>so</i>, and
+    that I had answered you&mdash;<i>so</i>, even, would not forgive me at the end
+    of ten years&mdash;and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here
+    and in no disrespect to your name and your position ... though he does
+    not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the
+    world's measures of the means of life ... but for the singular reason
+    that he never <i>does</i> tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the
+    development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not
+    bring to you of my own will&mdash;it rang hollow in my ears&mdash;perhaps I
+    thought even too little of it:&mdash;and I brought to you what I thought
+    much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts,
+    these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the
+    heart with any such:&mdash;and I will say, in reply to some words of yours,
+    that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I
+    do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I <i>wished</i> to
+    be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I <i>could not</i>, with
+    three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess
+    me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the
+    need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for
+    being so. Believe that I am grateful to you&mdash;<i>how</i> grateful, cannot be
+    shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in
+    all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you&mdash;but I would
+    not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the
+    earnestness with which I tell the other truths&mdash;of you ... and of this
+    subject. The subject will not bear consideration&mdash;it breaks in our
+    hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to
+    you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be
+    anyone's, be only yours.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on
+    me&mdash;very likely you do, and write it just for that&mdash;for I conceive
+    <i>all</i> from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect,
+    let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any
+    fear&mdash;though only for a moment and on the outset&mdash;that you have been
+    misunderstood, that the goodness <i>outside</i>, and round and over all,
+    hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you
+    see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that&mdash;can I speak
+    it&mdash;entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above
+    my hopes&mdash;and wishes, even, so it seems to me ... and yet could not
+    but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out
+    of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this
+    Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on
+    the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, <i>the</i> prize,
+    the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at
+    present you believe this gift impossible&mdash;and I acquiesce entirely&mdash;I
+    submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am
+    capable. Those obstacles are solely for <i>you</i> to see and to declare
+    ... had <i>I</i> seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or
+    myself by affecting to pass them over ... what <i>were</i> obstacles, I
+    mean: but you <i>do</i> see them, I must think,&mdash;and perhaps they strike me
+    the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they
+    are,&mdash;not that I shall endeavour. After what you <i>also</i> apprise me of,
+    I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what
+    you now consider them, you who see now <i>for me</i>, whom I implicitly
+    trust in to see for me; you will <i>then</i>, too, see and remember me, and
+    how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see,
+    and so inform me, I shall never utter a word&mdash;for that would involve
+    the vilest of implications. I thank God&mdash;I <i>do</i> thank him, that in
+    this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy
+    of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in
+    the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my
+    mind to the impossibility of loving any woman ... having wondered at
+    this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having
+    acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and
+    become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry ... I say, when
+    real love, making itself at once recognized as such, <i>did</i> reveal
+    itself to me at last, I <i>did</i> open my heart to it with a cry&mdash;nor care
+    for its overturning all my theory&mdash;nor mistrust its effect upon a mind
+    set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more&mdash;nor
+    apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was
+    already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of
+    the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the
+    pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when
+    <i>it</i> did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or
+    <i>should</i> speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after
+    all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. <i>Here</i>
+    for instance, <i>now</i> ... 'one' should despair; but 'try again' first,
+    and work blindly at removing those obstacles (&mdash;if I saw them, I
+    should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence,
+    I could bid you look where they <i>were</i>)&mdash;and 'one' would do all this,
+    not for the <i>play-acting's</i> sake, or to 'look the character' ...
+    (<i>that</i> would be something quite different from folly ...) but from a
+    not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an
+    acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and
+    unabatedness ... the <i>truth</i>, in fact, of what had already been
+    professed, should get to be questioned&mdash;But I believe that you believe
+    me&mdash;And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will
+    hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented
+    ... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go&mdash;) I accept what you
+    give me, what those words deliver to me, as&mdash;not all I asked for ...
+    as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,&mdash;<i>all</i>, in the best
+    sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to,
+    and the other&mdash;may stand, too&mdash;I never attempted to declare, describe
+    my feeling for you&mdash;one word of course stood for it all ... but having
+    to put down some one <i>point</i>, so to speak, of it&mdash;you could not wonder
+    if I took any extreme one <i>first</i> ... never minding all the untold
+    portion that <i>led</i> up to it, made it possible and natural&mdash;it is true,
+    'I could not dream of <i>that</i>'&mdash;that I was eager to get the horrible
+    notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus
+    and thus to me <i>on condition</i> of my proving just the same to you&mdash;just
+    as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we
+    ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth
+    happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said
+    it:&mdash;now you have declared what I should never have presumed to
+    hope&mdash;and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God,
+    am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which
+    is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see
+    clearly. Your regard for me is <i>all</i> success&mdash;let the rest come, or
+    not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would
+    promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would <i>not</i> do
+    that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere
+    &amp;c. &amp;c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the
+    practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher
+    motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no
+    words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I
+    renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them,
+    that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an
+    apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our
+    hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!
+    And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream of that'&mdash;, now it is
+    mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole
+    consolation of it at once, <i>now</i>&mdash;I will be confident that, if I obey
+    you, I shall get no wrong for it&mdash;if, endeavouring to spare you
+    fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed
+    'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you;
+    you will never say to yourself&mdash;so I said&mdash;'the "generous impulse"
+    <i>has</i> worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work&mdash;this was to be
+    expected' &amp;c. &amp;c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle
+    has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to <i>you</i>, one
+    <i>you</i> may try and overcome'&mdash;and I shall be there, and ready&mdash;ten
+    years hence as now&mdash;if alive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One final word on the other matters&mdash;the 'worldly matters'&mdash;I shall
+    own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because&mdash;because <i>that
+    would be</i> the <i>one</i> poor sacrifice I could make you&mdash;one I would
+    cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless
+    'sweet habitude of living'&mdash;this absolute independence of mine, which,
+    if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which
+    I have fought so many good battles to preserve&mdash;for that has
+    happened, too&mdash;this light rational life I lead, and know so well that
+    I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than&mdash;what you know&mdash;but
+    I <i>would</i> give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose
+    disappointment might re-act on you&mdash;and I should break no promise to
+    myself&mdash;the money getting would not be for the sake of <i>it</i>; 'the
+    labour not for that which is nought'&mdash;indeed the necessity of doing
+    this, if at all, <i>now</i>, was one of the reasons which make me go on to
+    that <i>last request of all</i>&mdash;at once; one must not be too old, they
+    say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure
+    that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to
+    spare&mdash;because along with what you have thought <i>genius</i> in me, is
+    certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried
+    it in various ways, just to be sure that I <i>was</i> a little magnanimous
+    in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews
+    and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago&mdash;in
+    the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most
+    laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I
+    '<i>did</i>' for my old French master, and he published&mdash;'<i>that</i> was really
+    an useful work'!&mdash;So that when the only obstacle is only that there is
+    so much <i>per annum</i> to be producible, you will tell me. After all it
+    would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to
+    be <i>my</i> own single stipulation&mdash;'an objection' which I could see,
+    certainly,&mdash;but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of
+    removing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, now, dearest&mdash;let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my
+    dearest&mdash;this once&mdash;dearest, I have done with words for the present. I
+    will wait. God bless you and reward you&mdash;I kiss your hands <i>now</i>. This
+    is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but <i>un</i>expressed
+    now, more and more will become spoken&mdash;or understood, that is&mdash;we both
+    live on&mdash;you will know better <i>what</i> it was, how much and manifold,
+    what one little word had to give out.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Thursday,&mdash;you remember?
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is Tuesday Night&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe&mdash;all uncertainty
+    about the vessel's sailing again for Leghorn&mdash;it could not sail before
+    the middle of the month&mdash;and only then <i>if</i> &amp;c. But if I would leave
+    my card &amp;c. &amp;c.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was
+    a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the
+    beginning&mdash;being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it
+    has all happened&mdash;<i>only do not blame me</i>, for I have kept my ground to
+    the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that
+    there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much
+    earnestness into a personal matter&mdash;and I spoke face to face and quite
+    firmly&mdash;so as to pass with my sisters for the 'bravest person in the
+    house' without contestation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sometimes it seems to me as if it <i>could not</i> end so&mdash;I mean, that the
+    responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered ... and you see
+    how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies, ... no Pisa!
+    And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail,
+    such as they have been from the beginning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you wish to come, it must not be until Saturday at soonest. I have
+    a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation&mdash;and besides
+    there is no haste now: and when you do come, <i>if you do</i>, I will trust
+    to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell ...
+    must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had
+    forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you ... the
+    <i>Hood</i> poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see
+    them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at
+    once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of
+    it&mdash;and more than think.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little
+    with the last week's turmoil, were impossible&mdash;and Mr. Kenyon said to
+    me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do
+    anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending
+    letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If
+    anything changes, you shall hear from&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in
+    the case.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it
+    finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in
+    obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in
+    my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an
+    absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at
+    all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is
+    involved in that, except as an 'idiosyncrasy' is a mystery. But the
+    'insurmountable' difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for
+    me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a
+    confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were
+    going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet
+    remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of
+    my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of 'faith'; but a plain
+    fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But
+    <i>don't</i> let us speak of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and
+    repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you&mdash;and which are <i>not</i>
+    'ostentatious' though unnecessary words&mdash;for, if I were in a position
+    to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept <i>such</i> a sacrifice
+    ... amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease
+    and satisfaction ... to an exchange of higher work for lower work ...
+    and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for
+    anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what
+    you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generalships to the
+    Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the
+    little right, (<i>over</i> the <i>over</i>-right you are always doing me) of
+    believing that I would not bear or dare to do <i>you</i> so much wrong, if
+    I were in the position to do it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for all the rest I thank you&mdash;believe that I thank you ... and
+    that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That <i>you</i> should care at
+    all for <i>me</i> has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the
+    first hour until now&mdash;and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in
+    thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known
+    me. May God turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot
+    expect you ... just at this moment, ... to say more than you say, ...
+    and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as
+    accessible to the 'unicorn' now as you ever could be at any former
+    period of your life. And here I have done. I had done <i>living</i>, I
+    thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end?
+    <i>That</i>, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for
+    you&mdash;which were a sufficient end. If you come on Saturday I trust you
+    to leave this subject untouched,&mdash;as it must be indeed henceforth.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No word more of Pisa&mdash;I shall not go, I think.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Words!&mdash;it was written I should hate and never use them to any
+    purpose. I will not say one word here&mdash;very well knowing neither word
+    nor deed avails&mdash;from me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My letter will have reassured you on the point you seem undecided
+    about&mdash;whether I would speak &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will come whenever you shall signify that I may ... whenever, acting
+    in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in
+    any way) to see me&mdash;but I fear that on Saturday I must be
+    otherwhere&mdash;I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but
+    melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my
+    sister in time. Will you tell me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is dark&mdash;but I want to save the post&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course you cannot do otherwise than go with your sister&mdash;or it will
+    be 'Every man <i>out</i> of his humour' perhaps&mdash;and you are not so very
+    'savage' after all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Monday then, if you do not hear&mdash;to the contrary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully
+    and talking leisurely&mdash;and every moment I have expected I confess,
+    some word (that did not come) about Pisa. Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot
+    end so&mdash;and I do sometimes&mdash;and in the meantime I do confess to a
+    little 'savageness' also&mdash;at heart! All I asked him to say the other
+    day, was that he was not displeased with me&mdash;<i>and he wouldn't</i>; and
+    for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the
+    door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a
+    thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal
+    advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible! So poor
+    Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now&mdash;if he would but care for
+    <i>that</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. Amuse yourself well on Saturday. I could not see
+    you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day ... staying
+    in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant
+    kindness.... On Monday then.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature,
+    <i>my</i> explanation&mdash;without which all that I have said and done would be
+    pure madness, I think. It <i>is</i> just 'what I see' that I <i>do</i> see,&mdash;or
+    rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was
+    infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the
+    writing of <i>that first letter</i>, on my first visit, I believed&mdash;through
+    some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too&mdash;that
+    your complaint was of quite another nature&mdash;a spinal injury
+    irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been <i>so</i>&mdash;now speak for
+    <i>me</i>, for what you hope I am, and say how <i>that</i> should affect or
+    neutralize what you <i>were</i>, what I wished to associate with myself in
+    you? But <i>as you now are</i>:&mdash;then if I had married you seven years ago,
+    and this visitation came now first, I should be 'fulfilling a pious
+    duty,' I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended&mdash;a pattern to
+    good people in not running away ... for where were <i>now</i> the use and
+    the good and the profit and&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too
+    weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me,
+    and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to
+    'live among lions' as you once said&mdash;but I should best do this if I
+    lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like
+    Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan&mdash;nor that I might
+    (beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get,
+    over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and
+    unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather
+    occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I
+    might be otherwise addicted to&mdash;<i>this</i>, also, does not constitute an
+    obstacle, as I see obstacles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But <i>you</i> see them&mdash;and I see <i>you</i>, and know my first duty and do it
+    resolutely if not cheerfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for referring again, till leave by word or letter&mdash;you will see&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And very likely, the tone of this letter even will be
+    misunderstood&mdash;because I studiously cut out all vain words, protesting
+    &amp;c.:&mdash;No&mdash;will it?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said, unadvisedly, that Saturday was taken from me ... but it was
+    dark and I had not looked at the tickets: the hour of the performance
+    is later than I thought. If to-morrow does not suit you, as I infer,
+    let it be Saturday&mdash;at 3&mdash;and I will leave earlier, a little, and all
+    will be quite right here. One hint will apprise me.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you, dearest friend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something else just heard, makes me reluctantly strike out
+    <i>Saturday</i>&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Monday</i> then?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 19, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not 'misunderstanding' you to know you to be the most generous
+    and loyal of all in the world&mdash;you overwhelm me with your
+    generosity&mdash;only while you see from above and I from below, we cannot
+    see the same thing in the same light. Moreover, if we <i>did</i>, I should
+    be more beneath you in one sense, than I am. Do me the justice of
+    remembering this whenever you recur in thought to the subject which
+    ends here in the words of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I began to write last Saturday to thank you for all the delight I had
+    had in Shelley, though you beguiled me about the pencil-marks, which
+    are few. Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not
+    in my copy and were, so, quite new to me. 'Marianne's Dream' I had
+    been anxious about to no end&mdash;I only know it now.&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Monday at the usual hour. As to coming twice into town on Saturday,
+    that would have been quite foolish if it had been possible.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Dearest friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have nothing to say about Pisa, ... but a great deal (if I could say
+    it) about <i>you</i>, who do what is wrong by your own confession and are
+    ill because of it and make people uneasy&mdash;now <i>is</i> it right
+    altogether? is it right to do wrong?... for it comes to <i>that</i>:&mdash;and
+    is it kind to do so much wrong?... for it comes almost to <i>that</i>
+    besides. Ah&mdash;you should not indeed! I seem to see quite plainly that
+    you will be ill in a serious way, if you do not take care and take
+    exercise; and so you must consent to be teazed a little into taking
+    both. And if you will not take them here ... or not so effectually as
+    in other places; <i>why not go with your Italian friends</i>? Have you
+    thought of it at all? <i>I</i> have been thinking since yesterday that it
+    might be best for you to go at once, now that the probability has
+    turned quite against me. If I were going, I should ask you not to do
+    so immediately ... but you see how unlikely it is!&mdash;although I mean
+    still to speak my whole thoughts&mdash;I <i>will do that</i> ... even though
+    for the mere purpose of self-satisfaction. George came last night&mdash;but
+    there is an adverse star this morning, and neither of us has the
+    opportunity necessary. Only both he and I <i>will speak</i>&mdash;that is
+    certain. And Arabel had the kindness to say yesterday that if I liked
+    to go, she would go with me at whatever hazard&mdash;which is very
+    kind&mdash;but you know I could not&mdash;it would not be right of me. And
+    perhaps after all we may gain the point lawfully; and if not ... at
+    the worst ... the winter may be warm (it is better to fall into the
+    hands of God, as the Jew said) and I may lose less strength than
+    usual, ... having more than usual to lose ... and altogether it may
+    not be so bad an alternative. As to being the cause of any anger
+    against my sister, you would not advise me into such a position, I am
+    sure&mdash;it would be untenable for one moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But <i>you</i> ... in that case, ... would it not be good for your head if
+    you went at once? I praise myself for saying so to you&mdash;yet if it
+    really is good for you, I don't deserve the praising at all. And how
+    was it on Saturday&mdash;that question I did not ask yesterday&mdash;with Ben
+    Jonson and the amateurs? I thought of you at the time&mdash;I mean, on that
+    Saturday evening, nevertheless.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You shall hear when there is any more to say. May God bless you,
+    dearest friend! I am ever yours,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I walked to town, this morning, and back again&mdash;so that when I found
+    your note on my return, and knew what you had been enjoining me in the
+    way of exercise, I seemed as if I knew, too, why that energetic fit
+    had possessed me and why I succumbed to it so readily. You shall never
+    have to intimate twice to me that such an insignificant thing, even,
+    as the taking exercise should be done. Besides, I have many motives
+    now for wishing to continue well. But Italy <i>just now</i>&mdash;Oh, no! My
+    friends would go through Pisa, too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On that subject I must not speak. And you have 'more strength to
+    lose,' and are so well, evidently so well; that is, so much better, so
+    sure to be still better&mdash;can it be that you will not go!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here are your new notes on my verses. Where are my words for the
+    thanks? But you know what I feel, and shall feel&mdash;ever feel&mdash;for these
+    and for all. The notes would be beyond price to me if they came from
+    some dear Phemius of a teacher&mdash;but from you!
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Theatricals 'went off' with great éclat, and the performance was
+    really good, really clever or better. Forster's 'Kitely' was very
+    emphatic and earnest, and grew into great interest, quite up to the
+    poet's allotted tether, which is none of the longest. He pitched the
+    character's key note too gravely, I thought; <i>beginning</i> with
+    certainty, rather than mere suspicion, of evil. Dickens' 'Bobadil'
+    <i>was</i> capital&mdash;with perhaps a little too much of the consciousness of
+    entire cowardice ... which I don't so willingly attribute to the noble
+    would-be pacificator of Europe, besieger of Strigonium &amp;c.&mdash;but the
+    end of it all was really pathetic, as it should be, for Bobadil is
+    only too clever for the company of fools he makes wonderment for:
+    having once the misfortune to relish their society, and to need but
+    too pressingly their 'tobacco-money,' what can he do but suit himself
+    to their capacities?&mdash;And D. Jerrold was very amusing and clever in
+    his 'Country Gull'&mdash;And Mr. Leech superb in the Town Master Mathew.
+    All were good, indeed, and were voted good, and called on, and cheered
+    off, and praised heartily behind their backs and before the curtain.
+    Stanfield's function had exercise solely in the touching up (very
+    effectively) sundry 'Scenes'&mdash;painted scenes&mdash;and the dresses, which
+    were perfect, had the advantage of Mr. Maclise's experience. And&mdash;all
+    is told!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now; I shall hear, you promise me, if anything occurs&mdash;with what
+    feeling, I wait and hope, you know. If there is <i>no</i> best of reasons
+    against it, Saturday, you remember, is my day&mdash;This fine weather, too!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless my dearest friend&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+ <p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have spoken again, and the result is that we are in precisely the
+    same position; only with bitterer feelings on one side. If I go or
+    stay they <i>must</i> be bitter: words have been said that I cannot easily
+    forget, nor remember without pain; and yet I really do almost smile in
+    the midst of it all, to think how I was treated this morning as an
+    undutiful daughter because I tried to put on my gloves ... for there
+    was no worse provocation. At least he complained of the undutifulness
+    and rebellion (!!!) of everyone in the house&mdash;and when I asked if he
+    meant that reproach for <i>me</i>, the answer was that he meant it for all
+    of us, one with another. And I could not get an answer. He would not
+    even grant me the consolation of thinking that I sacrificed what I
+    supposed to be good, to <i>him</i>. I told him that my prospects of health
+    seemed to me to depend on taking this step, but that through my
+    affection for him, I was ready to sacrifice those to his pleasure if
+    he exacted it&mdash;only it was necessary to my self-satisfaction in future
+    years, to understand definitely that the sacrifice <i>was</i> exacted by
+    him and <i>was</i> made to him, ... and not thrown away blindly and by a
+    misapprehension. And he would not answer <i>that</i>. I might do my own
+    way, he said&mdash;<i>he</i> would not speak&mdash;<i>he</i> would not say that he was not
+    displeased with me, nor the contrary:&mdash;I had better do what I
+    liked:&mdash;for his part, he washed his hands of me altogether.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so I have been very wise&mdash;witness how my eyes are swelled with
+    annotations and reflections on all this! The best of it is that now
+    George himself admits I can do no more in the way of speaking, ... I
+    have no spell for charming the dragons, ... and allows me to be
+    passive and enjoins me to be tranquil, and not 'make up my mind' to
+    any dreadful exertion for the future. Moreover he advises me to go on
+    with the preparations for the voyage, and promises to state the case
+    himself at the last hour to the 'highest authority'; and judge finally
+    whether it be possible for me to go with the necessary companionship.
+    And it seems best to go to Malta on the 3rd of October&mdash;if at all ...
+    from steam-packet reasons ... without excluding Pisa ... remember ...
+    by any means.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well!&mdash;and what do you think? Might it be desirable for me to give up
+    the whole? Tell me. I feel aggrieved of course and wounded&mdash;and
+    whether I go or stay that feeling must last&mdash;I cannot help it. But my
+    spirits sink altogether at the thought of leaving England <i>so</i>&mdash;and
+    then I doubt about Arabel and Stormie ... and it seems to me that I
+    <i>ought not</i> to mix them up in a business of this kind where the
+    advantage is merely personal to myself. On the other side, George
+    holds that if I give up and stay even, there will be displeasure just
+    the same, ... and that, when once gone, the irritation will exhaust
+    and smooth itself away&mdash;which however does not touch my chief
+    objection. Would it be better ... more <i>right</i> ... to give it up?
+    Think for me. Even if I hold on to the last, at the last I shall be
+    thrown off&mdash;<i>that</i> is my conviction. But ... shall I give up <i>at
+    once</i>? Do think for me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I have thought that if you like to come on Friday instead of
+    Saturday ... as there is the uncertainty about next week, ... it would
+    divide the time more equally: but let it be as you like and according
+    to circumstances as you see them. Perhaps you have decided to go at
+    once with your friends&mdash;who knows? I wish I could know that you were
+    better to-day. May God bless you
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You have said to me more than once that you wished I might never know
+    certain feelings <i>you</i> had been forced to endure. I suppose all of us
+    have the proper place where a blow should fall to be felt most&mdash;and I
+    truly wish <i>you</i> may never feel what I have to bear in looking on,
+    quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this
+    treatment, which I refuse to characterize&mdash;so blind is it <i>for</i>
+    blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and
+    a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love's
+    caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying
+    source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections&mdash;you
+    remember what&mdash;to myself, my own happiness,&mdash;did I once allude to,
+    much less argue against, or refuse to acknowledge those objections?
+    For I wholly sympathize, however it go against me, with the highest,
+    wariest, pride and love for you, and the proper jealousy and vigilance
+    they entail&mdash;but now, and here, the jewel is not being over guarded,
+    but ruined, cast away. And whoever is privileged to interfere should
+    do so in the possessor's own interest&mdash;all common sense
+    interferes&mdash;all rationality against absolute no-reason at all. And you
+    ask whether you ought to obey this no-reason? I will tell you: all
+    passive obedience and implicit submission of will and intellect is by
+    far too easy, if well considered, to be the course prescribed by God
+    to Man in this life of probation&mdash;for they <i>evade</i> probation
+    altogether, though foolish people think otherwise. Chop off your legs,
+    you will never go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will
+    find it is difficult to reason ill. 'It is hard to make these
+    sacrifices!'&mdash;not so hard as to lose the reward or incur the penalty
+    of an Eternity to come; 'hard to effect them, then, and go through
+    with them'&mdash;<i>not</i> hard, when the leg is to be <i>cut off</i>&mdash;that it is
+    rather harder to keep it quiet on a stool, I know very well. The
+    partial indulgence, the proper exercise of one's faculties, there is
+    the difficulty and problem for solution, set by that Providence which
+    might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as those of
+    vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as certainly as that
+    condition, for instance, by which we breathe so many times in a minute
+    to support life. But there is no reward proposed for the feat of
+    breathing, and a great one for that of believing&mdash;consequently there
+    must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is
+    implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the
+    direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another&mdash;for
+    all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief,
+    and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the
+    less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to
+    yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine
+    the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in
+    requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your
+    conduct should have its utmost claims considered&mdash;your father's in the
+    first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few
+    days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in
+    its whole extent ... the <i>hereafter</i> which all momentary passion
+    prevents him seeing ... indeed, the <i>present</i> on either side which
+    everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever
+    earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion
+    you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed ...
+    <i>difficult</i>, or how were it a duty? Will it <i>not</i> be infinitely harder
+    to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who
+    can <i>not</i> do that?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will
+    fall&mdash;knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain
+    or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better
+    light. The hard thing ... this is all I want to say ... is to act on
+    one's own best conviction&mdash;not to abjure it and accept another will,
+    and say '<i>there</i> is my plain duty'&mdash;easy it is, whether plain or no!
+</p>
+<p>
+    How 'all changes!' When I first knew you&mdash;you know what followed. I
+    supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint&mdash;and, of course,
+    to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest
+    alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached
+    myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any
+    proposition I might then have made&mdash;for though I have never been at
+    all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with
+    it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet
+    I could not but feel the consideration, of <i>what</i> failure would <i>now</i>
+    be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that
+    'you could never be poor'&mdash;all my solicitude was at an end&mdash;I had but
+    myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe,
+    that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could
+    cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing <i>that</i> obstacle. Now
+    again the circumstances shift&mdash;and you are in what I should wonder at
+    as the veriest slavery&mdash;and I who <i>could</i> free you from it, I am here
+    scarcely daring to write ... though I know you must feel for me and
+    forgive what forces itself from me ... what retires so mutely into my
+    heart at your least word ... what <i>shall not</i> be again written or
+    spoken, if you so will ... that I should be made happy beyond all hope
+    of expression by. Now while I <i>dream</i>, let me once dream! I would
+    marry you now and thus&mdash;I would come when you let me, and go when you
+    bade me&mdash;I would be no more than one of your brothers&mdash;'<i>no
+    more</i>'&mdash;that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should
+    get Saturday as well&mdash;two hours for one&mdash;when your head ached I
+    should be <i>here</i>. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream
+    (&mdash;of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any
+    other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I
+    know&mdash;And it will continue but a dream.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless my dearest E.B.B.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You understand that I see you to-morrow, Friday, as you propose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am better&mdash;thank you&mdash;and will go out to-day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You know what I am, what I would speak, and all I would do.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had your letter late last night, everyone almost, being out of the
+    house by an accident, so that it was left in the letter-box, and if I
+    had wished to answer it before I saw you, it had scarcely been
+    possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But it will be the same thing&mdash;for you know as well as if you saw my
+    answer, what it must be, what it cannot choose but be, on pain of
+    sinking me so infinitely below not merely your level but my own, that
+    the depth cannot bear a glance down. Yet, though I am not made of such
+    clay as to admit of my taking a base advantage of certain noble
+    extravagances, (and that I am not I thank God for your sake) I will
+    say, I must say, that your words in this letter have done me good and
+    made me happy, ... that I thank and bless you for them, ... and that
+    to receive such a proof of attachment from <i>you</i>, not only overpowers
+    every present evil, but seems to me a full and abundant amends for the
+    merely personal sufferings of my whole life. When I had read that
+    letter last night I <i>did</i> think so. I looked round and round for the
+    small bitternesses which for several days had been bitter to me, and I
+    could not find one of them. The tear-marks went away in the moisture
+    of new, happy tears. Why, how else could I have felt? how else do you
+    think I could? How would any woman have felt ... who could feel at all
+    ... hearing such words said (though 'in a dream' indeed) by such a
+    speaker?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now listen to me in turn. You have touched me more profoundly than
+    I thought even <i>you</i> could have touched me&mdash;my heart was full when you
+    came here to-day. Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you
+    harm&mdash;and I am yours too much, in my heart, ever to consent to do you
+    harm in that way. If I could consent to do it, not only should I be
+    less loyal ... but in one sense, less yours. I say this to you without
+    drawback and reserve, because it is all I am able to say, and perhaps
+    all I <i>shall</i> be able to say. However this may be, a promise goes to
+    you in it that none, except God and your will, shall interpose between
+    you and me, ... I mean, that if He should free me within a moderate
+    time from the trailing chain of this weakness, I will then be to you
+    whatever at that hour you shall choose ... whether friend or more than
+    friend ... a friend to the last in any case. So it rests with God and
+    with you&mdash;only in the meanwhile you are most absolutely free ...
+    'unentangled' (as they call it) by the breadth of a thread&mdash;and if I
+    did not know that you considered yourself so, I would not see you any
+    more, let the effort cost me what it might. You may force me <i>feel</i>:
+    ... but you cannot force me to <i>think</i> contrary to my first thought
+    ... that it were better for you to forget me at once in one relation.
+    And if better for <i>you</i>, can it be bad for <i>me</i>? which flings me down
+    on the stone-pavement of the logicians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now if I ask a boon of you, will you forget afterwards that it
+    ever was asked? I have hesitated a great deal; but my face is down on
+    the stone-pavement&mdash;no&mdash;I will not ask to-day&mdash;It shall be for another
+    day&mdash;and may God bless you on this and on those that come after, my
+    dearest friend.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Think for me, speak for me, my dearest, <i>my own</i>! You that are all
+    great-heartedness and generosity, do that one more generous thing?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you for</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What can it be you ask of me!&mdash;'a boon'&mdash;once my answer to <i>that</i> had
+    been the plain one&mdash;but now ... when I have better experience of&mdash;No,
+    now I have <SPAN class="sc-ex">best</span> experience of how you understand my interests; that at
+    last we <i>both</i> know what is my true good&mdash;so ask, ask! <i>My own</i>, now!
+    For there it is!&mdash;oh, do not fear I am '<i>entangled</i>'&mdash;my crown is
+    loose on my head, not nailed there&mdash;my pearl lies in my hand&mdash;I may
+    return it to the sea, if I will!
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is it you ask of me, this first asking?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3>
+<i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, September 29, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then <i>first</i>, ... first, I ask you not to misunderstand. Because we do
+    not ... no, we do not ... agree (but disagree) as to 'what is your
+    true good' ... but disagree, and as widely as ever indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The other asking shall come in its season ... some day before I go, if
+    I go. It only relates to a restitution&mdash;and you cannot guess it if you
+    try ... so don't try!&mdash;and perhaps you can't grant it if you try&mdash;and
+    I cannot guess.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cabins and berths all taken in the Malta steamer for both third and
+    twentieth of October! see what dark lanterns the stars hold out, and
+    how I shall stay in England after all as I think! And thus we are
+    thrown back on the old Gibraltar scheme with its shifting of steamers
+    ... unless we take the dreary alternative of Madeira!&mdash;or Cadiz! Even
+    suppose Madeira, ... why it were for a few months alone&mdash;and there
+    would be no temptation to loiter as in Italy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Don't</i> think too hardly of poor Papa. You have his wrong side ... his
+    side of peculiar wrongness ... to you just now. When you have walked
+    round him you will have other thoughts of him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Are you better, I wonder? and taking exercise and trying to be better?
+    May God bless you! Tuesday need not be the last day if you like to
+    take one more besides&mdash;for there is no going until the fourth or
+    seventh, ... and the seventh is the more probable of those two. But
+    now you have done with me until Tuesday.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 1, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have read to the last line of your 'Rosicrucian'; and my scepticism
+    grew and grew through Hume's process of doubtful doubts, and at last
+    rose to the full stature of incredulity ... for I never could believe
+    Shelley capable of such a book (call it a book!), not even with a
+    flood of boarding-school idiocy dashed in by way of dilution.
+    Altogether it roused me to deny myself so far as to look at the date
+    of the book, and to get up and travel to the other end of the room to
+    confront it with other dates in the 'Letters from Abroad' ... (I, who
+    never think of a date except the 'A.D.,' and am inclined every now and
+    then to write <i>that</i> down as 1548 ...) well! and on comparing these
+    dates in these two volumes before my eyes, I find that your
+    Rosicrucian was 'printed for Stockdale' in <i>1822</i>, and that Shelley
+    <i>died in the July of the same year</i>!!&mdash;There, is a vindicating fact
+    for you! And unless the 'Rosicrucian' went into more editions than
+    one, and dates here from a later one, ... which is not ascertainable
+    from this fragment of a titlepage, ... the innocence of the great poet
+    stands proved&mdash;now doesn't it? For nobody will say that he published
+    such a book in the last year of his life, in the maturity of his
+    genius, and that Godwin's daughter helped him in it! That 'dripping
+    dew' from the skeleton is the only living word in the book!&mdash;which
+    really amused me notwithstanding, from the intense absurdity of the
+    whole composition ... descriptions ... sentiments ... and morals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Judge yourself if I had not better say 'No' about the cloak! I would
+    take it if you wished such a kindness to me&mdash;and although you might
+    find it very useful to yourself ... or to your mother or sister ...
+    still if you <i>wished</i> me to take it I should like to have it, and the
+    mantle of the prophet might bring me down something of his spirit! but
+    do you remember ... do you consider ... how many talkers there are in
+    this house, and what would be talked&mdash;or that it is not worth while to
+    provoke it all? And Papa, knowing it, would not like it&mdash;and
+    altogether it is far better, believe me, that you should keep your own
+    cloak, and I, the thought of the kindness you meditated in respect to
+    it. I have heard nothing more&mdash;nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was asked the other day by a very young friend of mine ... the
+    daughter of an older friend who once followed you up-stairs in this
+    house ... Mr. Hunter, an Independent minister ... for 'Mr. Browning's
+    autograph.' She wants it for a collection ... for her album&mdash;and so,
+    will you write out a verse or two on one side of note paper ... not as
+    you write for the printers ... and let me keep my promise and send it
+    to her? I forgot to ask you before. Or one verse will do ... anything
+    will do ... and don't let me be bringing you into vexation. It need
+    not be of MS. rarity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are not better ... really ... I fear. And your mother's being ill
+    affects you more than you like to admit, I fear besides. Will you,
+    when you write, say how <i>both</i> are ... nothing extenuating, you know.
+    May God bless you, my dearest friend.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 2, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, let us hope against hope in the sad matter of the novel&mdash;yet,
+    yet,&mdash;it <i>is</i> by Shelley, if you will have the truth&mdash;as I happen to
+    <i>know</i>&mdash;proof <i>last</i> being that Leigh Hunt told me he unearthed it in
+    Shelley's own library at Marlow once, to the writer's horror and
+    shame&mdash;'He snatched it out of my hands'&mdash;said H. Yet I thrust it into
+    yours ... so much for the subtle fence of friends who reach your heart
+    by a side-thrust, as I told you on Tuesday, after the enemy has fallen
+    back breathless and baffled. As for the date, that Stockdale was a
+    notorious pirate and raker-up of rash publications ... and, do you
+    know, I suspect the <i>title-page</i> is all that boasts such novelty,&mdash;see
+    if the <i>book</i>, the inside leaves, be not older evidently!&mdash;a common
+    trick of the 'trade' to this day. The history of this and 'Justrozzi,'
+    as it is spelt,&mdash;the other novel,&mdash;may be read in Medwin's
+    'Conversations'&mdash;and, as I have been told, in Lady Ch. Bury's
+    'Reminiscences' or whatever she calls them ... the 'Guistrozzi' was
+    <i>certainly</i> 'written in concert with'&mdash;somebody or other ... for I
+    confess the whole story grows monstrous and even the froth of wine
+    strings itself in bright bubbles,&mdash;ah, but this was the scum of the
+    fermenting vat, do you see? I am happy to say I forget the novel
+    entirely, or almost&mdash;and only keep the exact impression which you have
+    gained ... through me! 'The fair cross of gold <i>he dashed on the
+    floor</i>'&mdash;(<i>that</i> is my pet-line ... because the 'chill dew' of a place
+    not commonly supposed to favour humidity is a plagiarism from Lewis's
+    'Monk,' it now flashes on me! Yes, Lewis, too, puts the phrase into
+    intense italics.) And now, please read a chorus in the 'Prometheus
+    Unbound' or a scene from the 'Cenci'&mdash;and join company with Shelley
+    again!
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;From 'chill dew' I come to the <i>cloak</i>&mdash;you are quite right&mdash;and I
+    give up that fancy. Will you, then, take one more precaution when
+    <i>all</i> proper safe-guards have been adopted; and, when <i>everything</i> is
+    sure, contrive some one sureness besides, against cold or wind or
+    sea-air; and say '<i>this</i>&mdash;for the cloak which is not here, and to help
+    the heart's wish which is,'&mdash;so I shall be there <i>palpably</i>. Will you
+    do this? Tell me you will, to-morrow&mdash;and tell me all good news.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My Mother suffers still.... I hope she is no worse&mdash;but a little
+    better&mdash;certainly better. I am better too, in my unimportant way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I will write you the verses ... some easy ones out of a paper-full
+    meant to go between poem and poem in my next number, and break the
+    shock of collision.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me kiss your hand&mdash;dearest! My heart and life&mdash;all is yours, and
+    forever&mdash;God make you happy as I am through you&mdash;Bless you
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 6, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tuesday is given up in full council. The thing is beyond doubting of,
+    as George says and as you thought yesterday. And then George has it in
+    his head to beguile the Duke of Palmella out of a smaller cabin, so
+    that I might sail from the Thames on the twentieth&mdash;and whether he
+    succeeds or not, I humbly confess that one of the chief advantages of
+    the new plan if not the very chief (as <i>I</i> see it) is just in the
+    <i>delay</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your spring-song is full of beauty as you know very well&mdash;and 'that's
+    the wise thrush,' so characteristic of you (and of the thrush too)
+    that I was sorely tempted to ask you to write it 'twice over,' ... and
+    not send the first copy to Mary Hunter notwithstanding my promise to
+    her. And now when you come to print these fragments, would it not be
+    well if you were to stoop to the vulgarism of prefixing some word of
+    introduction, as other people do, you know, ... a title ... a name?
+    You perplex your readers often by casting yourself on their
+    intelligence in these things&mdash;and although it is true that readers in
+    general are stupid and can't understand, it is still more true that
+    they are lazy and won't understand ... and they don't catch your point
+    of sight at first unless you think it worth while to push them by the
+    shoulders and force them into the right place. Now these fragments ...
+    you mean to print them with a line between ... and not one word at the
+    top of it ... now don't you! And then people will read
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Oh, to be in England
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">and say to themselves ... 'Why who is this? ... who's out of England?'
+    Which is an extreme case of course; but you will see what I mean ...
+    and often I have observed how some of the very most beautiful of your
+    lyrics have suffered just from your disdain of the usual tactics of
+    writers in this one respect.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you are not better, still&mdash;you are worse instead of better ... are
+    you not? Tell me&mdash;And what can you mean about 'unimportance,' when you
+    were worse last week ... this expiring week ... than ever before, by
+    your own confession? And now?&mdash;And your mother?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;I promise! And so, ... <i>Elijah</i> will be missed instead of his
+    mantle ... which will be a losing contract after all. But it shall be
+    as you say. May you be able to say that you are better! God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Never think of the 'White Slave.' I had just taken it up. The trash of
+    it is prodigious&mdash;far beyond Mr. Smythe. Not that I can settle upon a
+    book just now, in all this wind, to judge of it fairly.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 6, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I should certainly think that the Duke of Palmella may be induced, and
+    with no great difficulty, to give up a cabin under the
+    circumstances&mdash;and <i>then</i> the plan becomes really objection-proof, so
+    far as mortal plans go. But now you must think all the boldlier about
+    whatever difficulties remain, just because they are so much the fewer.
+    It <i>is</i> cold already in the mornings and evenings&mdash;cold and (this
+    morning) foggy&mdash;I did not ask if you continue to go out from time to
+    time.... I am sure you <i>should</i>,&mdash;you would so prepare yourself
+    properly for the fatigue and change&mdash;yesterday it was very warm and
+    fine in the afternoon, nor is this noontime so bad, if the requisite
+    precautions are taken. And do make 'journeys across the room,' and out
+    of it, meanwhile, and <i>stand</i> when possible&mdash;get all the strength
+    ready, now that so much is to be spent. Oh, if I were by you!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thank you, thank you&mdash;I will devise titles&mdash;I quite see what you say,
+    now you do say it. I am (this Monday morning, the prescribed day for
+    efforts and beginnings) looking over and correcting what you read&mdash;to
+    press they shall go, and then the plays can follow gently, and then
+    ... 'Oh to be in Pisa. Now that E.B.B. is there!'&mdash;And I <i>shall</i> be
+    there!... I am much better to-day; and my mother better&mdash;and to-morrow
+    I shall see you&mdash;So come good things together!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest&mdash;till to-morrow and ever I am yours, wholly yours&mdash;May God
+    bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You do not ask me that 'boon'&mdash;why is that?&mdash;Besides, I have my own
+    <i>real</i> boons to ask too, as you will inevitably find, and I shall
+    perhaps get heart by your example.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 7, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah but the good things do <i>not</i> come together&mdash;for just as your letter
+    comes I am driven to asking you to leave Tuesday for Wednesday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Tuesday Mr. Kenyon is to be here or not to be here, he
+    says&mdash;there's a doubt; and you would rather go to a clear day. So if
+    you do not hear from me again I shall expect you on <i>Wednesday</i> unless
+    I hear to the contrary from you:&mdash;and if anything happens to Wednesday
+    you shall hear. Mr. Kenyon is in town for only two days, or three. I
+    never could grumble against him, so good and kind as he is&mdash;but he may
+    not come after all to-morrow&mdash;so it is not grudging the obolus to
+    Belisarius, but the squandering of the last golden days at the bottom
+    of the purse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do I 'stand'&mdash;Do I walk? Yes&mdash;most uprightly. I 'walk upright every
+    day.' Do I go out? no, never. And I am not to be scolded for <i>that</i>,
+    because when you were looking at the sun to-day, I was marking the
+    east wind; and perhaps if I had breathed a breath of it ... farewell
+    Pisa. People who can walk don't always walk into the lion's den as a
+    consequence&mdash;do they? should they? Are you 'sure that they should?' I
+    write in great haste. So Wednesday then ... perhaps!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">And yours every day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You understand. Wednesday&mdash;if nothing to the contrary.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">12&mdash;Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, dearest, at all events I get up with the assurance I shall see
+    you, and go on till the fatal 11-1/4 p.m. believing in the same, and
+    <i>then</i>, if after all there <i>does</i> come such a note as this with its
+    instructions, why, first, it <i>is</i> such a note and such a gain, and
+    next it makes a great day out of to-morrow that was to have been so
+    little of a day, that is all. Only, only, I am suspicious, now, of a
+    real loss to me in the end; for, <i>putting</i> off yesterday, I dared put
+    off (on your part) Friday to Saturday ... while <i>now</i> ... what shall
+    be said to that?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Mr. Kenyon to be the smiling inconscious obstacle to any pleasure
+    of mine, if it were merely pleasure!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I want to catch our next post&mdash;to-morrow, then, excepting what is
+    to be excepted!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you, my dearest&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon never came. My sisters met him in the street, and he had
+    been 'detained all day in the city and would certainly be here
+    to-morrow,' Wednesday! And so you see what has happened to Wednesday!
+    Moreover he may come besides on Thursday, ... I can answer for
+    nothing. Only if I do not write and if you find Thursday admissible,
+    will you come then? In the case of an obstacle, you shall hear. And it
+    is not (in the meantime) my fault&mdash;now is it? I have been quite enough
+    vexed about it, indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did the Monday work work harm to the head, I wonder? I do fear so that
+    you won't get through those papers with impunity&mdash;especially if the
+    plays are to come after ... though ever so 'gently.' And if you are to
+    suffer, it would be right to tongue-tie that silver Bell, and leave
+    the congregations to their selling of cabbages. Which is
+    unphilanthropic of me perhaps, ... <span title="ô philtate">&omega; &phi;&iota;&lambda;&tau;&alpha;&tau;&epsilon;</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Be sure that I shall be 'bold' when the time for going comes&mdash;and both
+    bold and capable of the effort. I am desired to keep to the respirator
+    and the cabin for a day or two, while the cold can reach us; and
+    midway in the bay of Biscay some change of climate may be felt, they
+    say. There is no sort of danger for me; except that I shall <i>stay in
+    England</i>. And why is it that I feel to-night more than ever almost, as
+    if I should stay in England? Who can tell? <i>I</i> can tell one thing.
+    <i>If</i> I stay, it will not be from a failure in my resolution&mdash;<i>that
+    will</i> not be&mdash;<i>shall</i> not be. Yes&mdash;and Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the
+    other day that there was something of the tigress-nature very
+    distinctly cognisable under what he is pleased to call my
+    'Ba-lambishness.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then, on Thursday!... unless something happens to <i>Thursday</i> ... and I
+    shall write in that case. And I trust to you (as always) to attend to
+    your own convenience&mdash;just as you may trust to me to remember my own
+    'boon.' Ah&mdash;you are curious, I think! Which is scarcely wise of
+    you&mdash;because it <i>may</i>, you know, be the roc's egg after all. But no,
+    it <i>isn't</i>&mdash;I will say just so much. And besides I <i>did</i> say that it
+    was a 'restitution,' which limits the guesses if it does not put an
+    end to them. Unguessable, I choose it to be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now I feel as if I should <i>not</i> stay in England. Which is the
+    difference between one five minutes and another. May God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here again, and talking so (in his kindness
+    too) about the probabilities as to Pisa being against me ... about all
+    depending 'on one throw' and the 'dice being loaded' &amp;c. ... that I
+    looked at him aghast as if he looked at the future through the folded
+    curtain and was licensed to speak oracles:&mdash;and ever since I have been
+    out of spirits ... oh, out of spirits&mdash;and must write myself back
+    again, or try. After all he may be wrong like another&mdash;and I should
+    tell you that he reasons altogether from the delay ... and that 'the
+    cabins will therefore be taken' and the 'circular bills' out of reach!
+    He <i>said</i> that one of his purposes in staying in town, was to
+    '<i>knout</i>' me every day&mdash;didn't he?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well&mdash;George will probably speak before <i>he</i> leaves town, which will
+    be on Monday! and now that the hour approaches, I do feel as if the
+    house stood upon gunpowder, and as if I held Guy Fawkes's lantern in
+    my right hand. And no: I shall not go. The obstacles will not be those
+    of Mr. Kenyon's finding&mdash;and what their precise character will be I do
+    not see distinctly. Only that they will be sufficient, and thrown by
+    one hand just where the wheel should turn, ... <i>that</i>, I see&mdash;and you
+    will, in a few days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did you go to Moxon's and settle the printing matter? Tell me. And
+    what was the use of telling Mr. Kenyon that you were 'quite well' when
+    you know you are not? Will you say to me how you are, saying the
+    truth? and also how your mother is?
+</p>
+<p>
+    To show the significance of the omission of those evening or rather
+    night visits of Papa's&mdash;for they came sometimes at eleven, and
+    sometimes at twelve&mdash;I will tell you that he used to sit and talk in
+    them, and then <i>always</i> kneel and pray with me and for me&mdash;which I
+    used of course to feel as a proof of very kind and affectionate
+    sympathy on his part, and which has proportionably pained me in the
+    withdrawing. They were no ordinary visits, you observe, ... and he
+    could not well throw me further from him than by ceasing to pay
+    them&mdash;the thing is quite expressively significant. Not that I pretend
+    to complain, nor to have reason to complain. One should not be
+    grateful for kindness, only while it lasts: <i>that</i> would be a
+    short-breathed gratitude. I just tell you the fact, proving that it
+    cannot be accidental.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did you ever, ever tire me? Indeed no&mdash;you never did. And do
+    understand that I am not to be tired 'in that way,' though as Mr. Boyd
+    said once of his daughter, one may be so 'far too effeminate.' No&mdash;if
+    I were put into a crowd I should be tired soon&mdash;or, apart from the
+    crowd, if you made me discourse orations De Coronâ ... concerning your
+    bag even ... I should be tired soon&mdash;though peradventure not very much
+    sooner than you who heard. But on the smooth ground of quiet
+    conversation (particularly when three people don't talk at once as my
+    brothers do ... to say the least!) I last for a long while:&mdash;not to
+    say that I have the pretension of being as good and inexhaustible a
+    listener to your own speaking as you could find in the world. So
+    please not to accuse me of being tired again. I can't be tired, and
+    won't be tired, you see.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now, since I began to write this, there is a new evil and
+    anxiety&mdash;a worse anxiety than any&mdash;for one of my brothers is ill; had
+    been unwell for some days and we thought nothing of it, till to-day
+    Saturday: and the doctors call it a fever of the typhoid character ...
+    not typhus yet ... but we are very uneasy. You must not come on
+    Wednesday if an infectious fever be in the house&mdash;<i>that</i> must be out
+    of the question. May God bless you&mdash;I am quite heavy-hearted to-day,
+    but never less yours,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 13, 1845].
+</p>
+<p>
+    These are bad news, dearest&mdash;all bad, except the enduring comfort of
+    your regard; the illness of your brother is worst ... that <i>would</i>
+    stay you, and is the first proper obstacle. I shall not attempt to
+    speak and prove my feelings,&mdash;you know what even Flush is to me
+    through you: I wait in anxiety for the next account.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If after all you do <i>not</i> go to Pisa; why, we must be cheerful and
+    wise, and take courage and hope. I cannot but see with your eyes and
+    from your place, you know,&mdash;and will let this all be one surprizing
+    and deplorable mistake of mere love and care ... but no such another
+    mistake ought to be suffered, if you escape the effects of this. I
+    will not cease to believe in a better event, till the very last,
+    however, and it is a deep satisfaction that all has been made plain
+    and straight up to this strange and sad interposition like a bar. You
+    have done <i>your</i> part, at least&mdash;with all that forethought and counsel
+    from friends and adequate judges of the case&mdash;so, if the bar <i>will</i>
+    not move, you will consider&mdash;will you not, dearest?&mdash;where one may
+    best encamp in the unforbidden country, and wait the spring and fine
+    weather. Would it be advisable to go where Mr. Kenyon suggested, or
+    elsewhere? Oh, these vain wishes ... the will here, and no means!
+</p>
+<p>
+    My life is bound up with yours&mdash;my own, first and last love. What
+    wonder if I feared to tire you&mdash;I who, knowing you as I do, admiring
+    what is so admirable (let me speak), loving what must needs be loved,
+    fain to learn what you only can teach; proud of so much, happy in so
+    much of you; I, who, for all this, neither come to admire, nor feel
+    proud, nor be taught,&mdash;but only, only to live with you and be by
+    you&mdash;that is love&mdash;for I <i>know</i> the rest, as I say. I know those
+    qualities are in you ... but at them I could get in so many ways.... I
+    have your books, here are my letters you give me; you would answer my
+    questions were <i>I</i> in Pisa&mdash;well, and it all would amount to nothing,
+    infinitely much as I know it is; to nothing if I could not sit by you
+    and see you.... I can stop at that, but not before. And it seems
+    strange to me how little ... less than little I have laid open of my
+    feelings, the nature of them to you&mdash;I smile to think how if all this
+    while I had been acting with the profoundest policy in intention, so
+    as to pledge myself to nothing I could not afterwards perform with the
+    most perfect ease and security, I should have done not much unlike
+    what I <i>have</i> done&mdash;to be sure, one word includes many or all ... but
+    I have not said ... what I will not even now say ... you will
+    <i>know</i>&mdash;in God's time to which I trust.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will answer your note now&mdash;the questions. I did go&mdash;(it may amuse
+    you to write on)&mdash;to Moxon's. First let me tell you that when I called
+    there the Saturday before, his brother (in his absence) informed me,
+    replying to the question when it came naturally in turn with a round
+    of like enquiries, that your poems continued to sell 'singularly
+    well'&mdash;they would 'end in bringing a clear profit,' he said. I thought
+    to catch him, and asked if they <i>had</i> done so ... 'Oh; not at the
+    beginning ... it takes more time&mdash;he answered. On Thursday I saw
+    Moxon&mdash;he spoke rather encouragingly of my own prospects. I send him a
+    sheetful to-morrow, I believe, and we are 'out' on the 1st of next
+    month. Tennyson, by the way, has got his pension, £200 per annum&mdash;by
+    the other way, Moxon has bought the MSS. of Keats in the possession of
+    Taylor the publisher, and is going to bring out a complete edition;
+    which is pleasant to hear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After settling with Moxon I went to Mrs. Carlyle's&mdash;who told me
+    characteristic quaintnesses of Carlyle's father and mother over the
+    tea she gave me. And all yesterday, you are to know, I was in a
+    permanent mortal fright&mdash;for my uncle came in the morning to intreat
+    me to go to Paris in <i>the evening</i> about some urgent business of
+    his,&mdash;a five-minutes matter with his brother there,&mdash;and the affair
+    being really urgent and material to his and the brother's interest,
+    and no substitute being to be thought of, I was forced to promise to
+    go&mdash;in case a letter, which would arrive in Town at noon, should not
+    prove satisfactory. So I calculated times, and found I could be at
+    Paris to-morrow, and back again, <i>certainly</i> by Wednesday&mdash;and so not
+    lose you on that day&mdash;oh, the fear I had!&mdash;but I was sure then and
+    now, that the 17th would not see you depart. But night came, and the
+    last Dover train left, and I drew breath freely&mdash;this morning I find
+    the letter was all right&mdash;so may it be with all worse apprehensions!
+    What you fear, precisely that, never happens, as Napoleon observed and
+    thereon grew bold. I had stipulated for an hour's notice, if go I
+    must&mdash;and that was to be wholly spent in writing to you&mdash;for in quiet
+    consternation my mother cared for my carpet bag.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so, I shall hear from you to-morrow ... that is, you will write
+    <i>then</i>, telling me <i>all</i> about your brother. As for what you say, with
+    the kindest intentions, 'of fever-contagion' and keeping away on
+    Wednesday on <i>that</i> account, it is indeed 'out of the question,'&mdash;for
+    a first reason (which dispenses with any second) because I disbelieve
+    altogether in contagion from fevers, and especially from typhus
+    fevers&mdash;as do much better-informed men than myself&mdash;I speak quite
+    advisedly. If there should be only <i>that</i> reason, therefore, you will
+    not deprive me of the happiness of seeing you next Wednesday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am not well&mdash;have a cold, influenza or some unpleasant thing, but am
+    better than yesterday&mdash;My mother is much better, I think (she and my
+    sister are resolute non-contagionists, mind you that!)
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you and all you love! dearest, I am your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was the merest foolishness in me to write about fevers and the rest
+    as I did to-day, just as if it could do any good, all the wringing of
+    hands in the world. And there is no typhus <i>yet</i> ... and no danger of
+    any sort I hope and trust!&mdash;and how weak it is that habit of spreading
+    the cloud which is in you all around you, how weak and selfish ... and
+    unlike what <i>you</i> would do ... just as you are unlike Mr. Kenyon. And
+    you <i>are</i> unlike him&mdash;and you were right on Thursday when you said
+    so, and I was wrong in setting up a phrase on the other side ... only
+    what I said came by an instinct because you seemed to be giving him
+    all the sunshine to use and carry, which should not be after all. But
+    you are unlike him and must be ... seeing that the producers must
+    differ from the 'nati consumere fruges' in the intellectual as in the
+    material. You create and he enjoys, and the work makes you pale and
+    the pleasure makes him ruddy, and it is so of a necessity. So differs
+    the man of genius from the man of letters&mdash;and then dear Mr. Kenyon is
+    not even a man of letters in a full sense ... he is rather a Sybarite
+    of letters. Do you think he ever knew what mental labour is? I fancy
+    not. Not more than he has known what mental inspiration is! And not
+    more than he has known what the strife of the heart is ... with all
+    his tenderness and sensibility. He seems to me to <i>evade</i> pain, and
+    where he suffers at all to do so rather negatively than positively ...
+    if you understand what I mean by that ... rather by a want than by a
+    blow: the secret of all being that he has a certain latitudinarianism
+    (not indifferentism) in his life and affections, and has no capacity
+    for concentration and intensity. Partly by temperament and partly by
+    philosophy he contrives to keep the sunny side of the street&mdash;though
+    never inclined to forget the blind man at the corner. Ah, dear Mr.
+    Kenyon: he is magnanimous in toleration, and excellent in
+    sympathy&mdash;and he has the love of beauty and the reverence of
+    genius&mdash;but the faculty of <i>worship</i> he has not: he will not worship
+    aright either your heroes or your gods ... and while you do it he only
+    'tolerates' the act in you. Once he said ... not to me ... but I heard
+    of it: 'What, if genius should be nothing but scrofula?' and he doubts
+    (I very much fear) whether the world is not governed by a throw of
+    those very same 'loaded dice,' and no otherwise. Yet he reveres genius
+    in the acting of it, and recognizes a God in creation&mdash;only it is but
+    'so far,' and not farther. At least I think not&mdash;and I have a right to
+    think what I please of him, holding him as I do, in such true
+    affection. One of the kindest and most indulgent of human beings has
+    he been to me, and I am happy to be grateful to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Sunday.</i>&mdash;The Duke of Palmella takes the whole vessel for the 20th
+    and therefore if I go it must be on the 17th. Therefore (besides) as
+    George must be on sessions to-morrow, he will settle the question with
+    Papa to-night. In the meantime our poor Occy is not much better,
+    though a little, and is ordered leeches on his head, and is confined
+    to his bed and attended by physician and surgeon. It is not decided
+    typhus, but they will not answer for its not being infectious; and
+    although he is quite at the top of the house, two stories above me, I
+    shall not like you to come indeed. And then there will be only room
+    for a farewell, and I who am a coward shrink from the saying of it.
+    No&mdash;not being able to see you to-morrow, (Mr. Kenyon is to be here
+    to-morrow, he says) let us agree to throw away Wednesday. I will
+    write, ... you will write perhaps&mdash;and above all things you will
+    promise to write by the 'Star' on Monday, that the captain may give me
+    your letter at Gibraltar. You promise? But I shall hear from you
+    before then, and oftener than once, and you will acquiesce about
+    Wednesday and grant at once that there can be no gain, no good, in
+    that miserable good-bye-ing. I do not want the pain of it to remember
+    you by&mdash;I shall remember very well without it, be sure. Still it shall
+    be as you like&mdash;as you shall chose&mdash;and if you are <i>disappointed</i>
+    about Wednesday (if it is not vain in me to talk of disappointments)
+    why do with Wednesday as you think best ... always understanding that
+    there's no risk of infection.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Monday.</i>&mdash;All this I had written yesterday&mdash;and to-day it all is
+    worse than vain. Do not be angry with me&mdash;do not think it my
+    fault&mdash;but <i>I do not go to Italy</i> ... it has ended as I feared. What
+    passed between George and Papa there is no need of telling: only the
+    latter said that I 'might go if I pleased, but that going it would be
+    under his heaviest displeasure.' George, in great indignation,
+    pressed the question fully: but all was vain ... and I am left in this
+    position ... to go, if I please, with his displeasure over me, (which
+    after what you have said and after what Mr. Kenyon has said, and after
+    what my own conscience and deepest moral convictions say aloud, I
+    would unhesitatingly do at this hour!) and necessarily run the risk of
+    exposing my sister and brother to that same displeasure ... from which
+    risk I shrink and fall back and feel that to incur it, is impossible.
+    Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here and we have been talking&mdash;and he sees
+    what I see ... that I am justified in going myself, but not in
+    bringing others into difficulty. The very kindness and goodness with
+    which they desire me (both my sisters) 'not to think of them,'
+    naturally makes me think more of them. And so, tell me that I am not
+    wrong in taking up my chain again and acquiescing in this hard
+    necessity. The bitterest 'fact' of all is, that I had believed Papa to
+    have loved me more than he obviously does: but I never regret
+    knowledge ... I mean I never would <i>un</i>know anything ... even were it
+    the taste of the apples by the Dead sea&mdash;and this must be accepted
+    like the rest. In the meantime your letter comes&mdash;and if I could seem
+    to be very unhappy after reading it ... why it would be 'all pretence'
+    on my part, believe me. Can you care for me so much ... <i>you</i>? Then
+    <i>that</i> is light enough to account for all the shadows, and to make
+    them almost unregarded&mdash;the shadows of the life behind. Moreover dear
+    Occy is somewhat better&mdash;with a pulse only at ninety: and the doctors
+    declare that visitors may come to the house without any manner of
+    danger. Or I should not trust to your theories&mdash;no, indeed: it was not
+    that I expected you to be afraid, but that <i>I</i> was afraid&mdash;and if I am
+    not ashamed for <i>that</i>, why at least I am, for being <i>lâche</i> about
+    Wednesday, when you thought of hurrying back from Paris only for it!
+    You <i>could</i> think <i>that</i>!&mdash;You <i>can</i> care for me so much!&mdash;(I come to
+    it again!) When I hold some words to my eyes ... such as these in
+    this letter ... I can see nothing beyond them ... no evil, no want.
+    There <i>is</i> no evil and no want. Am I wrong in the decision about
+    Italy? Could I do otherwise? I had courage and to spare&mdash;but the
+    question, you see, did not regard myself wholly. For the rest, the
+    'unforbidden country' lies within these four walls. Madeira was
+    proposed in vain&mdash;and any part of England would be as objectionable as
+    Italy, and not more advantageous to <i>me</i> than Wimpole Street. To take
+    courage and be cheerful, as you say, is left as an alternative&mdash;and
+    (the winter may be mild!) to fall into the hands of God rather than of
+    man: <i>and I shall be here for your November, remember</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now that you are not well, will you take care? and not come on
+    Wednesday unless you are better? and never again bring me <i>wet
+    flowers</i>, which probably did all the harm on Thursday? I was afraid
+    for you then, though I said nothing. May God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours I am&mdash;your own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ninety is not a high pulse ... for a fever of this kind&mdash;is it? and
+    the heat diminishes, and his spirits are better&mdash;and we are all much
+    easier ... have been both to-day and yesterday indeed.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning,<br>
+[Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Be sure, my own, dearest love, that this is for the best; will be seen
+    for the best in the end. It is hard to bear now&mdash;but <i>you</i> have to
+    bear it; any other person could not, and you will, I know, knowing
+    you&mdash;<i>will</i> be well this one winter if you can, and then&mdash;since I am
+    <i>not</i> selfish in this love to you, my own conscience tells me,&mdash;I
+    desire, more earnestly than I ever knew what desiring was, to be yours
+    and with you and, as far as may be in this life and world, <SPAN class="sc-ex">you</span>&mdash;and
+    no hindrance to that, but one, gives me a moment's care or fear; but
+    that one is just your little hand, as I could fancy it raised in any
+    least interest of yours&mdash;and before that, I am, and would ever be,
+    still silent. But now&mdash;what is to make you raise that hand? I will not
+    speak <i>now</i>; not seem to take advantage of your present feelings,&mdash;we
+    will be rational, and all-considering and weighing consequences, and
+    foreseeing them&mdash;but first I will prove ... if <i>that</i> has to be done,
+    why&mdash;but I begin speaking, and I should not, I know.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you, love!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow I see you, without fail. I am rejoiced as you can imagine,
+    at your brother's improved state.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday,<br>
+[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will this note reach you at the 'fatal hour' ... or sooner? At any
+    rate it is forced to ask you to take Thursday for Wednesday, inasmuch
+    as Mr. Kenyon in his exceeding kindness has put off his journey just
+    for <i>me</i>, he says, because he saw me depressed about the decision, and
+    wished to come and see me again to-morrow and talk the spirits up, I
+    suppose. It is all so kind and good, that I cannot find a voice to
+    grumble about the obligation it brings of writing thus. And then, if
+    you suffer from cold and influenza, it will be better for you not to
+    come for another day, ... I think <i>that</i>, for comfort. Shall I hear
+    how you are to-night, I wonder? Dear Occy 'turned the corner,' the
+    physician said, yesterday evening, and, although a little fluctuating
+    to-day, remains on the whole considerably better. They were just in
+    time to keep the fever from turning to typhus.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How fast you print your book, for it is to be out on the first of
+    November! Why it comes out suddenly like the sun. Mr. Kenyon asked me
+    if I had seen anything you were going to print; and when I mentioned
+    the second part of the 'Duchess' and described how your perfect
+    rhymes, perfectly new, and all clashing together as by natural
+    attraction, had put me at once to shame and admiration, he began to
+    praise the first part of the same poem (which I had heard him do
+    before, by the way) and extolled it as one of your most striking
+    productions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so until Thursday! May God bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">and as the heart goes, ever yours.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am glad for Tennyson, and glad for Keats. It is well to be able to
+    be glad about something&mdash;is is it not? about something out of
+    ourselves. And (<i>in</i> myself) I shall be most glad, if I have a letter
+    to-night. Shall I?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thanks, my dearest, for the good news&mdash;of the fever's abatement&mdash;it is
+    good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole: what is it to <i>me</i>
+    that you write is of <i>me</i> ... I shall never say <i>that</i>! Mr. Kenyon is
+    all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a
+    thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs
+    to,&mdash;well! On Thursday, then,&mdash;to-morrow! Did you not get a note of
+    mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon's
+    delivery?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Forster came yesterday and was very profuse of graciosities: he
+    may have, or must have meant well, so we will go on again with the
+    friendship, as the snail repairs his battered shell.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My poems went duly to press on Monday night&mdash;there is not much
+    <i>correctable</i> in them,&mdash;you make, or you spoil, one of these things;
+    that is, <i>I</i> do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in
+    lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write
+    plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop
+    interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I
+    am to receive a <i>proof</i> at the end of the week&mdash;will you help me and
+    over-look it. ('Yes'&mdash;she says ... my thanks I do not say!&mdash;)
+</p>
+<p>
+    While writing this, the <i>Times</i> catches my eye (it just came in) and
+    something from the <i>Lancet</i> is extracted, a long article against
+    quackery&mdash;and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I
+    read&mdash;'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of
+    some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted.
+    We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into
+    the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets,
+    touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a
+    poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style
+    worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and
+    Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her
+    physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand
+    God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer
+    Hall.'&mdash;Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus
+    is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!
+</p>
+<p>
+    What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me&mdash;could you
+    not go out on such days?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am quite well now&mdash;cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle
+    arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would&mdash;so my travel
+    would have been to great purpose!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless my dearest&mdash;my own!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 16, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter which should have reached me in the morning of yesterday,
+    I did not receive until nearly midnight&mdash;partly through the
+    eccentricity of our new postman whose good pleasure it is to make use
+    of the letter-box without knocking; and partly from the confusion in
+    the house, of illness in different ways ... the very servants being
+    ill, ... one of them breaking a blood-vessel&mdash;for there is no new case
+    of fever; ... and for dear Occy, he grows better slowly day by day.
+    And just so late last night, five letters were found in the
+    letter-box, and mine ... yours ... among them&mdash;which accounts for my
+    beginning to answer it only now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What am I to say but this ... that I know what you are ... and that I
+    know also what you are to <i>me</i>,&mdash;and that I should accept that
+    knowledge as more than sufficient recompense for worse vexations than
+    these late ones. Therefore let no more be said of them: and no more
+    <i>need</i> be said, even if they were not likely to prove their own end
+    good, as I believe with you. You may be quite sure that I shall be
+    well this winter, if in any way it should be possible, and that I
+    <i>will not</i> be beaten down, if the will can do anything. I admire how,
+    if all had happened so but a year ago, (yet it could not have happened
+    quite <i>so</i>!), I should certainly have been beaten down&mdash;and how it is
+    different now, ... and how it is only gratitude to you, to <i>say</i> that
+    it is different now. My cage is not worse but better since you brought
+    the green groundsel to it&mdash;and to dash oneself against the wires of it
+    will not open the door. We shall see ... and God will oversee. And in
+    the meantime you will not talk of extravagances; and then nobody need
+    hold up the hand&mdash;because, as I said and say, I am yours, your
+    own&mdash;only not to <i>hurt you</i>. So now let us talk of the first of
+    November and of the poems which are to come out then, and of the poems
+    which are to come after then&mdash;and of the new avatar of 'Sordello,' for
+    instance, which you taught me to look for. And let us both be busy and
+    cheerful&mdash;and you will come and see me throughout the winter, ... if
+    you do not decide rather on going abroad, which may be better ...
+    better for your health's sake?&mdash;in which case I shall have your
+    letters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And here is another ... just arrived. How I thank you. Think of the
+    <i>Times</i>! Still it was very well of them to recognise your
+    principality. Oh yes&mdash;do let me see the proof&mdash;I understand too about
+    the 'making and spoiling.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Almost you forced me to smile by thinking it worth while to say that
+    you are '<i>not selfish</i>.' Did Sir Percival say so to Sir Gawaine across
+    the Round Table, in those times of chivalry to which you belong by the
+    soul? Certainly you are not selfish! May God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fever may last, they say, for a week longer, or even a
+    fortnight&mdash;but it <i>decreases</i>. Yet he is hot still, and very weak.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To to-morrow!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates'
+    title. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly
+    garment&mdash;but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your
+    reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And
+    yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you
+    should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses
+    of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a
+    solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Occy continues to make progress&mdash;with a pulse at only eighty-four this
+    morning. Are you learned in the pulse that I should talk as if you
+    were? <i>I</i>, who have had my lessons? He takes scarcely anything yet but
+    water, and his head is very hot still&mdash;but the progress is quite
+    sure, though it may be a lingering case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your beautiful flowers!&mdash;none the less beautiful for waiting for water
+    yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them
+    into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other
+    thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on
+    the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have
+    said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run
+    faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself
+    bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another;&mdash;and
+    that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world;
+    is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against <i>myself</i>,
+    to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For <i>me</i> ...
+    though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a 'third
+    person,' ... it would be monstrous to assume it to be necessary to
+    vindicate my trust of you&mdash;<i>I trust you implicitly</i>&mdash;and am not too
+    proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this
+    winter does or undoes&mdash;while God does His part for good, as we know. I
+    will never fail to you from any human influence whatever&mdash;<i>that</i> I
+    have promised&mdash;but you must let it be different from the other sort of
+    promise which it would be a wrong to make. May God bless you&mdash;you,
+    whose fault it is, to be too generous. You <i>are</i> not like other men,
+    as I could see from the beginning&mdash;no.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see
+    why there should be a 'no' to that. Judge from your own convenience.
+    Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too
+    frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Cassandra you know,
+    and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference
+    in fact; but in comfort, much.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must not go on tearing these poor sheets one after the other,&mdash;the
+    proper phrases <i>will not</i> come,&mdash;so let them stay, while you care for
+    my best interests in their best, only way, and say for <i>me</i> what I
+    would say if I could&mdash;dearest,&mdash;say it, as I feel it!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am thankful to hear of the continued improvement of your brother. So
+    may it continue with him! Pulses I know very little about&mdash;I go by
+    your own impressions which are evidently favourable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will make a note as you suggest&mdash;or, perhaps, keep it for the
+    closing number (the next), when it will come fitly in with two or
+    three parting words I shall have to say. The Rabbis make Bells and
+    Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the gay and the grave,
+    the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonizing&mdash;such a mixture of
+    effects as in the original hour (that is quarter of an hour) of
+    confidence and creation. I meant the whole should prove at last. Well,
+    it <i>has</i> succeeded beyond my most adventurous wishes in one
+    respect&mdash;'Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, if&mdash;' if there was any
+    sweetness in the tongue or flavour in the seeds to <i>her</i>. But I shall
+    do quite other and better things, or shame on me! The proof has not
+    yet come.... I should go, I suppose, and enquire this afternoon&mdash;and
+    probably I will.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I weigh all the words in your permission to come on Monday ... do not
+    think <i>I</i> have not seen <i>that</i> contingency from the first! Let it be
+    Tuesday&mdash;no sooner! Meanwhile you are never away&mdash;never from your
+    place here.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless my dearest.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This arrived on Saturday night&mdash;I just correct it in time for this our
+    first post&mdash;will it do, the new matter? I can take it to-morrow&mdash;when
+    I am to see you&mdash;if you are able to glance through it by then.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The 'Inscription,' how does that read?
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is strange temptation, by the way, in the space they please to
+    leave for the presumable 'motto'&mdash;'they but remind me of mine own
+    conception' ... but one must give no clue, of a silk's breadth, to the
+    '<i>Bower</i>,' <i>yet</i>, One day!
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;Which God send you, dearest, and your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 22, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that
+    there may be no misunderstanding between us&mdash;and this, before I sleep
+    to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of
+    receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had
+    sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were
+    ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my
+    sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago.
+    I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing
+    in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it
+    unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too
+    often and it was <i>observed</i>, difficulties and vexations would follow
+    as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk.
+    That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one
+    visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please&mdash;and
+    there is no objection to your coming twice a week <i>now</i> and <i>then</i> ...
+    if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand?
+    I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps&mdash;and certainly everybody in the
+    house is not equally prudent!&mdash;but I did shrink from running any risk
+    with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And
+    was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it?
+    anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or
+    old, what it <i>involves</i> may well be unpleasant to you&mdash;and that
+    (however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new
+    increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps,
+    by late events and impulses&mdash;but it is never too late to come back to
+    a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my
+    dearest friend, first, <i>not to answer this</i>, and next, to weigh and
+    consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you
+    plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify
+    so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the
+    excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of
+    self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... <i>you</i>.... When I
+    told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence should' &amp;c.
+    &amp;c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you&mdash;and now that I
+    turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ...
+    <i>there</i>. I ask you therefore to consider 'that contingency' well&mdash;not
+    forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa
+    has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we
+    see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable
+    for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ...
+    now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I
+    leave it to you. In any case <i>I entreat you not to answer
+    this</i>&mdash;neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may
+    call perhaps vacillation&mdash;only that I stand excused (I do not say
+    justified) before my own moral sense. May God bless you. If you go, I
+    shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the
+    meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I
+    ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our
+    sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I
+    shall understand <i>that</i> by your not going ... or you may say '<i>no</i>' in
+    a word ... for I require no '<i>protestations</i>' indeed&mdash;and <i>you</i> may
+    trust to <i>me</i> ... it shall be as you choose. <i>You will consider my
+    happiness most by considering your own</i> ... and that is my last word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Wednesday morning.</i>&mdash;I did not say half I thought about the poems
+    yesterday&mdash;and their various power and beauty will be striking and
+    surprising to your most accustomed readers. 'St. Praxed'&mdash;'Pictor
+    Ignotus'&mdash;'The Ride'&mdash;'The Duchess'!&mdash;Of the new poems I like
+    supremely the first and last ... that 'Lost Leader' which strikes so
+    broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget&mdash;and which is worth
+    all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world!&mdash;and then, the
+    last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments
+    ... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these
+    fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but
+    one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The
+    end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ...
+    just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to
+    the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more
+    than ever a new-minted golden coin&mdash;the rhythm of it answering to your
+    own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have
+    right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not
+    cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you always&mdash;send me the next proof <i>in any case</i>.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I <i>must</i> answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to
+    begin at the beginning) surely not '<i>startled</i>' ... only properly
+    aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not
+    disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so
+    treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation
+    from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the
+    quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In
+    this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of
+    displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of
+    it too soon&mdash;so I spoke&mdash;so <i>you</i> have spoken&mdash;and so now you get
+    'excused'? No&mdash;wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the
+    strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for
+    all, I <i>will</i> not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite
+    understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a
+    given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of
+    mine, none in the least. I love you because I <i>love</i> you; I see you
+    'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you
+    all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an
+    hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense)
+    in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to
+    suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once,
+    think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I
+    must talk your own language, so I shall say&mdash;) hindering any scheme of
+    mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think
+    that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I
+    might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do
+    you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me,
+    with my life I am hardened in&mdash;considering the rational chances; how
+    the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or
+    by 'success,' 'happiness' &amp;c. &amp;c. you never never can be seeing for a
+    moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that?
+    Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are
+    hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>I</i> know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his
+    heart&mdash;the person most concerned&mdash;<i>I</i>, dearest, who cannot play the
+    disinterested part of bidding <i>you</i> forget your 'protestation' ...
+    what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through
+    this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, <i>sure</i> that
+    the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,'
+    you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my
+    life to <i>any</i> imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your
+    life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For your friends ... whatever can be 'got over,' whatever opposition
+    may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I
+    spoke lately about the 'selfishness' I dared believe I was free from,
+    I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different
+    organization to mine&mdash;which has vices in plenty, but not those.
+    Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an
+    apparent angel of light, from the lawyer's parchment; and Doctors'
+    Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is
+    one which a good many women, and men too, call 'real passion'&mdash;under
+    the influence of which, I ought to say 'be mine, what ever happens to
+    <i>you</i>'&mdash;but I know better, and you know best&mdash;and you know me, for all
+    this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness
+    and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not&mdash;and now
+    you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life,
+    love my love.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I am, praying God to bless her ever,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    '<i>And be forgiven</i>' ... yes! and be thanked besides&mdash;if I knew how to
+    thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and
+    cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you&mdash;oh no&mdash;that made
+    me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely
+    noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me
+    detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud
+    must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite
+    enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess
+    to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you
+    have your way'&mdash;you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me
+    not to think of you so and so!&mdash;as if I could help thinking of you
+    <i>so</i>, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think
+    of you just so. 'Let me be'&mdash;Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you
+    perhaps in everything except one thing&mdash;and <i>that</i>, you cannot guess.
+    May God bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever I am yours.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The proof does not come!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it;
+    and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it
+    ... must&mdash;for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about
+    squares being not round, and of <i>you</i> being not 'selfish'! You know it
+    is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my
+    understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much
+    less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to <i>me</i> who
+    never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never
+    dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to
+    say so again&mdash;now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when
+    really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own
+    infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your
+    chivalry touched them with a silver sound&mdash;and that, without them, you
+    would pass by on the other side:&mdash;why twenty times I have thought
+    <i>that</i> and been vexed&mdash;ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too
+    frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent
+    promise&mdash;no, but first I will say another thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my
+    falling under displeasure through your visits&mdash;there is no sort of
+    risk of it <i>for the present</i>&mdash;and if I ran the risk of making you
+    uncomfortable about <i>that</i>, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do
+    was different. I wish you also to understand that <i>even if you came
+    here every day</i>, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if
+    I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:&mdash;the caution referred to
+    one person alone. In relation to <i>whom</i>, however, there will be no
+    'getting over'&mdash;you might as well think to sweep off a third of the
+    stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes&mdash;this, for matter of
+    fact and certainty&mdash;and this, as I said before, the keeping of a
+    general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great
+    peculiarity <i>in the individual</i> of course. But ... though I have been
+    a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake
+    ... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he
+    loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes&mdash;yet
+    I have reserved for myself <i>always</i> that right over my own affections
+    which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves
+    principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope&mdash;even
+    though I <i>never</i> thought (except perhaps when the door of life was
+    just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or
+    possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without
+    and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends,
+    I can look any way ... round, and <i>down</i> even&mdash;the merest thread of a
+    sympathy will draw me sometimes&mdash;or even the least look of kind eyes
+    over a dyspathy&mdash;'Cela se peut facilement.' But for another
+    relation&mdash;it was all different&mdash;and rightly so&mdash;and so very
+    different&mdash;'Cela ne se peut nullement'&mdash;as in Malherbe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now we must agree to 'let all this be,', and set ourselves to get
+    as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at
+    Pisa!) as we can&mdash;and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not
+    going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green
+    leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will
+    come the tragedies&mdash;and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy
+    winter after all ... <i>I</i> shall at least; and if Pisa had been better,
+    London might be worse: and for <i>me</i> to grow pretentious and fastidious
+    and critical about various sorts of <i>purple</i> ... I, who have been used
+    to the <i>brun foncé</i> of Mme. de Sévigné, (<i>foncé</i> and <i>enfoncé</i>
+    ...)&mdash;would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this
+    time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago
+    (the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those
+    prose papers of mine in the <i>Athenæum</i>, with additional matter on
+    American literature, in a volume by itself&mdash;to be published at the
+    same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo
+    Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I
+    do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not
+    inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must
+    give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not
+    poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well!&mdash;and if I do
+    not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave
+    ... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do?
+    All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed
+    for an answer by return of packet&mdash;and now it is past six ... eight
+    weeks; and I must say something.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Am I not 'femme qui parle' to-day? And let me talk on ever so, the
+    proof won't come. May God bless you&mdash;and me as I am
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And the silent promise I would have you make is this&mdash;that if ever you
+    should leave me, it shall be (though you are not 'selfish') for your
+    sake&mdash;and not for mine: for your good, and not for mine. I ask it&mdash;not
+    because I am disinterested; but because one class of motives would be
+    valid, and the other void&mdash;simply for that reason.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then the <i>femme qui parle</i> (looking back over the parlance) did not
+    mean to say on the first page of this letter that she was ever for a
+    moment <i>vexed in her pride</i> that she should owe anything to her
+    adversities. It was only because adversities are accidents and not
+    essentials. If it had been prosperities, it would have been the same
+    thing&mdash;no, not the same thing!&mdash;but far worse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Occy is up to-day and doing well.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, October 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How does one make 'silent promises' ... or, rather, how does the maker
+    of them communicate that fact to whomsoever it may concern? I know,
+    there have been many, very many unutterable vows and promises
+    made,&mdash;that is, <i>thought</i> down upon&mdash;the white slip at the top of my
+    notes,&mdash;such as of this note; and not trusted to the pen, that always
+    comes in for the shame,&mdash;but given up, and replaced by the poor forms
+    to which a pen is equal; and a glad minute I should account <i>that</i>, in
+    which you collected and accepted <i>those</i> 'promises'&mdash;because they
+    would not be all so unworthy of me&mdash;much less you! I would receive, in
+    virtue of <i>them</i>, the ascription of whatever worthiness is supposed to
+    lie in deep, truest love, and gratitude&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Read my silent answer there too!
+</p>
+<p>
+    All your letter is one comfort: we will be happy this winter, and
+    after, do not fear. I am most happy, to begin, that your brother is so
+    much better: he must be weak and susceptible of cold, remember.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was on my lip, I do think, <i>last</i> visit, or the last but one, to
+    beg you to detach those papers from the <i>Athenæum's gâchis</i>. Certainly
+    this opportunity is <i>most</i> favourable, for every reason: you cannot
+    hesitate, surely. At present those papers are lost&mdash;<i>lost</i> for
+    practical purposes. Do pray reply without fail to the proposers; no,
+    no harm of these really fine fellows, who <i>could</i> do harm (by printing
+    incorrect copies, and perhaps eking out the column by suppositious
+    matter ... ex-gr. they strengthened and lengthened a book of Dickens',
+    in Paris, by adding quant. suff. of Thackeray's 'Yellowplush Papers'
+    ... as I discovered by a Parisian somebody praising the latter to me
+    as Dickens' best work!)&mdash;and who <i>do</i> really a good straightforward
+    un-American thing. You will encourage 'the day of small
+    things'&mdash;though this is not small, nor likely to have small results. I
+    shall be impatient to hear that you have decided. I like the progress
+    of these Americans in taste, their amazing leaps, like grasshoppers up
+    to the sun&mdash;from ... what is the '<i>from</i>,' what depth, do you
+    remember, say, ten or twelve years back?&mdash;<i>to</i>&mdash;Carlyle, and Tennyson,
+    and you! So children leave off Jack of Cornwall and go on just to
+    Homer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can't conceive why my proof does not come&mdash;I must go to-morrow and
+    see. In the other, I have corrected all the points you noted, to their
+    evident improvement. Yesterday I took out 'Luria' and read it
+    through&mdash;the skeleton&mdash;I shall hope to finish it soon now. It is for a
+    purely imaginary stage,&mdash;very simple and straightforward. Would you
+    ... no, Act by Act, as I was about to propose that you should read it;
+    that process would affect the oneness I most wish to preserve.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Tuesday&mdash;at last, I am with you. Till when be with me ever,
+    dearest&mdash;God bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday 9 a.m.<br>
+[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I got this on coming home last night&mdash;have just run through it this
+    morning, and send it that time may not be lost. Faults, faults; but I
+    don't know how I have got tired of this. The Tragedies will be better,
+    at least the second&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    At 3 this day! Bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p>
+    I write in haste, not to lose time about the proof. You will see on
+    the papers here my doubtfulnesses such as they are&mdash;but silence
+    swallows up the admirations ... and there is no time. 'Theocrite'
+    overtakes that wish of mine which ran on so fast&mdash;and the 'Duchess'
+    grows and grows the more I look&mdash;and 'Saul' is noble and must have his
+    full royalty some day. Would it not be well, by the way, to print it
+    in the meanwhile as a fragment confessed ... sowing asterisks at the
+    end. Because as a poem of yours it stands there and wants unity, and
+    people can't be expected to understand the difference between
+    incompleteness and defect, unless you make a sign. For the new
+    poems&mdash;they are full of beauty. You throw largesses out on all sides
+    without counting the coins: how beautiful that 'Night and Morning' ...
+    and the 'Earth's Immortalities' ... and the 'Song' too. And for your
+    'Glove,' all women should be grateful,&mdash;and Ronsard, honoured, in
+    this fresh shower of music on his old grave ... though the chivalry of
+    the interpretation, as well as much beside, is so plainly yours, ...
+    could only be yours perhaps. And even <i>you</i> are forced to let in a
+    third person ... close to the doorway ... before you can do any good.
+    What a noble lion you give us too, with the 'flash on his forehead,'
+    and 'leagues in the desert already' as we look on him! And then, with
+    what a 'curious felicity' you turn the subject 'glove' to another use
+    and strike De Lorge's blow back on him with it, in the last paragraph
+    of your story! And the versification! And the lady's speech&mdash;(to
+    return!) so calm, and proud&mdash;yet a little bitter!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Am I not to thank you for all the pleasure and pride in these poems?
+    while you stand by and try to talk them down, perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tell me how your mother is&mdash;tell me how you are ... you who never were
+    to be told twice about walking. Gone the way of all promises, is that
+    promise?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, October 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Like your kindness&mdash;too, far too generous kindness,&mdash;all this trouble
+    and correcting,&mdash;and it is my proper office now, by this time, to sit
+    still and receive, by right <i>Human</i> (as opposed to Divine). When you
+    see the pamphlet's self, you will find your own doing,&mdash;but where will
+    you find the proofs of the best of all helping and counselling and
+    inciting, unless in new works which shall justify the
+    <i>unsatisfaction</i>, if I may not say shame, at these, these written
+    before your time, my best love?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Are you doing well to-day? For I feel well, have walked some eight or
+    nine miles&mdash;and my mother is very much better ... is singularly
+    better. You know whether you rejoiced me or no by that information
+    about the exercise <i>you</i> had taken yesterday. Think what telling one
+    that you grow stronger would mean!
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Vexatious' with you! Ah, prudence is all very right, and one ought,
+    no doubt, to say, 'of course, we shall not expect a life exempt from
+    the usual proportion of &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;' but truth is still more right, and
+    includes the highest prudence besides, and I do believe that we shall
+    be happy; that is, that <i>you</i> will be happy: you see I dare
+    confidently expect <i>the</i> end to it all ... so it has always been with
+    me in my life of wonders&mdash;absolute wonders, with God's hand over
+    all.... And this last and best of all would never have begun so, and
+    gone on so, to break off abruptly even here, in this world, for the
+    little time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So try, try, dearest, every method, take every measure of hastening
+    such a consummation. Why, we shall see Italy together! I could, would,
+    <i>will</i> shut myself in four walls of a room with you and never leave
+    you and be most of all <i>then</i> 'a lord of infinite space'&mdash;but, to
+    travel with you to Italy, or Greece. Very vain, I know that, all such
+    day dreaming! And ungrateful, too; with the real sufficing happiness
+    here of being, and knowing that you know me to be, and suffer me to
+    tell you I am yours, ever your own.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless you, my dearest&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and
+    went away at seven&mdash;and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour
+    speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so
+    tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and
+    herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer
+    once every ten minutes at least&mdash;and Flush, my usual companion, does
+    not exact so much&mdash;and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this
+    paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good
+    fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I
+    pushed the conversation up the next&mdash;because I was afraid of questions
+    such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind
+    them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his
+    spectacles. So your name was not once spoken&mdash;not thought of, I do not
+    say&mdash;perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her
+    suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have
+    wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she passed
+    gradually from that to this&mdash;I am not sure of the contrary. And
+    Isidore, they say, reads Béranger, and is supposed to be the most
+    literary person at court&mdash;and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs
+    think.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One must needs write nonsense rather&mdash;for I have written it there. The
+    sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my
+    heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and
+    through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what <i>is</i> not
+    dreaming is this and this&mdash;this reading of these words&mdash;this proof of
+    this regard&mdash;all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot
+    guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ...
+    since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ...
+    and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your
+    wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own
+    being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by
+    an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into
+    the sunshine where I was not&mdash;feeling nothing of the light which fell
+    on them even&mdash;making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that
+    factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be
+    all far on the outside of <i>me</i> ... <i>myself</i> ... not seeming to touch
+    it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a
+    bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another.
+    Morbid it was if you like it&mdash;perhaps very morbid&mdash;but all these heaps
+    of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which,
+    because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to
+    the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of
+    it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could
+    it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds
+    on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in
+    the shadow? It was not for <i>me</i> ... <i>me</i> ... in any way: it was not
+    within my reach&mdash;I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came
+    nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being
+    tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when
+    he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs.
+    Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not
+    letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I
+    to feel when you tell me what you have told me&mdash;and what you 'could
+    would and will' do, and <i>shall not</i> do?... but when you tell me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Only remember that such words make you freer and freer&mdash;if you can be
+    freer than free&mdash;just as every one makes me happier and richer&mdash;too
+    rich by you, to claim any debt. May God bless you always. When I wrote
+    that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran
+    down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere
+    nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as
+    other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse
+    you as I did them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I trust that you go on to take exercise&mdash;and that your mother is still
+    better. Occy's worst symptom now is too great an appetite ... a
+    monster-appetite indeed.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow,
+    Wednesday&mdash;so towards evening yours will reach you&mdash;'parve liber, sine
+    me ibis' ... would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know,
+    and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you <i>now</i>,
+    as we are now;&mdash;from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed
+    every other, greater or smaller&mdash;but as one cannot well,&mdash;or should
+    not,&mdash;sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what
+    chances&mdash;while you are in my thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But when I have you ... so it seems ... <i>in</i> my very heart; when you
+    are entirely with me&mdash;oh, the day&mdash;then it will all go better, talk
+    and writing too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Love me, my own love; not as I love you&mdash;not for&mdash;but I cannot write
+    that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the
+    luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 6, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had your note last night, and am waiting for the book to-day; a true
+    living breathing book, let the writer say of it what he will. Also
+    when it comes it won't certainly come 'sine te.' Which is my comfort.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now&mdash;not to make any more fuss about a matter of simple
+    restitution&mdash;may I have my letter back?... I mean the letter which if
+    you did not destroy ... did not punish for its sins long and long ago
+    ... belongs to me&mdash;which, if destroyed, I must lose for my sins, ...
+    but, if undestroyed, which I may have back; may I not? is it not my
+    own? must I not?&mdash;that letter I was made to return and now turn to ask
+    for again in further expiation. Now do I ask humbly enough? And send
+    it at once, if undestroyed&mdash;do not wait till Saturday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have considered about Mr. Kenyon and it seems best, in the event of
+    a question or of a remark equivalent to a question, to confess to the
+    visits 'generally once a week' ... because he may hear, one, two,
+    three different ways, ... not to say the other reasons and Chaucer's
+    charge against 'doubleness.' I fear ... I fear that he (not Chaucer)
+    will wonder a little&mdash;and he has looked at me with scanning spectacles
+    already and talked of its being a mystery to him how you made your way
+    here; and <i>I</i>, who though I can <i>bespeak</i> self-command, have no sort
+    of presence of mind (not so much as one would use to play at Jack
+    straws) did not help the case at all. Well&mdash;it cannot be helped. Did I
+    ever tell you what he said of you once&mdash;'<i>that you deserved to be a
+    poet</i>&mdash;being one in your heart and life:' he said <i>that</i> of you to me,
+    and I thought it a noble encomium and deserving its application.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest ... yes: you know I do&mdash;God knows I do. Whatever I can
+    feel is for you&mdash;and perhaps it is not less, for not being simmered
+    away in too much sunshine as with women accounted happier. <i>I</i> am
+    happy besides now&mdash;happy enough to die now.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you, dear&mdash;dearest&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever I am yours&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    The book does not come&mdash;so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead,
+    and comes again on <i>Friday</i> he says, and Saturday seems to be clear
+    still.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p>
+    <i>Just</i> arrived!&mdash;(mind, the <i>silent writing</i> overflows the page, and
+    laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)&mdash;But your note
+    arrived earlier&mdash;more of that, when I write after this dreadful
+    dispatching-business that falls on me&mdash;friend A. and B. and C. must
+    get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a name="268"></a>Could you think <i>that</i> that untoward letter lived one <i>moment</i> after
+    it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor
+    letter,&mdash;yet I should have been vexed and offended <i>then</i> to be told I
+    <i>could</i> love you better than I did already. 'Live and <i>learn</i>!' Live
+    and love you&mdash;dearest, as loves you
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other
+    reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two
+    instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they <i>are</i> so,
+    by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one
+    of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'&mdash;see! (Can you give me
+    Horne's address&mdash;I would send then.)
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by
+    my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and
+    power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling
+    more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this&mdash;or
+    'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand
+    which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading
+    everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in
+    inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr.
+    Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what
+    contradiction!) the <i>British Quarterly</i> has been abusing me so at
+    large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very
+    particular friend indeed,&mdash;of someone who positively never reviewed
+    before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I
+    suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are friends 'with a
+    difference.' Not that you are to fancy me pained&mdash;oh no!&mdash;merely
+    surprised. I was prepared for anything almost from the quarter in
+    question, but scarcely for being hung 'to the crows' so publicly ...
+    though within the bounds of legitimate criticisms, mind. But oh&mdash;the
+    creatures of your sex are not always magnanimous&mdash;<i>that</i> is true. And
+    to put <i>you</i> between me and all ... the thought of <i>you</i> ... in a
+    great eclipse of the world ... <i>that</i> is happy ... only, too happy for
+    such as I am; as my own heart warns me hour by hour.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Serve <i>me</i> right'&mdash;I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety
+    of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the
+    probability of it: but 'serve <i>me</i> right' quite clearly. And yet&mdash;but
+    no more 'and yets' about it. 'And yets' fray the silk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I see how the 'turret' stands in the new reading, triumphing over the
+    'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that
+    nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for
+    attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number&mdash;there are lights
+    enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by.
+    One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does
+    still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I
+    saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach
+    it&mdash;but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one
+    exception I <i>am quite</i> sure that people who shall complain of darkness
+    are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed
+    everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible
+    by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your
+    writings&mdash;but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from <i>that</i>
+    cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,'
+    you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid
+    them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of
+    critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!&mdash;'Let them
+    rave.' You will live when all <i>those</i> are under the willows. In the
+    meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your
+    poetry&mdash;as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the
+    creature, and <i>you</i> than <i>yours</i>. Yes&mdash;<i>you</i> than <i>yours</i>.... (I did
+    not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the 'bona
+    verba,' and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as <i>you</i> are
+    better than <i>yours</i>; even when so much yours as your own
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May I see the first act first? Let me!&mdash;And you walk?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Horne's address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes
+    to-morrow, Friday, and therefore&mdash;!&mdash;and if Saturday should become
+    impracticable, I will write again.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i><a name="270">R.B. to E.B.B.</a></i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never
+    is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to
+    return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and
+    fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that
+    does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is
+    no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of
+    mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on,
+    patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and
+    I will console myself, to the full extent, with your
+    knowledge&mdash;penetration, intuition&mdash;<i>somehow</i> I must believe you can
+    get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or
+    writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no
+    reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the
+    less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I
+    can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to
+    explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I
+    feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt
+    by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might
+    be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to <i>me</i>. Dearest,
+    I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from
+    the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">my</span> star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back
+    from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I <i>do</i> feel, with
+    you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few
+    rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree
+    with that power of yours&mdash;that you might easily make one so happy and
+    yet go on writing 'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'&mdash;but&mdash;how can I, dearest,
+    leave my heart's treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and
+    when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the
+    traces of you ... <i>will</i> it do&mdash;tell me&mdash;to trust all that as a light
+    effort, an easy matter?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to
+    crown you&mdash;there is queenliness in <i>that</i>, too!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you
+    determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of
+    yourself! It is all <SPAN class="sc-ex">me</span> you help, me you do good to ... and I take it
+    all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had <i>every</i> love-luxury, I
+    now find out ... where is the proper, rationally
+    to-be-expected&mdash;'<i>lovers' quarrel</i>'? <i>Here</i>, as you will find! 'Iræ;
+    amantium'.... I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter
+    Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be <i>reintegratio amoris</i>&mdash;and to get
+    back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it ...
+    trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The
+    consistent inference ... the 'self-denying ordinance'? Why&mdash;do you
+    doubt? even this,&mdash;you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the
+    Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid
+    to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and
+    walking, and working for my sake towards <i>the time</i>&mdash;informing me,
+    moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day&mdash;.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, my own love.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play ... for this serpent's
+    reason, in addition to the others ... that&mdash;No, I will <i>tell</i> you
+    that&mdash;I can tell you now more than even lately!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image02.png" width="554" height="800"
+alt="Facsimile of Letter of Robert Browning, Nov. 10, 1845">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<br>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/image03.png" width="541" height="800"
+alt="Page 2 of Letter">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<br>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/image04.png" width="622" height="800"
+alt="Page 3 of Letter">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<br>
+
+<center>
+<img src="images/image05.png" width="554" height="642"
+alt="Envelope">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center">
+
+<b>Facsimile of Letter of Robert Browning</b></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+
+<a href="#270">(See Vol. I., p. 270)</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    <i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i>
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 11, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If it were possible that you could do me harm in the way of work, (but
+    it isn't) it would be possible, not through writing letters and
+    reading manuscripts, but because of a reason to be drawn from your own
+    great line
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">What man is strong until he stands alone?
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">What man ... what woman? For have I not felt twenty times the desolate
+    advantage of being insulated here and of not minding anybody when I
+    made my poems?&mdash;of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and
+    caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing
+    in the pane?&mdash;<i>That</i> made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls
+    'insolent,'&mdash;untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much
+    by strength, you see, as by separation. <i>You</i> touch your greater ends
+    by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads
+    which, in your position would have hampered <i>me</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Still ... when all is changed for me now, and different, it is not
+    possible, ... for all the changing, nor for all your line and my
+    speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being
+    within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in
+    other ways. We shall see&mdash;you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I
+    confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of
+    Indolence and watching the new sunrise&mdash;as why not?&mdash;Do I mean to be
+    idle always?&mdash;no!&mdash;and am I not an industrious worker on the average
+    of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think
+    perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like
+    trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York
+    people, and the something rather better besides we may hope ... may
+    <i>I</i> not hope, if <i>you</i> wish it? Only there is no 'crown' for me, be
+    sure, except what grows from this letter and such letters ... this
+    sense of being anything to <i>one</i>! there is no room for another crown.
+    Have I a great head like Goethe's that there should be room? and mine
+    is bent down already by the unused weight&mdash;and as to bearing it, ...
+    'Will it do,&mdash;tell me; to treat <i>that</i> as a light effort, an easy
+    matter?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now let me remember to tell you that the line of yours I have just
+    quoted, and which has been present with me since you wrote it, Mr.
+    Chorley has quoted too in his new novel of 'Pomfret.' You were right
+    in your identifying of servant and waistcoat&mdash;and Wilson waited only
+    till you had gone on Saturday, to give me a parcel and note; the novel
+    itself in fact, which Mr. Chorley had the kindness to send me 'some
+    days or weeks,' said the note, 'previous to the publication.' Very
+    goodnatured of him certainly: and the book seems to me his best work
+    in point of sustainment and vigour, and I am in process of being
+    interested in it. Not that he is a <i>maker</i>, even for this prose. A
+    feeler ... an observer ... a thinker even, in a certain sphere&mdash;but a
+    maker ... no, as it seems to me&mdash;and if I were he, I would rather herd
+    with the essayists than the novelists where he is too good to take
+    inferior rank and not strong enough to 'go up higher.' Only it would
+    be more right in me to be grateful than to talk so&mdash;now wouldn't it?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And here is Mr. Kenyon's letter back again&mdash;a kind good letter ... a
+    letter I have liked to read (so it was kind and good in you to let
+    me!)&mdash;and he was with me to-day and praising the 'Ride to Ghent,' and
+    praising the 'Duchess,' and praising you altogether as I liked to hear
+    him. The Ghent-ride was 'very fine'&mdash;and the
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Into the midnight they galloped abreast
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">drew us out into the night as witnesses. And then, the 'Duchess' ...
+    the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most
+    characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh,
+    some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears&mdash;but the
+    incantation-scene, 'just trenching on the supernatural,' <i>that</i> was
+    taken to be 'wonderful,' ... 'showing extraordinary power, ... as
+    indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of
+    such various faculty!'&mdash;Am I not tired of writing your praises as he
+    said then? So I shall tell you, instead of any more, that I went down
+    to the drawing-room yesterday (because it was warm enough) by an act
+    of supererogatory virtue for which you may praise <i>me</i> in turn. What
+    weather it is! and how the year seems to have forgotten itself into
+    April.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But after all, how have I answered your letter? and how <i>are</i> such
+    letters to be answered? Do we answer the sun when he shines? May God
+    bless you ... it is my answer&mdash;with one word besides ... that I am
+    wholly and ever your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Thursday as far as I know yet&mdash;and you shall hear if there should
+    be an obstacle. <i>Will you walk?</i> If you will not, you know, you must
+    be forgetting me a little. Will you remember me too in the act of the
+    play?&mdash;but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not
+    overworking the head. And this for no serpent's reason.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Two letters in one&mdash;Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to
+    read perhaps. When you spoke of 'stars' and 'geniuses' in that letter,
+    I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter
+    which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could
+    be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh
+    such pure extravagance about 'glorious geniuses'&mdash;) I can't help
+    telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I tell you besides?&mdash;The first moment in which I seemed to admit
+    to myself in a flash of lightning the <i>possibility</i> of your affection
+    for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was <i>that</i> when
+    you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for
+    me not for a reason, but because you cared for me. Now such a
+    'parceque' which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was
+    just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the
+    particular question we were upon ... just the 'woman's reason'
+    suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as
+    you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you
+    see? If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for
+    ever&mdash;one of 'earth's immortalities'&mdash;<i>as long as it includes it</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising state
+    of things, we may both admit, and proves what it would be as well not
+    too curiously to enquire into. But then ... to look at it in a
+    brighter aspect, ... I do remember how, years ago, when talking the
+    foolishnesses which women will talk when they are by themselves, and
+    not forced to be sensible, ... one of my friends thought it 'safest to
+    begin with a little aversion,' and another, wisest to begin with a
+    great deal of esteem, and how the best attachments were produced so
+    and so, ... I took it into my head to say that the best was where
+    there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable,
+    the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and
+    not in the object of it&mdash;and that the affection which could (if it
+    could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goître would be more
+    admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone
+    thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly
+    that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I
+    meant to act out my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I
+    replied quite gravely that I had not virtue enough&mdash;and so, people
+    laughed as it is fair to laugh when other people are esteemed to talk
+    nonsense. And all this came back to me in the south wind of your
+    'parceque,' and I tell it as it came ... now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Which proves, if it proves anything, ... while I have every sort of
+    natural pleasure in your praises and like you to like my poetry just
+    as I should, and perhaps more than I should; yet <i>why</i> it is all
+    behind ... and in its place&mdash;and <i>why</i> I have a tendency moreover to
+    sift and measure any praise of yours and to separate it from the
+    superfluities, far more than with any other person's praise in the
+    world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Friday evening.</i>&mdash;Shall I send this letter or not? I have been 'tra
+    'l si e 'l no,' and writing a new beginning on a new sheet even&mdash;but
+    after all you ought to hear the remote echo of your last letter ...
+    far out among the hills, ... as well as the immediate reverberation,
+    and so I will send it,&mdash;and what I send is not to be answered,
+    remember!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I read Luria's first act twice through before I slept last night, and
+    feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but
+    because shot into the air and suddenly arrested and suspended. It
+    ('Luria') is all life, and we know (that is, the reader knows) that
+    there must be results here and here. How fine that sight of Luria is
+    upon the lynx hides&mdash;how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse
+    you have by the eyes of another&mdash;and that laugh when the horse drops
+    the forage, what wonderful truth and character you have in
+    <i>that</i>!&mdash;And then, when <i>he</i> is in the scene&mdash;: 'Golden-hearted Luria'
+    you called him once to me, and his heart shines already ... wide open
+    to the morning sun. The construction seems to me very clear
+    everywhere&mdash;and the rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where
+    you invert a little artificially&mdash;but that shall be set down on a
+    separate strip of paper: and in the meantime I am snatched up into
+    'Luria' and feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a
+    reader should.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But <i>you</i> are not driven on to any ends? so as to be tired, I mean?
+    You will not suffer yourself to be overworked because you are
+    'interested' in this work. I am so certain that the sensations in your
+    head <i>demand</i> repose; and it must be so injurious to you to be
+    perpetually calling, calling these new creations, one after another,
+    that you must consent to be called <i>to</i>, and not hurry the next act,
+    no, nor any act&mdash;let the people have time to learn the last number by
+    heart. And how glad I am that Mr. Fox should say what he did of it ...
+    though it wasn't true, you know ... not exactly. Still, I do hold that
+    as far as construction goes, you never put together so much
+    unquestionable, smooth glory before, ... not a single entanglement for
+    the understanding ... unless 'the snowdrops' make an exception&mdash;while
+    for the undeniableness of genius it never stood out before your
+    readers more plainly than in that same number! Also you have extended
+    your sweep of power&mdash;the sea-weed is thrown farther (if not higher)
+    than it was found before; and one may calculate surely now how a few
+    more waves will cover the brown stones and float the sight up away
+    through the fissure of the rocks. The rhythm (to touch one of the
+    various things) the rhythm of that 'Duchess' does more and more strike
+    me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks
+    called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult
+    rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the
+    general measure. Then 'The Ride'&mdash;with that touch of natural feeling
+    at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the
+    poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that
+    one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and resolution and
+    exalts both, instead of weakening anything, as might have been
+    expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And then 'Saul'&mdash;and in
+    a first place 'St. Praxed'&mdash;and for pure description, 'Fortú' and the
+    deep 'Pictor Ignotus'&mdash;and the noble, serene 'Italy in England,' which
+    grows on you the more you know of it&mdash;and that delightful 'Glove'&mdash;and
+    the short lyrics ... for one comes to <i>'select' everything</i> at last,
+    and certainly I do like these poems better and better, as your poems
+    are made to be liked. But you will be tired to hear it said over and
+    over so, ... and I am going to 'Luria,' besides.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When you write will you say exactly how you are? and will you write?
+    And I want to explain to you that although I don't make a profession
+    of equable spirits, (as a matter of temperament, my spirits were
+    always given to rock a little, up and down) yet that I did not mean to
+    be so ungrateful and wicked as to complain of low spirits now and to
+    you. It would not be true either: and I said 'low' to express a merely
+    bodily state. My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and
+    fainting ... to give the right composure and point of balance to the
+    nervous system. I don't take it for 'my spirits' in the usual sense;
+    you must not think such a thing. The medical man who came to see me
+    made me take it the other day when he was in the room, before the
+    right hour and when I was talking quite cheerfully, just for the need
+    he observed in the pulse. 'It was a necessity of my position,' he
+    said. Also I do not suffer from it in any way, as people usually do
+    who take opium. I am not even subject to an opium-headache. As to the
+    low spirits I will not say that mine <i>have not</i> been low enough and
+    with cause enough; but <i>even then</i>, ... why if you were to ask the
+    nearest witnesses, ... say, even my own sisters, ... everybody would
+    tell you, I think, that the 'cheerfulness' even <i>then</i>, was the
+    remarkable thing in me&mdash;certainly it has been remarked about me again
+    and again. Nobody has known that it was an effort (a habit of effort)
+    to throw the light on the outside,&mdash;I do abhor so that ignoble
+    groaning aloud of the 'groans of Testy and Sensitude'&mdash;yet I may say
+    that for three years I never was conscious of one movement of pleasure
+    in anything. Think if I could mean to complain of 'low spirits' now,
+    and to you. Why it would be like complaining of not being able to see
+    at noon&mdash;which would simply prove that I was very blind. And you, who
+    are not blind, cannot make out what is written&mdash;so you <i>need not try</i>.
+    May God bless you long after you have done blessing me!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I am half tempted to tear this letter in two (and it is long
+    enough for three) and to send you only the latter half. But you will
+    understand&mdash;you will not think that there is a contradiction between
+    the first and last ... you <i>cannot</i>. One is a truth of me&mdash;and the
+    other a truth of you&mdash;and we two are different, you know.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are not over-working in 'Luria'? That you <i>should not</i>, is a
+    truth, too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I observed that Mr. Kenyon put in '<i>Junior</i>' to your address. Ought
+    that to be done? or does my fashion of directing find you without
+    hesitation?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon asked me for Mr. Chorley's book, or you should have it.
+    Shall I send it to you presently?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last your letter comes&mdash;and the deep joy&mdash;(I know and use to
+    analyse my own feelings, and be sober in giving distinctive names to
+    their varieties; this is <i>deep</i> joy,)&mdash;the true love with which I
+    take this much of you into my heart, ... <i>that</i> proves what it is I
+    wanted so long, and find at last, and am happy for ever. I must have
+    more than 'intimated'&mdash;I must have spoken plainly out the truth, if I
+    do myself the barest justice, and told you long ago that the
+    admiration at your works went <i>away</i>, quite another way and afar from
+    the love of you. If I could fancy some method of what I shall say
+    happening without all the obvious stumbling-blocks of falseness, &amp;c.
+    which no foolish fancy dares associate with you ... if you <SPAN class="sc-ex">could</span> tell
+    me when I next sit by you&mdash;'I will undeceive you,&mdash;I am not <i>the</i> Miss
+    B.&mdash;she is up-stairs and you shall see her&mdash;I only wrote those
+    letters, and am what you see, that is all now left you' (all the
+    misapprehension having arisen from <i>me</i>, in some inexplicable way) ...
+    I should not begin by <i>saying</i> anything, dear, dearest&mdash;but <i>after
+    that</i>, I should assure you&mdash;soon make you believe that I did not much
+    wonder at the event, for I have been all my life asking what
+    connection there is between the satisfaction at the display of power,
+    and the sympathy with&mdash;ever-increasing sympathy with&mdash;all imaginable
+    weakness? Look now: Coleridge writes on and on,&mdash;at last he writes a
+    note to his 'War-Eclogue,' in which he avers himself to have been
+    actuated by a really&mdash;on the whole&mdash;<i>benevolent</i> feeling to Mr. Pitt
+    when he wrote that stanza in which 'Fire' means to 'cling to him
+    everlastingly'&mdash;where is the long line of admiration now that the end
+    snaps? And now&mdash;here I refuse to fancy&mdash;you <SPAN class="sc-ex">know</span> whether, if you never
+    write another line, speak another intelligible word, recognize me by a
+    look again&mdash;whether I shall love you less or <i>more</i> ... <SPAN class="sc-ex">more</span>; having a
+    right to expect more strength with the strange emergency. And it is
+    because I know this, build upon this entirely, that as a reasonable
+    creature, I am bound to look first to what hangs farthest and most
+    loosely from me ... what <i>might</i> go from you to your loss, and so to
+    mine, to say the least ... because I want <SPAN class="sc-ex">all</span> of you, not just so much
+    as I could not live without&mdash;and because I see the danger of your
+    entirely generous disposition and cannot quite, yet, bring myself to
+    profit by it in the quiet way you recommend. Always remember, I never
+    wrote to you, all the years, on the strength of your poetry, though I
+    constantly heard of you through Mr. K. and was near seeing you once,
+    and might have easily availed myself of his intervention to commend
+    any letter to your notice, so as to reach you out of the foolish crowd
+    of rushers-in upon genius ... who come and eat their bread and cheese
+    on the high-altar, and talk of reverence without one of its surest
+    instincts&mdash;never quiet till they cut their initials on the cheek of
+    the Medicean Venus to prove they worship her. My admiration, as I
+    said, went its natural way in silence&mdash;but when on my return to
+    England in December, late in the month, Mr. K. sent those Poems to my
+    sister, and I read my name there&mdash;and when, a day or two after, I met
+    him and, beginning to speak my mind on them, and getting on no better
+    than I should now, said quite naturally&mdash;'if I were to <i>write</i> this,
+    now?'&mdash;and he assured me with his perfect kindness, you would be even
+    'pleased' to hear from me under those circumstances ... nay,&mdash;for I
+    will tell you all, in this, in everything&mdash;when he wrote me a note
+    soon after to reassure me on that point ... <SPAN class="sc-ex">then</span> I <i>did</i> write, on
+    <i>account of my purely personal obligation</i>, though of course taking
+    that occasion to allude to the general and customary delight in your
+    works: I did write, on the whole, <SPAN class="sc-ex">unwillingly</span> ... with consciousness
+    of having to <i>speak</i> on a subject which I <i>felt</i> thoroughly
+    concerning, and could not be satisfied with an imperfect expression
+    of. As for expecting <SPAN class="sc-ex">then</span> what has followed ... I shall only say I was
+    scheming how to get done with England and go to my heart in Italy. And
+    now, my love&mdash;I am round you ... my whole life is wound up and down
+    and over you.... I feel you stir everywhere. I am not conscious of
+    thinking or feeling but <i>about</i> you, with some reference to you&mdash;so I
+    will live, so may I die! And you have blessed me <i>beyond</i> the <i>bond</i>,
+    in more than in giving me yourself to love; inasmuch as you believed
+    me from the first ... what you call 'dream-work' <i>was</i> real of its
+    kind, did you not think? and now you believe me, <i>I</i> believe and am
+    happy, in what I write with my heart full of love for you. Why do you
+    tell me of a doubt, as now, and bid me not clear it up, 'not answer
+    you?' Have I done wrong in thus answering? Never, never do <i>me</i> direct
+    <i>wrong</i> and hide for a moment from me what a word can explain as now.
+    You see, you thought, if but for a moment, I loved your intellect&mdash;or
+    what predominates in your poetry and is most distinct from your
+    heart&mdash;better, or as well as you&mdash;did you not? and I have told you
+    every thing,&mdash;explained everything ... have I not? And now I will dare
+    ... yes, dearest, kiss you back to my heart again; my own. There&mdash;and
+    there!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And since I wrote what is above, I have been reading among other poems
+    that sonnet&mdash;'Past and Future'&mdash;which affects me more than any poem I
+    ever read. How can I put your poetry away from you, even in these
+    ineffectual attempts to concentrate myself upon, and better apply
+    myself to what remains?&mdash;poor, poor work it is; for is not that sonnet
+    to be loved as a true utterance of yours? I cannot attempt to put down
+    the thoughts that rise; may God bless me, as you pray, by letting that
+    beloved hand shake the less ... I will only ask, <i>the less</i> ... for
+    being laid on mine through this life! And, indeed, you write down, for
+    me to calmly read, that I make you happy! Then it is&mdash;as with all
+    power&mdash;God through the weakest instrumentality ... and I am past
+    expression proud and grateful&mdash;My love,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must answer your questions: I am better&mdash;and will certainly have
+    your injunction before my eyes and work quite moderately. Your letters
+    come <i>straight</i> to me&mdash;my father's go to Town, except on extraordinary
+    occasions, so that <i>all</i> come for my first looking-over. I saw Mr. K.
+    last night at the Amateur Comedy&mdash;and heaps of old acquaintances&mdash;and
+    came home tired and savage&mdash;and <i>yearned</i> literally, for a letter this
+    morning, and so it came and I was well again. So, I am not even to
+    have your low spirits leaning on mine? It was just because I always
+    find you alike, and <i>ever</i> like yourself, that I seemed to discern a
+    depth, when you spoke of 'some days' and what they made uneven where
+    all is agreeable to <i>me</i>. Do not, now, deprive me of a right&mdash;a right
+    ... to find you as you <i>are</i>; get no habit of being cheerful with
+    me&mdash;I have universal sympathy and can show you a <SPAN class="sc-ex">side</span> of me, a true
+    face, turn as you may. If you <i>are</i> cheerful ... so will I be ... if
+    sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while <i>behind</i>, and propping up,
+    any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary. As for my
+    question about the opium ... you do not misunderstand <i>that</i> neither:
+    I trust in the eventual consummation of my&mdash;shall I not say,
+    <i>our</i>&mdash;hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or
+    prospectively, affects me&mdash;how it affects me! Will you write again?
+    <i>Wednesday</i>, remember! Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three
+    next days after. I will bring you some letters ... one from Landor.
+    Why should I trouble you about 'Pomfret.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    And Luria ... does it so interest you? Better is to come of it. How
+    you lift me up!&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 18, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How you overcome me as always you do&mdash;and where is the answer to
+    anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers?
+    But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake
+    you as far even as you say here and even 'for a moment.' I did not
+    write any of that letter in a 'doubt' of you&mdash;not a word.... I was
+    simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking
+    back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I
+    should not have looked back)&mdash;and so coming to tell you, by a natural
+    association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise
+    was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your
+    reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours. Of course I acknowledge it to
+    be yours, ... that high reason of no reason&mdash;I acknowledged it to be
+    yours (didn't I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me.
+    And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told
+    them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather
+    be cared for in <i>that</i> unreasonable way, than for the best reason in
+    the world. But all <i>that</i> was history and philosophy simply&mdash;was it
+    not?&mdash;and not <i>doubt of you</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ...
+    that I never have doubted you&mdash;ah, you <i>know</i>!&mdash;I felt from the
+    beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would
+    have trusted you to make a path for my soul&mdash;<i>that</i>, you <i>know</i>. I
+    felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or
+    wrote&mdash;and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it
+    was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the
+    nature of your own feelings. If you could turn over every page of my
+    heart like the pages of a book, you would see nothing there offensive
+    to the least of your feelings ... not even to the outside fringes of
+    your man's vanity ... should you have any vanity like a man; which I
+    <i>do</i> doubt. I never wronged you in the least of things&mdash;never ... I
+    thank God for it. But 'self-deceived,' it was so easy for you to be:
+    see how on every side and day by day, men are&mdash;and women too&mdash;in this
+    sort of feelings. 'Self-deceived,' it was so possible for you to be,
+    and while I thought it possible, could I help thinking it <i>best</i> for
+    you that it should be so&mdash;and was it not right in me to persist in
+    thinking it possible? It was my reverence for you that made me
+    persist! What was <i>I</i> that I should think otherwise? I had been shut
+    up here too long face to face with my own spirit, not to know myself,
+    and, so, to have lost the common illusions of vanity. All the men I
+    had ever known could not make your stature among them. So it was not
+    distrust, but reverence rather. I sate by while the angel stirred the
+    water, and I called it <i>Miracle</i>. Do not blame me now, ... <i>my</i> angel!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nor say, that I 'do not lean' on you with all the weight of my 'past'
+    ... because I do! You cannot guess what you are to me&mdash;you cannot&mdash;it
+    is not possible:&mdash;and though I have said <i>that</i> before, I must say it
+    again ... for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between
+    dream and miracle, all of it&mdash;as if some dream of my earliest
+    brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to
+    steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light. <i>Can</i> it be,
+    I say to myself, that <i>you</i> feel for me <i>so</i>? can it be meant for me?
+    this from <i>you</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    If it is your 'right' that I should be gloomy at will with you, you
+    exercise it, I do think&mdash;for although I cannot promise to be very
+    sorrowful when you come, (how could that be?) yet from different
+    motives it seems to me that I have written to you quite superfluities
+    about my 'abomination of desolation,'&mdash;yes indeed, and blamed myself
+    afterwards. And now I must say this besides. When grief came upon
+    grief, I never was tempted to ask 'How have I deserved this of God,'
+    as sufferers sometimes do: I always felt that there must be cause
+    enough ... corruption enough, needing purification ... weakness
+    enough, needing strengthening ... <i>nothing</i> of the chastisement could
+    come to me without cause and need. But in this different hour, when
+    joy follows joy, and God makes me happy, as you say, <i>through</i> you ...
+    I cannot repress the ... 'How have I deserved <i>this</i> of Him?'&mdash;I know
+    I have not&mdash;I know I do not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for
+    you?&mdash;If so, it was well done,&mdash;dearest! They leave the ground fallow
+    before the wheat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Were you wrong in answering?' Surely not ... unless it is wrong to
+    show all this goodness ... and too much, it may be for <i>me</i>. When the
+    plants droop for drought and the copious showers fall suddenly, silver
+    upon silver, they die sometimes of the reverse of their adversities.
+    But no&mdash;<i>that</i>, even, shall not be a danger! And if I said 'Do not
+    answer,' I did not mean that I would not have a doubt removed&mdash;(having
+    <i>no</i> doubt!&mdash;) but I was simply unwilling to seem to be asking for
+    golden words ... going down the aisles with that large silken purse,
+    as <i>quêteuse</i>. Try to understand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Wednesday then!&mdash;George is invited to meet you on Thursday at Mr.
+    Kenyon's.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The <i>Examiner</i> speaks well, upon the whole, and with allowances ...
+    oh, that absurdity about metaphysics apart from poetry!&mdash;'Can such
+    things be' in one of the best reviews of the day? Mr. Kenyon was here
+    on Sunday and talking of the poems with real living tears in his eyes
+    and on his cheeks. But I will tell you. 'Luria' is to climb to the
+    place of a great work, I see. And if I write too long letters, is it
+    not because you spoil me, and because (being spoilt) I cannot help
+    it?&mdash;May God bless you always&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is the copy of Landor's verses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You know thoroughly, do you not, why I brought all those good-natured
+    letters, desperate praise and all? Not, <i>not</i> out of the least vanity
+    in the world&mdash;nor to help myself in your sight with such testimony:
+    would it seem very extravagant, on the contrary, if I said that
+    perhaps I laid them before your eyes in a real fit of compunction at
+    not being, in my heart, thankful enough for the evident motive of the
+    writers,&mdash;and so was determined to give them the 'last honours' if
+    not the first, and not make them miss <i>you</i> because, through my fault,
+    they had missed <i>me</i>? Does this sound too fantastical? Because it is
+    strictly true: the most laudatory of all, I <i>skimmed</i> once over with
+    my flesh <i>creeping</i>&mdash;it seemed such a death-struggle, that of good
+    nature over&mdash;well, it is fresh ingratitude of me, so here it shall
+    end.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am not ungrateful to <i>you</i>&mdash;but you must wait to know that:&mdash;I can
+    speak less than nothing with my living lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I mean to ask your brother how you are to-night ... so quietly!
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you, my dearest, and reward you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mrs. Shelley&mdash;with the 'Ricordi.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, Landor's praise is altogether a different gift; a gold vase
+    from King Hiram; beside he has plenty of conscious rejoicing in his
+    own riches, and is not left painfully poor by what he sends away.
+    <i>That</i> is the unpleasant point with some others&mdash;they spread you a
+    board and want to gird up their loins and wait on you there. Landor
+    says 'come up higher and let us sit and eat together.' Is it not that?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now&mdash;you are not to turn on me because the first is my proper feeling
+    to <i>you</i>, ... for poetry is not the thing given or taken between
+    us&mdash;it is heart and life and <i>my</i>self, not <i>mine</i>, I give&mdash;give? That
+    you glorify and change and, in returning then, give <i>me</i>!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 21, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thank you! and will you, if your sister made the copy of Landor's
+    verses for <i>me</i> as well as for you, thank <i>her</i> from me for another
+    kindness, ... not the second nor the third? For my own part, be sure
+    that if I did not fall on the right subtle interpretation about the
+    letters, at least I did not 'think it vain' of you! vain: when,
+    supposing you really to have been over-gratified by such letters, it
+    could have proved only an excess of humility!&mdash;But ... besides the
+    subtlety,&mdash;you meant to be kind to <i>me</i>, you know,&mdash;and I had a
+    pleasure and an interest in reading them&mdash;only that ... mind. Sir John
+    Hanmer's, I was half angry with! Now <i>is</i> he not cold?&mdash;and is it not
+    easy to see <i>why</i> he is forced to write his own scenes five times over
+    and over? He might have mentioned the 'Duchess' I think; and he a
+    poet! Mr. Chorley speaks some things very well&mdash;but what does he mean
+    about 'execution,' <i>en revanche</i>? but I liked his letter and his
+    candour in the last page of it. Will Mr. Warburton review you? does he
+    mean <i>that</i>? Now do let me see any other letters you receive. <i>May</i> I?
+    Of course Landor's 'dwells apart' from all: and besides the reason you
+    give for being gratified by it, it is well that one prophet should
+    open his mouth and prophesy and give his witness to the inspiration of
+    another. See what he says in the letter.... '<i>You may stand quite
+    alone if you will&mdash;and I think you will.' That</i> is a noble testimony
+    to a <i>truth</i>. And he discriminates&mdash;he understands and discerns&mdash;they
+    are not words thrown out into the air. The 'profusion of imagery
+    covering the depth of thought' is a true description. And, in the
+    verses, he lays his finger just on your characteristics&mdash;just on those
+    which, when you were only a poet to me, (only a poet: does it sound
+    irreverent? almost, I think!) which, when you were only a poet to me,
+    I used to study, characteristic by characteristic, and turn myself
+    round and round in despair of being ever able to approach, taking them
+    to be so essentially and intensely masculine that like effects were
+    unattainable, even in a lower degree, by any female hand. Did I not
+    tell you so once before? or oftener than once? And must not these
+    verses of Landor's be printed somewhere&mdash;in the <i>Examiner</i>? and again
+    in the <i>Athenæum</i>? if in the <i>Examiner</i>, certainly again in the
+    <i>Athenæum</i>&mdash;it would be a matter of course. Oh those verses: how they
+    have pleased me! It was an act worthy of him&mdash;and of <i>you</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    George has been properly 'indoctrinated,' and, we must hope, will do
+    credit to my instructions. Just now ... just as I was writing ... he
+    came in to say good-morning and good-night (he goes to chambers
+    earlier than I receive visitors generally), and to ask with a smile,
+    if I had 'a message for my friend' ... <i>that</i> was you ... and so he
+    was indoctrinated. He is good and true, honest and kind, but a little
+    over-grave and reasonable, as I and my sisters complain continually.
+    The great Law lime-kiln dries human souls all to one colour&mdash;and he is
+    an industrious reader among law books and knows a good deal about
+    them, I have heard from persons who can judge; but with a sacrifice of
+    impulsiveness and liberty of spirit, which <i>I</i> should regret for him
+    if he sate on the Woolsack even. Oh&mdash;that law! how I do detest it! I
+    hate it and think ill of it&mdash;I tell George so sometimes&mdash;and he is
+    good-natured and only thinks to himself (a little audibly now and
+    then) that I am a woman and talking nonsense. But the morals of it,
+    and the philosophy of it! And the manners of it! in which the whole
+    host of barristers looks down on the attorneys and the rest of the
+    world!&mdash;how long are these things to last!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Theodosia Garrow, I have seen face to face once or twice. She is very
+    clever&mdash;very accomplished&mdash;with talents and tastes of various kinds&mdash;a
+    musician and linguist, in most modern languages I believe&mdash;and a
+    writer of fluent graceful melodious verses, ... you cannot say any
+    more. At least <i>I</i> cannot&mdash;and though I have not seen this last poem
+    in the 'Book of Beauty,' I have no more trust ready for it than for
+    its predecessors, of which Mr. Landor said as much. It is the personal
+    feeling which speaks in him, I fancy&mdash;simply the personal
+    feeling&mdash;and, <i>that</i> being the case, it does not spoil the
+    discriminating appreciation on the other page of this letter. I might
+    have the modesty to admit besides that I may be wrong and he, right,
+    all through. But ... 'more intense than Sappho'!&mdash;more intense than
+    intensity itself!&mdash;to think of <i>that</i>!&mdash;Also the word 'poetry' has a
+    clear meaning to me, and all the fluency and facility and quick
+    ear-catching of a tune which one can find in the world, do not answer
+    to it&mdash;no.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How is the head? will you tell me? I have written all this without a
+    word of it, and yet ever since yesterday I have been uneasy, ... I
+    cannot help it. You see you are not better but worse. 'Since you were
+    in Italy'&mdash;Then is it England that disagrees with you? and is it
+    change away from England that you want? ... <i>require</i>, I mean. If
+    so&mdash;why what follows and ought to follow? You must not be ill
+    indeed&mdash;<i>that</i> is the first necessity. Tell me how you are, exactly
+    how you are; and remember to walk, and not to work too much&mdash;for my
+    sake&mdash;if you care for me&mdash;if it is not too bold of me to say so. I had
+    fancied you were looking better rather than otherwise: but those
+    sensations in the head are frightful and ought to be stopped by
+    whatever means; even by the worst, as they would seem to <i>me</i>.
+    Well&mdash;it was bad news to hear of the increase of pain; for the
+    amendment was a 'passing show' I fear, and not caused even by thoughts
+    of mine or it would have appeared before; while on the other side (the
+    sunny side of the way) I heard on that same yesterday, what made me
+    glad as good news, a whole gospel of good news, and from <i>you</i> too who
+    profess to say 'less than nothing,' and <i>that</i> was that '<i>the times
+    seemed longer to you</i>':&mdash;do you remember saying it? And it made me
+    glad ... happy&mdash;perhaps too glad and happy&mdash;and surprised: yes,
+    surprised!&mdash;for if you had told me (but you would not have told me) if
+    you had let me guess ... just the contrary, ... '<i>that the times
+    seemed shorter</i>,' ... why it would have seemed to <i>me</i> as natural as
+    nature&mdash;oh, believe me it would, and I could not have thought hardly
+    of you for it in the most secret or silent of my thoughts. How am I
+    to feel towards you, do you imagine, ... who have the world round you
+    and yet make me this to you? I never can tell you how, and you never
+    can know it without having my heart in you with all its experiences:
+    we measure by those weights. May God bless you! and save <i>me</i> from
+    being the cause to you of any harm or grief!... I choose it for <i>my</i>
+    blessing instead of another. What should I be if I could fail
+    willingly to you in the least thing? But I <i>never will</i>, and you know
+    it. I will not move, nor speak, nor breathe, so as willingly and
+    consciously to touch, with one shade of wrong, that precious deposit
+    of 'heart and life' ... which may yet be recalled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, so, may God bless you and your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Remember to say how you are.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I sent 'Pomfret'&mdash;and Shelley is returned, and the letters, in the
+    same parcel&mdash;but my letter goes by the post as you see. Is there
+    contrast enough between the two rival female personages of 'Pomfret.'
+    <i>I</i> fancy not. Helena should have been more 'demonstrative' than she
+    appeared in Italy, to secure the 'new modulation' with Walter. But you
+    will not think it a strong book, I am sure, with all the good and pure
+    intention of it. The best character ... most life-like ... as
+    conventional life goes ... seems to <i>me</i> 'Mr. Rose' ... beyond all
+    comparison&mdash;and the best point, the noiseless, unaffected manner in
+    which the acting out of the 'private judgment' in Pomfret himself is
+    made no heroic virtue but simply an integral part of the love of
+    truth. As to Grace she is too good to be interesting, I am afraid&mdash;and
+    people say of her more than she expresses&mdash;and as to 'generosity,' she
+    could not do otherwise in the last scenes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I will not tell you the story after all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the beginning of this letter I meant to write just one page; but my
+    generosity is like Grace's, and could not help itself. There were the
+    letters to write of, and the verses! and then, you know, 'femme qui
+    parle' never has done. <i>Let</i> me hear! and I will be as brisk as a
+    monument next time for variety.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How good and kind to send me these books! (The letter I say nothing
+    of, according to convention: if I wrote down 'best and kindest' ...
+    oh, what poorest words!) I shall tell you all about 'Pomfret,' be
+    sure. Chorley talked of it, as we walked homewards together last
+    night,&mdash;modestly and well, and spoke of having given away two copies
+    only ... to his mother one, and the other to&mdash;Miss Barrett, and 'she
+    seemed interested in the life of it, entered into his purpose in it,'
+    and I listened to it all, loving Chorley for his loveability which is
+    considerable at other times, and saying to myself what might run
+    better in the child's couplet&mdash;'Not more than others I deserve, Though
+    God has given me more'!&mdash;Given me the letter which expresses surprise
+    that I shall feel these blanks between the days when I see you longer
+    and longer! So am <i>I</i> surprised&mdash;that I should have mentioned so
+    obvious a matter at all; or leave unmentioned a hundred others its
+    correlatives which I cannot conceive you to be ignorant of, you! When
+    I spread out my riches before me, and think <i>what</i> the hour and more
+    means that you endow one with, I <i>do</i>&mdash;not to say <i>could</i>&mdash;I <i>do</i> form
+    resolutions, and say to myself&mdash;'If next time I am bidden stay away a
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">fortnight</span>, I will not reply by a word beyond the grateful assent.' I
+    <i>do</i>, God knows, lay up in my heart these priceless treasures,&mdash;shall
+    I tell you? I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights,
+    or fancies, or feelings; in my last travel I put down on a slip of
+    paper a few dates, that I might remember in England, on such a day I
+    was on Vesuvius, in Pompeii, at Shelley's grave; all that should be
+    kept in memory is, with <i>me</i>, best left to the brain's own process.
+    But I have, from the first, recorded the date and the duration of
+    every visit to you; the numbers of minutes you have given me ... and I
+    put them together till they make ... nearly two days now;
+    four-and-twenty-hour-long-days, that I have been <i>by you</i>&mdash;and I enter
+    the room determining to get up and go sooner ... and I go away into
+    the light street repenting that I went so soon by I don't know how
+    many minutes&mdash;for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an
+    earnest desiring to include you in myself, if that might be; to feel
+    you in my very heart and hold you there for ever, through all chance
+    and earthly changes!
+</p>
+<p>
+    There, I had better leave off; the words!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was very glad to find myself with your brother yesterday; I like him
+    very much and mean to get a friend in him&mdash;(to supply the loss of my
+    friend ... Miss Barrett&mdash;which is gone, the friendship, so gone!) But
+    I did not ask after you because I heard Moxon do it. Now of Landor's
+    verses: I got a note from Forster yesterday telling me that he, too,
+    had received a copy ... so that there is no injunction to be secret.
+    So I got a copy for dear Mr. Kenyon, and, lo! what comes! I send the
+    note to make you smile! I shall reply that I felt in duty bound to
+    apprise you; as I did. You will observe that I go to that too facile
+    gate of his on Tuesday, <i>my day</i> ... from your house directly. The
+    worst is that I have got entangled with invitations already, and must
+    go out again, <i>hating</i> it, to more than one place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am <i>very</i> well&mdash;quite well; yes, dearest! The pain is quite gone;
+    and the inconvenience, hard on its trace. You will write to me again,
+    will you not? And be as brief as your heart lets you, to me who hoard
+    up your words and get remote and imperfect ideas of what ... shall it
+    be written?... anger at you could mean, when I see a line blotted out;
+    a <i>second-thoughted</i> finger-tip rapidly put forth upon one of my gold
+    pieces!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I rather think if Warburton reviews me it will be in the <i>Quarterly</i>,
+    which I know he writes for. Hanmer is a very sculpturesque passionless
+    high-minded and amiable man ... this coldness, as you see it, is part
+    of him. I like his poems, I think, better than you&mdash;'the Sonnets,' do
+    you know them? Not 'Fra Cipolla.' See what is here, since you will not
+    let me have only you to look at&mdash;this is Landor's first
+    opinion&mdash;expressed to Forster&mdash;see the date! and last of all, see me
+    and know me, beloved! May God bless you!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon came yesterday&mdash;and do you know when he took out those
+    verses and spoke his preface and I understood what was to follow, I
+    had a temptation from my familiar Devil not to say I had read them
+    before&mdash;I had the temptation strong and clear. For he (Mr. K.) told me
+    that your sister let him see them&mdash;.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But no&mdash;My 'vade retro' prevailed, and I spoke the truth and shamed
+    the devil and surprised Mr. Kenyon besides, as I could observe. Not an
+    observation did he make till he was just going away half an hour
+    afterwards, and then he said rather dryly ... 'And now may I ask how
+    long ago it was when you first read these verses?&mdash;was it a fortnight
+    ago?' It was better, I think, that I should not have made a mystery of
+    such a simple thing, ... and yet I felt half vexed with myself and
+    with him besides. But the verses,&mdash;how he praised them! more than I
+    thought of doing ... as verses&mdash;though there is beauty and music and
+    all that ought to be. Do you see clearly now that the latter lines
+    refer to the combination in you,&mdash;the qualities over and above those
+    held in common with Chaucer? And I have heard this morning from two or
+    three of the early readers of the <i>Chronicle</i> (I never care to see it
+    till the evening) that the verses are there&mdash;so that my wishes have
+    fulfilled themselves <i>there</i> at least&mdash;strangely, for wishes of mine
+    ... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of
+    dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and
+    how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours <i>then</i> ... <i>written then</i>,
+    I mean ... or written <i>now</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon told me that you were to dine with him on Tuesday, and I
+    took for granted, at first hearing, that you would come on Wednesday
+    perhaps to me&mdash;and afterwards I saw the possibility of the two ends
+    being joined without much difficulty. Still, I was not sure, before
+    your letter came, how it might be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That you really are better is the best news of all&mdash;thank you for
+    telling me. It will be wise not to go out <i>too</i> much&mdash;'aequam servare
+    mentem' as Landor quotes, ... in this as in the rest. Perhaps that
+    worst pain was a sort of crisis ... the sharp turn of the road about
+    to end ... oh, I do trust it may be so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. K. wrote to Landor to the effect that it was not because he (Mr.
+    K.) held you in affection, nor because the verses expressed critically
+    the opinion entertained of you by all who could judge, nor because
+    they praised a book with which his own name was associated ... but for
+    the abstract beauty of those verses ... for <i>that</i> reason he could not
+    help naming them to Mr. Landor. All of which was repeated to me
+    yesterday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also I heard of you from George, who admired you&mdash;admired you ... as
+    if you were a chancellor in <i>posse</i>, a great lawyer in <i>esse</i>&mdash;and
+    then he thought you ... what he never could think a lawyer ...
+    '<i>unassuming</i>.' And <i>you</i> ... you are so kind! Only <i>that</i> makes me
+    think bitterly what I have thought before, but cannot write to-day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was good-natured of Mr. Chorley to send me a copy of his book, and
+    he sending so few&mdash;very! George who admires <i>you</i>, does not tolerate
+    Mr. Chorley ... (did I tell ever?) declares that the affectation is
+    'bad,' and that there is a dash of vulgarity ... which I positively
+    refuse to believe, and <i>should</i>, I fancy, though face to face with the
+    most vainglorious of waistcoats. How can there be vulgarity even of
+    manners, with so much mental refinement? I never could believe in
+    those combinations of contradictions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'An obvious matter,' you think! as obvious, as your 'green hill' ...
+    which I cannot see. For the rest ... my thought upon your 'great
+    <i>fact</i>' of the 'two days,' is quite different from yours ... for I
+    think directly, 'So little'! so dreadfully little! What shallow earth
+    for a deep root! What can be known of me in that time? 'So <i>there</i>, is
+    the only good, you see, that comes from making calculations on a slip
+    of paper! It is not and it cannot come to good.' I would rather look
+    at my seventy-five letters&mdash;there is room to breathe in them. And this
+    is my idea (<i>ecce</i>!) of monumental brevity&mdash;and <i>hic jacet</i> at last
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But a word to-night, my love&mdash;for my head aches a little,&mdash;I had to
+    write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit
+    and think of you and get well&mdash;but I must not quite lose the word I
+    counted on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, <i>that</i> way you will take my two days and turn them against me?
+    <i>Oh, you!</i> Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather,
+    that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, <i>they</i> had
+    been planted then&mdash;and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns
+    enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,&mdash;when the very rook,
+    say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to
+    be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do&mdash;I am not going
+    to prove what <i>may</i> be, when here it <i>is</i>, to my everlasting
+    happiness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;And 'I am kind'&mdash;there again! Do I not know what you mean by that?
+    Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and
+    take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my
+    protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you
+    admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to
+    give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you,
+    benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to
+    feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ...
+    but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do?
+    ... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you,
+    which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's
+    end,&mdash;should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the
+    real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and
+    affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness
+    does....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, I'll tell you what it <i>does</i> deserve, and what it shall get. Give
+    me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I
+    would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait&mdash;for your own sake,
+    not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for
+    your own sense of justice, and to <i>say</i>, so as my heart shall hear,
+    that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you&mdash;all
+    precious that you are&mdash;as may be given in a lock of your hair&mdash;I will
+    live and die with it, and with the memory of you&mdash;this <i>at</i> the
+    <i>worst</i>! If you give me what I beg,&mdash;shall I say next Tuesday ... when
+    I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think
+    you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and
+    remember me one day&mdash;when the power to deserve more may be greater ...
+    never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So
+    I can but pray, kissing your hand.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel,
+    for the love's sake that it grew from.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The <i>Chronicle</i> was through Moxon, I believe&mdash;Landor had sent the
+    verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I
+    never in my life less cared about people's praise or blame for myself,
+    and never more for its influence on <i>other people</i> than now&mdash;I would
+    stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you&mdash;yet not, after
+    all, at poor Chorley's expense whom your brother, I am sure,
+    unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my
+    own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I
+    corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother,
+    differently trained, looking different ways&mdash;and for some of the
+    peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good
+    reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For 'Vulgarity'&mdash;NO!
+    But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further
+    acquaintance ... and,&mdash;woe's me&mdash;will find that 'assumption's' pertest
+    self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr.
+    K.'s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped
+    onward far too readily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Good night, now. Am I not yours&mdash;are you not mine? And can that make
+    <i>you</i> happy too?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you once more and for ever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That scrap of Landor's being for no other eye than mine&mdash;I made the
+    foolish comment, that there was no blotting out&mdash;made it some four or
+    five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my
+    idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go&mdash;but there used
+    to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew
+    characters&mdash;the noble languages!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But what unlawful things have I said about 'kindness'? I did not mean
+    any harm&mdash;no, indeed! And as to thinking ... as to having ever
+    thought, that you could 'imitate' (can this word be 'imitate'?) an
+    unfelt feeling or a feeling unsupposed to be felt ... I may solemnly
+    assure you that I never, never did so. 'Get up'&mdash;'imitate'!! But it
+    was the contrary ... <i>all</i> the contrary! From the beginning, now <i>did</i>
+    I not believe you too much? Did I not believe you even in your
+    contradiction of yourself ... in your <i>yes</i> and <i>no</i> on the same
+    subject, ... and take the world to be turning round backwards and
+    myself to have been shut up here till I grew mad, ... rather than
+    disbelieve you either way? Well!&mdash;You know it as well as I can tell
+    you, and I will not, any more. If I have been 'wrong,' it was not <i>so</i>
+    ... nor indeed <i>then</i> ... it is not <i>so</i>, though it is <i>now</i>, perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Therefore ... but wait! I never gave away what you ask me to give
+    <i>you</i>, to a human being, except my nearest relatives and once or twice
+    or thrice to female friends, ... never, though reproached for it; and
+    it is just three weeks since I said last to an asker that I was 'too
+    great a prude for such a thing'! it was best to anticipate the
+    accusation!&mdash;And, prude or not, I could not&mdash;I never
+    could&mdash;<i>something</i> would not let me. And now ... what am I to do ...
+    'for my own sake and not yours?' Should you have it, or not? Why I
+    suppose ... <i>yes</i>. I suppose that 'for my own sense of justice and in
+    order to show that I was wrong' (which is wrong&mdash;you wrote a wrong
+    word there ... 'right,' you meant!) 'to show that I was <i>right</i> and am
+    no longer so,' ... I suppose you must have it, 'Oh, <i>You</i>,' ... who
+    have your way in everything! Which does not mean ... Oh, vous, qui
+    avez toujours raison&mdash;far from it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also ... which does not mean that I shall give you what you ask for,
+    <i>to-morrow</i>,&mdash;because I shall not&mdash;and one of my conditions is (with
+    others to follow) that <i>not a word be said to-morrow</i>, you understand.
+    Some day I will send it perhaps ... as you <i>knew</i> I should ... ah, as
+    you knew I should ... notwithstanding that 'getting up' ... that
+    'imitation' ... of humility: as you knew <i>too</i> well I should!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Only I will not teaze you as I might perhaps; and now that your
+    headache has begun again&mdash;the headache again: the worse than headache!
+    See what good my wishes do! And try to understand that if I speak of
+    my being 'wrong' now in relation to you ... of my being right before,
+    and wrong now, ... I mean wrong for your sake, and not for mine ...
+    wrong in letting you come out into the desert here to me, you whose
+    place is by the waters of Damascus. But I need not tell you over
+    again&mdash;you <i>know</i>. May God bless you till to-morrow and past it for
+    ever. Mr. Kenyon brought me your note yesterday to read about the
+    'order in the button-hole'&mdash;ah!&mdash;or 'oh, <i>you</i>,' may I not re-echo? It
+    enrages me to think of Mr. Forster; publishing too as he does, at a
+    moment, the very sweepings of Landor's desk! Is the motive of the
+    reticence to be looked for somewhere among the cinders?&mdash;Too bad it
+    is. So, till to-morrow! and you shall not be 'kind' any more.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But how, 'a <i>foolish</i> comment'? Good and true rather! And I admired
+    the <i>writing</i><a href="#note-21"><b>21</b></a> ... worthy of the reeds of Jordan!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How are you? and Miss Bayley's visit yesterday, and Mr. K.'s
+    to-day&mdash;(He told me he should see you this morning&mdash;and <i>I</i> shall pass
+    close by, having to be in town and near you,&mdash;but only the thought
+    will reach you and be with you&mdash;) tell me all this, dearest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How kind Mr. Kenyon was last night and the day before! He neither
+    wonders nor is much vexed, I dare believe&mdash;and I write now these few
+    words to say so&mdash;My heart is set on next Thursday, remember ... and
+    the prize of Saturday! Oh, dearest, believe for truth's sake, that I
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">would</span> most frankly own to any fault, any imperfection in the beginning
+    of my love of you; in the pride and security of this present stage it
+    has reached&mdash;I <i>would</i> gladly learn, by the full lights now, what an
+    insufficient glimmer it grew from, ... but there <i>never has been
+    change</i>, only development and increased knowledge and strengthened
+    feeling&mdash;I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and
+    become yours for ever. God bless you, and make me thankful!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you <i>will</i> give me <i>that</i>? What shall save me from wreck: but
+    truly? How must I feel to you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now you must not blame me&mdash;you must not. To make a promise is one
+    thing, and to keep it, quite another: and the conclusion you see 'as
+    from a tower.' Suppose I had an oath in heaven somewhere ... near to
+    'coma Berenices,' ... never to give you what you ask for! ... would
+    not such an oath be stronger than a mere half promise such as I sent
+    you a few hours ago? Admit that it would&mdash;and that I am not to blame
+    for saying now ... (listen!) that I <i>never can</i> nor <i>will give you
+    this thing</i>;&mdash;only that I will, if you please, exchange it for another
+    thing&mdash;you understand. <i>I</i> too will avoid being 'assuming'; I will not
+    pretend to be generous, no, nor 'kind.' It shall be pure merchandise
+    or nothing at all. Therefore determine!&mdash;remembering always how our
+    'ars poetica,' after Horace, recommends 'dare et petere
+    vicissim'&mdash;which is making a clatter of pedantry to take advantage of
+    the noise ... because perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say this to
+    you, and perhaps I <i>am</i>! ... yet say it none the less.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And ... less lightly ... if you have right and reason on your side,
+    may I not have a little on mine too? And shall I not care, do you
+    think?... Think!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then there is another reason for me, entirely mine. You have come to
+    me as a dream comes, as the best dreams come ... dearest&mdash;and so there
+    is need to me of 'a sign' to know the difference between dream and
+    vision&mdash;and <i>that</i> is my completest reason, my own reason&mdash;you have
+    none like it; none. A ticket to know the horn-gate from the ivory, ...
+    ought I not to have it? Therefore send it to me before I send you
+    anything, and if possible by that Lewisham post which was the most
+    frequent bringer of your letters until these last few came, and which
+    reaches me at eight in the evening when all the world is at dinner and
+    my solitude most certain. Everything is so still then, that I have
+    heard the footsteps of a letter of yours ten doors off ... or more,
+    perhaps. Now beware of imagining from this which I say, that there is
+    a strict police for my correspondence ... (it is not so&mdash;) nor that I
+    do not like hearing from you at any and every hour: it <i>is</i> so. Only I
+    would make the smoothest and sweetest of roads for ... and you
+    <i>understand</i>, and do not <i>imagine</i> beyond.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Tuesday evening.</i>&mdash;What is written is written, ... all the above: and
+    it is forbidden to me to write a word of what I could write down here
+    ... forbidden for good reasons. So I am silent on <i>conditions</i> ...
+    those being ... first ... that you never do such things again ... no,
+    you must not and shall not.... I <i>will not let it be</i>: and secondly,
+    that you try to hear the unspoken words, and understand how your gift
+    will remain with me while <i>I</i> remain ... they need not be said&mdash;just
+    as <i>it</i> need not have been so beautiful, for that. The beauty drops
+    'full fathom five' into the deep thought which covers it. So I study
+    my Machiavelli to contrive the possibility of wearing it, without
+    being put to the question violently by all the curiosity of all my
+    brothers;&mdash;the questions 'how' ... 'what' ... 'why' ... put round and
+    edgeways. They are famous, some of them, for asking questions. I say
+    to them&mdash;'well: how many more questions?' And now ... for <i>me</i>&mdash;<i>have</i>
+    I said a word?&mdash;<i>have</i> I not been obedient? And by rights and in
+    justice, there should have been a reproach ... if there could!
+    Because, friendship or more than friendship, Pisa or no Pisa, it was
+    unnecessary altogether from you to me ... but I have done, and you
+    shall not be teazed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Wednesday.</i>&mdash;Only ... I persist in the view of the <i>other</i> question.
+    This will not do for the '<i>sign</i>,' ... this, which, so far from being
+    qualified for disproving a dream, is the beautiful image of a dream in
+    itself ... <i>so</i> beautiful: and with the very shut eyelids, and the
+    "little folding of the hands to sleep." You see at a glance it will
+    not do. And so&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as one might be interrupted while telling a fairy-tale, ... in
+    the midst of the "and so's" ... just <i>so</i>, I have been interrupted by
+    the coming in of Miss Bayley, and here she has been sitting for nearly
+    two hours, from twelve to two nearly, and I like her, do you know. Not
+    only she talks well, which was only a thing to expect, but she seems
+    to <i>feel</i> ... to have great sensibility&mdash;<i>and</i> her kindness to me ...
+    kindness of manner and words and expression, all together ... quite
+    touched me.&mdash;I did not think of her being so loveable a person. Yet it
+    was kind and generous, her proposition about Italy; (did I tell you
+    how she made it to me through Mr. Kenyon long ago&mdash;when I was a mere
+    stranger to her?) the proposition to go there with me herself. It was
+    quite a grave, earnest proposal of hers&mdash;which was one of the reasons
+    why I could not even <i>wish</i> not to see her to-day. Because you see, it
+    was a tremendous degree of experimental generosity, to think of going
+    to Italy by sea with an invalid stranger, "seule <i>à</i> seule." And she
+    was wholly in earnest, wholly. Is there not good in the world after
+    all?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tell me how you are, for I am not at ease about you&mdash;You were not well
+    even yesterday, I thought. If this goes on ... but it mustn't go
+    on&mdash;oh, it must not. May God bless us more!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do not fancy, in the meantime, that you stay here 'too long' for any
+    observation that can be made. In the first place there is nobody to
+    'observe'&mdash;everybody is out till seven, except the one or two who will
+    not observe if I tell them not. My sisters are glad when you come,
+    because it is a gladness of mine, ... they observe. I have a great
+    deal of liberty, to have so many chains; we all have, in this house:
+    and though the liberty has melancholy motives, it saves some daily
+    torment, and <i>I</i> do not complain of it for one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you! Do not forget me. Say how you are. What good can I
+    do you with all my thoughts, when you keep unwell? See!&mdash;Facts are
+    against fancies. As when I would not have the lamp lighted yesterday
+    because it seemed to make it later, and you proved directly that it
+    would not make it <i>earlier</i>, by getting up and going away!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wholly and ever your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, November 28, 1845.]<b><a href="#note-22">22</a></b>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Take it, dearest; what I am forced to think you mean&mdash;and take <i>no
+    more</i> with it&mdash;for I gave all to give long ago&mdash;I am all yours&mdash;and
+    now, <i>mine</i>; give me <i>mine</i> to be happy with!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will have received my note of yesterday.&mdash;I am glad you are
+    satisfied with Miss Bayley, whom I, too, thank ... that is, sympathize
+    with, ... (not wonder at, though)&mdash;for her intention.... Well, may it
+    all be for best&mdash;here or at Pisa, you are my blessing and life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    ... How all considerate you are, <i>you</i> that are the kind, kind one!
+    The post arrangement I will remember&mdash;to-day, for instance, will this
+    reach you at 8? I shall be with you then, in thought. 'Forget
+    you!'&mdash;<i>What</i> does that mean, dearest?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I might have stayed longer and you let me go. What does <i>that</i>
+    mean, also tell me? Why, I make up my mind to go, always, like a man,
+    and praise myself as I get through it&mdash;as when one plunges into the
+    cold water&mdash;<SPAN class="sc-ex">only</span> ... ah, <i>that</i> too is no more a merit than any other
+    thing I do ... there is the reward, the last and best! Or is it the
+    'lure'?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I would not be ashamed of my soul if it might be shown you,&mdash;it is
+    wholly grateful, conscious of you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But another time, do not let me wrong myself <i>so</i>! Say, 'one minute
+    more.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Monday?&mdash;I am <i>much</i> better&mdash;and, having got free from an
+    engagement for Saturday, shall stay quietly here and think the post
+    never intending to come&mdash;for you will not let me wait longer?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I dare write down a grievance of my heart, and not offend you?
+    Yes, trusting in the right of my love&mdash;you tell me, sweet, here in the
+    letter, 'I do not look so well'&mdash;and sometimes, I 'look better' ...
+    <i>how do you know</i>? When I first saw you&mdash;<i>I saw your eyes</i>&mdash;since
+    then, <i>you</i>, it should appear, see mine&mdash;but I only <i>know</i> yours are
+    there, and have to use that memory as if one carried dried flowers
+    about when fairly inside the garden-enclosure. And while I resolve,
+    and hesitate, and resolve again to complain of this&mdash;(kissing your
+    foot ... not boldly complaining, nor rudely)&mdash;while I have this on my
+    mind, on my heart, ever since that May morning ... can it be?
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;No, nothing <i>can be</i> wrong now&mdash;you will never call me 'kind' again,
+    in that sense, you promise! Nor think 'bitterly' of my kindness, that
+    word!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I <i>see</i> you on Monday?
+</p>
+<p>
+    God bless you my dearest&mdash;I see her now&mdash;and <i>here</i> and <i>now</i> the eyes
+    open, wide <i>enough</i>, and I will kiss them&mdash;<i>how</i> gratefully!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 1, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    It comes at eight o'clock&mdash;the post says eight ... <i>I</i> say nearer half
+    past eight ... it <i>comes</i>&mdash;and I thank you, thank you, as I can. Do
+    you remember the purple lock of a king on which hung the fate of a
+    city? <i>I</i> do! And I need not in conscience&mdash;because this one here did
+    not come to me by treason&mdash;'ego et rex meus,' on the contrary, do
+    fairly give and take.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I meant at first only to send you what is in the ring ... which, by
+    the way, will not fit you I know&mdash;(not certainly in the finger which
+    it was meant for ...) as it would not Napoleon before you&mdash;but can
+    easily be altered to the right size.... I meant at first to send you
+    only what was in the ring: but your fashion is best so you shall have
+    it both ways. Now don't say a word on Monday ... nor at all. As for
+    the ring, recollect that I am forced to feel blindfold into the outer
+    world, and take what is nearest ... by chance, not choice ... or it
+    might have been better&mdash;a little better&mdash;perhaps. The <i>best</i> of it is
+    that it's the colour of your blue flowers. Now you will not say a
+    word&mdash;I trust to you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is enough that you should have said these others, I think. Now <i>is</i>
+    it just of you? isn't it hard upon me? And if the charge is true,
+    whose fault is it, pray? I have been ashamed and vexed with myself
+    fifty times for being so like a little girl, ... for seeming to have
+    'affectations'; and all in vain: 'it was stronger than I,' as the
+    French say. And for <i>you</i> to complain! As if Haroun Alraschid after
+    cutting off a head, should complain of the want of an
+    obeisance!&mdash;Well!&mdash;I smile notwithstanding. Nobody can help
+    smiling&mdash;both for my foolishness which is great, I confess, though
+    somewhat exaggerated in your statement&mdash;(because if it was quite as
+    bad as you say, you know, I never should have <i>seen you</i> ... and <i>I
+    have</i>!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very
+    preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you
+    know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No&mdash;it has not
+    been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with
+    both eyes wide open&mdash;only that by a supernatural influence they won't
+    stay open with <i>you</i> as they are used to do with other people ... so
+    now I tell you. And for the rest I promise nothing at all&mdash;as how can
+    I, when it is quite beyond my control&mdash;and you have not improved my
+    capabilities ... do you think you have? Why what nonsense we have come
+    to&mdash;we, who ought to be 'talking Greek!' said Mr. Kenyon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes&mdash;he came and talked of you, and told me how you had been speaking
+    of ... me; and I have been thinking how I should have been proud of it
+    a year ago, and how I could half scold you for it now. Ah yes&mdash;and Mr.
+    Kenyon told me that you had spoken exaggerations&mdash;such
+    exaggerations!&mdash;Now should there not be some scolding ... some?
+</p>
+<p>
+    But how did you expect Mr. Kenyon to 'wonder' at <i>you</i>, or be 'vexed'
+    with <i>you</i>? That would have been strange surely. You are and always
+    have been a chief favourite in that quarter ... appreciated, praised,
+    loved, I think.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I write, a letter from America is put into my hands, and having
+    read it through with shame and confusion of face ... not able to help
+    a smile though notwithstanding, ... I send it to you to show how you
+    have made me behave!&mdash;to say nothing of my other offences to the kind
+    people at Boston&mdash;and to a stray gentleman in Philadelphia who is to
+    perform a pilgrimage next year, he says, ... to visit the Holy Land
+    and your E.B.B. I was naughty enough to take <i>that</i> letter to be a
+    circular ... for the address of various 'Europ<i>a</i>ians.' In any case
+    ... just see how I have behaved! and if it has not been worse than ...
+    not opening one's eyes!&mdash;Judge. Really and gravely I am ashamed&mdash;I
+    mean as to Mr. Mathews, who has been an earnest, kind friend to
+    me&mdash;and I do mean to behave better. I say <i>that</i> to prevent your
+    scolding, you know. And think of Mr. Poe, with that great Roman
+    justice of his (if not rather American!), dedicating a book to one and
+    abusing one in the preface of the same. He wrote a review of me in
+    just that spirit&mdash;the two extremes of laudation and reprehension,
+    folded in on one another. You would have thought that it had been
+    written by a friend and foe, each stark mad with love and hate, and
+    writing the alternate paragraphs&mdash;a most curious production indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And here I shall end. I have been waiting ... waiting for what does
+    not come ... the ring ... sent to have the hair put in; but it won't
+    come (now) until too late for the post, and you must hear from me
+    before Monday ... you ought to have heard to-day. It has not been my
+    fault&mdash;I have waited. Oh these people&mdash;who won't remember that it is
+    possible to be out of patience! So I send you my letter now ... and
+    what is in the paper now ... and the rest, you shall have after
+    Monday. And you <i>will not say a word</i> ... not then ... not at all!&mdash;I
+    trust you. And may God bless you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If ever you care less for me&mdash;I do not say it in distrust of you ... I
+    trust you wholly&mdash;but you are a man, and free to care less, ... and if
+    ever you <i>do</i> ... why in that case you will destroy, burn, ... do all
+    but send back ... enough is said for you to understand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. You are <i>best</i> to me&mdash;best ... as I see ... in the
+    world&mdash;and so, dearest aright to
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Finished on Saturday evening. Oh&mdash;this thread of silk&mdash;And to post!!
+    After all you must wait till Tuesday. I have no silk within reach and
+    shall miss the post. Do forgive me.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Evening.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a
+    few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ...
+    and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk
+    if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks
+    meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ...
+    fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of
+    my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper
+    fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after
+    unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!)&mdash;and now I have
+    silk to tie fast with ... to tie a 'nodus' ... 'dignus' of the
+    celestial interposition&mdash;and a new packet shall be ready to go to you
+    directly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me
+    this week, was forgotten, (not by <i>me</i>) forgotten, and detained, so,
+    from the post&mdash;a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to
+    me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to
+    stay. In the first place you were keeping your father 'in a maze,' as
+    you said yourself&mdash;and then, even without that, I never know what
+    o'clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a
+    dream&mdash;which I do&mdash;time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go
+    forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I
+    leave it in the drawer&mdash;and the clocks all round strike out of
+    hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another
+    in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Till Monday then! I send the 'Ricordi' to take care of the rest ... of
+    mine. It is a touching story&mdash;and there is an impracticable nobleness
+    from end to end in the spirit of it. How <i>slow</i> (to the ear and mind)
+    that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet
+    Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli's prose can walk and strike
+    as well as float and faint.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now you will not say a word. My excuse is that you had nothing to
+    remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how
+    much too much!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">If I could be too much</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 2, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My
+    love&mdash;no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to
+    the end of it the vibration now struck will extend&mdash;I will live and
+    die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair&mdash;comforting me,
+    blessing me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me write to-morrow&mdash;when I think on all you have been and are to
+    me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper
+    words that come seem vainer than ever&mdash;To-morrow I will write.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, my own, my precious&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am all your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger
+    <i>you</i> intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one
+    is less liable to observation and comment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say
+    anything?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a
+    good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it
+    well done, or badly&mdash;there are you, leading me up and onward, in his
+    review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go
+    together&mdash;be read together. In itself this is nothing to <i>you</i>, dear
+    poet&mdash;but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has
+    pleased me very much&mdash;<i>does</i> it not please you?&mdash;I thought I was to
+    figure in that cold <i>Quarterly</i> all by myself, (for he writes for
+    it)&mdash;but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has
+    no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are
+    pleased!
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no writing yesterday for me&mdash;nor will there be much to-day.
+    In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what
+    you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise&mdash;at others, I
+    rest on you, and feel <i>all</i> well, all <i>best</i> ... now, for one
+    instance, even that phrase of the <i>possibility</i> 'and what is to
+    follow,'&mdash;even <i>that</i> I cannot except against&mdash;I am happy, contented;
+    too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just
+    sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping
+    of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'Yes&mdash;I do promise
+    you'&mdash;yet it is some solace to&mdash;No&mdash;I will <i>not</i> even couple the
+    promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they
+    care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts:
+    yet I feel so sure of <i>you</i>, so safe and confident in you! If any of
+    it had been <i>my</i> work, my own ... distrust and foreboding had pursued
+    me from the beginning; but all is <i>yours</i>&mdash;you crust me round with
+    gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you
+    transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first
+    instance, but the choice once made!... So I rest on you, for life, for
+    death, beloved&mdash;beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct
+    miraculous gift of God to me&mdash;that is my solemn belief; may I be
+    thankful!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am anxious to hear from you ... when am I not?&mdash;but <i>not</i> before the
+    American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the
+    visitor on Monday&mdash;and if &amp;c. <i>what</i> did he remark?&mdash;And what is
+    right or wrong with Saturday&mdash;is it to be mine?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, dearest&mdash;now and for ever&mdash;words cannot say how much I am
+    your own.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    No Mr. Kenyon after all&mdash;not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at
+    the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter
+    from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come&mdash;but she
+    won't come on Saturday.... I shall 'provide'&mdash;she may as well (and
+    better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr.
+    Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to
+    dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up
+    suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter
+    <i>our</i> arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by,
+    remember, and there's a Saturday to follow Monday ... and I should
+    understand at a word, or apart from a word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as <i>you</i> understand how to 'take me with guile,' when you tell me
+    that anything in me can have any part in making you happy ... you, who
+    can say such words and call them 'vain words.' Ah, well! If I only
+    knew certainly, ... more certainly than the thing may be known by
+    either me or you, ... that nothing in me could have any part in making
+    you <i>un</i>happy, ... ah, would it not be enough ... <i>that</i> knowledge ...
+    to content me, to overjoy me? but <i>that</i> lies too high and out of
+    reach, you see, and one can't hope to get at it except by the ladder
+    Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate
+    of Heaven afterwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Wednesday.</i>&mdash;In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and
+    am promised another to-day. How ... I was going to say 'kind' and
+    pull down the thunders ... how <i>un</i>kind ... will <i>that</i> do? ... how
+    good you are to me&mdash;how dear you must be! Dear&mdash;dearest&mdash;if I feel
+    that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain
+    knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman,
+    can I help it? no&mdash;certainly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand
+    you, ... comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and
+    combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better
+    otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the ... I mean that to
+    understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own
+    favour ... mine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold,
+    you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by
+    the roadside <span title="apedilos">&alpha;&pi;&epsilon;&delta;&iota;&lambda;&omicron;&sigmaf;</span> like the startled sea nymph in
+    Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a
+    certain tract of ground&mdash;never takes a step there unled! and never (I
+    write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of
+    your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the
+    possibility of your caring <i>more</i> for me ... never! That you should
+    <i>continue</i> to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction.
+    So, when you spoke of a 'strengthened feeling,' judge how I listened
+    with my heart&mdash;judge!
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Luria' is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the
+    world; that, I foresee.... And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which
+    grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its
+    own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with
+    Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more
+    pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be
+    chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the
+    versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a
+    few lines here and there. But I shall write more of 'Luria,'&mdash;and
+    well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly.
+    Yes,&mdash;I thought of the greater safety from 'comment'&mdash;it is best in
+    every way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to
+    me,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why of course I am pleased&mdash;I should have been pleased last year, for
+    the vanity's sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as
+    that vice of vanity goes ... shall I tell you?... I would infinitely
+    prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude,
+    and supremacy, apart from me or any one else, ... this, as far as my
+    vice of vanity goes, ... and because, vainer I am of my poet than of
+    my poems ... <i>pour cause</i>. But since, according to the <i>Quarterly</i>
+    régime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am
+    glad, pleased, that it should be with myself:&mdash;and since I was to be
+    there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with
+    <i>you</i>,&mdash;oh, of course I am pleased!&mdash;I am pleased that the 'names
+    should be read together' as you say, ... and am happily safe from the
+    apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about 'my leading <i>you</i>'
+    &amp;c. ... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea's
+    occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I
+    'find fault' with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an
+    ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!)
+    <i>can</i> it be 'to your surprise?' <i>can</i> it? Ought you to say such
+    things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and
+    inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The
+    qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what
+    you take it to be&mdash;we had better not examine it too nearly. You never
+    will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those
+    words&mdash;and not any in their likeness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also ... nothing is <i>my</i> work ... if you please! What an omen you take
+    in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it&mdash;for
+    everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God's work and
+    yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope&mdash;and indeed I exclaim to
+    myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems
+    to me (as I say over and over ... I say it to my own thoughts
+    oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, ...
+    the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and
+    only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it
+    was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and
+    took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before
+    he went. I answered with my usual 'no,' like a wild Indian&mdash;whereupon
+    he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation ...
+    'mortification' was one of the words used, I remember, ... that I grew
+    ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or
+    six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well!&mdash;he never came.
+    Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and
+    had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and
+    quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me
+    for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the
+    punishment effective, ... for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt
+    my danger to be passed&mdash;and now of course, I have no scruples.... I
+    may be as capricious as I please, ... may I not? Not that I ask you.
+    It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with
+    Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world
+    with those two. Only the miracle is that <i>you</i> should be behind the
+    enclosure&mdash;within it ... and so!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>That</i> is <i>my</i> side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder, ...
+    as <i>I</i> see it!&mdash;But there are greater things than these.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Speaking of the portrait of you in the 'Spirit of the Age' ... which
+    is not like ... no!&mdash;which has not your character, in a line of it ...
+    something in just the forehead and eyes and hair, ... but even <i>that</i>,
+    thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you...!
+    speaking of that portrait ... shall I tell you?&mdash;Mr. Horne had the
+    goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads
+    which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed
+    after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau's
+    ... because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some
+    kind letters&mdash;and for the rest, Wordsworth's, Carlyle's, Tennyson's
+    and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of
+    shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed
+    at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ...
+    (there is the nail, under Wordsworth&mdash;) and then pulled down
+    Tennyson's in a fit of justice,&mdash;because I would not have his hung up
+    and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the
+    drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find
+    and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my
+    'absurdity' to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being
+    obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening
+    the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like&mdash;and I
+    knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, 'Rather
+    like!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not
+    come: when he told me that he could not see me 'for a week or a
+    fortnight,' he meant it, I suppose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America&mdash;the
+    letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not so much a look of 'ferocity,' ... as you say, ... in that
+    head, as of <i>expression by intention</i>. Several people have said of it
+    what nobody would say of you ... 'How affected-looking.' Which is too
+    strong&mdash;but it is not like you, in any way, and there's the truth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So until Saturday. I read 'Luria' and feel the life in him. But <i>walk</i>
+    and do not <i>work</i>! do you?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wholly your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, I did see your brother last night ... and very wisely neither
+    spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that 'I hoped
+    you were well'&mdash;from the sudden feeling that I must say <i>something</i> of
+    you&mdash;not pretend indifference about you <i>now</i> ... and from the
+    impossibility of saying the <i>full</i> of what I might; because other
+    people were by&mdash;and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied
+    the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So,
+    you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But
+    it all hangs together; speaking of you,&mdash;to you,&mdash;writing to you&mdash;all
+    is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to
+    say and to write&mdash;or is it not the natural consequence? If these
+    vehicles of feelings sufficed&mdash;<i>there</i> would be the end!&mdash;And that my
+    feeling for you should end!... For the rest, the headache which kept
+    away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is
+    unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable
+    endeavours, all my power of face went <i>à qui de droit</i>&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did your brother tell you ... yes, I think ... of the portentous book,
+    lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on
+    the appearance of 'Ion'?&mdash;But how under the B's in the Index came
+    'Miss Barrett' and, woe's me, 'R.B.'! I don't know when I have had so
+    ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly <i>forgotten</i> letter, in the
+    as thoroughly disused hand-writing, in the ... I fear ... still as
+    completely obsolete feeling&mdash;no, not so bad as that&mdash;but at first
+    there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend&mdash;it is
+    truly not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold
+    them up clean and dry as if they came <i>so</i> from all you now see, which
+    is nothing at all ... like the Chinese Air-plant! Do you understand
+    this? And surely 'Ion' is a <i>very</i>, very beautiful and noble
+    conception, and finely executed,&mdash;a beautiful work&mdash;what has come
+    after, has lowered it down by grade after grade ... it don't stand
+    apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is <i>built up</i> to by other
+    attempts; but the great difference is in myself. Another maker of
+    another 'Ion,' finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not
+    find <i>that me</i>, so to be behaved to, so to be honoured&mdash;though he
+    should have all the good will! Ten years ago!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And ten years hence!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Always understand that you do <i>not</i> take me as I was at the beginning
+    ... with a crowd of loves to give to <i>something</i> and so get rid of
+    their pain and burden. I have <i>known</i> what that ends in&mdash;a handful of
+    anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach
+    you its nature, as well as whole heaps&mdash;and I know what most of the
+    pleasures of this world are&mdash;so that I <i>can</i> be surer of myself, and
+    make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of
+    objects of admiration or ambition <i>yet</i> to become acquainted with. You
+    say, 'I am a man and may change'&mdash;I answer, yes&mdash;but, while I hold my
+    senses, only change for the <i>presumable</i> better ... not for the
+    <i>experienced worst</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is my Uncle's foot on the stair ... his knock hurried the last
+    sentence&mdash;here he is by me!&mdash;Understand what this would have led to,
+    how you would have been <i>proved logically</i> my own, best, extreme want,
+    my life's end&mdash;<SPAN class="sc-ex">yes</span>; dearest! Bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for
+    the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered
+    how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the
+    lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the
+    going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together,
+    which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose.
+    Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be
+    unnecessarily 'perplext in the extreme' where to spend the time before
+    ... <i>five</i>, ... shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I
+    can easily explain if an observation should be made ... only it will
+    not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the
+    head of the house, not until seven ... as I told you. George thought
+    it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd's yesterday, just to see the
+    author of 'Paracelsus' dance the Polka ... should I not tell you?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am vexed by another thing which he tells <i>me</i>&mdash;vexed, if amused a
+    little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the
+    'Autography'&mdash;now <i>isn't</i> it absurd? And for neither you nor George to
+    have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd
+    too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now,
+    I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately
+    repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when
+    I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr.
+    Serjeant Talfourd sent then his 'Ion' to <i>me</i>, he did it in mere
+    good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my
+    'Prometheus' at the moment, and of course caring no more for my
+    'opinion' than for the rest of me&mdash;and it was excessively bad taste in
+    me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I
+    had been competent to say it. Ah well!&mdash;you see how it is, and that I
+    am vexed <i>you</i> should have read it, ... as George says you did ... he
+    laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by
+    crying aloud against the editor of the 'Autography'! Surely such a
+    thing was never done before ... even by an author in the last stage of
+    a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of
+    conventional flatteries, ... lettered in so many volumes, bound in
+    green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one's own
+    particular private public,&mdash;is it not a miracle of vanity ... neither
+    more nor less?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity
+    ... <i>mine</i>!) to send Landor's verses to America ... yours&mdash;so they
+    will be in the American papers.... I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking
+    to him of your last number of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' and the verses
+    came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first
+    time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of
+    you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure
+    disinterestedness, ... purely because your name belonged to my country
+    and to her literature, ... and how I have a sort of reward at this
+    present, in being able to write what I please without anyone's saying
+    'it is a new fancy.' As for the Americans, they have 'a zeal without
+    knowledge' for poetry. There is more love for <i>verse</i> among them than
+    among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their
+    choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is
+    said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep
+    down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to
+    understand <i>you</i> sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the
+    critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort
+    in these questions is, that there can be <i>no</i> question, except between
+    the sooner and the later&mdash;a little sooner, and a little later: but
+    when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to
+    ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his
+    waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question ... and I like that&mdash;do
+    not <i>you</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Monday.</i>&mdash;Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a
+    finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in
+    disavowing our own letters of old on 'Ion'&mdash;Mr. Talfourd's collection
+    goes to prove too much, I think&mdash;and you, a little too much, when you
+    draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes&mdash;I
+    perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards
+    a 'presumably better' thing&mdash;but I do not so well understand how any
+    presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, ... I do not
+    indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you
+    seen the 'unicorns'?&mdash;Which is only a pebble thrown down into your
+    smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of
+    it. And as to the 'Ion' letters, I am delighted that you have anything
+    to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play&mdash;there
+    is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, ... and
+    if he had never written another to show what was <i>not</i> in him, this
+    might have been 'predicated' of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a
+    noble work&mdash;and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your
+    letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances,
+    would have been less noble yourself not to have done so&mdash;only, how I
+    agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry
+    roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste&mdash;now isn't it? ...
+    though you do not use that word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have
+    something to tell you, of him at least.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me,
+    and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not
+    been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment,
+    inasmuch as <i>he knew perfectly that you had just left me</i>. My sisters
+    told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off
+    on Saturday, with a, ... '<i>So</i> I am to meet Mr. Browning?' But he made
+    no observation afterwards&mdash;none: and if he heard what you said at all
+    (which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on
+    'Yorick's' part when the 'last chapter' was too much with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have written about 'Luria' in another place&mdash;you shall have the
+    papers when I have read through the play. How different this living
+    poetry is from the polished rhetoric of 'Ion.' The man and the statue
+    are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing&mdash;it is
+    here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of '<i>taste</i>,' but of
+    sight and feeling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the 'Venice' it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical
+    sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say
+    more?&mdash;of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception.
+    Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and
+    the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do not write 'Luria' if your head is uneasy&mdash;and you cannot say that
+    it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do
+    what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be
+    tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the
+    necessary exercise ... this, you will do&mdash;I entreat you to do it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I
+    say ... as I am yours&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did <i>not</i> read <i>either</i> of
+    your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read
+    one word of them&mdash;and hear why. When your brother and I took the book
+    between us in wonderment at the notion&mdash;we turned to the index, in
+    large text-hand, and stopped at 'Miss B.'&mdash;and <i>he</i> indeed read them,
+    or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my
+    short-sighted eye&mdash;all <i>I</i> saw was the <i>faint</i> small characters&mdash;and,
+    do you know ... I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor
+    a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said
+    was most unfairly exposed to view!&mdash;so I was silent, and lost you (in
+    that)&mdash;then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of
+    vexation it would give you. <i>All</i> I know of the notes, that <i>one</i> is
+    addressed to Talfourd in the third person&mdash;and when I had run through
+    my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR)&mdash;I was sick of the book altogether.
+    You are generous to me&mdash;but, to say the truth, I might have remembered
+    the most justifying circumstance in my case ... which was, that my own
+    'Paracelsus,' printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure
+    as 'Ion' a brilliant success&mdash;for, until just before.... Ah, really I
+    forget!&mdash;but I know that until Forster's notice in the <i>Examiner</i>
+    appeared, <i>every</i> journal that thought worth while to allude to the
+    poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think,
+    with the <i>Athenæum</i> which <i>then</i> made haste to say, a few days after
+    its publication, 'that it was not without talent but spoiled by
+    obscurity and only an imitation of&mdash;Shelley'!&mdash;something to this
+    effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their 'Library
+    Table' notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of
+    what the 'craft' had in store for me&mdash;since my publisher and I had
+    fairly to laugh at <i>his</i> 'Book'&mdash;(quite of another kind than the
+    Serjeant's)&mdash;in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers
+    and the like&mdash;seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied
+    with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went:
+    but Forster's notice altered a good deal&mdash;which I have to recollect
+    for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so
+    <i>utter</i>&mdash;you remember the world's-wonder 'Ion' made,&mdash;that I was
+    determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I
+    really <i>was not</i>&mdash;and so!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing
+    me good for another than yours?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily
+    over it? <i>Why</i> must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else
+    did or could, to do well&mdash;concern yourself with what might be done by
+    any good, kind ministrant <i>only</i> fit for such offices? Not that I
+    <i>feel</i>, even, more bound to you for them&mdash;they have their weight, I
+    <i>know</i> ... but <i>what</i> weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do
+    not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: <i>you</i> know me!&mdash;and
+    <i>they</i> know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of
+    what <i>you</i> are to me&mdash;if you ... well, but that <i>will</i> follow; if I do
+    greater things one day&mdash;what shall they serve for, what range
+    themselves under of right?&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems&mdash;and, I believe, a
+    newspaper, 'when time was,' about the 'Blot in the Scutcheon'&mdash;and
+    also, through Moxon&mdash;(I <i>believe</i> it was Mr. M.)&mdash;a proposition for
+    reprinting&mdash;to which I assented of course&mdash;and there was an end to the
+    matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And might I have stayed <i>till five</i>?&mdash;dearest, I will never ask for
+    more than you give&mdash;but I feel every single sand of the gold showers
+    ... spite of what I say above! I <i>have</i> an invitation for Thursday
+    which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such
+    liberty)&mdash;but <i>now</i>....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something I will <i>say</i>! 'Polka,' forsooth!&mdash;one lady whose <i>head</i>
+    could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!&mdash;But I talked a
+    little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that
+    he is yours.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, <i>Thursday</i>,&mdash;thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go
+    out. This week I have done nothing to 'Luria'&mdash;is it that my <i>ring</i> is
+    gone? There surely <i>is</i> something to forgive in me&mdash;for that shameful
+    business&mdash;or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you <i>did</i>
+    forgive me.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">God bless my own, only love&mdash;ever&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours wholly</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript
+    wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in
+    shape&mdash;cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did
+    my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly
+    <i>compartmented</i>, to have always about him, so that the <i>next such coin
+    he picked</i> up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place
+    of safety ... his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the
+    same. I saw the box&mdash;and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Parallel.</i> R.B. having found an unicorn....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for
+    more&mdash;having exhausted my stock.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening<br>
+[Post-mark, December 10, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was right of you to write ... (now see what jangling comes of not
+    using the fit words.... I said 'right,' not to say 'kind') ... right
+    of you to write to me to-day&mdash;and I had begun to be disappointed
+    already because the post <i>seemed</i> to be past, when suddenly the knock
+    brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not 'kind' ...
+    then <i>kindest</i> ... will that do better? Perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again&mdash;and
+    I, I answered at random ... 'at the end of the week&mdash;Thursday or
+    Friday'&mdash;which did not prevent another question about 'what we were
+    consulting about.' He said that he 'must have you,' and had written to
+    beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring
+    something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days
+    with him. Oh, my disingenuousness!&mdash;Then he talked again of 'Saul.' A
+    true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he
+    says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his
+    dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it
+    reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl
+    and life. Quite ill he took it of me the 'not expecting him to like it
+    so much' and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt
+    it), that I 'never understood anybody to have any sensibility except
+    myself.' Wasn't it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has
+    caught some sort of evil spirit from your 'Saul' perhaps; though
+    admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do <i>you</i>
+    remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and
+    that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a
+    great lyrical work&mdash;now remember. And forget 'Luria' ... if you are
+    better forgetting. And forget <i>me</i> ... <i>when</i> you are happier
+    forgetting. I say <i>that</i> too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So your idea of an unicorn is&mdash;one horn broken off. And you a
+    poet!&mdash;one horn broken off&mdash;or hid in the blackthorn hedge!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when
+    they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the
+    thunder-cloud! I don't remember the <i>Athenæum</i>, but can well believe
+    that it said what you say. The <i>Athenæum</i> admires only what gods, men
+    and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity&mdash;mark it, as a
+    general rule! The good, they see&mdash;the great escapes them. Dare to
+    breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and
+    you are 'put down' and instructed how to be like other people. By the
+    way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write
+    'peoples,' on pain of writing what is obsolete&mdash;and these the teachers
+    of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of
+    it? An imitation of Shelley!&mdash;when if 'Paracelsus' was anything it was
+    the expression of a new mind, as all might see&mdash;as <i>I</i> saw, let me be
+    proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by 'Ion.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah, indeed if I could 'rake and hoe' ... or even pick up weeds along
+    the walk, ... which is the work of the most helpless children, ... if
+    I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for
+    'shining' ... shining ... when there is not so much light in me as to
+    do 'carpet work' by, why let anyone in the world, <i>except you</i>, tell
+    me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied
+    astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a
+    dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so.&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will
+    not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having
+    come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do
+    not hear from her, and my precautions are 'watched out,' May God bless
+    you always.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But no&mdash;I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except
+    in <i>me</i>, for not being right in my meaning?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 12, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now, my heart's love, I am waiting to hear from you; my heart is
+    <i>full</i> of you. When I try to remember what I said yesterday, <i>that</i>
+    thought, of what fills my heart&mdash;only <i>that</i> makes me bear with the
+    memory.... I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words <i>must</i>
+    have come <i>from</i> thence if not bearing up to you all that is
+    there&mdash;and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and
+    forgive, and <i>wait</i> for the one day which I will never say to myself
+    cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel&mdash;more of it&mdash;or <i>some</i> of
+    it&mdash;for now nothing is spoken.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My all-beloved&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I
+    spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly
+    <i>expect</i> of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as
+    was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name <i>any</i> conditions
+    possible for a human will to submit to&mdash;there is no imaginable
+    condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully
+    bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this&mdash;but so, also
+    do you know <i>more</i> ... and yet 'I may tire of you'&mdash;'may forget you'!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the
+    things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride
+    in you&mdash;that nothing <i>but</i> that love could balance that pride&mdash;and
+    that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as
+    well; yes, my own&mdash;I shall follow your fame,&mdash;and, better than fame,
+    the good you do&mdash;in the world&mdash;and, if you please, it shall all be
+    mine&mdash;as your hand, as your eyes&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will write and pray it from you into a promise ... and your promises
+    I live upon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you! your R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 13, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a
+    day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when
+    I cannot help it ... always when I cannot help it&mdash;you could not
+    blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is
+    distrust, it is not of <i>you</i>, dearest of all!&mdash;but of myself
+    rather:&mdash;it is not doubt <i>of</i> you, but <i>for</i> you. From the beginning I
+    have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits
+    fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having
+    known me:&mdash;it is for <i>you</i> I fear, whenever I fear:&mdash;and if you were
+    less to me, ... <i>should</i> I fear do you think?&mdash;if you were to me only
+    what I am to myself for instance, ... if your happiness were only as
+    precious as my own in my own eyes, ... should I fear, do you think,
+    <i>then</i>? Think, and do not blame me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To tell you to 'forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you,'
+    ... (was it not <i>that</i>, I said?) proved more affection than might go
+    in smoother words.... I could prove the truth of <i>that</i> out of my
+    heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine&mdash;my fear will not
+    cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all
+    to me ... all: more than I used to take for all when I looked round
+    the world, ... almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams.
+    You stand in between me and not merely the living who stood closest,
+    but between me and the closer graves, ... and I reproach myself for
+    this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different
+    thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to unfavourable influences, ... I can speak of them quietly, having
+    foreseen them from the first, ... and it is true, I have been thinking
+    since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here,
+    and <i>should</i>, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power
+    would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two
+    affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties,
+    I feel, ... since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all.
+    For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil,&mdash;ah, you
+    do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the
+    side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder&mdash;and
+    I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with&mdash;it is
+    impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing
+    and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved
+    enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the
+    meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so
+    many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors,
+    but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure:&mdash;and then, the
+    one person, by a curious anomaly, <i>never</i> draws an inference of this
+    order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand,
+    point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours&mdash;and so it is,
+    at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with
+    your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I
+    cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be
+    grateful to you.&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But for the paper&mdash;no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a
+    prepared apology for something wrong. And besides&mdash;the apology would
+    be nothing but the offence in another form&mdash;unless you said it was all
+    a mistake&mdash;(<i>will</i> you, again?)&mdash;that it was all a mistake and you
+    were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said <i>that</i>, it would
+    be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than
+    nothing: and would not save me&mdash;which you were thinking of, I
+    know&mdash;would not save me the least of the stripes. For
+    'conditions'&mdash;now I will tell you what I said once in a jest....
+</p>
+<p>
+    'If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal
+    descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of
+    good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other'&mdash;?
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Why even <i>then</i>,' said my sister Arabel, 'it would not <i>do</i>.' And she
+    was right, and we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of
+    the will&mdash;and one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor
+    Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible
+    natures, which hers is indeed; beginning with implicit obedience, and
+    ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where
+    money is wanted, and where the dependence is total&mdash;see! And when
+    once, in the case of the one dearest to me; when just at the last he
+    was involved in the same grief, and I attempted to make over my
+    advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know&mdash;<i>I</i> did not
+    want the money, and could buy nothing with it so good as his
+    happiness,&mdash;) why then, my hands were seized and tied&mdash;and then and
+    there, in the midst of the trouble, came the end of all! I tell you
+    all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you
+    before? But there is no danger at present&mdash;and why ruffle this present
+    with disquieting thoughts? Why not leave that future to itself? For
+    me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly ... so calmly as
+    to surprise myself at intervals&mdash;and yet I know the reason of the
+    calmness well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Mr. Kenyon&mdash;dear Mr. Kenyon&mdash;he will speak the softest of words,
+    if any&mdash;only he will think privately that you are foolish and that I
+    am ungenerous, but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is another thing, of more consequence than <i>his</i> thoughts, which
+    is often in my mind to ask you of&mdash;but there will be time for such
+    questions&mdash;let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be
+    ill again you will be reasonable and we both must submit to God's
+    necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being
+    ill, if I can help it&mdash;and in the case of a tolerably mild winter, and
+    with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me&mdash;and
+    then I have sunshine from <i>you</i>, which is better than Pisa's.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And what more would you say? Do I not hear and understand! It seems to
+    me that I do both, or why all this wonder and gratitude? If the
+    devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear, ...
+    would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps&mdash;but not gift enough.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you always.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have put <i>some</i> of the hair into a little locket which was given to
+    me when I was a child by my favourite uncle, Papa's only brother, who
+    used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, and
+    was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am
+    richer than my sisters&mdash;through him and his mother&mdash;and a great grief
+    it was and trial, when he died a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by
+    his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once
+    said to me: 'Do you beware of ever loving!&mdash;If you do, you will not do
+    it half: it will be for life and death.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    So I put the hair into his locket, which I wear habitually, and which
+    never had hair before&mdash;the natural use of it being for perfume:&mdash;and
+    this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a
+    prophecy.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 15, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Every word you write goes to my heart and lives there: let us live so,
+    and die so, if God will. I trust many years hence to begin telling you
+    what I feel now;&mdash;that the beam of the light will have <i>reached</i>
+    you!&mdash;meantime it <i>is</i> here. Let me kiss your forehead, my sweetest,
+    dearest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wednesday I am waiting for&mdash;how waiting for!
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all, it seems probable that there was no intentional mischief in
+    that jeweller's management of the ring. The divided gold must have
+    been exposed to fire&mdash;heated thoroughly, perhaps,&mdash;and what became of
+    the contents then! Well, all is safe now, and I go to work again of
+    course. My next act is just done&mdash;that is, <i>being</i> done&mdash;but, what I
+    did not foresee, I cannot bring it, copied, by Wednesday, as my sister
+    went this morning on a visit for the week.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the matters, the others, I will not think, as you bid me,&mdash;if I can
+    help, at least. But your kind, gentle, good sisters! and the provoking
+    sorrow of the <i>right</i> meaning at bottom of the wrong doing&mdash;wrong to
+    itself and its plain purpose&mdash;and meanwhile, the real tragedy and
+    sacrifice of a life!
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you should see Mr. Kenyon, and can find if he will be disengaged on
+    Wednesday evening, I shall be glad to go in that case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I have been writing, as I say, and will leave off this, for the
+    better communing with you. Don't imagine I am unwell; I feel quite
+    well, but a little tired, and the thought of you waits in such
+    readiness! So, may God bless you, beloved!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am all your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 16, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon has not come&mdash;he does not come so often, I think. Did he
+    <i>know</i> from <i>you</i> that you were to see me last Thursday? If he did it
+    might be as well, do you not think? to go to him next week. Will it
+    not seem frequent, otherwise? But if you did <i>not</i> tell him of
+    Thursday distinctly (<i>I</i> did not&mdash;remember!), he might take the
+    Wednesday's visit to be the substitute for rather than the successor
+    of Thursday's: and in that case, why not write a word to him yourself
+    to propose dining with him as he suggested? He really wishes to see
+    you&mdash;of that, I am sure. But you will know what is best to do, and he
+    may come here to-morrow perhaps, and ask a whole set of questions
+    about you; so my right hand may forget its cunning for any good it
+    does. Only don't send messages by <i>me</i>, please!
+</p>
+<p>
+    How happy I am with your letter to-night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I had sent away my last letter I began to remember, and could not
+    help smiling to do so, that I had totally forgotten the great subject
+    of my 'fame,' and the oath you administered about it&mdash;totally! Now how
+    do you read that omen? If I forget myself, who is to remember me, do
+    you think?&mdash;except <i>you</i>?&mdash;which brings me where I would stay.
+    Yes&mdash;'yours' it must be, but <i>you</i>, it had better be! But, to leave
+    the vain superstitions, let me go on to assure you that I did mean to
+    answer that part of your former letter, and do mean to behave well and
+    be obedient. Your wish would be enough, even if there could be
+    likelihood without it of my doing nothing ever again. Oh, certainly I
+    have been idle&mdash;it comes of lotus-eating&mdash;and, besides, of sitting too
+    long in the sun. Yet 'idle' may not be the word! silent I have been,
+    through too many thoughts to speak just <i>that</i>!&mdash;As to writing letters
+    and reading manuscripts' filling all my time, why I must lack 'vital
+    energy' indeed&mdash;you do not mean seriously to fancy such a thing of me!
+    For the rest.... Tell me&mdash;Is it your opinion that when the apostle
+    Paul saw the unspeakable things, being snatched up into the third
+    Heavens 'whether in the body or out of the body he could not
+    tell,'&mdash;is it your opinion that, all the week after, he worked
+    particularly hard at the tent-making? For my part, I doubt it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I would not speak profanely or extravagantly&mdash;it is not the best way
+    to thank God. But to say only that I was in the desert and that I am
+    among the palm-trees, is to say nothing ... because it is easy to
+    <i>understand how</i>, after walking straight on ... on ... furlong after
+    furlong ... dreary day after dreary day, ... one may come to the end
+    of the sand and within sight of the fountain:&mdash;there is nothing
+    miraculous in <i>that</i>, you know!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet even in that case, to doubt whether it may not all be <i>mirage</i>,
+    would be the natural first thought, the recurring dream-fear! now
+    would it not? And you can reproach me for <i>my</i> thoughts, as if <i>they</i>
+    were unnatural!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Never mind about the third act&mdash;the advantage is that you will not
+    tire yourself perhaps the next week. What gladness it is that you
+    should really seem better, and how much better <i>that</i> is than even
+    'Luria.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mrs. Jameson came to-day&mdash;but I will tell you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you now and always.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 17, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henrietta had a note from Mr. Kenyon to the effect that he was 'coming
+    to see <i>Ba</i>' to-day if in any way he found it possible. Now he has not
+    come&mdash;and the inference is that he will come to-morrow&mdash;in which case
+    you will be convicted of not wishing to be with him perhaps. So ...
+    would it not be advisable for you to call at his door for a
+    moment&mdash;and <i>before</i> you come here? Think of it. You know it would not
+    do to vex him&mdash;would it?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 19, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I ought to have written yesterday: so to-day when I need a letter and
+    get none, there is my own fault besides, and the less consolation. A
+    letter from you would light up this sad day. Shall I fancy how, if a
+    letter lay <i>there</i> where I look, rain might fall and winds blow while
+    I listened to you, long after the <i>words</i> had been laid to heart? But
+    here you are in your place&mdash;with me who am your own&mdash;your own&mdash;and so
+    the rhyme joins on,
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">She shall speak to me in places lone<br>
+With a low and holy tone&mdash;<br>
+Ay: when I have lit my lamp at night<br>
+She shall be present with my sprite:<br>
+And I will say, whate'er it be,<br>
+Every word she telleth me!
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Now, is that taken from your book? No&mdash;but from <i>my</i> book, which holds
+    my verses as I write them; and as I open it, I read that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And speaking of verse&mdash;somebody gave me a few days ago that Mr.
+    Lowell's book you once mentioned to me. Anyone who 'admires' <i>you</i>
+    shall have my sympathy at once&mdash;even though he <i>do</i> change the
+    laughing wine-<i>mark</i> into a 'stain' in that perfectly beautiful
+    triplet&mdash;nor am I to be indifferent to his good word for myself
+    (though not very happily connected with the criticism on the epithet
+    in that 'Yorkshire Tragedy'&mdash;which has better things, by the
+    way&mdash;seeing that 'white boy,' in old language, meant just 'good boy,'
+    a general epithet, as Johnson notices in the life of Dryden, whom the
+    schoolmaster Busby was used to class with his 'white boys'&mdash;this is
+    hypercriticism, however). But these American books should not be
+    reprinted here&mdash;one asks, what and where is the class to which they
+    address themselves? for, no doubt, we have our congregations of
+    ignoramuses that enjoy the profoundest ignorance imaginable on the
+    subjects treated of; but <i>these</i> are evidently not the audience Mr.
+    Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting
+    to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be
+    found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there
+    resting&mdash;vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a
+    knot&mdash;which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man
+    brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or
+    a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all the old stocks go
+    on growing again&mdash;but here, with us, whoever <i>wanted</i> Chaucer, or
+    Chapman, or Ford, got him long ago&mdash;what else have Lamb, and
+    Coleridge, and Hazlitt and Hunt and so on to the end of their
+    generations ... what else been doing this many a year? What one
+    passage of all these, cited with the very air of a Columbus, but has
+    been known to all who know anything of poetry this many, many a year?
+    The others, who don't know anything, are the stocks that have got to
+    <i>shoot</i>, not climb higher&mdash;<i>compost</i>, they want in the first place!
+    Ford's and Crashaw's rival Nightingales&mdash;why they have been
+    dissertated on by Wordsworth and Coleridge, then by Lamb and Hazlitt,
+    then worked to death by Hunt, who printed them entire and quoted them
+    to pieces again, in every periodical he was ever engaged upon; and yet
+    after all, here 'Philip'&mdash;'must read' (out of a roll of dropping
+    papers with yellow ink tracings, so old!) something at which 'John'
+    claps his hands and says 'Really&mdash;that these ancients should own so
+    much wit &amp;c.'! The <i>passage</i> no longer looks its fresh self after this
+    veritable passage from hand to hand: as when, in old dances, the belle
+    began the figure with her own partner, and by him was transferred to
+    the next, and so to the next&mdash;<i>they</i> ever <i>beginning</i> with all the old
+    alacrity and spirit; but she bearing a still-accumulating weight of
+    tokens of gallantry, and none the better for every fresh pushing and
+    shoving and pulling and hauling&mdash;till, at the bottom of the room&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    To which Mr. Lowell might say, that&mdash;No, I will say the true thing
+    against myself&mdash;and it is, that when I turn from what is in my mind,
+    and determine to write about anybody's book to avoid writing that I
+    love and love and love again my own, dearest love&mdash;because of the
+    cuckoo-song of it,&mdash;<i>then</i>, I shall be in no better humour with that
+    book than with Mr. Lowell's!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I <i>have</i> a new thing to say or sing&mdash;you never before heard me
+    love and bless and send my heart after&mdash;'Ba'&mdash;did you? Ba ... and
+    that is you! I <SPAN class="sc-ex">tried</span> ... (more than <i>wanted</i>) to call you <i>that</i>, on
+    Wednesday! I have a flower here&mdash;rather, a tree, a mimosa, which must
+    be turned and turned, the side to the light changing in a little time
+    to the <i>leafy</i> side, where all the fans lean and spread ... so I turn
+    your name to me, that side I have not last seen: you cannot tell how I
+    feel glad that you will not part with the name&mdash;Barrett&mdash;seeing you
+    have two of the same&mdash;and must always, moreover, remain my EBB!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest 'E.B.C.'&mdash;no, no! and so it will never be!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Have you seen Mr. Kenyon? I did not write ... knowing that such a
+    procedure would draw the kind sure letter in return, with the
+    invitation &amp;c., as if I had asked for it! I had perhaps better call on
+    him some morning very early.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, my own sweetest. You will write to me, I know in my heart!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever may God bless you!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never
+    think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it
+    either; I simply understand that you <i>are</i> my happiness, and that
+    therefore you could not make another happiness for me, such as would
+    be worth having&mdash;not even <i>you</i>! Why, how could you? <i>That</i> was in my
+    mind to speak yesterday, but I could not speak it&mdash;to write it, is
+    easier.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Talking of happiness&mdash;shall I tell you? Promise not to be angry and I
+    will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered myself
+    wholly, I should choose to die this winter&mdash;now&mdash;before I had
+    disappointed you in anything. But because you are better and dearer
+    and more to be considered than I, I do <i>not</i> choose it. I <i>cannot</i>
+    choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of its being a less
+    pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps (who can say?), if I
+    should prove the burden of your life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with
+    others&mdash;as with the extravagance yesterday&mdash;and seriously&mdash;<i>too</i>
+    seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past&mdash;I am
+    frightened, I tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know
+    myself, what can save me, do you think, from disappointing and
+    displeasing you? I ask the question, and find no answer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a poor answer, to say that I can do one thing well ... that I
+    have one capacity largely. On points of the general affections, I have
+    in thought applied to myself the words of Mme. de Stael, not
+    fretfully, I hope, not complainingly, I am sure (I can thank God for
+    most affectionate friends!) not complainingly, yet mournfully and in
+    profound conviction&mdash;those words&mdash;'<i>jamais je n'ai pas été aimée comme
+    j'aime</i>.' The capacity of loving is the largest of my powers I
+    think&mdash;I thought so before knowing you&mdash;and one form of feeling. And
+    although any woman might love you&mdash;<i>every</i> woman,&mdash;with understanding
+    enough to discern you by&mdash;(oh, do not fancy that I am unduly
+    magnifying mine office) yet I persist in persuading myself that!
+    Because I have the capacity, as I said&mdash;and besides I owe more to you
+    than others could, it seems to me: let me boast of it. To many, you
+    might be better than all things while one of all things: to me you are
+    instead of all&mdash;to many, a crowning happiness&mdash;to me, the happiness
+    itself. From out of the deep dark pits men see the stars more
+    gloriously&mdash;and <i>de profundis amavi</i>&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a very poor answer! Almost as poor an answer as yours could be
+    if I were to ask you to teach me to please you always; or rather, how
+    not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you&mdash;what if all those
+    things were in my fate?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And&mdash;(to begin!)&mdash;<i>I</i> am disappointed to-night. I expected a letter
+    which does not come&mdash;and I had felt so sure of having a letter
+    to-night ... unreasonably sure perhaps, which means doubly sure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Friday.</i>&mdash;Remember you have had two notes of mine, and that it is
+    certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Scarcely you had gone on Wednesday when Mr. Kenyon came. It seemed
+    best to me, you know, that you should go&mdash;I had the presentiment of
+    his footsteps&mdash;and so near they were, that if you had looked up the
+    street in leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told
+    him of your having been here and also at his house; whereupon he
+    enquired eagerly if you meant to dine with him, seeming disappointed
+    by my negative. 'Now I had told him,' he said ... and murmured on to
+    himself loud enough for me to hear, that 'it would have been a
+    peculiar pleasure &amp;c.' The reason I have not seen him lately is the
+    eternal 'business,' just as you thought, and he means to come 'oftener
+    now,' so nothing is wrong as I half thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking what
+    sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most
+    particularly admire&mdash;sulkiness?&mdash;the divine gift of sitting aloof in a
+    cloud like any god for three weeks together perhaps&mdash;pettishness? ...
+    which will get you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one
+    either? obstinacy?&mdash;which is an agreeable form of temper I can assure
+    you, and describes itself&mdash;or the good open passion which lies on the
+    floor and kicks, like one of my cousins?&mdash;Certainly I prefer the last,
+    and should, I think, prefer it (as an evil), even if it were not the
+    born weakness of my own nature&mdash;though I humbly confess (to <i>you</i>, who
+    seem to think differently of these things) that never since I was a
+    child have I upset all the chairs and tables and thrown the books
+    about the room in a fury&mdash;I am afraid I do not even 'kick,' like my
+    cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the 'light of other
+    days'&mdash;not a very full light, I used to be accustomed to think:&mdash;but
+    <i>you</i>,&mdash;<i>you</i> think otherwise, <i>you</i> take a fury to be the opposite of
+    'indifference,' as if there could be no such thing as self-control!
+    Now for my part, I do believe that the worst-tempered persons in the
+    world are less so through sensibility than selfishness&mdash;they spare
+    nobody's heart, on the ground of being themselves pricked by a straw.
+    Now see if it isn't so. What, after all, is a good temper but
+    generosity in trifles&mdash;and what, without it, is the happiness of life?
+    We have only to look round us. I <i>saw</i> a woman, once, burst into
+    tears, because her husband cut the bread and butter too thick. I saw
+    <i>that</i> with my own eyes. Was it <i>sensibility</i>, I wonder! They were at
+    least real tears and ran down her cheeks. 'You <i>always</i> do it'! she
+    said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why how you must sympathize with the heroes and heroines of the French
+    romances (<i>do</i> you sympathize with them very much?) when at the
+    slightest provocation they break up the tables and chairs, (a degree
+    beyond the deeds of my childhood!&mdash;<i>I</i> only used to upset them) break
+    up the tables and chairs and chiffoniers, and dash the china to atoms.
+    The men <i>do</i> the furniture, and the women the porcelain: and pray
+    observe that they always set about this as a matter of course! When
+    they have broken everything in the room, they sink down quite (and
+    very naturally) <i>abattus</i>. I remember a particular case of a hero of
+    Frederic Soulié's, who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a
+    chair <i>unconsciously</i>, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then
+    proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!&mdash;the clearest idea this excites in
+    <i>me</i>, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of
+    upholstery. Because&mdash;just consider for yourself&mdash;how <i>you</i> would
+    succeed in breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were
+    properly put together&mdash;as stools are in England&mdash;just yourself,
+    without a hammer and a screw! You might work at it <i>comme quatre</i>, and
+    find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then as a demonstration, a
+    child of six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) and
+    be whipped accordingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How I go on writing!&mdash;and you, who do not write at all!&mdash;two extremes,
+    one set against the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know is
+    just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that
+    I am glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I
+    never was called Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, and I
+    accept the omen. So little it seems my name that if a voice said
+    suddenly 'Elizabeth,' I should as soon turn round as my sisters would
+    ... no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want
+    of euphony ... <i>Ba</i> ... now and then it has&mdash;and Mr. Boyd makes a
+    compromise and calls me <i>Elibet</i>, because nothing could induce him to
+    desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a <i>Ba</i>. So I
+    am glad, and accept the omen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I give you no credit for not thinking that I may forget you ... I!
+    As if you did not see the difference! Why, <i>I</i> could not even forget
+    to <i>write</i> to <i>you</i>, observe!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whenever you write, say how you are. Were you wet on Wednesday?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever 'making you happy'&mdash;I
+    can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to
+    my own truest, only true happiness&mdash;yet in every such effort there is
+    implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of
+    it at all? <i>You</i> it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be:
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">you</span>&mdash;dearest!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert
+    to <i>that</i> frightful wish. 'Disappoint me?' 'I speak what I know and
+    testify what I have seen'&mdash;you shall 'mystery' again and again&mdash;I do
+    not dispute that, but do not <i>you</i> dispute, neither, that mysteries
+    are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part
+    of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that
+    fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and
+    esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops
+    short of accounting for <i>that</i>, whatever else it would account for,
+    because I do this, in pure logical justice&mdash;<i>you</i> are able to turn and
+    wonder (if you <i>do ... now</i>) what causes it all! My love, only wait,
+    only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little,
+    become known to you&mdash;after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I
+    <i>would</i> say <i>this</i> now&mdash;but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my
+    sweetest&mdash;ever, love, I am your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But my letter came last night, did it not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another thing&mdash;no, <i>to-morrow</i>&mdash;for time presses, and, in all cases,
+    <i>Tuesday</i>&mdash;remember!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote
+    that you had 'forgotten to write,' I did not mean it; not a word! If I
+    had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been
+    better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before
+    writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes
+    people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots
+    tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is
+    graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he
+    knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has
+    merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading
+    in that direction is an article in the <i>Retrospective Review</i> which
+    contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the
+    quotations, and, 'a pede Herculem,' from the foot infers the man, or
+    rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul
+    of the man&mdash;it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative
+    conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up
+    his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious
+    proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why
+    a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a 'Young Ladies' academy'
+    here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better
+    information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review!
+    And then, Mr. Lowell's naïveté in showing his authority,&mdash;as if the
+    Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible manuscript somewhere
+    below the lowest deep of Shakespeare's grave,&mdash;is curious beyond the
+    rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of
+    America. As you say, their books do not suit us:&mdash;Mrs. Markham might
+    as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If
+    they <i>knew</i> more they could not give parsley crowns to their own
+    native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs.
+    Sigourney has just sent me&mdash;just this morning&mdash;her 'Scenes in my
+    Native Land' and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet
+    Hillhouse, of 'sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,' standing in 'the
+    temple of Fame' as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he
+    is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as
+    flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as
+    transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if
+    not a poet&mdash;and certainly this little book we are talking of is
+    grateful enough in some ways&mdash;you would call it a <i>pretty book</i>&mdash;would
+    you not? Two or three letters I have had from him ... all very
+    kind!&mdash;and <i>that</i> reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingratitude on
+    my own part! When one's conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing
+    for it but to throw it away!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how
+    you would not let me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Mathews said of <i>him</i>, having met him once in society, that he was
+    the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then
+    they seem to be on better terms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B.<i>C.</i>? <i>your</i> meaning, I mean?
+</p>
+<p>
+    My true initials are E.B.M.B.&mdash;my long name, as opposed to my short
+    one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett!&mdash;there's a full length
+    to take away one's breath!&mdash;Christian name ... Elizabeth
+    Barrett:&mdash;surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it
+    portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it
+    closely, ... and of forgetting that I was a <i>Moulton</i>, altogether. One
+    might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our
+    family-name is <i>Moulton Barrett</i>, and my brothers reproach me
+    sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk
+    with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds' Office. As if I
+    cared for the <i>Retrospective Review</i>! Nevertheless it is true that I
+    would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer
+    lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from
+    generation to generation!&mdash;I seem to hear the 'Commination Service.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Dickens's 'Cricket' sings repetitions, and, with considerable
+    beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of
+    his most successful productions, though quite free from what was
+    reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You do not say how you are&mdash;not a word! And you are wrong in saying
+    that you 'ought to have written'&mdash;as if 'ought' could be in place
+    <i>so</i>! You <i>never 'ought' to write to me you know</i>! or rather ... if
+    you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of
+    mysteries on my part!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 22, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, '<i>ought</i>' you to be 'sorry you sent that letter,' which made, and
+    makes me so happy&mdash;so happy&mdash;can you bring yourself to turn round and
+    tell one you have so blessed with your bounty that there was a
+    mistake, and you meant only half that largess? If you are not sensible
+    that you <i>do</i> make me most happy by such letters, and do not warm in
+    the reflection of your own rays, then I <i>do</i> give up indeed the last
+    chance of procuring <i>you</i> happiness. My own 'ought,' which you object
+    to, shall be withdrawn&mdash;being only a pure bit of selfishness; I felt,
+    in missing the letter of yours, next day, that I <i>might</i> have drawn it
+    down by one of mine,&mdash;if I had begged never so gently, the gold would
+    have fallen&mdash;<i>there</i> was my omitted duty to myself which you properly
+    blame. I should stand silently and wait and be sure of the
+    ever-remembering goodness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me count my gold now&mdash;and rub off any speck that stays the full
+    shining. First&mdash;<i>that thought</i> ... I told you; I pray you, pray you,
+    sweet&mdash;never that again&mdash;or what leads never so remotely or indirectly
+    to it! On <i>your own fancied ground</i>, the fulfilment would be of
+    necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am
+    yours for ever&mdash;if you are not <i>here</i>, with me&mdash;what then? Say, you
+    take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, <i>that</i>
+    defeats every kind purpose ... as if you cut away all the ground from
+    my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room ... why still, I
+    <i>stand</i> there&mdash;and is it the better that I have no broader space,
+    when off <i>that</i> you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge
+    of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,&mdash;on that, I
+    can live my life&mdash;but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous
+    creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life&mdash;to
+    extend life and deepen it&mdash;as you do, and will do. Oh, <i>how</i> I love
+    you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to
+    me&mdash;how, meaning and willing to <i>give</i>, you gave <i>nobly</i>! Do you think
+    I have not seen in this world how women who <i>do</i> love will manage to
+    confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how
+    much alloy such pure gold as <i>your</i> love would have rendered
+    endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what
+    but this makes me confident and happy? <i>Can</i> I take a lesson by your
+    fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw
+    all the world&mdash;the worthier, better men there ... those who would' &amp;c.
+    &amp;c. No, I think of the great, dear <i>gift</i> that it was; how I '<i>won</i>'
+    <SPAN class="sc-ex">nothing</span> (the hateful word, and <i>French</i> thought)&mdash;did nothing by my
+    own arts or cleverness in the matter ... so what pretence have the
+    <i>more</i> artful or more clever for:&mdash;but I cannot write out this
+    folly&mdash;I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of gratitude&mdash;to say
+    I would give you my life joyfully is little.... I would, I hope, do
+    that for two or three other people&mdash;but I am not conscious of any
+    imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self
+    to you&mdash;be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be
+    spoken of&mdash;let me <i>live</i> it into proof, beloved!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for 'disappointment and a burden' ... now&mdash;let us get quite away
+    from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the <i>cords</i>
+    of love with the world's horny eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then?
+    Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep
+    passion for society? 'Have they common sympathy in each other's
+    pursuits?'&mdash;always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew
+    me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with God's help to write what
+    may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me
+    or no? Do you <i>not</i> help me so much that, if you saw the more likely
+    peril for poor human nature, you would say, 'He will be jealous of all
+    the help coming from me,&mdash;none from him to me!'&mdash;And <i>that would</i> be a
+    consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any
+    one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being
+    <i>transcended</i> and the <i>blest</i> one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But&mdash;'here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed'&mdash;I will speak of
+    other things. When we are together one day&mdash;the days I believe in&mdash;I
+    mean to set about that reconsidering 'Sordello'&mdash;it has always been
+    rather on my mind&mdash;but yesterday I was reading the 'Purgatorio' and
+    the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me
+    with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose
+    and fate in my own poem&mdash;see; one of the burthened, contorted souls
+    tells Virgil and Dante&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,<br>
+E <i>peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora</i>:<br>
+<SPAN class="sc-ex">Quivi</span>&mdash;<i>lume del ciel ne fece accorti<br>
+Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora<br>
+Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati<br>
+Che del disio di se veder n'accora.</i><a href="#note-23"><b>23</b></a>
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p>Which is just my Sordello's story ... could I '<i>do</i>' it off hand, I
+    wonder&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">And sinners were we to the extreme hour;<br>
+    <i>Then</i>, light from heaven fell, making us aware,<br>
+So that, repenting us and pardoned, out<br>
+Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him<br>
+Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p>
+    There were many singular incidents attending my work on that
+    subject&mdash;thus, quite at the end, I found out there <i>was printed</i> and
+    not published, a little historical tract by a Count V&mdash;&mdash; something,
+    called 'Sordello'&mdash;with the motto 'Post fata resurgam'! I hope he
+    prophesied. The main of this&mdash;biographical notices&mdash;is extracted by
+    Muratori, I think. Last year when I set foot in Naples I found after a
+    few minutes that at some theatre, that night, the opera was to be 'one
+    act of Sordello' and I never looked twice, nor expended a couple of
+    carlines on the <i>libretto</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wanted to tell you, in last letter, that when I spoke of people's
+    tempers <i>you</i> have no concern with 'people'&mdash;I do not glance obliquely
+    at <i>your</i> temper&mdash;either to discover it, or praise it, or adapt myself
+    to it. I speak of the relation one sees in other cases&mdash;how one
+    opposes passionate foolish people, but hates cold clever people who
+    take quite care enough of themselves. I myself am born supremely
+    passionate&mdash;so I was born with light yellow hair: all changes&mdash;that is
+    the passion changes its direction and, taking a channel large enough,
+    looks calmer, perhaps, than it should&mdash;and all my sympathies go with
+    quiet strength, of course&mdash;but I know what the other kind is. As for
+    the breakages of chairs, and the appreciation of Parisian <i>meubles</i>;
+    manibus, pedibusque descendo in tuam sententiam, Ba, mi ocelle! ('What
+    was E.B. C?' why, the first letter after, and <i>not</i>, E.B. <i>B</i>, my own
+    <i>B</i>! There was no latent meaning in the C&mdash;but I had no inclination to
+    go on to D, or E, for instance).
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so, love, Tuesday is to be our day&mdash;one day more&mdash;and then! And
+    meanwhile '<i>care</i>' for me! a good word for you&mdash;but <i>my</i> care, what is
+    that! One day I aspire to <i>care</i>, though! I shall not go away at any
+    dear Mr. K.'s coming! They call me down-stairs to supper&mdash;and my fire
+    is out, and you keep me from feeling cold and yet ask if I am well?
+    Yes, well&mdash;yes, happy&mdash;and your own ever&mdash;I must bid God bless
+    you&mdash;dearest!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 24, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But did I dispute? Surely not. Surely I believe in you and in
+    'mysteries.' Surely I prefer the no-reason to ever so much rationalism
+    ... (rationalism and infidelity go together they say!). All which I
+    may do, and be afraid sometimes notwithstanding, and when you
+    overpraise me (<i>not</i> over<i>love</i>) I must be frightened as I told you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is with me as with the theologians. I believe in you and can be
+    happy and safe <i>so</i>; but when my 'personal merits' come into question
+    in any way, even the least, ... why then the position grows untenable:
+    it is no more 'of grace.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do I tease you as I tease myself sometimes? But do not wrong me in
+    turn! Do not keep repeating that 'after long years' I shall know
+    you&mdash;know you!&mdash;as if I did not without the years. If you are forced
+    to refer me to those long ears, I must deserve the thistles besides.
+    The thistles are the corollary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For it is obvious&mdash;manifest&mdash;that I cannot doubt of you, that I may
+    doubt of myself, of happiness, of the whole world,&mdash;but of
+    <i>you</i>&mdash;<i>not</i>: it is obvious that if I could doubt of you and <i>act so</i>
+    I should be a very idiot, or worse indeed. And <i>you</i> ... you think I
+    doubt of you whenever I make an interjection!&mdash;now do you not? And is
+    it reasonable?&mdash;Of <i>you</i>, I mean?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Monday.</i>&mdash;For my part, you must admit it to be too possible that you
+    may be, as I say, 'disappointed' in me&mdash;it <i>is</i> too possible. And if
+    it does me good to say so, even now perhaps ... if it is mere weakness
+    to say so and simply torments you, why do <i>you</i> be magnanimous and
+    forgive <i>that</i> ... let it pass as a weakness and forgive it <i>so</i>.
+    Often I think painful things which I do not tell you and....
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I write, your letter comes. Kindest of you it was, to write me
+    such a letter, when I expected scarcely the shadow of one!&mdash;this makes
+    up for the other letter which I expected unreasonably and which you
+    '<i>ought not</i>' to have written, as was proved afterwards. And now why
+    should I go on with that sentence? What had I to say of 'painful
+    things,' I wonder? all the painful things seem gone ... vanished. I
+    forget what I had to say. Only do you still think of this, dearest
+    beloved; that I sit here in the dark but for <i>you</i>, and that the light
+    you bring me (from <i>my</i> fault!&mdash;from the nature of <i>my</i> darkness!) is
+    not a settled light as when you open the shutters in the morning, but
+    a light made by candles which burn some of them longer and some
+    shorter, and some brighter and briefer, at once&mdash;being 'double-wicks,'
+    and that there is an intermission for a moment now and then between
+    the dropping of the old light into the socket and the lighting of the
+    new. Every letter of yours is a new light which burns so many hours
+    ... and <i>then</i>!&mdash;I am morbid, you see&mdash;or call it by what name you
+    like ... too wise or too foolish. 'If the light of the body is
+    darkness, how great is that darkness.' Yet even when I grow too wise,
+    I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all. And I am
+    never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own
+    sake&mdash;only for yours:&mdash;not for my own sake, since I am content to owe
+    all things to you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And it could be so much to you to lose me!&mdash;and you say so,&mdash;and
+    <i>then</i> think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought! As
+    if <i>that</i> were possible! Do you remember what you said once of the
+    flowers?&mdash;that you 'felt a respect for them when they had passed out
+    of your hands.' And must it not be so with my life, which if you
+    choose to have it, must be respected too? Much more with my life!
+    Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of
+    the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now&mdash;quite otherwise. I
+    did not like it at first to be so much otherwise. And I could not have
+    had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old
+    motives, but simply to escape the 'risk' I told you of. Should I have
+    said to you instead of it ... '<i>Love me for ever</i>'? Well then, ... I
+    <i>do</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to my 'helping' you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on
+    with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as
+    deeds. We <i>have</i> sympathy too&mdash;we walk one way&mdash;oh, I do not forget
+    the advantages. Only Mrs. Tomkins's ideas of happiness are below my
+    ambition for you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I
+    should be more exacting than any other woman&mdash;so often I have said it:
+    and so different everything is from what I thought it would be!
+    Because if I am exacting it is for <i>you</i> and not for <i>me</i>&mdash;it is
+    altogether for <i>you</i>&mdash;you understand <i>that</i>, dearest of all ... it is
+    for <i>you wholly</i>. It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even,
+    the question whether I may be happy so and so&mdash;<i>I</i>. It is the other
+    question which comes always&mdash;too often for peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    People used to say to me, 'You expect too much&mdash;you are too romantic.'
+    And my answer always was that 'I could not expect too much when I
+    expected nothing at all' ... which was the truth&mdash;for I never thought
+    (and how often I have <i>said that</i>!) I never thought that anyone whom
+    <i>I</i> could love, would stoop to love <i>me</i> ... the two things seemed
+    clearly incompatible to my understanding.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking
+    twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or <i>horn</i>.
+    You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion&mdash;illusion
+    for you,&mdash;illusion for me as a consequence. But how natural.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is true of me&mdash;very true&mdash;that I have not a high appreciation of
+    what passes in the world (and not merely the Tomkins-world!) under the
+    name of love; and that a distrust of the thing had grown to be a habit
+    of mind with me when I knew you first. It has appeared to me, through
+    all the seclusion of my life and the narrow experience it admitted
+    of, that in nothing men&mdash;and women too&mdash;were so apt to mistake their
+    own feelings, as in this one thing. Putting <i>falseness</i> quite on one
+    side, quite out of sight and consideration, an honest mistaking of
+    feeling appears wonderfully common, and no mistake has such frightful
+    results&mdash;none can. Self-love and generosity, a mistake may come from
+    either&mdash;from pity, from admiration, from any blind impulse&mdash;oh, when I
+    look at the histories of my own female friends&mdash;to go no step further!
+    And if it is true of the <i>women</i>, what must the other side be? To see
+    the marriages which are made every day! worse than solitudes and more
+    desolate! In the case of the two happiest I ever knew, one of the
+    husbands said in confidence to a brother of mine&mdash;not much in
+    confidence or I should not have heard it, but in a sort of smoking
+    frankness,&mdash;that he had 'ruined his prospects by marrying'; and the
+    other said to himself at the very moment of professing an
+    extraordinary happiness, ... 'But I should have done as well if I had
+    not married <i>her</i>.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then for the falseness&mdash;the first time I ever, in my own experience,
+    heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on
+    (on some hands!)&mdash;it was from a man of whose attentions to another
+    woman I was at that <i>time her confidante</i>. I was bound so to silence
+    for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in
+    me&mdash;and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror ... a
+    terror&mdash;for I was very young then, and the world did, at the moment,
+    look ghastly!
+</p>
+<p>
+    The falseness and the calculations!&mdash;why how can you, who are <i>just</i>,
+    <i>blame women</i> ... when you must know what the 'system' of man is
+    towards them,&mdash;and of men not ungenerous otherwise? Why are women to
+    be blamed if they act as if they had to do with swindlers?&mdash;is it not
+    the mere instinct of preservation which makes them do it? These make
+    women what they are. And your 'honourable men,' the most loyal of
+    them, (for instance) is it not a rule with them (unless when taken
+    unaware through a want of self-government) to force a woman (trying
+    all means) to force a woman to stand committed in her affections ...
+    (they with their feet lifted all the time to trample on her for want
+    of delicacy) before <i>they</i> risk the pin-prick to their own personal
+    pitiful vanities? Oh&mdash;to see how these things are set about by <i>men</i>!
+    to see how a man carefully holding up on each side the skirts of an
+    embroidered vanity to keep it quite safe from the wet, will contrive
+    to tell you in so many words that he ... might love you if the sun
+    shone! And women are to be blamed! Why there are, to be sure, cold and
+    heartless, light and changeable, ungenerous and calculating women in
+    the world!&mdash;that is sure. But for the most part, they are only what
+    they are made ... and far better than the nature of the making ... of
+    that I am confident. The loyal make the loyal, the disloyal the
+    disloyal. And I give no more discredit to those women you speak of,
+    than I myself can take any credit in this thing&mdash;I. Because who could
+    be disloyal with <i>you</i> ... with whatever corrupt inclination? <i>you</i>,
+    who are the noblest of all? If you judge me so, ... it is my privilege
+    rather than my merit ... as I feel of myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Wednesday.</i>&mdash;All but the last few lines of all this was written
+    before I saw you yesterday, ever dearest&mdash;and since, I have been
+    reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both
+    in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on
+    triumphantly ... to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the
+    language is freer&mdash;there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm.
+    It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the
+    interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I
+    guess&mdash;which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor,
+    noble Luria, who will be equal to the leap ... as it is easy to see.
+    It is full, altogether, of magnanimities;&mdash;noble, and nobly put. I
+    will go on with my notes, and those, you shall have at once ... I mean
+    together ... presently. And don't hurry and chafe yourself for the
+    fourth act&mdash;now that you are better! To be ill again&mdash;think what that
+    would be! Luria will be great now whatever you do&mdash;or whatever you do
+    <i>not</i>. Will he not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And never, never for a moment (I quite forgot to tell you) did I fancy
+    that you were talking at <i>me</i> in the temper-observations&mdash;never. It
+    was the most unprovoked egotism, all that I told you of my temper; for
+    certainly I never suspected you of asking questions so. I was simply
+    amused a little by what you said, and thought to myself (if you <i>will</i>
+    know my thoughts on that serious subject) that you had probably lived
+    among very good-tempered persons, to hold such an opinion about the
+    innocuousness of ill-temper. It was all I thought, indeed. Now to
+    fancy that I was capable of suspecting you of such a manoeuvre! Why
+    you would have <i>asked</i> me directly;&mdash;if you had wished 'curiously to
+    enquire.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    An excellent solemn chiming, the passage from Dante makes with your
+    'Sordello,' and the 'Sordello' <i>deserves</i> the labour which it needs,
+    to make it appear the great work it is. I think that the principle of
+    association is too subtly in movement throughout it&mdash;so that <i>while</i>
+    you are going straight forward you go at the same time round and
+    round, until the progress involved in the motion is lost sight of by
+    the lookers on. Or did I tell you that before?
+</p>
+<p>
+    You have heard, I suppose, how Dickens's 'Cricket' sells by nineteen
+    thousand copies at a time, though he takes Michael Angelo to be 'a
+    humbug'&mdash;or for 'though' read 'because.' Tell me of Mr. Kenyon's
+    dinner and Moxon?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is not this an infinite letter? I shall hear from you, I hope.... I
+    <i>ask</i> you to let me hear soon. I write all sorts of things to you,
+    rightly and wrongly perhaps; when wrongly forgive it. I think of you
+    always. May God bless you. 'Love me for ever,' as
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Ba</i>
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">25th Dec. [1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My dear Christmas gift of a letter! I will write back a few lines,
+    (all I can, having to go out now)&mdash;just that I may forever,&mdash;certainly
+    during our mortal 'forever'&mdash;mix my love for you, and, as you suffer
+    me to say, your love for me ... dearest! ... these shall be mixed with
+    the other loves of the day and live therein&mdash;as I write, and trust,
+    and know&mdash;forever! While I live I will remember what was my feeling in
+    reading, and in writing, and in stopping from either ... as I have
+    just done ... to kiss you and bless you with my whole heart.&mdash;Yes,
+    yes, bless you, my own!
+</p>
+<p>
+    All is right, all of your letter ... admirably right and just in the
+    defence of the women I <i>seemed</i> to speak against; and only
+    seemed&mdash;because that is a way of mine which you must have observed;
+    that foolish concentrating of thought and feeling, for a moment, on
+    some one little spot of a character or anything else indeed, and in
+    the attempt to do justice and develop whatever may seem ordinarily to
+    be overlooked in it,&mdash;that over vehement <i>insisting</i> on, and giving an
+    undue prominence to, the same&mdash;which has the effect of taking away
+    from the importance of the rest of the related objects which, in
+    truth, are not considered at all ... or they would also rise
+    proportionally when subjected to the same (that is, correspondingly
+    magnified and dilated) light and concentrated feeling. So, you
+    remember, the old divine, preaching on 'small sins,' in his zeal to
+    expose the tendencies and consequences usually made little account of,
+    was led to maintain the said small sins to be 'greater than great
+    ones.' <i>But then</i> ... if you look on the world <i>altogether</i>, and
+    accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater
+    ... things do not look <i>quite</i> so bad; because the conduct which <i>is</i>
+    atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, <i>may</i> be
+    no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in
+    certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly
+    less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, exchange (counting
+    spiritual gifts as only coin, for our purpose), but surely the
+    formalities and policies and decencies all vary with the nature of the
+    thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life
+    to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl&mdash;[he] gets witnesses and
+    testimony and so forth&mdash;but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges
+    are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all
+    words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on
+    the counter. If instead of diamonds you want&mdash;(being a king or
+    queen)&mdash;provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more
+    diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to&mdash;high motives
+    <i>supposed</i>, at all events&mdash;whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave
+    to black your shoe in the dusty street 'purely for the honour of
+    serving your Excellency' you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself
+    without a 'grano' or two&mdash;(six of which, about, make a farthing)&mdash;Now
+    do you not see! Where so little is to be got, why offer much more? If
+    a man knows that ... but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in
+    Benedick's phrase, 'the world must go on.' He who honestly wants his
+    wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his
+    <i>help-meat</i> (not 'help mete for him')&mdash;he shall assuredly find a girl
+    of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to
+    mortify, who <i>would</i> be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that
+    man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead
+    of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a 'Every Lady
+    Her Own <i>Market-Woman</i>, Being a Table of' &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;<i>then</i>, I say he
+    is&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, dearest&mdash;the clock strikes&mdash;and time is none&mdash;but&mdash;bless
+    you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday 4. p.m.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning&mdash;and now I
+    have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves. I hoped to
+    return from Town earlier. But I can say something&mdash;and Monday will
+    make amends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'For ever' and for ever I <i>do</i> love you, dearest&mdash;love you with my
+    whole heart&mdash;in life, in death&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon's&mdash;who had a little to forgive in my slack
+    justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind
+    self&mdash;and I went, also, to Moxon's&mdash;who said something about my
+    number's going off 'rather heavily'&mdash;so let it!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to 'acts' first or
+    last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. <i>Let</i> me get done
+    with these, and better things will follow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest&mdash;I have you ever in my thoughts&mdash;And
+    on Monday, remember, I am to see you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    See what I cut out of a <i>Cambridge Advertiser</i><a href="#note-24"><b>24</b></a> of the 24th&mdash;to make
+    you laugh!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, indeed, I have 'observed that way' in you, and not once, and not
+    twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,&mdash;and almost every
+    time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the
+    reflection that <i>that</i> is the way for making all sorts of mistakes
+    dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way!&mdash;the
+    highway.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the
+    truth&mdash;as partial truth:&mdash;I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I
+    am not apt to be extravagant in my <i>esprit de sexe</i>: the Martineau
+    doctrines of intellectual equality &amp;c., I gave them up, you remember,
+    like a woman&mdash;most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But
+    we are not on that ground now&mdash;we are on ground worth holding a brief
+    for!&mdash;and when women fail <i>here</i> ... it is not so much our fault.
+    Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your 'Luria,' this third
+    act, of the worth of a woman's sympathy,&mdash;indeed of the exquisite
+    double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be
+    better, I think, than this:&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">To the motive, the endeavour,&mdash;the heart's self&mdash;<br>
+Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright<br>
+The soul of the purpose ere 'tis shaped as act,<br>
+Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king;
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">except the characterizing of the 'learned praise,' which comes
+    afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to
+    you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of
+    the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could
+    be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal
+    only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside!
+    You shall tell Mr. Forster so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And speaking of 'Luria,' which grows on me the more I read, ... how
+    fine he is when the doubt breaks on him&mdash;I mean, when he begins ...
+    'Why then, all is very well.' It is most affecting, I think, all that
+    process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which
+    at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that
+    he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is
+    managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ... 'so slight, so slight,<br>
+And yet it tells you they are dead and gone'&mdash;
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">And then, the direct approach....
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,<br>
+What is it in your eyes?&mdash;
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>
+    Do you not feel it to be success, ... '<i>you</i> now?' <i>I</i> do, from my low
+    ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the
+    manner in which he <i>stands</i>, facing it, ... I admire it all
+    thoroughly. Braccio's vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too
+    <i>poetically</i> subtle for the man&mdash;but nobody could have the heart to
+    wish a line of it away&mdash;<i>that</i> would be too much for critical virtue!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were
+    so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me
+    keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which
+    never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least
+    crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to
+    listen to,&mdash;remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another
+    Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say <i>that</i> every
+    time, and you will please to remember it&mdash;Eccellenza!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>. 'The admirers of Robert Browning's
+    poetry, and they are now very numerous, will be glad to hear of the
+    issue by Mr. Moxon of a seventh series of the renowned "Bells" and
+    delicious "Pomegranates," under the title of "Dramatic Romances and
+    Lyrics."'
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, December 30, 1845.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When you are gone I find your flowers; and you never spoke of nor
+    showed them to me&mdash;so instead of yesterday I thank you to-day&mdash;thank
+    you. Count among the miracles that your flowers live with me&mdash;I accept
+    <i>that</i> for an omen, dear&mdash;dearest! Flowers in general, all other
+    flowers, die of despair when they come into the same atmosphere ...
+    used to do it so constantly and observably that it made me melancholy
+    and I left off for the most part having them here. Now you see how
+    they put up with the close room, and condescend to me and the dust&mdash;it
+    is true and no fancy! To be sure they know that I care for them and
+    that I stand up by the table myself to change their water and cut
+    their stalk freshly at intervals&mdash;<i>that</i> may make a difference
+    perhaps. Only the great reason must be that they are yours, and that
+    you teach them to bear with me patiently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do not pretend even to misunderstand what I meant to say yesterday of
+    dear Mr. Kenyon. His blame would fall as my blame of myself has
+    fallen: he would say&mdash;will say&mdash;'it is ungenerous of her to let such a
+    risk be run! I thought she would have been more generous.' There, is
+    Mr. Kenyon's opinion as I foresee it! Not that it would be spoken, you
+    know! he is too kind. And then, he said to me last summer, somewhere
+    <i>à propos</i> to the flies or butterflies, that he had 'long ceased to
+    wonder at any extreme of foolishness produced by&mdash;<i>love</i>.' He will of
+    course think you very very foolish, but not ungenerously foolish like
+    other people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Never mind. I do not mind indeed. I mean, that, having said to myself
+    worse than the worst perhaps of what can be said against me by any who
+    regard me at all, and feeling it put to silence by the fact that you
+    <i>do</i> feel so and so for me; feeling that fact to be an answer to
+    all,&mdash;I cannot mind much, in comparison, the railing at second remove.
+    There will be a nine days' railing of it and no more: and if on the
+    ninth day you should not exactly wish never to have known me, the
+    better reason will be demonstrated to stand with us. On this one point
+    the wise man cannot judge for the fool his neighbour. If you <i>do</i> love
+    me, the inference is that you would be happier with than without
+    me&mdash;and whether you do, you know better than another: so I think of
+    <i>you</i> and not of <i>them</i>&mdash;always of <i>you</i>! When I talked of being
+    afraid of dear Mr. Kenyon, I just meant that he makes me nervous with
+    his all-scrutinizing spectacles, put on for great occasions, and his
+    questions which seem to belong to the spectacles, they go together
+    so:&mdash;and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the
+    spectacles. My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look
+    for me) would be the old child's way of getting behind the window
+    curtains or under the sofa:&mdash;and even <i>that</i> might not be effectual if
+    I had recourse to it now. Do you think it would? Two or three times I
+    fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something&mdash;but if he ever <i>did</i>, his
+    only reproof was a reduplicated praise of <i>you</i>&mdash;he praises you always
+    and in relation to every sort of subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What a <i>misomonsism</i> you fell into yesterday, you who have much great
+    work to do which no one else can do except just yourself!&mdash;and you,
+    too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work,
+    with the principle of life in it, <i>will</i> live, let it be trampled ever
+    so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation&mdash;yes, that
+    it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart
+    of a rock. All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said ...
+    by prompting the foremost rows ... by tradition and translation:&mdash;all,
+    <i>except</i> poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own
+    song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have
+    stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the <span title="stoa">&sigma;&tau;&omicron;&alpha;</span>
+    like the conversation-teachers. So much I have to say to you,
+    till we are in the Siren's island&mdash;and <i>I</i>, jealous of the Siren!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">The Siren waits thee singing song for song,
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">says Mr. Landor. A prophecy which refuses to class you with the 'mute
+    fishes,' precisely as I do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And are you not my 'good'&mdash;all my good now&mdash;my only good ever? The
+    Italians would say it better without saying more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her
+    long silence by the supposition,&mdash;put lately to an end by scarcely
+    credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says&mdash;that I was out of
+    England; gone to the South from the 20th of September. She calls
+    herself the strongest of women, and talks of 'walking fifteen miles
+    one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,'&mdash;also
+    of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued
+    alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting
+    well by such unlawful means. And she is to write again to tell me of
+    Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile&mdash;all
+    very kind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so 'against the
+    principles of universal justice.' Yes, very unjust&mdash;very unfair it
+    was&mdash;only, you make me do just as you like in everything. Now confess
+    to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt
+    against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim,
+    oh 'son of humanity.' Think how much more need of a letter <i>I</i> have
+    than you can have; and that if you have a giant's power, ''tis
+    tyrannous to use it like a giant.' Who would take tribute from the
+    desert? How I grumble. <i>Do</i> let me have a letter directly! remember
+    that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait 'as those who
+    watch for the morning'&mdash;'lux mea!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you&mdash;and mind to say how you are <i>exactly</i>, and don't
+    neglect the walking, <i>pray</i> do not.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own
+</p>
+<p>
+    And after all, those women! A great deal of doctrine commends and
+    discommends itself by the delivery: and an honest thing may be said so
+    foolishly as to disprove its very honesty. Now after all, what did she
+    mean by that very silly expression about books, but that she did not
+    feel as she considered herself capable of feeling&mdash;and that else but
+    <i>that</i> was the meaning of the other woman? Perhaps it should have been
+    spoken earlier&mdash;nay, clearly it should&mdash;but surely it was better
+    spoken even in the last hour than not at all ... surely it is always
+    and under all circumstances, better spoken at whatever cost&mdash;I have
+    thought so steadily since I could think or feel at all. An entire
+    openness to the last moment of possible liberty, at whatever cost and
+    consequence, is the most honourable and most merciful way, both for
+    men and women! perhaps for men in an especial manner. But I shall send
+    this letter away, being in haste to get change for it.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday, December 31, 1845.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have been properly punished for so much treachery as went to that
+    re-urging the prayer that <i>you</i> would begin writing, when all the time
+    (after the first of those words had been spoken which bade <i>me</i> write)
+    I was full of purpose to send my own note last evening; one which
+    should do its best to thank you: but see, the punishment! At home I
+    found a note from Mr. Horne&mdash;on the point of setting out for Ireland,
+    too unwell to manage to come over to me; anxious, so he said, to see
+    me before leaving London, and with only Tuesday or to-day to allow the
+    opportunity of it, if I should choose to go and find him out. So I
+    considered all things and determined to go&mdash;but not till so late did I
+    determine on Tuesday, that there was barely time to get to
+    Highgate&mdash;wherefore no letter reached you to beg pardon ... and now
+    this undeserved&mdash;beyond the usual undeservedness&mdash;this
+    last-day-of-the-Year's gift&mdash;do you think or not think my gratitude
+    weighs on me? When I lay this with the others, and remember what you
+    have done for me&mdash;I do bless you&mdash;so as I cannot but believe must
+    reach the all-beloved head all my hopes and fancies and cares fly
+    straight to. Dearest, whatever change the new year brings with it, we
+    are together&mdash;I can give you no more of myself&mdash;indeed, you give me
+    now (back again if you choose, but changed and renewed by your
+    possession) the powers that seemed most properly mine. I could only
+    mean that, by the expressions to which you refer&mdash;only could mean that
+    you were my crown and palm branch, now and for ever, and so, that it
+    was a very indifferent matter to me if the world took notice of that
+    fact or no. Yes, dearest, that <i>is</i> the meaning of the prophecy, which
+    I was stupidly blind not to have read and taken comfort from long ago.
+    You ARE the veritable Siren&mdash;and you 'wait me,' and will sing 'song
+    for song.' And this is my first song, my true song&mdash;this love I bear
+    you&mdash;I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that
+    name&mdash;love. I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me:
+    they are not earnest enough; so far, not true enough&mdash;but this is all
+    the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your
+    feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now let me say it&mdash;what you are to remember. That if I had the
+    slightest doubt, or fear, I would utter it to you on the
+    instant&mdash;secure in the incontested stability of the main <i>fact</i>, even
+    though the heights at the verge in the distance should tremble and
+    prove vapour&mdash;and there would be a deep consolation in your
+    forgiveness&mdash;indeed, yes; but I tell you, on solemn consideration, it
+    does seem to me that&mdash;once take away the broad and general words that
+    admit in their nature of any freight they can be charged with,&mdash;put
+    aside love, and devotion, and trust&mdash;and <i>then</i> I seem to have said
+    <i>nothing</i> of my feeling to you&mdash;nothing whatever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will not write more now on this subject. Believe you are my blessing
+    and infinite reward beyond possible desert in intention,&mdash;my life has
+    been crowned by you, as I said!
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you ever&mdash;through you I shall be blessed. May I kiss
+    your cheek and pray this, my own, all-beloved?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must add a word or two of other things. I am very well now, quite
+    well&mdash;am walking and about to walk. Horne, or rather his friends,
+    reside in the very lane Keats loved so much&mdash;Millfield Lane. Hunt lent
+    me once the little copy of the first Poems dedicated to him&mdash;and on
+    the title-page was recorded in Hunt's delicate characters that 'Keats
+    met him with this, the presentation-copy, or whatever was the odious
+    name, in M&mdash;&mdash; Lane&mdash;called Poets' Lane by the gods&mdash;Keats came
+    running, holding it up in his hand.' Coleridge had an affection for
+    the place, and Shelley '<i>knew</i>' it&mdash;and I can testify it is green and
+    silent, with pleasant openings on the grounds and ponds, through the
+    old trees that line it. But the hills here are far more open and wild
+    and hill-like; not with the eternal clump of evergreens and thatched
+    summer house&mdash;to say nothing of the 'invisible railing' miserably
+    visible everywhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You very well know <i>what</i> a vision it is you give me&mdash;when you speak
+    of <i>standing up by the table</i> to care for my flowers&mdash;(which I will
+    never be ashamed of again, by the way&mdash;I will say for the future;
+    'here are my best'&mdash;in this as in other things.) Now, do you remember,
+    that once I bade you not surprise me out of my good behaviour by
+    standing to meet me unawares, as visions do, some day&mdash;but now&mdash;<i>omne
+    ignotum</i>? No, dearest!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ought I to say there will be two days more? till Saturday&mdash;and if one
+    word comes, <i>one</i> line&mdash;think! I am wholly yours&mdash;yours, beloved!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">January 1, 1845 [1846].
+</p>
+<p>
+    How good you are&mdash;how best! it is a favourite play of my memory to
+    take up the thought of what you were to me (to my mind gazing!) years
+    ago, as the poet in an abstraction&mdash;then the thoughts of you, a little
+    clearer, in concrete personality, as Mr. Kenyon's friend, who had
+    dined with him on such a day, or met him at dinner on such another,
+    and said some great memorable thing 'on Wednesday last,' and enquired
+    kindly about <i>me</i> perhaps on Thursday,&mdash;till I was proud! and so, the
+    thoughts of you, nearer and nearer (yet still afar!) as the Mr.
+    Browning who meant to do me the honour of writing to me, and who did
+    write; and who asked me once in a letter (does he remember?) 'not to
+    lean out of the window while his foot was on the stair!'&mdash;to take up
+    all those thoughts, and more than those, one after another, and tie
+    them together with all <i>these</i>, which cannot be named so easily&mdash;which
+    cannot be classed in botany and Greek. It is a nosegay of mystical
+    flowers, looking strangely and brightly, and keeping their May-dew
+    through the Christmases&mdash;better than even <i>your</i> flowers! And I am not
+    'ashamed' of mine, ... be very sure! no!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the siren, I never suggested to you any such thing&mdash;why you do not
+    pretend to have read such a suggestion in my letter certainly. <i>That</i>
+    would have been most exemplarily modest of me! would it not, O
+    Ulysses?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you meant to write, ... you <i>meant</i>! and went to walk in 'Poet's
+    lane' instead, (in the 'Aonius of Highgate') which I remember to have
+    read of&mdash;does not Hunt speak of it in his Memoirs?&mdash;and so now there
+    is another track of light in the traditions of the place, and people
+    may talk of the pomegranate-smell between the hedges. So you really
+    have <i>hills</i> at New Cross, and not hills by courtesy? I was at
+    Hampstead once&mdash;and there was something attractive to me in that
+    fragment of heath with its wild smell, thrown down ... like a Sicilian
+    rose from Proserpine's lap when the car drove away, ... into all that
+    arid civilization, 'laurel-clumps and invisible visible fences,' as
+    you say!&mdash;and the grand, eternal smoke rising up in the distance, with
+    its witness against nature! People grew severely in jest about cockney
+    landscape&mdash;but is it not true that the trees and grass in the close
+    neighbourhood of great cities must of necessity excite deeper emotion
+    than the woods and valleys will, a hundred miles off, where human
+    creatures ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the 'county families'
+    es-<i>chewing</i> all men who are not 'landed proprietors,' and the farmers
+    never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do
+    you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise
+    so, and 'moralize upon into a thousand similes,' as that one greatest,
+    purest, noblest thing in the world&mdash;the purely English and excellent
+    thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would
+    rather live in a street than be forced to live it out,&mdash;that English
+    country-life; for I don't mean life in the country. The social
+    exigencies&mdash;why, nothing <i>can</i> be so bad&mdash;nothing! That is the way by
+    which Englishmen grow up to top the world in their peculiar line of
+    respectable absurdities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Think of my talking so as if I could be vexed with any one of them!
+    <i>I!</i>&mdash;On the contrary I wish them all a happy new year to abuse one
+    another, or visit each of them his nearest neighbour whom he hates,
+    three times a week, because 'the distance is so convenient,' and give
+    great dinners in noble rivalship (venison from the Lord Lieutenant
+    against turbot from London!), and talk popularity and game-law by
+    turns to the tenantry, and beat down tithes to the rector. This
+    glorious England of ours; with its peculiar glory of the rural
+    districts! And <i>my</i> glory of patriotic virtue, who am so happy in
+    spite of it all, and make a pretence of talking&mdash;talking&mdash;while I
+    think the whole time of your letter. I think of your letter&mdash;I am no
+    more a patriot than <i>that</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, best and dearest! You say things to me which I am
+    not worthy to listen to for a moment, even if I was deaf dust the next
+    moment.... I confess it humbly and earnestly as before God.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet He knows,&mdash;if the entireness of a gift means anything,&mdash;that I
+    have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul,
+    for this year and for other years. Let me be used <i>for</i> you rather
+    than <i>against</i> you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of
+    feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be
+    saved from it!&mdash;pray it for <i>me</i> ... for <i>my</i> sake rather than
+    <i>yours</i>. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to
+    me, what to-day you are&mdash;and that is all!&mdash;!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 5, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you 'think of me'&mdash;I wonder
+    if you could misunderstand me in that?&mdash;As if my words or actions or
+    any of my ineffectual outside-self <i>should</i> be thought of, unless to
+    be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your
+    mind&mdash;cared for, rather than thought about&mdash;no great harm can happen
+    to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pass through you,
+    you will care for yourself; <i>my</i>self, best self!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Come, let us talk. I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to
+    see that fresh beautiful things are there&mdash;I suppose 'Delora' will
+    stand alone still&mdash;but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower
+    of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-masses and fern and
+    spotty yellow leaves,&mdash;all that, I love heartily&mdash;and there is good
+    sailor-speech in the 'Ben Capstan'&mdash;though he does knock a man down
+    with a 'crow-bar'&mdash;instead of a marling-spike or, even, a
+    belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and
+    individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder&mdash;his not
+    reprinting a quaint clever <i>real</i> ballad, published before 'Delora,'
+    on the 'Merry Devil of Edmonton'&mdash;the first of his works I ever read.
+    No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which
+    was this line: 'When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,'&mdash;good, is
+    it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, <i>is</i> that 'Swineshead
+    Monk' ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler's touch on the method of
+    concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under
+    a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &amp;c.
+    something to that effect. I suspect, <i>par parenthèse</i>, you have found
+    out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'&mdash;you once wrote '<i>your</i>
+    snails'&mdash;and certainly snails are old clients of mine&mdash;but efts! Horne
+    traced a line to me&mdash;in the rhymes of a ''prentice-hand' I used to
+    look over and correct occasionally&mdash;taxed me (last week) with having
+    altered the wise line 'Cold as a <i>lizard</i> in a <i>sunny</i> stream' to
+    'Cold as a newt hid in a shady brook'&mdash;for 'what do <i>you</i> know about
+    newts?' he asked of the author&mdash;who thereupon confessed. But never try
+    and catch a speckled gray lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you
+    see his tail hang out of the chink of a wall, his
+    winter-house&mdash;because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him
+    and stay in your fingers&mdash;and though you afterwards learn that there
+    is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than
+    positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)&mdash;and
+    though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort&mdash;<i>yet</i> ... don't
+    do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our English
+    water-eft is; 'Triton paludis Linnaei'&mdash;<i>e come guizza</i> (<i>that</i> you
+    can't say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out
+    motion along with the straightforwardness!)&mdash;I always loved all those
+    wild creatures God '<i>sets up for themselves</i>' so independently of us,
+    so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as
+    it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with
+    our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a
+    leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no
+    doubt; or tomb, perhaps&mdash;'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's
+    olives swart'&mdash;(Kiss me, my Siren!)&mdash;Well, it seemed awful to watch
+    that bee&mdash;he seemed so <i>instantly</i> from the teaching of God! Ælian
+    says that ... a <i>frog</i>, does he say?&mdash;some animal, having to swim
+    across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed,
+    which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts
+    from shore gallantly ... because when the water-serpent comes swimming
+    to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent's jaws, and no
+    hopes of a swallow that time&mdash;now fancy the two meeting heads, the
+    frog's wide eyes and the vexation of the snake!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, see! do I deceive you? Never say I began by letting down my
+    dignity 'that with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian
+    Mount'!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    My best, dear, dear one,&mdash;may you be better, less <i>depressed</i>, ... I
+    can hardly imagine frost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what
+    happiness you mean to give me,&mdash;what a life; what a death! 'I may
+    change'&mdash;too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning
+    so it continues&mdash;I <i>may</i> take up stones and pelt the next I
+    see&mdash;but&mdash;do you much fear that?&mdash;Now, <i>walk</i>, move, <i>guizza, anima
+    mia dolce</i>. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from
+    mine as we walk? May I let that stay ... dearest, (the <i>line</i> stay,
+    not the mouth)?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am not very well to-day&mdash;or, rather, have not been so&mdash;<i>now</i>, I am
+    well and <i>with you</i>. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict
+    frankness' sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all
+    about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless
+    you, and leave you in the hands of God&mdash;My own love!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tell me if I do wrong to send <i>this</i> by a morning post&mdash;so as to reach
+    you earlier than the evening&mdash;when you will ... write to me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Don't let me forget to say that I shall receive the <i>Review</i>
+    to-morrow, and will send it directly.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 6, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading
+    just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a
+    little of it&mdash;and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do,
+    I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the
+    first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty.
+    But last night I read the 'Monk of Swineshead Abbey' and the 'Three
+    Knights of Camelott' and 'Bedd Gelert' and found them all of different
+    stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure
+    and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless
+    ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines
+    for clearness&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Like to the cloud upon the hill<br>
+We are a moment seen<br>
+Or the <i>shadow of the windmill-sail<br>
+Across yon sunny slope of green</i>.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">New or not, and I don't remember it elsewhere, it is just and
+    beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just
+    touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying
+    is not faster! Then the 'Three Knights' has beautiful things, with
+    more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show&mdash;for his
+    character is a vague grand massiveness,&mdash;like Stonehenge&mdash;or at least,
+    if 'towers and battlements he sees' they are 'bosomed high' in dusky
+    clouds ... it is a 'passion-created imagery' which has no clear
+    outline. In this ballad of the 'Knights,' and in the Monk's too, we
+    may <i>look at</i> things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and
+    mates not with his kind afterwards, 'While, <i>holding beards</i>, they
+    dance in pairs&mdash;and that is all excellent and reminds one of those
+    fine sylvan festivals, 'in Orion.' But now tell me if you like
+    altogether 'Ben Capstan' and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be
+    lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we
+    may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect
+    what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf
+    story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I
+    am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about
+    fairies:&mdash;Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' with its
+    subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse ...
+    '<i>machina intersit</i>' ... Grandmama Grey!&mdash;to say nothing of the 'small
+    dog' that isn't the 'small boy.' Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger
+    canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than
+    lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity
+    in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and
+    earnestly. No one has admired more than I the 'Death of Marlowe,'
+    scenes in 'Cosmo,' and 'Orion' in much of it. But now tell me if you
+    can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I
+    am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who
+    combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No
+    one, at present in the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I
+    found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter
+    of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now
+    is only as good as the worst before, and I can't hear from you, until
+    Monday ... Monday! Did you think of <i>that</i>&mdash;you who took the credit of
+    acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I
+    shall have to wait ... till what o'clock on Monday, tempted in the
+    meanwhile to fall into controversy against the 'new moons and sabbath
+    days' and the pausing of the post in consequence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the
+    physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about
+    you&mdash;you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the
+    crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of
+    myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could
+    not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters
+    seemed nearer to me, long ... long ... and in spite of the postmark,
+    than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me
+    constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his
+    side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to
+    think of having to wait so many hours before the 'candid' closing
+    letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. 'People say,'
+    I used to think, 'that women <i>always</i> know, and certainly I do not
+    know, and therefore ... therefore.'&mdash;The logic crushed on like
+    Juggernaut's car. But in the letters it was different&mdash;the dear
+    letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to
+    stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for
+    ever and answer them after a fashion ... that, I felt from the
+    beginning. But <i>you</i>&mdash;!
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Monday.</i>&mdash;Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my
+    letter! Yet you look askance at me over 'newt and toad,' and praise so
+    the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same
+    head. And you really like <i>that</i>? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the
+    night cap and all? and 'shoetye and blue sky?' and is it really wrong
+    of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole,
+    ... not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical,
+    and in the grotesque&mdash;but here there is a want of life and
+    consistency, as it seems to me!&mdash;the elf is no elf and speaks no
+    elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch, ... this, ... for
+    supernatural music. So I fancy at least&mdash;but I will try the poem again
+    presently. You must be right&mdash;unless it should be your over-goodness
+    opposed to my over-badness&mdash;I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps
+    in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as
+    Mr. Forster did his last <i>Examiner</i> in, when he gave the all-hail to
+    Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no!&mdash;not
+    such as Mr. Forster's. Your soul does not enter into his secret&mdash;There
+    can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word&mdash;he
+    who knows&mdash;or ought to know!&mdash;And now let us agree and admire the
+    bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert's unfilled grave&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">The <i>long</i> beard <i>fell</i> like <i>snow</i> into the grave<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+With solemn grace
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for
+    the fairies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon&mdash;Miss Martineau's
+    two volumes&mdash;and Mr. Bailey sends his 'Festus,' very kindly, ... and
+    'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' from America from a Mrs. or a Miss
+    Fuller&mdash;how I hate those 'Women of England,' 'Women and their Mission'
+    and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such
+    expositions of rights and wrongs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter would be worth them all, if <i>you</i> were less <i>you</i>! I mean,
+    just this letter, ... all alive as it is with crawling buzzing
+    wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures ... as all alive as your
+    own pedant's book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs
+    too&mdash;particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so
+    high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my
+    nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one
+    hand to the other. But for the toad!&mdash;why, at the end of the row of
+    narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an
+    old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a
+    great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly.
+    That he 'wore a jewel in his head' I doubted nothing at all. You must
+    see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And
+    on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never
+    looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs,
+    deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than
+    go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the
+    profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his
+    toad's head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment,
+    poisoned as by one of the Medici.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh&mdash;and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my
+    sisters in a rat's nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was,
+    the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and
+    blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet
+    no, not much. My aversion proper ... call it horror rather ... was for
+    the silent, cold, clinging, gliding <i>bat</i>; and even now, I think, I
+    could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as
+    it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on
+    the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing&mdash;the
+    wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so
+    cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of
+    natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night
+    those bats come sailing ... without a sound&mdash;and go ... you cannot
+    guess where!&mdash;fade with the night-blackness!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You have not been well&mdash;which is my first thought if not my first
+    word. Do walk, and do not work; and think ... what I could be thinking
+    of, if I did not think of <i>you</i> ... dear&mdash;dearest! 'As the doves fly
+    to the windows,' so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty,
+    as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up
+    straight to God ... nothing, no one, used to intercept me&mdash;now there
+    is <i>you</i>&mdash;only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore
+    any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are
+    to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you
+    know at all what <i>I</i> am,&mdash;and what I should be but for you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So ... love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the
+    lizards! love me as you love the efts&mdash;and I will believe in <i>you</i> as
+    you believe ... in Ælian&mdash;Will <i>that</i> do?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Say how you are when you write&mdash;<i>and write</i>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I this minute receive the Review&mdash;a poor business, truly! Is there a
+    reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical
+    High-place to hold forth?&mdash;I have only glanced over the article
+    however. Well, one day <i>I</i> am to write of you, dearest, and it must
+    come to something rather better than <i>that</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest.
+    I am trusting to hear from you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in
+    the <i>New Quarterly</i> 'Mr. Browning' figures pleasantly as 'one without
+    any sympathy for a human being!'&mdash;Then, for newts and efts at all
+    events!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you
+    not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one's
+    supposed tether without danger&mdash;there is the distance so palpably
+    between the most audacious step <i>there</i>, and the next ... which is
+    nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal
+    intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even,
+    might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path
+    once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come
+    into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended <i>there</i>, just there
+    ... and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid
+    speaking irrevocable words&mdash;and when, as to me, those words are
+    intensely <i>true, doom-words</i>&mdash;think, dearest! Because, as I told you
+    once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect
+    <i>respect</i> in it, the full <i>belief</i> ... (I shall get presently to poor
+    Robert's very avowal of 'owing you all esteem'!). It is on that I
+    build, and am secure&mdash;for how should I know, of myself, how to serve
+    you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own
+    interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be
+    considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were
+    loathing at your heart, and if so many 'noes' made a 'yes,' and 'one
+    refusal no rebuff' and all that horrible bestiality which stout
+    gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after
+    dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, 'The toast be
+    dear woman!' Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,&mdash;I
+    do believe,&mdash;<i>now</i>, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love,
+    and least able to imagine what I should do without it,&mdash;I cannot but
+    believe, I say, that had you given me once a 'refusal'&mdash;clearly
+    derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied
+    consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly
+    but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by
+    any step of mine; I should, <i>believing you</i>, have never again renewed
+    directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count
+    how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to
+    you ... but from <i>the outside</i>, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I
+    should have acted thus under <i>any</i> circumstances, how could I but
+    redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish&mdash;you know,
+    and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for
+    the cause, though not the manner&mdash;but could I do other than keep
+    'farther from you' than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in
+    that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and
+    <i>then</i>, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your
+    feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart
+    and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be
+    yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It
+    was the plainness of <i>that</i> which determined me to wait and be patient
+    and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might
+    please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could
+    not have been most rich, too, <i>then</i>&mdash;in what would seem little only
+    to <i>me</i>, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud
+    beyond measure&mdash;happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see
+    you simply, speak with you and be spoken to&mdash;what am I more than
+    others? Don't think this mock humility&mdash;<i>it is not</i>&mdash;you take me in
+    your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this
+    is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you <i>might</i>&mdash;if not
+    now, at some future time&mdash;give other than this, the true reason, for
+    that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early
+    farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate
+    <i>drawing closer</i>&mdash;I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press
+    close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Wednesday.</i>&mdash;You are entirely right about those poems of Horne's&mdash;I
+    spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle
+    with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of
+    originality in men&mdash;the other way of safe copying precedents being
+    <i>so</i> safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in
+    the form ... reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The
+    Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think&mdash;and a common mistake,
+    too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women,
+    and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing
+    for children and miss them and the others too,&mdash;with that detestable
+    irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they
+    profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower
+    capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by
+    half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books
+    and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid
+    good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club&mdash;keep us from all
+    that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in
+    Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the
+    foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all
+    events&mdash;the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour
+    which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then,
+    what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, <i>so</i>! Not
+    altogether,&mdash;for first it was but the stranger's welcome I gave, the
+    right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once
+    admitted within the door. And then&mdash;when I know what Horne thinks
+    of&mdash;you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired
+    you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune ... I <i>could</i> <SPAN class="sc-ex">not</span>
+    begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends&mdash;he has such
+    very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and
+    <i>none</i>, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than
+    your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed&mdash;truth
+    remains the truth&mdash;so, at least, I excuse myself ... and quite as much
+    for what I say <i>now</i> as for what was said <i>then</i>! 'King John' is very
+    fine and full of purpose; 'The Noble Heart,' sadly faint and
+    uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor
+    conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to
+    resist&mdash;a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced
+    to complete another fashioned morality&mdash;a segment of a circle of
+    larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your
+    own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how
+    and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with
+    quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one
+    to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. 'Bear patiently all
+    injuries&mdash;revenge in no case'&mdash;that is plain. 'Take what you conceive
+    to be God's part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy
+    evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here'&mdash;<i>that</i> is plain,
+    too,&mdash;but, call Otto's act <i>no</i> wrong, or being one, not such as
+    should be avenged&mdash;and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is
+    a 'recreant'&mdash;just what needs the slight punishment of instant death
+    to the remarker&mdash;and ... where is the way? What <i>is</i> clear?
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;Not my letter! which goes on and on&mdash;'dear letters'&mdash;sweetest?
+    because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall
+    see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own&mdash;I have not half said
+    what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which
+    proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, 'at a
+    cock-crow from the Grange.'&mdash;Ever your own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last night, I received a copy of the <i>New Quarterly</i>&mdash;now here is
+    popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to
+    be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously
+    eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last&mdash;and
+    in <i>three other</i> articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing,
+    they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one
+    instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and
+    <i>with</i> me I don't know how many poetical <i>crétins</i> are praised as
+    noticeably&mdash;and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the
+    richest style of scavengering&mdash;only Carlyle! And I love him enough not
+    to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into
+    his.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my
+    Ba.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read
+    them&mdash;of <i>you</i>, I mean of course,&mdash;though I quite understand that it
+    is doing no manner of good to go back so to 'Paracelsus,' heading the
+    article 'Paracelsus and other poems,' as if the other poems could not
+    front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. 'Paracelsus'
+    is a great work and will <i>live</i>, but the way to do you good with the
+    stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would
+    have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last
+    living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying 'Look <i>here</i>.'
+    What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the
+    <i>Retrospective Review</i>? And then, no attempt at analytical
+    criticism&mdash;or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in
+    sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy
+    things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice:
+    and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your
+    great world&mdash;the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like
+    that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a
+    sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical
+    sectarianism, in another place&mdash;<i>yours</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For me, it is all quite kind enough&mdash;only I object, on my own part
+    also, to being reviewed in the 'Seraphim,' when my better books are
+    nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk
+    of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know,&mdash;but let
+    them be <i>my</i> faults! When I wrote the 'Romaunt of Margret,' I had not
+    read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only
+    half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and
+    sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in
+    London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till
+    the collected works appeared ... <i>favente</i> Moxon, ... I was ignorant
+    of his best <i>early</i> productions; and not even for the rhythmetical
+    form of my 'Vision of the Poets,' was I indebted to the 'Two
+    Voices,'&mdash;three pages of my 'Vision' having been written several years
+    ago&mdash;at the beginning of my illness&mdash;and thrown aside, and taken up
+    again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there's no use talking! In a
+    solitary review which noticed my 'Essay on Mind,' somebody wrote ...
+    'this young lady imitates Darwin'&mdash;and I never could <i>read</i> Darwin,
+    ... was stopped always on the second page of the 'Loves of the Plants'
+    when I tried to read him to 'justify myself in having an opinion'&mdash;the
+    repulsion was too strong. Yet the 'young lady imitated Darwin' of
+    course, as the infallible critic said so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the 'many others,'
+    whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The 'three
+    poets in three distant ages born' may well stare amazed!
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on
+    your review in a passion&mdash;because pray mark that the ink has over-run
+    some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of
+    an inkstand, it would not have been precisely <i>there</i>. It is the
+    second book spoilt by me within these two days&mdash;and my fingers were so
+    dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have
+    made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty
+    enough to befit a poetess&mdash;as black 'as bard beseemed'&mdash;and he took
+    the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have
+    reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very
+    very earliest?&mdash;and how is it that I did not hear from you last night
+    again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you
+    <i>hate</i> writing to me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the
+    letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the
+    ink&mdash;I did it 'in a pet,' he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new
+    book&mdash;certainly I ought&mdash;only it is not worth doing justice for&mdash;and I
+    shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must
+    forgive me as magnanimously as you can.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Omne ignotum pro magnifico'&mdash;do you think <i>so</i>? I hope not indeed!
+    <i>vo quietando</i>&mdash;and everything else that I ought to do&mdash;except of
+    course, <i>that</i> thinking of you which is so difficult.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. Till to-morrow!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own always.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon refers to 'Festus'&mdash;of which I had said that the fine
+    things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 9, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You never think, ever dearest, that I 'repent'&mdash;why what a word to
+    use! You never could <i>think</i> such a word for a moment! If you were to
+    leave me even,&mdash;to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do
+    it,&mdash;I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I
+    'repent' ... regret anything ... be sorry for having known you and
+    loved you ... no! Which I say simply to prove that, in <i>no</i> extreme
+    case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be
+    different.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Not</i> out of 'generosity' certainly, but from the veriest selfishness,
+    I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the
+    future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than
+    another woman might have been.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions&mdash;do I not vex you by
+    them, <i>you</i> whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force
+    their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world,
+    and because your happiness is so precious a thing.
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Cloth of frieze, be not too bold,<br>
+Though thou'rt matched with cloth of gold!
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">&mdash;<i>that</i>, beloved, was written for <i>me</i>. And you, if you would make me
+    happy, <i>always</i> will look at yourself from my ground and by my light,
+    as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that
+    if I were <i>vacillating</i>, I should not be so weak as to tease you with
+    the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased
+    swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction
+    or wish of retraction,&mdash;because I belong to you by gift and ownership,
+    and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of
+    yours,&mdash;it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the
+    necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being
+    wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which
+    is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over
+    and over have you replied to them,&mdash;as yesterday!&mdash;and now, do not
+    speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for
+    particular application,&mdash;only to be <i>ready</i> for application. I love
+    you from the deepest of my nature&mdash;the whole world is nothing to me
+    beside you&mdash;and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible.
+    'How <i>dreadful</i> is this place.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for
+    to-day,&mdash;it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word.
+    It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves)
+    under the same aspect and colour&mdash;and it is certainly true that I have
+    a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects
+    as we have never looked at together. I know <i>you</i> so well (yes, I
+    boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also
+    the <i>idola</i> of all things as they are in your eyes&mdash;so that never,
+    scarcely, I am curious,&mdash;never anxious, to learn what your opinions
+    may be. Now, <i>have</i> I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to
+    know <i>you</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    More than enough! You have 'left undone'&mdash;do you say? On the contrary,
+    you have done too much,&mdash;you <i>are</i> too much. My cup,&mdash;which used to
+    hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the
+    absinthus,&mdash;has overflowed all this wine: and <i>that</i> makes me look out
+    for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out
+    your hand for them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Say how you are&mdash;and do take care and exercise&mdash;and write to me,
+    dearest!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How right you are about 'Ben Capstan,'&mdash;and the illustration by the
+    <i>yellow clay</i>. That is precisely what I meant,&mdash;said with more
+    precision than I could say it. Art without an ideal is neither nature
+    nor art. The question involves the whole difference between Madame
+    Tussaud and Phidias.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe's book&mdash;and I see that the
+    deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever
+    produceable by the dedication, is cut down and away&mdash;perhaps in this
+    particular copy only!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tuesday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being
+    afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you!
+    Try to let it be long to you&mdash;will you? My consistency is wonderful.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review&mdash;indeed it was
+    foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?&mdash;You
+    shall not send it back&mdash;but on your table I shall find and take it
+    next Tuesday&mdash;<i>c'est convenu</i>! The other precious volume has not yet
+    come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to
+    carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a
+    scale for the Review's sake; and just now&mdash;there is no denying it, and
+    spite of all I have been incredulous about&mdash;it does seem that the fact
+    <i>is</i> achieved and that I <i>do</i> love you, plainly, surely, more than
+    ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why,
+    the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?&mdash;in the
+    heart's heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Rest&mdash;dearest&mdash;bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kindest and dearest you are!&mdash;that is 'my secret' and for the others,
+    I leave them to you!&mdash;only it is no secret that I should and must be
+    glad to have the words you sent with the book,&mdash;which I should have
+    seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I
+    not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of
+    critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the
+    dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of
+    human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on&mdash;it is the stamp
+    on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or
+    farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said
+    than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up
+    to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could
+    have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said
+    rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the
+    brain,&mdash;which is as true as truth can be. Then, I <i>shall have
+    'Pauline' in a day or two</i>&mdash;yes, I shall and must, and <i>will</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that
+    name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley's, and is one of his very best
+    papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about
+    his writings in general, with a grace and <i>savoir faire</i> nevertheless,
+    and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says
+    of 'many-sidedness' seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That,
+    he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having
+    such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of
+    principle&mdash;yet 'many-sidedness' is certainly no word for him. The
+    effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy
+    and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather <i>bends</i> to
+    a phase of humanity and literature than contains it&mdash;than comprehends
+    it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all
+    round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things:
+    universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the
+    contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the
+    mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the
+    willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now
+    toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is
+    different altogether ... <i>as</i> different as a willow-tree from a church
+    tower.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while
+    I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me
+    to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so
+    much, of thinking of only you&mdash;which <i>is</i> too much, perhaps. Shall I
+    tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to
+    any woman what you are to me&mdash;the fulness must be in proportion, you
+    know, to the vacancy ... and only <i>I</i> know what was behind&mdash;the long
+    wilderness <i>without</i> the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for
+    happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is
+    it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve&mdash;not
+    <i>you</i>&mdash;but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a
+    lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without
+    the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And
+    you love me <i>more</i>, you say?&mdash;Shall I thank you or God?
+    Both,&mdash;indeed&mdash;and there is no possible return from me to either of
+    you! I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God. How
+    shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it
+    as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for
+    your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a
+    thought of any others&mdash;<i>that</i> is all I could ask you with any disquiet
+    as to the granting of it&mdash;May God bless you!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But you have the review <i>now</i>&mdash;surely?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The <i>Morning Chronicle</i> attributes the authorship of 'Modern Poets'
+    (<i>our</i> article) to Lord John Manners&mdash;so I hear this morning. I have
+    not yet looked at the paper myself. The <i>Athenæum</i>, still abominably
+    dumb!&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is <i>no</i> letter&mdash;love,&mdash;I make haste to tell you&mdash;to-morrow I will
+    write. For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very
+    destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an
+    old, old friend he is, beside&mdash;so&mdash;you must understand my defection,
+    when only this scrap reaches you to-night! Ah, love,&mdash;you are my
+    unutterable blessing,&mdash;I discover you, more of you, day by day,&mdash;hour
+    by hour, I do think!&mdash;I am entirely yours,&mdash;one gratitude, all my soul
+    becomes when I see you over me as now&mdash;God bless my dear, dearest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My 'Act Fourth' is done&mdash;but too roughly this time! I will tell you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    One kiss more, dearest!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thanks for the Review.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 12, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have no words for you, my dearest,&mdash;I shall never have.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are mine, I am yours. Now, here is one sign of what I said ...
+    that I must love you more than at first ... a little sign, and to be
+    looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows
+    <i>can</i> only be little, so very little now&mdash;and as the fine French
+    Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined
+    stages by <i>millionths</i>, so&mdash;! At first I only thought of being <i>happy</i>
+    in you,&mdash;in your happiness: now I most think of you in the dark hours
+    that must come&mdash;I shall grow old with you, and die with you&mdash;as far as
+    I can look into the night I see the light with me. And surely with
+    that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed
+    sense of security to the sunny middle of the day. I am in the full
+    sunshine now; and <i>after</i>, all seems cared for,&mdash;is it too homely an
+    illustration if I say the day's visit is not crossed by uncertainties
+    as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?&mdash;Now Keats
+    speaks of 'Beauty, that must <i>die</i>&mdash;and Joy whose hand is ever at his
+    lips, bidding farewell!' And <i>who</i> spoke of&mdash;looking up into the eyes
+    and asking 'And <i>how long</i> will you love us'?&mdash;There is a Beauty that
+    will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will
+    love for ever!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And <i>I</i>&mdash;am to love no longer than I can. Well, dear&mdash;and when I <i>can</i>
+    no longer&mdash;you will not blame me? You will do only as ever, kindly and
+    justly; hardly more. I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my
+    fancy to such an experiment, and consider how <i>that</i> is to happen, and
+    what measures ought to be taken in the emergency&mdash;because in the
+    'universality of my sympathies' I certainly number a very lively one
+    with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a
+    spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis. There is no doubt
+    I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more
+    fortunate human being. And I hope that because such a calamity does
+    not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no
+    less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no
+    humanity can be altogether exempt&mdash;just as God bids us ask for the
+    continuance of the 'daily bread'!&mdash;'battle, murder and sudden death'
+    lie behind doubtless. I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one
+    more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we
+    bestow in another's case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our
+    own, ... that I only contemplate the <i>possibility</i> you make me
+    recognize, with pity, and fear ... no anger at all; and imprecations
+    of vengeance, <i>for what</i>? Observe, I only speak of cases <i>possible</i>;
+    of sudden impotency of mind; that <i>is</i> possible&mdash;there <i>are</i> other
+    ways of '<i>changing</i>,' 'ceasing to love' &amp;c. which it is safest not to
+    think of nor believe in. A man <i>may</i> never leave his writing desk
+    without seeing safe in one corner of it the folded slip which directs
+    the disposal of his papers in the event of his reason suddenly leaving
+    him&mdash;or he may never go out into the street without a card in his
+    pocket to signify his address to those who may have to pick him up in
+    an apoplectic fit&mdash;but if he once begins to fear he is growing a glass
+    bottle, and, <i>so</i>, liable to be smashed,&mdash;do you see? And now, love,
+    dear heart of my heart, my own, only Ba&mdash;see no more&mdash;see what I <i>am</i>,
+    what God in his constant mercy ordinarily grants to those who have, as
+    I, received already so much; much, past expression! It is but&mdash;if you
+    will so please&mdash;at worst, forestalling the one or two years, for my
+    sake; but you <i>will</i> be as sure of me <i>one</i> day as I can be now of
+    myself&mdash;and why not <i>now</i> be sure? See, love&mdash;a year is gone by&mdash;we
+    were in one relation when you wrote at the end of a letter 'Do not say
+    I do not tire you' (by writing)&mdash;'<i>I am sure I do</i>.' A year has gone
+    by&mdash;<i>Did you tire me then?</i> <i>Now</i>, you tell me what is told; for my
+    sake, sweet, let the few years go by; we are married, and my arms are
+    round you, and my face touches yours, and I am asking you, '<i>Were you
+    not</i> to me, in that dim beginning of 1846, a joy behind all joys, a
+    life added to and transforming mine, the good I choose from all the
+    possible gifts of God on this earth, for which I seemed to have lived;
+    which accepting, I thankfully step aside and let the rest get what
+    they can; what, it is very likely, they esteem more&mdash;for why should my
+    eye be evil because God's is good; why should I grudge that, giving
+    them, I do believe, infinitely less, he gives them a content in the
+    inferior good and belief in its worth? I should have wished <i>that</i>
+    further concession, that illusion as I believe it, for their
+    sakes&mdash;but I cannot undervalue my own treasure and so scant the only
+    tribute of mere gratitude which is in my power to pay. Hear this said
+    <i>now before</i> the few years; and believe in it <i>now for then</i>, dearest!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Must you see 'Pauline'? At least then let me wait a few days; to
+    correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the
+    history of it; what is necessary you should know before you see it.
+    That article I suppose to be by Heraud&mdash;about two thirds&mdash;and the
+    rest, or a little less, by that Mr. Powell&mdash;whose unimaginable,
+    impudent vulgar stupidity you get some inkling of in the 'Story from
+    Boccaccio'&mdash;of which the <i>words</i> quoted were <i>his</i>, I am sure&mdash;as sure
+    as that he knows not whether Boccaccio lived before or after
+    Shakspeare, whether Florence or Rome be the more northern city,&mdash;one
+    word of Italian in general, or letter of Boccaccio's in particular.
+    When I took pity on him once on a time and helped his verses into a
+    sort of grammar and sense, I did not think he was a <i>buyer</i> of other
+    men's verses, to be printed as his own; thus he <i>bought</i> two
+    modernisations of Chaucer&mdash;'Ugolino' and another story from Leigh
+    Hunt&mdash;and one, 'Sir Thopas' from Horne, and printed them as his own,
+    as I learned only last week. He paid me extravagant court and, seeing
+    no harm in the mere folly of the man, I was on good terms with him,
+    till ten months ago he grossly insulted a friend of mine who had
+    written an article for the Review&mdash;(which is as good as <i>his</i>, he
+    being a large proprietor of the delectable property, and influencing
+    the voices of his co-mates in council)&mdash;well, he insulted my friend,
+    who had written that article at my special solicitation, and did all
+    he could to avoid paying the price of it&mdash;Why?&mdash;Because the poor
+    creature had actually taken the article to the Editor <i>as one by his
+    friend Serjeant Talfourd contributed for pure love of him, Powell the
+    aforesaid</i>,&mdash;cutting, in consequence, no inglorious figure in the eyes
+    of Printer and Publisher! Now I was away all this time in Italy or he
+    would never have ventured on such a piece of childish impertinence.
+    And my friend being a true gentleman, and quite unused to this sort of
+    'practice,' in the American sense, held his peace and went without his
+    'honorarium.' But on my return, I enquired, and made him make a
+    proper application, which Mr. Powell treated with all the insolence in
+    the world&mdash;because, as the event showed, the having to write a cheque
+    for 'the Author of <i>the</i> Article'&mdash;that author's name <i>not</i> being
+    Talfourd's ... <i>there</i> was certain disgrace! Since then (ten months
+    ago) I have never seen him&mdash;and he accuses <i>himself</i>, observe, of
+    'sucking my plots while I drink his tea'&mdash;one as much as the other!
+    And now why do I tell you this, all of it? Ah,&mdash;now you shall hear!
+    Because, it has often been in my mind to ask you what <i>you</i> know of
+    this Mr. Powell, or ever knew. For he, (being profoundly versed in
+    every sort of untruth, as every fresh experience shows me, and the
+    rest of his acquaintance) he told me long ago, 'he used to correspond
+    with you, and that he quarrelled with you'&mdash;which I supposed to mean
+    that he began by sending you his books (as with one and everybody) and
+    that, in return to your note of acknowledgment, he had chosen to write
+    again, and perhaps, again&mdash;is it so? Do not write one word in answer
+    to me&mdash;the name of such a miserable nullity, and husk of a man, ought
+    not to have a place in your letters&mdash;and <i>that way</i> he would get near
+    to me again; near indeed this time!&mdash;So <i>tell</i> me, in a word&mdash;or do
+    not tell me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How I never say what I sit down to say! How saying the little makes me
+    want to say the more! How the least of little things, once taken up as
+    a thing to be imparted to you, seems to need explanations and
+    commentaries; all is of importance to me&mdash;every breath you breathe,
+    every little fact (like this) you are to know!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was out last night&mdash;to see the rest of Frank Talfourd's theatricals;
+    and met Dickens and his set&mdash;so my evenings go away! If I do not bring
+    the <i>Act</i> you must forgive me&mdash;yet I shall, I think; the roughness
+    matters little in this stage. Chorley says very truly that a tragedy
+    implies as much power <i>kept back</i> as brought out&mdash;very true that is. I
+    do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied&mdash;as was to be but
+    expected&mdash;with the effect of this last&mdash;the <i>shelve</i> of the hill,
+    whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at
+    the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away&mdash;not come to a
+    stop like your horse against a church wall. It is all in long
+    speeches&mdash;the <i>action, proper</i>, is in them&mdash;they are no descriptions,
+    or amplifications&mdash;but here, in a drama of this kind, all the
+    <i>events</i>, (and interest), take place in the <i>minds</i> of the actors ...
+    somewhat like 'Paracelsus' in that respect. You know, or don't know,
+    that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I
+    thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt,
+    spasmodic writing&mdash;they will find some fault with this, of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How you know Chorley! That is precisely the man, that willow blowing
+    now here now there&mdash;precisely! I wish he minded the <i>Athenæum</i>, its
+    silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I&mdash;but he goes on
+    painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me,
+    I feel confident, that <i>he</i> has no part nor lot in the matter: I have
+    <i>two</i> kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday. See
+    the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he
+    can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt;
+    and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to
+    prove my belief in that same! For myself&mdash;if I have vanity which such
+    Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who
+    praised Mr. Mackay's own, own 'Dead Pan,' quite his own, the other
+    day?&mdash;By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the
+    gentleman had written a certain 'Song of the Bell' ... 'singularly
+    like Schiller's; <i>considering that Mr. M. had never</i> seen it!' I am
+    told he writes for the <i>Athenæum</i>, but don't know. Would that sort of
+    praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue&mdash;which Forster, deep
+    in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about&mdash;as
+    pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever
+    spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last? You shall
+    see they will not notice&mdash;unless a fresh publication alters the
+    circumstances&mdash;until some seven or eight months&mdash;as before; and then
+    they <i>will</i> notice, and <i>praise</i>, and tell anybody who cares to
+    enquire, '<i>So</i> we noticed the work.' So do not you go expecting
+    justice or injustice till I tell you. It answers me to be found
+    writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game,
+    when that game is only 'Thimble-rig' and for prizes of
+    gingerbread-nuts&mdash;Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke <i>does</i> shift the pea,
+    and so did from the beginning&mdash;as Charles Lamb's pleasant <i>sobriquet</i>
+    (Mr. <i>Bilk</i>, he would have it) testifies. Still he behaved kindly to
+    that poor Frances Brown&mdash;let us forget him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now, my Audience, my crown-bearer, my path-preparer&mdash;I am with you
+    again and out of them all&mdash;there, <i>here</i>, in my arms, is my <i>proved
+    palpable success</i>! My life, my poetry, gained nothing, oh no!&mdash;but
+    this found them, and blessed them. On Tuesday I shall see you,
+    dearest&mdash;am much better; well to-day&mdash;are you well&mdash;or 'scarcely to be
+    called an invalid'? Oh, when I <i>have</i> you, am by you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, dearest&mdash;And be very sure you have your wish about the
+    length of the week&mdash;still Tuesday must come! And with it your own,
+    happy, grateful
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah Mr. Kenyon!&mdash;how he vexed me to-day. To keep away all the ten days
+    before, and to come just at the wrong time after all! It was better
+    for you, I suppose&mdash;believe&mdash;to go with him down-stairs&mdash;yes, it
+    certainly was better: it was disagreeable enough to be very wise! Yet
+    I, being addicted to every sort of superstition turning to melancholy,
+    did hate so breaking off in the middle of that black thread ... (do
+    you remember what we were talking of when they opened the door?) that
+    I was on the point of saying 'Stay one moment,' which I should have
+    repented afterwards for the best of good reasons. Oh, I <i>should</i> have
+    liked to have 'fastened off' that black thread, and taken one stitch
+    with a blue or a green one!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You do not remember what we were talking of? what <i>you</i>, rather, were
+    talking of? And what <i>I</i> remember, at least, because it is exactly the
+    most unkind and hard thing you ever said to me&mdash;ever dearest, so I
+    remember it by that sign! That you should say such a thing to me&mdash;!
+    think what it was, for indeed I will not write it down here&mdash;it would
+    be worse than Mr. Powell! Only the foolishness of it (I mean, the
+    foolishness of it alone) saves it, smooths it to a degree!&mdash;the
+    foolishness being the same as if you asked a man where he would walk
+    when he lost his head. Why, if you had asked St. Denis <i>beforehand</i>,
+    he would have thought it a foolish question.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you!&mdash;you, who talk so finely of never, never doubting; of being
+    such an example in the way of believing and trusting&mdash;it appears,
+    after all, that you have an imagination apprehensive (or
+    comprehensive) of 'glass bottles' like other sublunary creatures, and
+    worse than some of them. For mark, that I never went any farther than
+    to the stone-wall hypothesis of your forgetting me!&mdash;<i>I</i> always
+    stopped there&mdash;and never climbed, to the top of it over the
+    broken-bottle fortification, to see which way you meant to walk
+    afterwards. And you, to ask me so coolly&mdash;think what you asked me.
+    That you should have the heart to ask such a question!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And the reason&mdash;! and it could seem a reasonable matter of doubt to
+    you whether I would go to the south for my health's sake!&mdash;And I
+    answered quite a common 'no' I believe&mdash;for you bewildered me for the
+    moment&mdash;and I have had tears in my eyes two or three times since, just
+    through thinking back of it all ... of your asking me such questions.
+    Now did I not tell you when I first knew you, that I was leaning out
+    of the window? True, <i>that</i> was&mdash;I was tired of living ...
+    unaffectedly tired. All I cared to live for was to do better some of
+    the work which, after all, was out of myself, and which I had to reach
+    across to do. But I told you. Then, last year, for duty's sake I would
+    have <i>consented</i> to go to Italy! but if you really fancy that I would
+    have struggled in the face of all that difficulty&mdash;or struggled,
+    indeed, anywise, to compass such an object as <i>that</i>&mdash;except for the
+    motive of your caring for it and me&mdash;why you know nothing of me after
+    all&mdash;nothing! And now, take away the motive, and I am where I
+    was&mdash;leaning out of the window again. To put it in plainer words (as
+    you really require information), I should let them do what they liked
+    to me till I was dead&mdash;only I <i>wouldn't go to Italy</i>&mdash;if anybody
+    proposed Italy out of contradiction. In the meantime I do entreat you
+    never to talk of such a thing to me any more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You know, if you were to leave me by your choice and for your
+    happiness, it would be another thing. It would be very lawful to talk
+    of <i>that</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And observe! I perfectly understand that you did not think of
+    <i>doubting me</i>&mdash;so to speak! But you thought, all the same, that if
+    such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well&mdash;I am not quarrelling&mdash;I am uneasy about your head rather. That
+    pain in it&mdash;what can it mean? I do beseech you to think of me just so
+    much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never
+    missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then
+    not to walk at all until Friday is <i>not</i> taking exercise, nor the
+    thing required. Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of
+    evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid. I
+    do beseech you, dearest! And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you,
+    besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to <i>him</i> for a very little
+    time&mdash;just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast
+    somewhere. Will you consider, and do what is right, <i>for me</i>? I do not
+    propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at
+    which you might reasonably hesitate. And&mdash;did you ever try smoking as
+    a remedy? If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do
+    you good, I have been thinking. Or without the smoking, to breathe
+    where tobacco is burnt,&mdash;<i>that</i> calms the nervous system in a
+    wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from
+    an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of
+    narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was
+    tranquillized in one half hour by a <i>pinch</i> of <i>tobacco</i> being burnt
+    in a shovel near me. Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Wednesday.</i>&mdash;For '<i>Pauline</i>'&mdash;when I had named it to you I was on the
+    point of sending for the book to the booksellers&mdash;then suddenly I
+    thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very
+    much would dislike my reading it. See now! Many readers have done
+    virtuously, but <i>I</i>, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpassed them
+    all!&mdash;And now, because I may, I '<i>must</i> read it':&mdash;and as there are
+    misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you
+    think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday? Do not
+    send&mdash;bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot
+    to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read
+    it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not
+    keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been
+    worse&mdash;<i>that</i>, you confess!&mdash;and what if it should be the crossing of
+    my bad star? <i>You</i> of the 'Crown' and the 'Lyre,' to seek influences
+    from the 'chair of Cassiopeia'! I hope she will forgive me for using
+    her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professorship of
+    poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election.
+    You know, the qualification, there, is,&mdash;<i>not to be a poet</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of <i>them</i>) were out of
+    spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet
+    sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley!&mdash;and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who
+    <i>will</i> say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with
+    him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk
+    down-stairs together?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very
+    own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">E.B.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Say particularly how you are&mdash;now do not omit it. And will you have
+    Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this
+    moment I <i>dare</i> not, because they are reading them here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'&mdash;which is
+    quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank
+    verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But for the <i>man</i>!&mdash;To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of
+    Commonplaces, such as he is!&mdash;I have seen his name in the <i>Athenæum</i>
+    attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,&mdash;more
+    than usually fugitive&mdash;but I never heard before that his hand was in
+    the prose department.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I <i>well knew
+    and felt</i> the price I was about to pay&mdash;but the thought <i>did</i> occur
+    that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was
+    that of his own arrival&mdash;and that he would not know how very soon,
+    alas, I should be <i>obliged</i> to go&mdash;so ... to save you any least
+    embarrassment in the world, I got&mdash;just that shake of the hand, just
+    that look&mdash;and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after
+    all? So I said to myself all the way home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I am away from you&mdash;a crowd of things press on me for
+    utterance&mdash;'I will say them, not write them,' I think:&mdash;when I see
+    you&mdash;all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,&mdash;'they can be
+    written, at all events'&mdash;I think <i>that</i> too. So, feeling so much, I
+    say so little!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have just returned from Town and write for the Post&mdash;but <i>you</i> mean
+    to write, I trust.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>That</i> was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!
+</p>
+<p>
+    How are you?&mdash;tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am wholly your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 15, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, dearer to my heart minute by minute, I had no wish to give
+    you pain, God knows. No one can more readily consent to let a few
+    years more or less of life go out of account,&mdash;be lost&mdash;but as I sate
+    by you, you so full of the truest life, for this world as for the
+    next,&mdash;and was struck by the possibility, all that might happen were I
+    away, in the case of your continuing to acquiesce&mdash;dearest, it <i>is</i>
+    horrible&mdash;could not but speak. If in drawing you, all of you, closer
+    to my heart, I hurt you whom I would&mdash;<i>outlive</i> ... yes,&mdash;cannot speak
+    here&mdash;forgive me, Ba.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My Ba, you are to consider now for me. Your health, your strength, it
+    is all wonderful; that is not my dream, you know&mdash;but what all see.
+    Now, steadily care for us both&mdash;take time, take counsel if you choose;
+    but at the end tell me what you will do for your part&mdash;thinking of me
+    as utterly devoted, soul and body, to you, living wholly in your life,
+    seeing good and ill only as you see,&mdash;being yours as your hand is,&mdash;or
+    as your Flush, rather. Then I will, on my side, prepare. When I say
+    'take counsel'&mdash;I reserve my last right, the man's right of first
+    speech. <i>I</i> stipulate, too, and require to say my own speech in my own
+    words or by letter&mdash;remember! But this living without you is too
+    tormenting now. So begin thinking,&mdash;as for Spring, as for a New Year,
+    as for a new life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I went no farther than the door with Mr. Kenyon. He must see the
+    truth; and&mdash;you heard the playful words which had a meaning all the
+    same.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No more of this; only, think of it for me, love!
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of these days I shall write a long letter&mdash;on the omitted matters,
+    unanswered questions, in your past letters. The present joy still
+    makes me ungrateful to the previous one; but I remember. We are to
+    live together one day, love!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will you let Mr. Poe's book lie on the table on Monday, if you please,
+    that I may read what he <i>does</i> say, with my own eyes? <i>That</i> I meant
+    to ask, too!
+</p>
+<p>
+    How too, too kind you are&mdash;how you care for so little that affects me!
+    I am very much better&mdash;I went out yesterday, as you found: to-day I
+    shall walk, beside seeing Chorley. And certainly, certainly I would go
+    away for a week, if so I might escape being ill (and away from you) a
+    fortnight; but I am <i>not</i> ill&mdash;and will care, as you bid me, beloved!
+    So, you will send, and take all trouble; and all about that crazy
+    Review! Now, you should not!&mdash;I will consider about your goodness. I
+    hardly know if I care to read that kind of book just now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will you, and must you have 'Pauline'? If I could pray you to revoke
+    that decision! For it is altogether foolish and <i>not</i> boylike&mdash;and I
+    shall, I confess, hate the notion of running over it&mdash;yet commented
+    it must be; more than mere correction! I was unluckily
+    <i>precocious</i>&mdash;but I had rather you <i>saw</i> real infantine efforts
+    (verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this
+    ambiguous, feverish&mdash;Why not wait? When you speak of the
+    'Bookseller'&mdash;I smile, in glorious security&mdash;having a whole bale of
+    sheets at the house-top. He never knew my name even!&mdash;and I withdrew
+    these after a very little time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now&mdash;here is a vexation. May I be with you (for this once) next
+    Monday, at <i>two</i> instead of <i>three</i> o'clock? Forster's business with
+    the new Paper obliges him, he says, to restrict his choice of days to
+    <i>Monday</i> next&mdash;and give up <i>my</i> part of Monday I will never for fifty
+    Forsters&mdash;now, sweet, mind that! Monday is no common day, but leads to
+    a <i>Saturday</i>&mdash;and if, as I ask, I get leave to call at 2&mdash;and to stay
+    till 3-1/2&mdash;though I then lose nearly half an hour&mdash;yet all will be
+    comparatively well. If there is any difficulty&mdash;one word and I
+    re-appoint our party, his and mine, for the day the paper breaks
+    down&mdash;not so long to wait, it strikes me!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, bless you, my precious Ba&mdash;I am your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&mdash;Your own R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right
+    to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it
+    seems to me&mdash;now what I am going to say may take its place among the
+    paradoxes,&mdash;that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only
+    long one came last, and I was quite contented that the 'old friend'
+    should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of
+    the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short
+    note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a
+    child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a
+    crown&mdash;and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never
+    turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of
+    precedents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that 'Mr. Browning would soon
+    go away'&mdash;in reply to an observation of his, that 'he would not stay
+    as I had company'; and altogether it was better,&mdash;the lamp made it
+    look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being
+    tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and
+    leave me under such an impression&mdash;'mens conscia recti' too!!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But
+    I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather
+    is as 'miraculous' as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and
+    make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do
+    what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the
+    air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech
+    you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill
+    to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A
+    little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me
+    to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!&mdash;How the
+    world has changed since then! To <i>me</i>, I mean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did I say <i>that</i> ever ... that 'I knew you must be tired?' And it was
+    not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Thursday night.</i>&mdash;I have begun on another sheet&mdash;I could not write
+    here what was in my heart&mdash;yet I send you this paper besides to show
+    how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a
+    female friend of mine and broke the thread&mdash;the visible thread, that
+    is.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now, even now, at this safe eight o'clock, I could not be safe
+    from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and
+    sit by me&mdash;and when my letter was come&mdash;'why wouldn't I read it? What
+    wonderful politeness on my part.' She would not and could not consent
+    to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire
+    rather.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the
+    Regent, ... (didn't he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in
+    the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put
+    down to-night in her 'private diary.' I kept the letter in my hand and
+    only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the
+    mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch
+    a little of what was inside. Not <i>all</i>, however, happily for me! Or my
+    friend would have seen in my eyes what <i>they</i> did not see.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the
+    verses at six years old&mdash;or see the drawings either? I am reasonable,
+    you observe! Only, 'Pauline,' I must have <i>some day</i>&mdash;why not without
+    the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a
+    little&mdash;if you promise <i>at last</i> to let me see the book, which I will
+    not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the
+    day&mdash;some day. Am I not generous? And <i>I</i> was 'precocious' too, and
+    used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby
+    ... only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing
+    of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I
+    used to write of virtue with a large 'V,' and 'Oh Muse' with a harp,
+    and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called 'an
+    epic'&mdash;and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we
+    used to act in the nursery. There was a French 'hexameter' tragedy on
+    the subject of Regulus&mdash;but I cannot even smile to think of it now,
+    there are so many grave memories&mdash;which time has made grave&mdash;hung
+    around it. How I remember sitting in 'my house under the sideboard,'
+    in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Que suis je? autrefois un général Remain:<br>
+Maintenant esclave de Carthage je souffre en vain.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Poor Regulus!&mdash;Can't you conceive how fine it must have been
+    altogether? And these were my 'maturer works,' you are to understand,
+    ... and 'the moon was bright at ten o'clock at night' years before. As
+    to the gods and goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and
+    reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a
+    fashion, as some greater philosophers have done&mdash;and went out one day
+    with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the
+    housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my
+    favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon
+    as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of
+    general scepticism, ... and though I went on saying 'the Lord's
+    prayer' at nights and mornings, and the 'Bless all my kind friends'
+    afterwards, by the childish custom ... yet I ended this liturgy with a
+    supplication which I found in 'King's Memoirs' and which took my fancy
+    and met my general views exactly.... 'O God, if there be a God, save
+    my soul if I have a soul.' Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful
+    children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is
+    wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as
+    well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in
+    which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds
+    all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say ... 'Don't read
+    Gibbon's history&mdash;it's not a proper book. Don't read "Tom Jones"&mdash;and
+    none of the books on <i>this</i> side, mind!' So I was very obedient and
+    never touched the books on <i>that</i> side, and only read instead Tom
+    Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,'
+    and Hume's 'Essays,' and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary
+    Wollstonecraft ... books, which I was never suspected of looking
+    towards, and which were not 'on <i>that</i> side' certainly, but which did
+    as well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How I am writing!&mdash;And what are the questions you did not answer? I
+    shall remember them by the answers I suppose&mdash;but your letters always
+    have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this is the end <i>indeed</i>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Night.<br>
+[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest&mdash;how you can write touching things to me; and how my
+    whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from
+    God and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only,
+    it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was 'horrible,' it
+    was what you <i>supposed</i>, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we
+    will not talk of it any more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Friday morning.</i>&mdash;For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I
+    have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and
+    I hope we <i>both</i> are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our
+    position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess
+    perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers,
+    and that from the moment of a suspicion entering <i>one</i> mind, we should
+    be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by
+    letter through the ordinary channel. I mean, that letters of yours,
+    addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed&mdash;if
+    not opened. Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing&mdash;on these
+    grounds it is advisable. What should I do if I did not see you nor
+    hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your
+    happiness? What should I do for a month even? And then, I might be
+    thrown out of the window or its equivalent&mdash;I look back shuddering to
+    the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never
+    offended as I have offended ... years ago which seem as present as
+    to-day. She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that
+    consent was obtained&mdash;and at a word she gave up all&mdash;at a word. In
+    fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the
+    time&mdash;a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday. Yet
+    how she was made to suffer. Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because
+    she had seemed to feel a little. I told you, I think, that there was
+    an obliquity&mdash;an eccentricity, or something beyond&mdash;on one class of
+    subjects. I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now!
+    she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose
+    up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered
+    only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit.
+    Arabel thought I was dead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have tried to forget it all&mdash;but now I must remember&mdash;and throughout
+    our intercourse <i>I have remembered</i>. It is necessary to remember so
+    much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I
+    would conceal nothing from you. Do <i>you</i> remember, besides, that there
+    can be no faltering on my 'part,' and that, if I should remain well,
+    which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you
+    please to have it done. But there is time for considering!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Only ... as you speak of 'counsel,' I will take courage to tell you
+    that my <i>sisters know</i>, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being
+    often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago&mdash;she saw
+    that I was affected from some cause&mdash;and I told her. We are as safe
+    with both of them as possible ... and they thoroughly understand that
+    <i>if there should be any change it would not be your fault</i>.... I made
+    them understand that thoroughly. From themselves I have received
+    nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I
+    thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness for
+    me to fail in it now. My brothers, it is quite necessary not to draw
+    into a dangerous responsibility. I have felt that from the beginning,
+    and shall continue to feel it&mdash;though I hear and can observe that they
+    are full of suspicions and conjectures, which are never unkindly
+    expressed. I told you once that we held hands the faster in this house
+    for the weight over our heads. But the absolute <i>knowledge</i> would be
+    dangerous for my brothers: with my sisters it is different, and I
+    could not continue to conceal from <i>them</i> what they had under their
+    eyes; and then, Henrietta is in a like position. It was not wrong of
+    me to let them know it?&mdash;no?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet of what consequence is all this to the other side of the question?
+    What, if <i>you</i> should give pain and disappointment where you owe such
+    pure gratitude. But we need not talk of these things now. Only you
+    have more to consider than <i>I</i>, I imagine, while the future comes on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, let me have my way in one thing: let me see you on <i>Tuesday</i>
+    instead of on Monday&mdash;on Tuesday at the old hour. Be reasonable and
+    consider. Tuesday is almost as near as the day before it; and on
+    Monday, I shall be hurried at first, lest Papa should be still in the
+    house, (no harm, but an excuse for nervousness: and I can't quote a
+    noble Roman as you can, to the praise of my conscience!) and <i>you</i>
+    will be hurried at last, lest you should not be in time for Mr.
+    Forster. On the other hand, I will not let you be rude to the <i>Daily
+    News</i>, ... no, nor to the <i>Examiner</i>. Come on Tuesday, then, instead
+    of Monday, and let us have the usual hours in a peaceable way,&mdash;and if
+    there is no obstacle,&mdash;that is, if Mr. Kenyon or some equivalent
+    authority should not take note of your being here on Tuesday, why you
+    can come again on the Saturday afterwards&mdash;I do not see the
+    difficulty. Are we agreed? On Tuesday, at three o'clock. Consider,
+    besides, that the Monday arrangement would hurry you in every manner,
+    and leave you fagged for the evening&mdash;no, I will not hear of it. Not
+    on my account, not on yours!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two
+    lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?
+</p>
+<p>
+    My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for
+    your sake:&mdash;<i>that</i> resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect
+    to you. No 'counsel' could make the difference of a grain of dust in
+    the balance. It <i>is so</i>, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me,
+    it would be better for you I believe&mdash;and I should be only where I was
+    before. While you do <i>not</i> change, I look to you for my first
+    affections and my first duty&mdash;and nothing but your bidding me, could
+    make me look away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not
+    talk to him. No&mdash;he does not 'see how it is.' He may have passing
+    thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce&mdash;even
+    an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world
+    were away&mdash;even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so, once more&mdash;may God bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am wholly yours&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Tuesday</i>, remember! And say that you agree.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the
+    forb&mdash;no, <i>un</i>forbidden shelf&mdash;wherein Voltaire pleases to say that
+    'si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer'? I feel, after
+    reading these letters,&mdash;as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or
+    hearing from you,&mdash;that if <i>marriage</i> did not exist, I should
+    infallibly <i>invent</i> it. I should say, no words, no <i>feelings</i> even,
+    do justice to the whole conviction and <i>religion</i> of my soul&mdash;and
+    though they may be suffered to represent some one minute's phase of
+    it, yet, in their very fulness and passion they do injustice to the
+    <i>unrepresented, other minute's</i>, depth and breadth of love ... which
+    let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and
+    exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way&mdash;let me have the
+    plain palpable power of this; the assured time for this ... something
+    of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the
+    illustration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in
+    Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and
+    lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story <i>must</i> be
+    listened to now, and the 'rights of it,'&mdash;dearest, the love unspoken
+    now you are to hear 'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of
+    our wealth ... at the hour of death, and'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    If I did not <i>know</i> this was so,&mdash;nothing would have been said, or
+    sought for. Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for,
+    and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and,
+    seen now, nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will care for it no more, dearest&mdash;I am wedded to you now. I believe
+    no human being could love you more&mdash;that thought consoles me for my
+    own imperfection&mdash;for when <i>that</i> does strike me, as so often it will,
+    I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask 'What if it were a claim
+    then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for
+    what were in you&mdash;do you like <i>that</i> way!'&mdash;And I do <i>not</i>, Ba&mdash;you,
+    even, might not&mdash;when people everyday buy improveable ground, and
+    eligible sites for building, and don't want every inch filled up,
+    covered over, done to their hands! So take me, and make me what you
+    can and will&mdash;and though never to be <i>more</i> yours, yet more <i>like</i>
+    you, I may and must be&mdash;Yes, indeed&mdash;best, only love!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And am I not grateful to your sisters&mdash;entirely grateful for that
+    crowning comfort; it is 'miraculous,' too, if you please&mdash;for <i>you</i>
+    shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or
+    new times&mdash;but they do not see me, know me&mdash;and must moreover be
+    jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of
+    wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple&mdash;yet instead of
+    'rapidly levelling eager eyes'&mdash;they are indulgent? Then&mdash;shall I wish
+    capriciously they were <i>not</i> your sisters, not so near you, that there
+    might be a kind of grace in loving them for it'&mdash;but what grace can
+    there be when ... yes, I will tell you&mdash;<i>no</i>, I will not&mdash;it is
+    foolish!&mdash;and it is <i>not</i> foolish in me to love the table and chairs
+    and vases in your room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a
+    word against the arrangement&mdash;and Saturday promised, too&mdash;but though
+    all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet&mdash;but this is
+    wrong&mdash;on Tuesday it shall be, then,&mdash;thank you, dearest! you let me
+    keep up the old proper form, do you not?&mdash;I shall continue to thank,
+    and be gratified &amp;c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my
+    disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion! And so, now, for
+    your kind considerateness thank <i>you ... that I say</i>, which, God
+    knows, <i>could</i> not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good,
+    'you are repaid'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow I will write, and answer more. I am pretty well, and will go
+    out to-day&mdash;to-night. My Act is done, and copied&mdash;I will bring it. Do
+    you see the <i>Athenæum</i>? By Chorley surely&mdash;and kind and satisfactory.
+    I did not expect any notice for a long time&mdash;all that about the
+    'mist,' 'unchanged manner' and the like is politic concession to the
+    Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with
+    his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain,
+    yet he does not. But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand&mdash;the long
+    extracts answer every purpose&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is all to say yet&mdash;to-morrow!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And ever, ever your own; God bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Admire the clean paper.... I did not notice that I have been writing in
+    a desk where a candle fell! See the bottoms of the other pages!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the
+    letter&mdash;but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few
+    words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in <i>enough</i>
+    of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in
+    your assurance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan
+    them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word&mdash;I fully
+    believe in it,&mdash;of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt
+    to speak. And for 'waiting'; 'not hurrying',&mdash;I leave all with you
+    henceforth&mdash;all you say is most wise, most convincing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the saddest part of all,&mdash;silence. You understand, and I can
+    understand through you. Do you know, that I never <i>used</i> to dream
+    unless indisposed, and rarely then&mdash;(of late I dream of you, but quite
+    of late)&mdash;and <i>those</i> nightmare dreams have invariably been of <i>one</i>
+    sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the
+    infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the
+    last)&mdash;and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of
+    experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous
+    arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse
+    commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate,
+    desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a
+    madman&mdash;and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some
+    bloodvessel was to break)&mdash;he, once at a dinner party at which I was
+    present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his
+    awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in
+    order)&mdash;brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ...
+    purely to 'show off' in the eyes of his guests ... (all males,
+    law-friends &amp;c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too,
+    left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to 'just say a
+    word and return'&mdash;and no sooner was his back to the door than the
+    biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark 'what a fortunate
+    thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife&mdash;not one of
+    the women who would resist&mdash;that is, attempt to resist&mdash;and so
+    exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!' I said it
+    <i>was</i>, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women,
+    without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give
+    him his desert, I thought&mdash;'Oh, indeed?' No&mdash;<i>this</i> man was not to be
+    opposed&mdash;wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what
+    kind argument would do&mdash;and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently
+    we went up-stairs&mdash;there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at
+    the tea-table&mdash;and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand
+    in his, our friend&mdash;disposed to be very good-natured of course. I
+    listened <i>arrectis auribus</i>, and in a minute he said he did not know
+    somebody I mentioned. I told him, <i>that</i> I easily conceived&mdash;such a
+    person would never condescend to know <i>him</i>, &amp;c., and treated him to
+    every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text&mdash;and at the end
+    marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a
+    post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in
+    unfeigned wonder, 'What <i>can</i> have possessed you, my <i>dear</i> B?'&mdash;All
+    which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man
+    of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog.
+    All this is quite irrelevant to <i>the</i> case&mdash;indeed, I write to get rid
+    of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of
+    all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to
+    another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves.
+    <i>Trees</i> live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law&mdash;but
+    with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted
+    conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why
+    declare that 'the Lord <i>is</i> holy, just and good' unless there is
+    recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to
+    which the subsequent assertion is referable? 'You know what <i>holiness</i>
+    is, what it is to be good? Then, He <i>is</i> that'&mdash;not, '<i>that</i> is
+    <i>so</i>&mdash;because <i>he</i> is that'; though, of course, when once the converse
+    is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical
+    purposes. All God's urgency, so to speak, is on the <i>justice</i> of his
+    judgments, <i>rightness</i> of his rule: yet why? one might ask&mdash;if one
+    does believe that the rule <i>is</i> his; why ask further?&mdash;Because, his is
+    a 'reasonable service,' once for all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed
+    as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail,
+    under any circumstances&mdash;(and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul
+    could bring the flesh to perform)&mdash;in that case, you will not come to
+    me with a shadow past hope of chasing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary
+    contrast with those here&mdash;you allude to them&mdash;if I went with this
+    letter downstairs and said simply 'I want this taken to the direction
+    to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?' my
+    father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful
+    absurdities about his 'wanting a walk,' 'just having been wishing to
+    go out' &amp;c. At night he sits studying my works&mdash;illustrating them (I
+    will bring you drawings to make you laugh)&mdash;and <i>yesterday</i> I picked
+    up a crumpled bit of paper ... 'his notion of what a criticism on this
+    last number ought to be,&mdash;none, that have appeared, satisfying
+    him!'&mdash;So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as
+    much more as must of necessity be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once more, understand all this ... for the clock scares me of a
+    sudden&mdash;I meant to say more&mdash;far more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But may God bless you ever&mdash;my own dearest, my Ba&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am wholly your R.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>(Tuesday)</i>
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter came just after the hope of one had past&mdash;the latest
+    Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed
+    as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly
+    came the knock&mdash;the postman redivivus&mdash;just when it seemed so beyond
+    hoping for&mdash;it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post
+    at nearly eight&mdash;suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was
+    I not glad, do you think?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you call the <i>Athenæum</i> 'kind and satisfactory'? Well&mdash;I was angry
+    instead. To make us wait so long for an 'article' like <i>that</i>, was not
+    over-kind certainly, nor was it 'satisfactory' to class your peculiar
+    qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar.
+    It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you
+    mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who
+    knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with
+    them. For what is said of 'mist' I have no patience because I who know
+    when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your
+    former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and
+    self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and
+    medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound
+    in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to
+    make the general observation stronger. And then 'mist' is an infamous
+    word for your kind of obscurity. You never <i>are</i> misty, not even in
+    'Sordello'&mdash;never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines,
+    always&mdash;and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and
+    thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the
+    general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a 'mist,'
+    when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me
+    angry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the suggested virtue of 'self-renunciation' only made me smile,
+    because it is simply nonsense ... nonsense which proves itself to be
+    nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself&mdash;<i>that</i> is the
+    new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the
+    poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in
+    'self-renunciation' in that very relation&mdash;or rather, to hint the
+    virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What
+    atheists these critics are after all&mdash;and how the old heathens
+    understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may
+    take shame to ourselves, looking back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm,
+    the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to
+    call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked
+    down-stairs into the drawing-room&mdash;walked, mind! Before, I was carried
+    by one of my brothers,&mdash;even to the last autumn-day when I went out&mdash;I
+    never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But
+    yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides&mdash;it was
+    a feat worthy of the day&mdash;and I surprised them all as much as if I had
+    walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all
+    his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said
+    that he was '<i>so</i> glad to see me'!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well!&mdash;setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise
+    perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us
+    otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this
+    morning after an uncomfortable feverish night&mdash;not very unwell, mind,
+    nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence&mdash;and I tell you,
+    only to show how susceptible I really am still, though 'scarcely an
+    invalid,' say the complimenters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What a way I am from your letter&mdash;that letter&mdash;or seem to be
+    rather&mdash;for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing
+    distrustedly of other things. So you are 'grateful' to my sisters ...
+    <i>you</i>! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such
+    extravagances as words like these <i>imply</i>&mdash;and there are far worse
+    words than these, in the letter ... such as I need not put my finger
+    on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours,
+    and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion.
+    Observe!&mdash;<i>certainly</i> I should not choose to have a '<i>claim</i>,' see!
+    Only, what I object to, in 'illusions,' 'miracles,' and things of that
+    sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the
+    sun to stand still, it was not for a year even!&mdash;Ungrateful, I am!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And 'pretty well' means 'not well' I am afraid&mdash;or I should be gladder
+    still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what 'pretty well'
+    means, and if your mother is better&mdash;or I may have a letter
+    to-morrow&mdash;dearest! May God bless you!
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow too, at half past three o'clock, how joyful I shall be that
+    my 'kind considerateness' decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My
+    very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A hundred letters I have, by this last, ... to set against Napoleon's
+    Hundred Days&mdash;did you know <i>that</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from
+    the damp&mdash;the fog, you see!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my
+    note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into
+    which some of the phrases might be construed&mdash;you would forgive me,
+    indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact
+    remains&mdash;that it would be the one trial I <i>know</i> I should not be able
+    to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'&mdash;intolerable&mdash;not to be
+    written of, even my mind <i>refuses</i> to form a clear conception of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My own loved letter is come&mdash;and the news; of which the reassuring
+    postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not
+    to be grateful for that; nor that you <i>do</i> 'eat your dinner'? Indeed
+    you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on
+    'the stairs'&mdash;stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou
+    indeed!) all, with their picturesque <i>accidents</i>, of landing-places,
+    and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half
+    open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'&mdash;and above
+    all, <i>landing-places</i>&mdash;they are my heart's delight&mdash;I would come upon
+    you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk
+    on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges' Palace
+    at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was
+    banished for an 'enormous dig (intacco) into the public
+    treasure'&mdash;another for ... what you are not to know because his
+    friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it&mdash;underneath
+    the 'giants' on their stands, and in the midst of the <i>cortile</i> the
+    bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So <i>you</i> too wrote French verses?&mdash;Mine were of less lofty
+    argument&mdash;one couplet makes me laugh now for the reason of its false
+    quantity&mdash;I translated the Ode of Alcæus; and the last couplet ran
+    thus....
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Harmodius, et toi, cher Aristogiton!</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Comme l'astre du jour, brillera votre nom!
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">The fact was, I could not bear to hurt my French Master's
+    feelings&mdash;who inveterately maltreated 'ai's and oi's' and in this
+    instance, an 'ei.' But 'Pauline' is altogether of a different sort of
+    precocity&mdash;you shall see it when I can master resolution to transcribe
+    the explanation which I know is on the fly-leaf of a copy here. Of
+    that work, the <i>Athenæum</i> said [several words erased] now, what
+    outrageous folly! I care, and you care, precisely nothing about its
+    sayings and doings&mdash;yet here I talk!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now to you&mdash;Ba! When I go through sweetness to sweetness, at 'Ba' I
+    stop last of all, and lie and rest. That is the quintessence of them
+    all,&mdash;they all take colour and flavour from that. So, dear, dear Ba,
+    be glad as you can to see me to-morrow. God knows how I embalm every
+    such day,&mdash;I do not believe that one of the <i>forty</i> is confounded with
+    another in my memory. So, <i>that</i> is gained and sure for ever. And of
+    letters, this makes my 104th and, like Donne's Bride,
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ... I take,<br>
+My jewels from their boxes; call<br>
+My Diamonds, Pearls, and Emeralds, and make<br>
+Myself a constellation of them all!
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Bless you, my own Beloved!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am much better to-day&mdash;having been not so well yesterday&mdash;whence the
+    note to you, perhaps! I put that to your charity for construction. By
+    the way, let the foolish and needless story about my whilome friend be
+    of this use, that it records one of the traits in that same generous
+    love, of me, I once mentioned, I remember&mdash;one of the points in his
+    character which, I told you, <i>would</i> account, if you heard them, for
+    my parting company with a good deal of warmth of attachment to myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What a day! But you do not so much care for rain, I think. My Mother
+    is no worse, but still suffering sadly.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own, dearest ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever since I ceased to be with you&mdash;ever dearest,&mdash;have been with your
+    'Luria,' if <i>that</i> is ceasing to be with you&mdash;which it <i>is</i>, I feel at
+    last. Yet the new act is powerful and subtle, and very affecting, it
+    seems to me, after a grave, suggested pathos; the reasoning is done on
+    every hand with admirable directness and adroitness, and poor Luria's
+    iron baptism under such a bright crossing of swords, most miserably
+    complete. Still ... is he to die <i>so</i>? can you mean it? Oh&mdash;indeed I
+    foresaw <i>that</i>&mdash;not a guess of mine ever touched such an end&mdash;and I
+    can scarcely resign myself to it as a necessity, even now ... I mean,
+    to the act, as Luria's act, whether it is final or not&mdash;the act of
+    suicide being so unheroical. But you are a dramatic poet and right
+    perhaps, where, as a didactic poet, you would have been wrong, ...
+    and, after the first shock, I begin to see that your Luria is the man
+    Luria and that his 'sun' lights him so far and not farther than so,
+    and to understand the natural reaction of all that generous trust and
+    hopefulness, what naturally it would be. Also, it is satisfactory that
+    Domizia, having put her woman's part off to the last, should be too
+    late with it&mdash;it will be a righteous retribution. I had fancied that
+    her object was to isolate him, ... to make his military glory and
+    national recompense ring hollowly to his ears, and so commend herself,
+    drawing back the veil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Puccio's scornful working out of the low work, is very finely given,
+    I think, ... and you have 'a cunning right hand,' to lift up Luria
+    higher in the mind of your readers, by the very means used to pull
+    down his fortunes&mdash;you show what a man he is by the very talk of his
+    rivals ... by his 'natural godship' over Puccio. Then Husain is nobly
+    characteristic&mdash;I like those streaks of Moorish fire in his speeches.
+    'Why 'twas all fighting' &amp;c. ... <i>that</i> passage perhaps is over-subtle
+    for a Husain&mdash;but too nobly right in the abstract to be altered, if it
+    is so or not. Domizia talks philosophically besides, and how
+    eloquently;&mdash;and very noble she is where she proclaims
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">The angel in thee and rejects the sprites<br>
+That ineffectual crowd about his strength,<br>
+And mingle with his work and claim a share!&mdash;
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">But why not 'spirits' rather than 'sprites,' which has a different
+    association by custom? 'Spirits' is quite short enough, it seems to
+    me, for a last word&mdash;it sounds like a monosyllable that trembles&mdash;or
+    thrills, rather. And, do you know, I agree with yourself a little when
+    you say (as did you <i>not</i> say?) that some of the speeches&mdash;Domizia's
+    for instance&mdash;are too lengthy. I think I should like them to coil up
+    their strength, here and there, in a few passages. Luria ... poor
+    Luria ... is great and pathetic when he stands alone at last, and 'all
+    his waves have gone over him.' Poor Luria!&mdash;And now, I wonder where
+    Mr. Chorley will look, in this work,&mdash;along all the edges of the
+    hills,&mdash;to find, or prove, his favourite 'mist!' On the glass of his
+    own opera-lorgnon, perhaps:&mdash;shall we ask him to try <i>that</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    But first, I want to ask <i>you</i> something&mdash;I have had it in my head a
+    long time, but it might as well have been in a box&mdash;and indeed if it
+    had been in the box with your letters, I should have remembered to
+    speak of it long ago. So now, at last, tell me&mdash;how do you write, O my
+    poet? with steel pens, or Bramah pens, or goose-quills or
+    crow-quills?&mdash;Because I have a penholder which was given to me when I
+    was a child, and which I have used both then and since in the
+    production of various great epics and immortal 'works,' until in these
+    latter years it has seemed to me too heavy, and I have taken into
+    service, instead of it, another two-inch-long instrument which makes
+    Mr. Kenyon laugh to look at&mdash;and so, my fancy has run upon your having
+    the heavier holder, which is not very heavy after all, and which will
+    make you think of me whether you choose it or not, besides being made
+    of a splinter from the ivory gate of old, and therefore not unworthy
+    of a true prophet. Will you have it, dearest? Yes&mdash;because you can't
+    help it. When you come ... on Saturday!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for 'Pauline,' ... I am satisfied with the promise to see it some
+    day ... when we are in the isle of the sirens, or ready for wandering
+    in the Doges' galleries. I seem to understand that you would really
+    rather wish me not to see it now ... and as long as I <i>do</i> see it! So
+    <i>that shall</i> be!&mdash;Am I not good now, and not a teazer? If there is any
+    poetical justice in 'the seven worlds,' I shall have a letter
+    to-night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the way, you owe me two letters by your confession. A hundred and
+    four of mine you have, and I, only a hundred and two of yours ...
+    which is a 'deficit' scarcely creditable to me, (now is it?) when,
+    according to the law and ordinance, a woman's hundred and four letters
+    would take two hundred and eight at least, from the other side, to
+    justify them. Well&mdash;I feel inclined to wring out the legal per centage
+    to the uttermost farthing; but fall into a fit of gratitude,
+    notwithstanding, thinking of Monday, and how the second letter came
+    beyond hope. Always better, you are, than I guess you to be,&mdash;and it
+    was being <i>best</i>, to write, as you did, for me to hear twice on one
+    day!&mdash;best and dearest!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the first letter was not what you feared&mdash;I know you too well not
+    to know how that letter was written and with what intention. <i>Do
+    you</i>, on the other hand, endeavour to comprehend how there may be an
+    eccentricity and obliquity in certain relations and on certain
+    subjects, while the general character stands up worthily of esteem and
+    regard&mdash;even of yours. Mr. Kenyon says broadly that it is
+    monomania&mdash;neither more nor less. Then the principle of passive filial
+    obedience is held&mdash;drawn (and quartered) from Scripture. He <i>sees</i> the
+    law and the gospel on his side. Only the other day, there was a
+    setting forth of the whole doctrine, I hear, down-stairs&mdash;'passive
+    obedience, and particularly in respect to marriage.' One after the
+    other, my brothers all walked out of the room, and there was left for
+    sole auditor, Captain Surtees Cook, who had especial reasons for
+    sitting it out against his will,&mdash;so he sate and asked 'if children
+    were to be considered slaves' as meekly as if he were asking for
+    information. I could not help smiling when I heard of it. He is just
+    <i>succeeding</i> in obtaining what is called an 'adjutancy,' which, with
+    the half pay, will put an end to many anxieties.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest&mdash;when, in the next dream, you meet me in the 'landing-place,'
+    tell me why I am to stand up to be reviewed again. What a fancy,
+    <i>that</i> is of yours, for 'full-lengths'&mdash;and what bad policy, if a
+    fancy, to talk of it so! because you would have had the glory and
+    advantage, and privilege, of seeing me on my feet twenty times before
+    now, if you had not impressed on me, in some ineffable manner, that to
+    stand on my head would scarcely be stranger. Nevertheless you shall
+    have it your own way, as you have everything&mdash;which makes you so very,
+    very, exemplarily submissive, you know!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon does not come&mdash;puts it off to <i>Saturday</i> perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The <i>Daily News</i> I have had a glance at. A weak leading article, I
+    thought ... and nothing stronger from Ireland:&mdash;but enough
+    advertisements to promise a long future. What do you think? or have
+    you not seen the paper? No broad principles laid down. A mere
+    newspaper-support of the 'League.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. Say how you are&mdash;and <i>do</i> walk, and 'care' for
+    yourself,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">and, so, for your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Ba</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Have I expressed to you at all how 'Luria' impresses <i>me</i> more and
+    more? You shall see the 'remarks' with the other papers&mdash;the details
+    of what strikes me.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But you did <i>not</i> get the letter last evening&mdash;no, for all my good
+    intentions&mdash;because somebody came over in the morning and forced me to
+    go out ... and, perhaps, I <i>knew</i> what was coming, and had all my
+    thoughts <i>there</i>, that is, <i>here</i> now, with my own letters from you. I
+    think so&mdash;for this punishment, I will tell you, came for some sin or
+    other last night. I woke&mdash;late, or early&mdash;and, in one of those lucid
+    moments when all things are thoroughly <i>perceived</i>,&mdash;whether suggested
+    by some forgotten passage in the past sleep itself, I don't know&mdash;but
+    I seem to <i>apprehend</i>, comprehend entirely, for the first time, what
+    would happen if I lost you&mdash;the whole sense of that <i>closed door</i> of
+    Catarina's came on me at once, and it was <i>I</i> who said&mdash;not as quoting
+    or adapting another's words, but spontaneously, unavoidably, '<i>In that
+    door, you will not enter, I have</i>'.... And, dearest, the
+</p>
+<p>
+    Unwritten it must remain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is on the other leaf, no ill-omen, after all,&mdash;because I
+    strengthened myself against a merely imaginary evil&mdash;as I do always;
+    and <i>thus</i>&mdash;I know I never can lose you,&mdash;you surely are more mine,
+    there is less for the future to give or take away than in the
+    ordinary cases, where so much less is known, explained, possessed, as
+    with us. Understand for me, my dearest&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And do you think, sweet, that there <i>is</i> any free movement of my soul
+    which your penholder is to secure? Well, try,&mdash;it will be yours by
+    every right of discovery&mdash;and I, for my part, will religiously report
+    to you the first time I think of you 'which, but for your present I
+    should not have done'&mdash;or is it not a happy, most happy way of
+    ensuring a better fifth act to Luria than the foregoing? See the
+    absurdity I write&mdash;when it will be more probably the ruin of the
+    whole&mdash;for was it not observed in the case of a friend of mine once,
+    who wrote his own part in a piece for private theatricals, and had
+    ends of his own to serve in it,&mdash;that he set to work somewhat after
+    this fashion: 'Scene 1st. A breakfast chamber&mdash;Lord and Lady A. at
+    table&mdash;Lady A./ No more coffee my dear?&mdash;Lord A./ One more cup!
+    (<i>Embracing her</i>). Lady A./ I was thinking of trying the ponies in the
+    Park&mdash;are you engaged? Lord A./ Why, there's that bore of a Committee
+    at the House till 2. (<i>Kissing her hand</i>).' And so forth, to the
+    astonishment of the auditory, who did not exactly see the 'sequitur'
+    in either instance. Well, dearest, whatever comes of it, the 'aside,'
+    the bye-play, the digression, will be the best, and only true business
+    of the piece. And though I must smile at your notion of securing
+    <i>that</i> by any fresh appliance, mechanical or spiritual, yet I do thank
+    you, dearest, thank you from my heart indeed&mdash;(and I write with
+    Bramahs <i>always</i>&mdash;not being able to make a pen!)
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you have gone so far with 'Luria,' I fancy myself nearly or
+    altogether safe. I must not tell you, but I wished just these feelings
+    to be in your mind about Domizia, and the death of Luria: the last act
+    throws light back on all, I hope. Observe only, that Luria <i>would</i>
+    stand, if I have plied him effectually with adverse influences, in
+    such a position as to render any other end impossible without the hurt
+    to Florence which his religion is, to avoid inflicting&mdash;passively
+    awaiting, for instance, the sentence and punishment to come at night,
+    would as surely inflict it as taking part with her foes. His aim is to
+    prevent the harm she will do herself by striking him, so he moves
+    aside from the blow. But I know there is very much to improve and
+    heighten in this fourth act, as in the others&mdash;but the right aspect of
+    things seems obtained and the rest of the work is plain and easy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am obliged to leave off&mdash;the rest to-morrow&mdash;and then dear,
+    Saturday! I love you utterly, my own best, dearest&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Night.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, I understand your 'Luria'&mdash;and there is to be more light; and I
+    open the window to the east and wait for it&mdash;a little less gladly than
+    for <i>you</i> on Saturday, dearest. In the meanwhile you have 'lucid
+    moments,' and 'strengthen' yourself into the wisdom of learning to
+    love me&mdash;and, upon consideration, it does not seem to be so hard after
+    all ... there is 'less for the future to take away' than you had
+    supposed&mdash;so <i>that</i> is the way? Ah, 'these lucid moments, in which all
+    things are thoroughly <i>perceived</i>';&mdash;what harm they do me!&mdash;And I am
+    to 'understand for you,' you say!&mdash;Am I?
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the other side, and to make the good omen complete, I remembered,
+    after I had sealed my last letter, having made a confusion between the
+    ivory and horn gates, the gates of false and true visions, as I am apt
+    to do&mdash;and my penholder belongs to the ivory gate, ... as you will
+    perceive in your lucid moments&mdash;poor holder! But, as you forget me on
+    Wednesdays, the post testifying, ... the sinecure may not be quite so
+    certain as the Thursday's letter says. And <i>I</i> too, in the meanwhile,
+    grow wiser, ... having learnt something which you cannot do,&mdash;you of
+    the 'Bells and Pomegranates': <i>You cannot make a pen.</i> Yesterday I
+    looked round the world in vain for it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon does not come&mdash;<i>will</i> not perhaps until Saturday! Which
+    reminds me&mdash;Mr. Kenyon told me about a year ago that he had been
+    painfully employed that morning in <i>parting</i> two&mdash;dearer than
+    friends&mdash;and he had done it he said, by proving to either, that he or
+    she was likely to mar the prospects of the other. 'If I had spoken to
+    each, of himself or herself,' he said, 'I <i>never could have done it</i>.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was not <i>that</i> an ingenious cruelty? The remembrance rose up in me
+    like a ghost, and made me ask you once to promise what you promised
+    ... (you recollect?) because I could not bear to be stabbed with my
+    own dagger by the hand of a third person ... <i>so</i>! When people have
+    lucid moments themselves, you know, it is different.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And <i>shall</i> I indeed have a letter to-morrow? Or, not having the
+    penholder yet, will you....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Goodnight. May God bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever and wholly your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, of all perverse interpretations that ever were and never ought to
+    have been, commend me to this of Ba's&mdash;after I bade her generosity
+    'understand me,' too!&mdash;which meant, 'let her pick out of my disjointed
+    sentences a general meaning, if she can,&mdash;which I very well know their
+    imperfect utterance would not give to one unsupplied with the key of
+    my whole heart's-mystery'&mdash;and Ba, with the key in her hand, to
+    pretend and poke feathers and penholders into the key-hole, and
+    complain that the wards are wrong! So&mdash;when the poor scholar, one has
+    read of, uses not very dissimilar language and argument&mdash;who being
+    threatened with the deprivation of his Virgil learnt the Æneid by
+    heart and then said 'Take what you can now'!&mdash;<i>that</i> Ba calls
+    'feeling the loss would not be so hard after all'!&mdash;<i>I</i> do not, at
+    least. And if at any future moment I should again be visited&mdash;as I
+    earnestly desire may never be the case&mdash;with a sudden consciousness of
+    the entire inutility of all earthly love (since of <i>my</i> love) to hold
+    its object back from the decree of God, if such should call it away;
+    one of those known facts which, for practical good, we treat as
+    supremely common-place, but which, like those of the uncertainty of
+    life&mdash;the very existence of God, I may say&mdash;if they were <i>not</i>
+    common-place, and could they be thoroughly apprehended (except in the
+    chance minutes which make one grow old, not the mere years)&mdash;the
+    business of the world would cease; but when you find Chaucer's graver
+    at his work of 'graving smale seles' by the sun's light, you know that
+    the sun's self could not have been <i>created</i> on that day&mdash;do you
+    'understand' that, Ba? And when I am with you, or here or writing or
+    walking&mdash;and perfectly happy in the sunshine of you, I very well know
+    I am no wiser than is good for me and that there seems no harm in
+    feeling it impossible this should change, or fail to go on increasing
+    till this world ends and we are safe, I with you, for ever. But
+    when&mdash;if only <i>once</i>, as I told you, recording it for its very
+    strangeness, I <i>do</i> feel&mdash;in a flash&mdash;that words are words, and could
+    not alter <i>that</i> decree ... will you tell me how, after all, that
+    conviction and the true woe of it are better met than by the as
+    thorough conviction that, for one blessing, the extreme woe is
+    <i>impossible</i> now&mdash;that you <i>are</i>, and have been, <i>mine</i>, and <i>me</i>&mdash;one
+    with me, never to be parted&mdash;so that the complete separation not being
+    to be thought of, such an incomplete one as is yet in Fate's power may
+    be the less likely to attract her notice? And, dearest, in all
+    emergencies, see, I go to you for help; for your gift of better
+    comfort than is found in myself. Or ought I, if I could, to add one
+    more proof to the Greek proverb 'that the half is greater than the
+    whole'&mdash;and only love you for myself (it is absurd; but if I <i>could</i>
+    disentwine you from my soul in that sense), only see my own will, and
+    good (not in <i>your</i> will and good, as I now see them and shall ever
+    see) ... should you say I <i>did</i> love you then? Perhaps. And it would
+    have been better for me, I know&mdash;I should not have <i>written</i> this or
+    the like&mdash;there being no post in the Siren's isle, as you will see.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And the end of the whole matter is&mdash;what? Not by any means what my Ba
+    expects or ought to expect; that I say with a flounce 'Catch me
+    blotting down on paper, again, the first vague impressions in the
+    weakest words and being sure I have only to bid her
+    "understand"!&mdash;when I can get "Blair on Rhetoric," and the additional
+    chapter on the proper conduct of a letter'! On the contrary I tell
+    you, Ba, my own heart's dearest, I will provoke you tenfold worse;
+    will tell you all that comes uppermost, and what frightens me or
+    reassures me, in moments lucid or opaque&mdash;and when all the pen-stumps
+    and holders refuse to open the lock, out will come the key perforce;
+    and once put that knowledge&mdash;of the entire love and worship of my
+    heart and soul&mdash;to its proper use, and all will be clear&mdash;tell me
+    to-morrow that it will be clear when I call you to account and exact
+    strict payment for every word and phrase and full-stop and partial
+    stop, and no stop at all, in this wicked little note which got so
+    treacherously the kisses and the thankfulness&mdash;written with no
+    penholder that is to belong to me, I hope&mdash;but with the feather,
+    possibly, which Sycorax wiped the dew from, as Caliban remembered when
+    he was angry! All but&mdash;(that is, all was wrong but)&mdash;to be just ...
+    the old, dear, so dear ending which makes my heart beat now as at
+    first ... and so, pays for all! Wherefore, all is right again, is it
+    not? and you are my own priceless Ba, my very own&mdash;and I will have
+    you, if you like that style, and want you, and must have you every day
+    and all day long&mdash;much less see you to-morrow <i>stand</i>&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    ... Now, there breaks down my new spirit&mdash;and, shame or no, I must
+    pray you, in the old way, <i>not</i> to <i>receive me standing</i>&mdash;I should not
+    remain master of myself I do believe!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You have put out of my head all I intended to write&mdash;and now I slowly
+    begin to remember the matters they seem strangely unimportant&mdash;that
+    poor impotency of a Newspaper! No&mdash;nothing of that for the present.
+    To-morrow my dearest! Ba's first comment&mdash;'<i>To-morrow?</i> <i>To-day</i> is
+    too soon, it seems&mdash;yet it is wise, perhaps, to avoid the satiety &amp;c.
+    &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Does she feel how I kissed that comment back on her dear self as fit
+    punishment?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must begin by invoking my own stupidity! To forget after all the
+    penholder! I had put it close beside me too on the table, and never
+    once thought of it afterwards from first to last&mdash;just as I should do
+    if I had a common-place book, the memoranda all turning to
+    obliviscenda as by particular contact. So I shall send the holder with
+    Miss Martineau's books which you can read or not as you like ... they
+    have beauty in passages ... but, trained up against the wall of a set
+    design, want room for branching and blossoming, great as her skill is.
+    I like her 'Playfellow' stories twice as well. Do you know <i>them</i>?
+    Written for children, and in such a fine heroic child-spirit as to be
+    too young and too old for nobody. Oh, and I send you besides a most
+    frightful extract from an American magazine sent to me yesterday ...
+    no, the day before ... on the subject of mesmerism&mdash;and you are to
+    understand, if you please, that the Mr. Edgar Poe who stands committed
+    in it, is my dedicator ... whose dedication I forgot, by the way, with
+    the rest&mdash;so, while I am sending, you shall have his poems with his
+    mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to
+    E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to
+    prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen
+    between the great gaps of bathos.... 'Politian' will make you
+    laugh&mdash;as the 'Raven' made <i>me</i> laugh, though with something in it
+    which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P.
+    Willis and his peers&mdash;it was sent to me from <i>four</i> different quarters
+    besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and
+    when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power
+    of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at
+    all&mdash;never heard from him nor wrote to him&mdash;and in my opinion, there
+    is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric
+    experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the
+    beginning to the end. That '<i>going out</i>' of the hectic, struck me very
+    much ... and the writhing <i>away</i> of the upper lip. Most
+    horrible!&mdash;Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for
+    the full acting of the story on me ... without absolutely giving full
+    credence to it, understand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was
+    because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the
+    jesting a little&mdash;for had I not thought of <i>that</i> before, myself, and
+    was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content,
+    for my part, even <i>so</i>? Surely you remember&mdash;and I should not have
+    said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that 'there is,
+    with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary
+    cases.' So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me
+    through you, and it is enough to live for or die in&mdash;therefore living
+    or dying I would thank God, and use that word '<i>enough</i>' ... being
+    yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us
+    should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when
+    she knew you, since I could not bear&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs
+    to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me tell you instead of my sister's affairs, which are so publicly
+    talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in
+    respect to them&mdash;yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told
+    nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may
+    say of Henrietta that her only fault is, her virtues being written in
+    water&mdash;I know not of one other fault. She has too much softness to be
+    able to say 'no' in the right place&mdash;and thus, without the slightest
+    levity ... perfectly blameless in that respect, ... she says half a
+    yes or a quarter of a yes, or a yes in some sort of form, too
+    often&mdash;but I will tell you. Two years ago, three men were loving her,
+    as they called it. After a few months, and the proper quantity of
+    interpretations, one of them consoled himself by giving nick-names to
+    his rivals. Perseverance and Despair he called them, and so, went up
+    to the boxes to see out the rest of the play. Despair ran to a crisis,
+    was rejected in so many words, but appealed against the judgment and
+    had his claim admitted&mdash;it was all silence and mildness on each side
+    ... a tacit gaining of ground,&mdash;Despair 'was at least a gentleman,'
+    said my brothers. On which Perseverance came on with violent
+    re-iterations,&mdash;insisted that she loved him without knowing it, or
+    <i>should</i>&mdash;elbowed poor Despair into the open streets, who being a
+    gentleman wouldn't elbow again&mdash;swore that 'if she married another he
+    would wait till she became a widow, trusting to Providence' ... <i>did</i>
+    wait every morning till the head of the house was out, and sate day by
+    day, in spite of the disinclination of my sisters and the rudeness of
+    all my brothers, four hours in the drawing-room ... let himself be
+    refused once a week and sate all the longer ... allowed everybody in
+    the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of
+    hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits
+    now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of
+    remorse for her own instability, that she is 'taken by storm and
+    cannot help it.' I give you only the <i>résumé</i> of this military
+    movement&mdash;and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid
+    at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person and
+    then another, yet I am woman enough rather to be glad that the
+    decision is made <i>so</i>. He is sincerely attached to her, I believe; and
+    the want of refinement and sensibility (for he understood her
+    affections to be engaged to another at one time) is covered in a
+    measure by the earnestness,&mdash;and justified too by the event&mdash;everybody
+    being quite happy and contented, even to Despair, who has a new horse
+    and takes lessons in music.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That's love&mdash;is it not? And that's my answer (if you look for it) to
+    the question you asked me yesterday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet do not think that I am turning it all to game. I could not do so
+    with any real earnest sentiment ... I never could ... and now least,
+    and with my own sister whom I love so. One may smile to oneself and
+    yet wish another well&mdash;and so I smile to <i>you</i>&mdash;and it is all safe
+    with you I know. He is a second or third cousin of ours and has golden
+    opinions from all his friends and fellow-officers&mdash;and for the rest,
+    most of these men are like one another.... I never could see the
+    difference between fuller's earth and common clay, among them all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What do you think he has said since&mdash;to <i>her</i> too?&mdash;'I always
+    persevere about everything. Once I began to write a farce&mdash;which they
+    told me was as bad as could be. Well!&mdash;I persevered!&mdash;<i>I finished
+    it</i>.' Perfectly unconscious, both he and she were of there being
+    anything mal à propos in <i>that</i>&mdash;and no kind of harm was meant,&mdash;only
+    it expresses the man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest&mdash;it had better be Thursday I think&mdash;<i>our</i> day! I was showing
+    to-day your father's drawings,&mdash;and my brothers, and Arabel besides,
+    admired them very much on the right grounds. Say how you are. You did
+    not seem to me to answer frankly this time, and I was more than half
+    uneasy when you went away. Take exercise, dear, dearest ... think of
+    me enough for it,&mdash;and do not hurry 'Luria.' May God bless you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Ba.</i>
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will not try and write much to-night, dearest, for my head gives a
+    little warning&mdash;and I have so much to think of!&mdash;spite of my penholder
+    being kept back from me after all! Now, ought I to have asked for it?
+    Or did I not seem grateful enough at the promise? This last would be a
+    characteristic reason, seeing that I reproached myself with feeling
+    <i>too</i> grateful for the 'special symbol'&mdash;the 'essential meaning' of
+    which was already in my soul. Well then, I will&mdash;I do pray for
+    it&mdash;next time; and I will keep it for that one yesterday and all its
+    memories&mdash;and it shall bear witness against me, if, on the Siren's
+    isle, I grow forgetful of Wimpole Street. And when is 'next time' to
+    be&mdash;Wednesday or Thursday? When I look back on the strangely steady
+    widening of my horizon&mdash;how no least interruption has occurred to
+    visits or letters&mdash;oh, care <i>you</i>, sweet&mdash;care for us both!
+</p>
+<p>
+    That remark of your sister's delights me&mdash;you remember?&mdash;that the
+    anger would not be so formidable. I have exactly the fear of
+    encountering <i>that</i>, which the sense of having to deal with a ghost
+    would induce: there's no striking at it with one's partizan. Well, God
+    is above all! It is not my fault if it so happens that by returning my
+    love you make me exquisitely blessed; I believe&mdash;more than hope, I am
+    <i>sure</i> I should do all I ever <i>now</i> can do, if you were never to know
+    it&mdash;that is, my love for you was in the first instance its own
+    reward&mdash;if one must use such phrases&mdash;and if it were possible for
+    that ... not <i>anger</i>, which is of no good, but that <i>opposition</i>&mdash;that
+    adverse will&mdash;to show that your good would be attained by the&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But it would need to be <i>shown</i> to me. You have said thus to me&mdash;in
+    the very last letter, indeed. But with me, or any <i>man</i>, the instincts
+    of happiness develop themselves too unmistakably where there is
+    anything like a freedom of will. The man whose heart is set on being
+    rich or influential after the worldly fashion, may be found far enough
+    from the attainment of either riches or influence&mdash;but he will be in
+    the presumed way to them&mdash;pumping at the pump, if he is really anxious
+    for water, even though the pump be dry&mdash;but not sitting still by the
+    dusty roadside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I believe&mdash;first of all, you&mdash;but when that is done, and I am allowed
+    to call your heart <i>mine</i>,&mdash;I cannot think you would be happy if
+    parted from me&mdash;and <i>that</i> belief, coming to add to my own feeling in
+    <i>that</i> case. So, this will <i>be</i>&mdash;I trust in God.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In life, in death, I am your own, <i>my</i> own! My head has got well
+    already! It is so slight a thing, that I make such an ado about! Do
+    not reply to these bodings&mdash;they are gone&mdash;they seem absurd! All steps
+    secured but the last, and that last the easiest! Yes&mdash;far easiest! For
+    first you had to be created, only that; and then, in my time; and
+    then, not in Timbuctoo but Wimpole Street, and then ... the strange
+    hedge round the sleeping Palace keeping the world off&mdash;and then ...
+    all was to begin, all the difficulty only <i>begin</i>:&mdash;and now ... see
+    where is reached! And I kiss you, and bless you, my dearest, in
+    earnest of the end!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You have had my letter and heard about the penholder. Your fancy of
+    'not seeming grateful enough,' is not wise enough for <i>you</i>, dearest;
+    when you know that <i>I</i> know your common fault to be the undue
+    magnifying of everything that comes from me, and I am always
+    complaining of it outwardly and inwardly. That suddenly I should set
+    about desiring you to be more grateful,&mdash;even for so great a boon as
+    an old penholder,&mdash;would be a more astounding change than any to be
+    sought or seen in a prime minister.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another mistake you made concerning Henrietta and her opinion&mdash;and
+    there's no use nor comfort in leaving you in it. Henrietta says that
+    the 'anger would not be so formidable after all'! Poor dearest
+    Henrietta, who trembles at the least bending of the brows ... who has
+    less courage than I, and the same views of the future! What she
+    referred to, was simply the infrequency of the visits. 'Why was I
+    afraid,' she said&mdash;'where was the danger? who would be the
+    <i>informer</i>?'&mdash;Well! I will not say any more. It is just natural that
+    you, in your circumstances and associations, should be unable to see
+    what I have seen from the beginning&mdash;only you will not hereafter
+    reproach me, in the most secret of your thoughts, for not having told
+    you plainly. If I could have told you with greater plainness I should
+    blame myself (and I do not) because it is not an opinion I have, but a
+    perception. I see, I know. The result ... the end of all ... perhaps
+    now and then I see <i>that</i> too ... in the 'lucid moments' which are not
+    the happiest for anybody. Remember, in all cases, that I shall not
+    repent of any part of our past intercourse; and that, therefore, when
+    the time for decision comes, you will be free to look at the question
+    as if you saw it then for the first moment, without being hampered by
+    considerations about 'all those yesterdays.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    For <i>him</i> ... he would rather see me dead at his foot than yield the
+    point: and he will say so, and mean it, and persist in the meaning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you ever wonder at me ... that I should write such things, and have
+    written others so different? <i>I have thought that in myself very
+    often.</i> Insincerity and injustice may seem the two ends, while I
+    occupy the straight betwixt two&mdash;and I should not like you to doubt
+    how this may be! Sometimes I have begun to show you the truth, and
+    torn the paper; I <i>could</i> not. Yet now again I am borne on to tell
+    you, ... to save you from some thoughts which you cannot help perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There has been no insincerity&mdash;nor is there injustice. I believe, I am
+    certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children. I have
+    heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in
+    towards him through the stones of the rock ... thrust off ... dropping
+    off ... turning in again and clinging! Knowing what is excellent in
+    him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly,
+    notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable 'system' which made
+    him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for
+    his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so
+    bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt
+    acutely&mdash;more than you and I could feel them&mdash;but the fortitude was
+    admirable. Then came the trials of love&mdash;then, I was repulsed too
+    often, ... made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side ...
+    depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is
+    possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as past. Yet
+    my friends used to say 'You look broken-spirited'&mdash;and it was true. In
+    the midst, came my illness,&mdash;and when I was ill he grew gentler and
+    let me draw nearer than ever I had done: and after that great stroke
+    ... you <i>know</i> ... though <i>that</i> fell in the middle of a storm of
+    emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God
+    seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful
+    to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, '<i>If it
+    had not been for you</i>'...! And comparing my self-reproach to what I
+    imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if <i>I</i> had loved
+    selfishly, <i>he</i> had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and
+    forgive him for two ... (I knowing that serene generous departed
+    spirit, and seeming left to represent it) ... and I did love him
+    better than all those left to <i>me</i> to love in the world here. I proved
+    a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my
+    life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of
+    my family away from him. And afterwards for long and long he spoke to
+    me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much
+    praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself
+    capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of
+    his voice when he prayed in this room; my best hope, as I have told
+    him since, being, to die beneath his eyes. Love is so much to me
+    naturally&mdash;it is, to all women! and it was so much to <i>me</i> to feel
+    sure at last that <i>he</i> loved me&mdash;to forget all blame&mdash;to pull the
+    weeds up from that last illusion of life:&mdash;and this, till the
+    Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again&mdash;farther than
+    ever&mdash;when George said 'he could not flatter me' and I dared not
+    flatter myself. But do <i>you</i> believe that I never wrote what I did not
+    feel: I never did. And I ask one kindness more ... do not notice what
+    I have written here. Let it pass. We can alter nothing by ever so many
+    words. After all, he is the victim. He isolates himself&mdash;and now and
+    then he feels it ... the cold dead silence all round, which is the
+    effect of an incredible system. If he were not stronger than most men,
+    he could not bear it as he does. With such high qualities too!&mdash;so
+    upright and honourable&mdash;you would esteem him, you would like him, I
+    think. And so ... dearest ... let <i>that</i> be the last word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I dare say you have asked yourself sometimes, why it was that I never
+    managed to draw you into the house here, so that you might make your
+    own way. Now <i>that</i> is one of the things impossible to me. I have not
+    influence enough for <i>that</i>. George can never invite a friend of his
+    even. Do you see? The people who do come here, come by particular
+    license and association ... Capt. Surtees Cook being one of them.
+    Once ... when I was in high favour too ... I asked for Mr. Kenyon to
+    be invited to dinner&mdash;he an old college friend, and living close by
+    and so affectionate to me always&mdash;I felt that he must be hurt by the
+    neglect, and asked. <i>It was in vain.</i> Now, you see&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you always! I wrote all my spirits away in this letter
+    yesterday, and kept it to finish to-day ... being yours every day,
+    glad or sad, ever beloved!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your <SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why will you give me such unnecessary proofs of your goodness? Why not
+    leave the books for me to take away, at all events? No&mdash;you must fold
+    up, and tie round, and seal over, and be at all the pains in the world
+    with those hands I see now. But you only threaten; say you 'shall
+    send'&mdash;as yet, and nothing having come, I do pray you, if not too
+    late, to save me the shame&mdash;add to the gratitude you never can now, I
+    think ... only <i>think</i>, for you are a siren, and I don't know
+    certainly to what your magic may not extend. Thus, in not so important
+    a matter, I should have said, the day before yesterday, that no letter
+    from you could make my heart rise within me, more than of old ...
+    unless it should happen to be of twice the ordinary thickness ... and
+    <i>then</i> there's a fear at first lest the over-running of my dealt-out
+    measure should be just a note of Mr. Kenyon's, for instance! But
+    yesterday the very seal began with 'Ba'&mdash;Now, always seal with that
+    seal my letters, dearest! Do you recollect Donne's pretty lines about
+    seals?
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Quondam fessus Amor loquens Amato,<br>
+Tot et tanta loquens amica, scripsit:<br>
+Tandem et fessa manus dedit Sigillum.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">And in his own English,
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">When love, being weary, made an end<br>
+Of kind expressions to his friend,<br>
+He writ; when hand could write no more,<br>
+He gave the seal&mdash;and so left o'er.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p>
+    (By the way, what a mercy that he never noticed the jingle <i>in posse</i>
+    of ending 'expressions' and beginning 'impressions.')
+</p>
+<p>
+    How your account of the actors in the 'Love's Labour Lost' amused me!
+    I rather like, though, the notion of that steady, business-like
+    pursuit of love under difficulties; and the <i>sobbing</i> proves something
+    surely! Serjt. Talfourd says&mdash;is it not he who says it?&mdash;'All tears
+    are not for sorrow.' I should incline to say, from my own feeling,
+    that no tears were. They only express joy in me, or sympathy with
+    joy&mdash;and so is it with you too, I should think.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Understand that I do <i>not</i> disbelieve in Mesmerism&mdash;I only object to
+    insufficient evidence being put forward as quite irrefragable. I keep
+    an open sense on the subject&mdash;ready to be instructed; and should have
+    refused such testimony as Miss Martineau's if it had been adduced in
+    support of something I firmly believed&mdash;'non <i>tali</i> auxilio'&mdash;indeed,
+    so has truth been harmed, and only so, from the beginning. So, I shall
+    read what you bid me, and learn all I can.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am not quite so well this week&mdash;yesterday some friends came early
+    and kept me at home&mdash;for which I seem to suffer a little; less,
+    already, than in the morning&mdash;so I will go out and walk away the
+    whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment. As for 'Luria' I have
+    not looked at it since I saw you&mdash;which means, saw you in the body,
+    because last night I saw you; as I wonder if you know!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thursday, and again I am with you&mdash;and you will forget nothing ... how
+    the farewell is to be returned? Ah, my dearest, sweetest Ba; how
+    entirely I love you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God bless you ever&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<p>
+    2. p.m. Your parcel arrives ... the penholder; now what shall I say?
+    How am I to use so fine a thing even in writing to you? I will give it
+    you again in our Isle, and meantime keep it where my other treasures
+    are&mdash;my letters and my dear ringlet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thank you&mdash;all I can thank.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 28, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest&mdash;I will say, as you desire, nothing on that subject&mdash;but
+    this strictly for myself: you engaged me to consult my own good in the
+    keeping or breaking our engagement; not <i>your</i> good as it might even
+    seem to me; much less seem to another. My only good in this
+    world&mdash;that against which all the world goes for nothing&mdash;is to spend
+    my life with you, and be yours. You know that when I <i>claim</i> anything,
+    it is really yourself in me&mdash;you <i>give</i> me a right and bid me use it,
+    and I, in fact, am most obeying you when I appear most exacting on my
+    own account&mdash;so, in that feeling, I dare claim, once for all, and in
+    all possible cases (except that dreadful one of your becoming worse
+    again ... in which case I wait till life ends with both of us), I
+    claim your promise's fulfilment&mdash;say, at the summer's end: it cannot
+    be for your good that this state of things should continue. We can go
+    to Italy for a year or two and be happy as day and night are long. For
+    me, I adore you. This is all unnecessary, I feel as I write: but you
+    will think of the main fact as <i>ordained</i>, granted by God, will you
+    not, dearest?&mdash;so, not to be put in doubt <i>ever again</i>&mdash;then, we can
+    go quietly thinking of after matters. Till to-morrow, and ever after,
+    God bless my heart's own, own Ba. All my soul follows you,
+    love&mdash;encircles you&mdash;and I live in being yours.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am
+    not ill, ... <i>then</i> ... <i>not now</i> ... you shall decide, and your
+    decision shall be duty and desire to me, both&mdash;I will make no
+    difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I <i>have</i> decided to let
+    it be as you shall choose ... <i>shall</i> choose. That I love you enough
+    to give you up 'for your good,' is proof (to myself at least) that I
+    love you enough for any other end:&mdash;but you thought <i>too much of me in
+    the last letter</i>. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your
+    words&mdash;only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into
+    the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I
+    see that you love me and that I am bound to you:&mdash;and 'what more need
+    I see,' you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to
+    the blue ridges of the hills, to the <i>chances</i> of your being happy
+    with me. Well! I am yours as <i>you</i> see ... and not yours to teaze you.
+    You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ...
+    and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use 'the
+    liberty of leaping out of the window,' unless you are sure of the
+    house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window&mdash;least of
+    all, <i>I</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say,
+    and further from the world, as I think&mdash;out of hearing of the great
+    storm of gossiping, when 'scirocco is loose.' Even if you liked to
+    live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no
+    sacrifice for me&mdash;and whether in Italy or England, we should have
+    sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying
+    by a line that 'good free life' of yours which you reasonably
+    praise&mdash;which, if it had been necessary to modify, <i>we must have
+    parted</i>, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though,
+    that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had
+    been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his
+    club (the Athenæum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of
+    something better to say&mdash;and he had not heard of it. There were more
+    black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of
+    his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy
+    councillor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson&mdash;I forgot to tell you&mdash;I
+    forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and
+    confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does
+    not prevent his writing a new poem&mdash;he has finished the second book of
+    it&mdash;and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the
+    'University,' the university-members being all females. If George has
+    not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I
+    don't know what to think&mdash;it makes me open my eyes. Now isn't the
+    world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so
+    many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him,
+    for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger,
+    understand&mdash;but the complaint may <i>run</i> into danger&mdash;so the account
+    went.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May God bless you. Is Monday or
+    Tuesday to be <i>our</i> day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take
+    courage and say Monday&mdash;but Tuesday and Saturday would do as
+    well&mdash;would they not?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I have a letter?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further
+    remark on <i>that</i> subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I
+    suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and
+    choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ...
+    (that is, in <i>expression</i>; the just correspondency of word to fact and
+    feeling: for <i>it</i>&mdash;the love&mdash;may be very truly <i>there</i>, at the bottom,
+    when it is got at, and spoken out)&mdash;quite otherwise, I do really have
+    to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as
+    little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity.
+    Dearest, <i>love</i> means <i>love</i>, certainly, and adoration carries its
+    sense with it&mdash;and <i>so</i>, you may have received my feeling in that
+    shape&mdash;but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice
+    one or the other profession, you 'fly out'&mdash;instead of keeping your
+    throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to
+    it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a
+    moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able,
+    see more&mdash;'si <i>minus propè</i> stes, te capiet magis.' Meanwhile, silent
+    or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that <i>glove</i>&mdash;not that hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness
+    ... hardly disapproves&mdash;he knows I could not avoid&mdash;escape you&mdash;for he
+    knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in
+    our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) 'what I thought of his
+    young relative'&mdash;and I considered half a second to this effect&mdash;'if he
+    asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the
+    crown of the Czar&mdash;and I answered truly&mdash;he would not return; "then of
+    course you mean to try and get it to keep."' So I <i>did</i> tell the truth
+    in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected
+    book&mdash;title, scheme, all of it,&mdash;<i>that</i> is astounding;&mdash;and fairies?
+    If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies&mdash;<i>this</i> maketh that
+    there ben no fairies'&mdash;locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must
+    keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world
+    passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if <i>we</i> have the making
+    of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to
+    hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play
+    goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir
+    [Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is
+    slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually
+    insisted upon and drawn boldly ... <i>here</i>, you have it gone over with
+    an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes
+    whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of
+    mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode,
+    'Sic fatur&mdash;so said Æneas; lachrymans&mdash;<i>a-crying</i>' ... our pedagogue
+    turned on him furiously&mdash;'D'ye think Æneas made such a noise&mdash;as <i>you</i>
+    shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy,
+    smiling at itself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then <i>Tuesday</i>, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer
+    afterward. I am singularly well to-day&mdash;head quite quiet&mdash;and
+    yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my
+    last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor
+    dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something, you said yesterday, made me happy&mdash;'that your liking for me
+    did not come and go'&mdash;do you remember? Because there was a letter,
+    written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully,
+    as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your
+    fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold
+    water'!&mdash;and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my
+    thoughts of you too much, until quite of late&mdash;while even yesterday I
+    was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach
+    me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'&mdash;it was your own word!
+    And the other long word <i>idiosyncrasy</i> seemed long enough to cover it;
+    and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man
+    of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings
+    sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at
+    half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black
+    beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most
+    of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... <i>where</i> did they
+    gape? who could tell? Oh&mdash;but lately I have not been crossed so, of
+    course, with those fabulous terrors&mdash;lately that horror of the burning
+    mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear!&mdash;and
+    if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably
+    sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him
+    that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a
+    white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse!&mdash;call it the
+    'mammoth horse'&mdash;the '<i>real</i> mammoth,' this time!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems
+    so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and
+    that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping
+    on your purple underneath. <i>Your</i> letter, the letter I answered, was
+    in my heart ... <i>is</i> in my heart&mdash;and all the yeses in the world would
+    not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps,
+    I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction&mdash;and it comes to the
+    same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of
+    instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from
+    your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should,
+    would, <i>must</i>, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You
+    understand&mdash;you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like.
+    On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and
+    better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the
+    whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing
+    beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to
+    me, I do not feel it any longer&mdash;it may be raining still, but I am in
+    the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you <i>could</i> be <i>too dear</i> to me
+    you would be now&mdash;but you could not&mdash;I do not believe in those
+    supposed excesses of pure affections&mdash;God cannot be too great.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Therefore it is a conditional engagement still&mdash;all the conditions
+    being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall
+    I tell you what is 'not to be put in doubt <i>ever</i>'?&mdash;your goodness,
+    <i>that</i> is ... and every tie that binds me to you. 'Ordained, granted
+    by God' it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you,
+    and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it
+    at this present point. Still I <i>do not</i>&mdash;there seems no necessity yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, ever dearest:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own <SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well I have your letter&mdash;and I send you the postscript to my last one,
+    written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in
+    some parts of it, <i>so</i> far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the
+    'flying out'&mdash;perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your moments
+    of starry centrifugal motion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon's opinion of his 'young
+    relative'&mdash;(neither young nor his relative&mdash;not very much of either!)
+    is to the effect that you couldn't possibly 'escape' her&mdash;? It looks
+    like the sign of the Red Dragon, put <i>so</i> ... and your burning
+    mountain is not too awful for the scenery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you
+    should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say
+    infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean
+    a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No&mdash;do not say
+    such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal
+    Czarina who must stand between you and me.... I shall think that it is
+    not <i>I</i> whom you look at ... and <i>pour cause</i>. 'Flying out,' <i>that</i>
+    would be!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful
+    of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not
+    come, certainly uncomfortable when he does&mdash;yes, <i>really</i> I would
+    rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of
+    which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me
+    ask why he does not come &amp;c. ... questions which never came to my lips
+    before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I
+    wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except,
+    except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his
+    too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being
+    overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate
+    writing letters to any of my old friends&mdash;I feel as if it were the
+    merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to
+    anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very
+    fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards
+    through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am
+    ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ...
+    which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ...
+    and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of
+    understanding, I have a distaste for <i>them</i> ... cannot help it&mdash;and
+    you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it,
+    persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon&mdash;with whom we began,
+    and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can
+    think of another,&mdash;do not imagine that, if he <i>should</i> see anything,
+    he can 'approve' of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... <i>he</i>,
+    with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and
+    left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know, ... if I
+    should be ill <i>before</i> ... why there, is a conclusion!&mdash;but if
+    <i>afterward</i> ... what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I
+    only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both
+    suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master
+    to run the latter risk. You have overcome ... to your loss
+    perhaps&mdash;unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my
+    prison ... I could not even smile at <i>that</i> if it seemed probable ...
+    I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you
+    ... dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and
+    believe&mdash;in spite of the <i>possibility</i> which it is impossible to deny.
+    And now we leave this subject for the present.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Sunday.</i>&mdash;You are 'singularly well.' You are very seldom quite well,
+    I am afraid&mdash;yet 'Luria' seems to have done no harm this time, as you
+    are singularly well the day <i>after</i> so much writing. Yet do not hurry
+    that last act.... I won't have it for a long while yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine,
+    very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you
+    understand that I had said there was nothing in him but <i>manner</i> ... I
+    thought he said so&mdash;and I am confident that he never heard such an
+    opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have
+    observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called
+    <i>mannerism</i>, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the
+    medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon
+    teaches ... 'Le style, c'est <i>l'homme</i>.' But if the <i>whole man</i> were
+    style, if all Carlyleism were manner&mdash;why there would be no man, no
+    Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent
+    me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world&mdash;affected
+    parlances&mdash;just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic
+    the distractions of some great wandering soul&mdash;although <i>that</i> is a
+    bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not
+    his dress, but his physiognomy&mdash;or more than <i>that</i> even.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I do not forgive him for talking here against the 'ideals of
+    poets' ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called <i>reality</i>, which is
+    another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in
+    broad blazing lights&mdash;but he does not analyse them like a
+    philosopher&mdash;do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action
+    as opposed to speech and singing, what is <i>that</i>&mdash;when all earnest
+    thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions
+    surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if
+    Shakespeare's actions were not greater than Cromwell's!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wholly and only</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your <SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You ought hardly,&mdash;ought you, my Ba?&mdash;to refer to <i>that</i> letter or any
+    expression in it; I had&mdash;and <i>have</i>, I trust&mdash;your forgiveness for
+    what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows.
+    That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose
+    of what you properly call a <i>crisis</i>. I <i>did</i> believe,&mdash;taking an
+    expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an
+    excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day
+    previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny
+    me admittance again unless I blotted out&mdash;not merely softened
+    down&mdash;the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion,
+    I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most
+    painfully to my mind&mdash;<i>that</i> does not, after all, disagree with what I
+    said and you repeat&mdash;does it, if you will think? I said my other
+    '<i>likings</i>' (as you rightly set it down) <i>used</i> to 'come and go,' and
+    that my love for you <i>did not</i>, and that is true; the first clause as
+    the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and
+    general,&mdash;always have been&mdash;and the natural problem has been the
+    giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of
+    dispersing. I seem to have foretold, <i>foreknown</i> you in other likings
+    of mine&mdash;now here ... when the liking '<i>came</i>' ... and now elsewhere
+    ... when as surely the liking '<i>went</i>': and if they had stayed before
+    the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary,
+    I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,&mdash;for Romeo
+    <i>thinks</i> he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands&mdash;whereas I saw
+    the plain truth without one mistake, and 'looked to like, if looking
+    liking moved&mdash;and no more deep <i>did</i> I endart mine eye'&mdash;about which,
+    first I was very sorry, and after rather proud&mdash;all which I seem to
+    have told you before.&mdash;And now, when my whole heart and soul find you,
+    and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy
+    cannot last, seeing that
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone
+    now, dearest, ever-dearest?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some
+    chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to
+    <i>me</i>&mdash;like Charles Lamb's 'letter to an elderly man whose education
+    had been neglected'&mdash;when he finds himself involuntarily communicating
+    truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops
+    himself after this fashion&mdash;'If you look round the world, my dear
+    Sir&mdash;for it <i>is</i> round!&mdash;so I will make you laugh at me, if you will,
+    for <i>my</i> inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment
+    with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of
+    that&mdash;for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the
+    most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it&mdash;so that increase
+    of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness&mdash;and
+    diminution, diminished illness. And now there <i>is</i> diminution! Dear,
+    dear Ba&mdash;you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and
+    what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and
+    what ends it all directly?&mdash;just an hour's walk! So with <i>me</i>:
+    now,&mdash;fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is&mdash;no, <i>don't</i>
+    see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But <i>you</i>, at the end;
+    this is <i>all</i> the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief
+    in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless God with my whole heart that
+    it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say&mdash;so
+    superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath
+    (I who <i>do</i> love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes
+    dearest,)&mdash;I <i>will not</i> bid you&mdash;that is, pray you&mdash;to persevere! You
+    have all my life bound to yours&mdash;save me from <i>my 'seven years'</i>&mdash;and
+    God reward you!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I did not&mdash;dear, dearest&mdash;no indeed, I did not mean any harm about
+    the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure&mdash;and
+    so,&mdash;did I give you pain? was <i>that</i> my ingenuity? Forgive my
+    unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will
+    just say that what made me talk about 'the thorn in the flesh' from
+    that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into
+    it as much of the truth, <i>your</i> truth, as admitted of the ultimate
+    purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave
+    me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set
+    about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that
+    it 'did not come and go,'&mdash;was it not enough? enough to make me feel
+    happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this?
+    Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning
+    to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you
+    have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent,
+    most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing
+    and at no moment have you&mdash;I will not say&mdash;failed to <i>me</i>, but spoken
+    or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever
+    been to me except too generous? Ah&mdash;if I had been only half as
+    generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that
+    first meeting&mdash;it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not
+    courage&mdash;I shrank from the thought of it&mdash;and then ... besides ... I
+    could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,&mdash;I concluded
+    that I might keep my friend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why should any remembrance be painful to <i>you</i>? I do not understand.
+    Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself!&mdash;seeing that
+    every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made
+    me yours with a deeper trust and love.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for that letter ... do you fancy that in <i>my</i> memory the sting is
+    not gone from it?&mdash;and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the
+    Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart
+    always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear
+    letter that was burnt, forgiven by <i>you</i>&mdash;until you grow angry with me
+    instead&mdash;just till then.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And that you should care so much about the opium! Then <i>I</i> must care,
+    and get to do with less&mdash;at least. On the other side of your goodness
+    and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike
+    you as strange that I who have had no pain&mdash;no acute suffering to keep
+    down from its angles&mdash;should need opium in any shape. But I have had
+    restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power
+    of sleeping quite&mdash;and even in the day, the continual aching sense of
+    weakness has been intolerable&mdash;besides palpitation&mdash;as if one's life,
+    instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished
+    within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all
+    the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium&mdash;a
+    preparation of it, called morphine, and ether&mdash;and ever since I have
+    been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,&mdash;because the
+    tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I
+    have&mdash;so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that
+    the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be
+    dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very
+    slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be
+    done&mdash;and you are to understand that I never <i>increased</i> upon the
+    prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance&mdash;no! Now
+    think of my writing all this to you!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters;
+    and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I
+    have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I
+    shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... <i>you</i>:&mdash;a
+    forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is
+    just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your head ... is it ... <i>how</i> is it? tell me. And consider again if it
+    could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach <i>you</i> ... in
+    what I said about the letter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the <i>compensation</i>
+    blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and <i>that</i>, I can say before
+    God.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your <SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If I said you 'gave me pain' in anything, it was in the only way ever
+    possible for you, my dearest&mdash;by giving <i>yourself</i>, in me, pain&mdash;being
+    unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in
+    that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called&mdash;in this
+    very letter&mdash;'generous' &amp;c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep
+    into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall
+    hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of
+    gratitude already is beyond expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. 'Slowly and
+    gradually' what may <i>not</i> be done? Then see the bright weather while I
+    write&mdash;lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf,
+    rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge
+    sparrows in full song&mdash;there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in
+    store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps&mdash;and then comes what
+    shall come&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    And Miss Mitford yesterday&mdash;and has she fresh fears for you of my evil
+    influence and Origenic power of 'raying out darkness' like a swart
+    star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing
+    people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as
+    the like infirmity in others&mdash;whether they are unconscious of, or
+    indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance
+    from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think
+    he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by
+    his deafness as you profess&mdash;but he will be quite aware, to say the
+    least of it, when another man can't hear <i>him</i>; he will certainly not
+    encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who
+    fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either
+    believe in his heart that it is <i>not</i> so ... that only as much
+    attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would
+    quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and
+    be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to
+    confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness
+    of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were
+    just such another mote&mdash;<i>then</i> one might sympathize and feel no such
+    inconvenience&mdash;but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to
+    just its <i>double</i>, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce
+    see nothing wrong? 'No'&mdash;it is supposed&mdash;'but something <i>as</i> obscure
+    in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no
+    nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought
+    and the two words that express it without obscurity at all&mdash;'bricks
+    and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle
+    wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in
+    him'&mdash;I am almost inclined to say that <i>clear expression</i> should be
+    his only work and care&mdash;for he is born, ordained, such as he is&mdash;and
+    not born learned in putting what was born in him into words&mdash;what ever
+    <i>can</i> be clearly spoken, ought to be. But 'bricks and mortar' is very
+    easily said&mdash;and some of the thoughts in 'Sordello' not so readily
+    even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I look forward to a real life's work for us both. <i>I</i> shall do
+    all,&mdash;under your eyes and with your hand in mine,&mdash;all I was intended
+    to do: may but <i>you</i> as surely go perfecting&mdash;by continuing&mdash;the work
+    begun so wonderfully&mdash;'a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend&mdash;'to-morrow'
+    always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your
+    sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did <i>not</i>
+    tell you that I had almost passed by her&mdash;the eyes being still
+    elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that&mdash;no&mdash;I will send the
+    old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence&mdash;and it is very
+    charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest&mdash;and
+    tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as
+    glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you
+    ever.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own
+
+R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing
+    you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner
+    with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it&mdash;these
+    have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some
+    reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive
+    me&mdash;and let me forget it all on Monday? On <i>Monday</i>&mdash;unless I am told
+    otherwise by the early post&mdash;And God bless you ever
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I felt it must be so ... that something must be the matter, ... and I
+    had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which
+    comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than
+    my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now <i>was</i>
+    it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great
+    dinner?&mdash;but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest&mdash;I have no
+    heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like
+    ... if you are well enough on Monday ... if it should be thought wise
+    of you to come to London through the noise ... if ... you understand
+    all the <i>ifs</i> ... and among them the greatest if of all, ... for if
+    you do love me ... <i>care</i> for me even, you will not do yourself harm
+    or run any risk of harm by going out <i>anywhere too soon</i>. On Monday,
+    in case you are <i>considered well enough</i>, and otherwise Tuesday,
+    Wednesday&mdash;I leave it to you. Still I <i>will</i> ask one thing, whether
+    you come on Monday or not. <i>Let</i> me have a single line by the nearest
+    post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible&mdash;oh
+    no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with
+    me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to
+    save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course
+    with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all!&mdash;I
+    thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when
+    Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been
+    depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ...
+    that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that
+    she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I
+    had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half
+    past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have
+    a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward
+    skyward ... to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come
+    that day ... no!&mdash;and I revenged myself by writing a letter to <i>you</i>,
+    which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for
+    letters. Last night, came a real one&mdash;dearest! So we could not keep
+    our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead, ... on my part. How
+    should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you
+    on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday,
+    nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again&mdash;if all
+    the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you!&mdash;it
+    has grown to be enough prayer!&mdash;as <i>you</i> are enough (and all, besides)
+    for
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    The clock strikes&mdash;<i>three</i>; and I am here, not with you&mdash;and my
+    'fractious' headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now,
+    and is leaving me every minute&mdash;as if to make me aware, with an
+    undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and
+    soon will be wondering&mdash;and it would be so easy now to dress myself
+    and walk or run or ride&mdash;do anything that led to you ... but by no
+    haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a
+    quarter to five&mdash;by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear,
+    dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am&mdash;with myself, with&mdash;this
+    is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last
+    night&mdash;yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been
+    twice put off before&mdash;once solely on my account. And the sun shines,
+    and you would shine&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still
+    I have lost my day.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you, my ever-dearest.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 9, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My dearest&mdash;there are no words,&mdash;nor will be to-morrow, nor even in
+    the Island&mdash;I know that! But I do love you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am quite well now&mdash;my other note will have told you when the change
+    began&mdash;I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of
+    getting better in as little time as possible,&mdash;and the stimulus turned
+    mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a
+    degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you&mdash;but I knew
+    my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later&mdash;and I
+    thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually
+    prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had
+    been laid to heart&mdash;to-morrow I shall see you, Ba&mdash;my sweetest. But
+    there are cold winds blowing to-day&mdash;how do you bear them, my Ba?
+    '<i>Care</i>' you, pray, pray, care for all <i>I</i> care about&mdash;and be well, if
+    God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss
+    you, and will begin a new thinking of you&mdash;and end, and begin, going
+    round and round in my circle of discovery,&mdash;<i>My</i> lotos-blossom!
+    because they <i>loved</i> the lotos, were lotos-lovers,&mdash;<span title="lôtou t' erôtes">&lambda;&omega;&tau;&omicron;&upsilon; &tau;' &epsilon;&rho;&omega;&tau;&epsilon;&sigmaf;</span>,
+    as Euripides writes in the <span title="Trôades">
+    &Tau;&rho;&omega;&alpha;&delta;&epsilon;&sigmaf;</span>.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own
+</p>
+<p>
+    P.S. See those lines in the <i>Athenæum</i> on Pulci with Hunt's
+    translation&mdash;all wrong&mdash;'<i>che non si sente</i>,' being&mdash;'that one does
+    not <i>hear</i> him' i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow&mdash;and the rest, male,
+    pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mî ocelle!
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Where's Luigi Pulci, that one don't the man see?<br>
+He just now yonder in the copse has '<i>gone it</i>' (<i>n</i>'andò)<br>
+Because across his mind there came a fancy;<br>
+He'll wish to fancify, perhaps, a sonnet!<br>
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read <i>this</i> which I
+    really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful
+    persecuted Pietro d'Abano wrote this quatrain on the people's plaguing
+    him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him&mdash;he helped
+    to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and
+    passes for a conjuror in his country to this day&mdash;when there is a
+    storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact
+    with the evil one obliged him to drink no <i>milk</i>; no natural human
+    food! You know Tieck's novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I
+    believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty
+    years ago.
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Studiando le mie cifre, col compasso<br>
+Rilevo, che presto sarò sotterra&mdash;<br>
+Perchè del mio saper si fa gran chiasso,<br>
+E gl'ignoranti m'hanno mosso guerra.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I
+    remember, I turned it&mdash;word for word&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Studying my ciphers, with the compass<br>
+I reckon&mdash;who soon shall be below ground,<br>
+Because of my lore they make great 'rumpus,'<br>
+And against me war makes each dull rogue round.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Say that you forgive me to-morrow!
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">[The following is in E.B.B.'s handwriting.]
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">With my compass I take up my ciphers, poor scholar;<br>
+Who myself shall be taken down soon under the ground ...<br>
+Since the world at my learning roars out in its choler,<br>
+And the blockheads have fought me all round.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 10, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your 'Luria' just as you would
+    have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a
+    conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has
+    moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of
+    pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has&mdash;it is
+    very fine. For the execution, <i>that</i> too is worthily done&mdash;although I
+    agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here
+    and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to
+    lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger&mdash;but you will
+    look to it yourself&mdash;and such a conception <i>must</i> come in thunder and
+    lightning, as a chief god would&mdash;<i>must</i> make its own way ... and will
+    not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable.
+    Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light
+    on her face&mdash;might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a
+    magnificent work&mdash;a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against
+    their 'heroes,' and (what is peculiar) an <i>humane</i> exposition ... not
+    misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the
+    return, the remorse, saves it&mdash;and the 'Too late' of the repentance
+    and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors
+    and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward ...
+    '<i>That is done.</i>' And now&mdash;surely you think well of the work as a
+    whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it&mdash;and of the
+    <i>subtilty</i> too, for it is subtle&mdash;too subtle perhaps for stage
+    purposes, though as clear, ... as to expression ... as to medium ...
+    as 'bricks and mortar' ... shall I say?
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">'A people is but the attempt of many<br>
+To rise to the completer life of one.'
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine <i>he</i> is, your Luria,
+    when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and
+    half-disdain of Domizia. Ah&mdash;Domizia! would it hurt her to make her
+    more a woman ... a little ... I wonder!
+</p>
+<p>
+    So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read
+    <i>through</i> ... since I have read the fifth twice over. And remember,
+    please, that I am to read, besides, the 'Soul's Tragedy,' and that I
+    shall dun you for it presently. Because you told me it was finished,
+    otherwise I would not speak a word, feeling that you want rest, and
+    that I, who am anxious about you, would be crossing my own purposes
+    by driving you into work. It is the overwork, the overwear of mind and
+    heart (for the feelings come as much into use as the thoughts in these
+    productions), that makes you so pale, dearest, that distracts your
+    head, and does all the harm on Saturdays and so many other days
+    besides.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-day&mdash;how are you? It <i>was</i> right and just for me to write this
+    time, after the two dear notes ... the one on Saturday night which
+    made me praise you to myself and think you kinder than kindest, and
+    the other on Monday morning which took me unaware&mdash;such a note, <i>that</i>
+    was! Oh it <i>was</i> right and just that I should not teaze you to send me
+    another after those two others,&mdash;yet I was very near doing it&mdash;yet I
+    should like infinitely to hear to-day how you
+    are&mdash;unreasonable!&mdash;Well! you will write now&mdash;you will answer what I
+    am writing, and mention yourself particularly and sincerely&mdash;Remember!
+    Above all, you will care for your head. I have been thinking since
+    yesterday that, coming out of the cold, you might not have refused as
+    usual to take something ... hot wine and water, or coffee? Will you
+    have coffee with me on Saturday? 'Shunning the salt,' will you have
+    the sugar? And do tell me, for I have been thinking, are you careful
+    as to diet&mdash;and will such sublunary things as coffee and tea and cocoa
+    affect your head&mdash;<i>for</i> or <i>against</i>! Then you do not touch wine&mdash;and
+    perhaps you ought. Surely something may be found or done to do you
+    good. If it had not been for me, you would be travelling in Italy by
+    this time and quite well perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This morning I had a letter from Miss Martineau and really read it to
+    the end without thinking it too long, which is extraordinary for me
+    just now, and scarcely ordinary in the letter, and indeed it is a
+    delightful letter, as letters go, which are not yours! You shall take
+    it with you on Saturday to read, and you shall see that it is worth
+    reading, and interesting for Wordsworth's sake and her own. Mr.
+    Kenyon has it now, because he presses on to have her letters, and I
+    should not like to tell him that you had it first from me.... Also
+    Saturday will be time enough.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh&mdash;poor Mr. Horne! shall I tell you some of his offences? That he
+    desires to be called at four in the morning, and does not get up till
+    eight. That he pours libations on his bare head out of the
+    water-glasses at great dinners. That being in the midst of
+    sportsmen&mdash;rural aristocrats&mdash;lords of soil&mdash;and all talking learnedly
+    of pointers' noses and spaniels' ears; he has exclaimed aloud in a
+    mocking paraphrase&mdash;'If I were to hold up a horse by the tail.' The
+    wit is certainly doubtful!&mdash;That being asked to dinner on Tuesday, he
+    will go on Wednesday instead.&mdash;That he throws himself at full length
+    with a gesture approaching to a 'summerset' on satin sofas. That he
+    giggles. That he only <i>thinks</i> he can talk. That his ignorance on all
+    subjects is astounding. That he never read the old ballads, nor saw
+    Percy's collection. That he asked <i>who</i> wrote 'Drink to me only with
+    thine eyes.' That after making himself ridiculous in attempting to
+    speak at a public meeting, he said to a compassionate friend 'I got
+    very well out of <i>that</i>.' That, in writing his work on Napoleon, he
+    employed a man to study the subject for him. That he cares for
+    nobody's poetry or fame except his own, and considers Tennyson chiefly
+    illustrious as being his contemporary. That, as to politics, he
+    doesn't care '<i>which</i> side.' That he is always talking of 'my shares,'
+    'my income,' as if he were a Kilmansegg. Lastly (and understand, this
+    is <i>my</i> 'lastly' and not Miss Mitford's, who is far from being out of
+    breath so soon) that he has a mania for heiresses&mdash;that he has gone
+    out at half past five and 'proposed' to Miss M or N with fifty
+    thousand pounds, and being rejected (as the lady thought fit to report
+    herself) came back to tea and the same evening 'fell in love' with
+    Miss O or P ... with forty thousand&mdash;went away for a few months, and
+    upon his next visit, did as much to a Miss Q or W, on the promise of
+    four blood horses&mdash;has a prospect now of a Miss R or S&mdash;with hounds,
+    perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Too, too bad&mdash;isn't it? I would repeat none of it except to you&mdash;and
+    as to the worst part, the last, why some may be coincidence, and some,
+    exaggeration, for I have not the least doubt that every now and then a
+    fine poetical compliment was turned into a serious thing by the
+    listener, and then the poor poet had critics as well as listeners all
+    round him. Also, he rather 'wears his heart on his sleeve,' there is
+    no denying&mdash;and in other respects he is not much better, perhaps, than
+    other men. But for the base traffic of the affair&mdash;I do not believe a
+    word. He is too generous&mdash;has too much real sensibility. I fought his
+    battle, poor Orion. 'And so,' she said 'you believe it possible for a
+    disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses,
+    on the same day?' I doubted the <i>fact</i>. And then she showed me a note,
+    an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the
+    business&mdash;while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But
+    I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady's confessions, or
+    convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having
+    tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few
+    days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a
+    neighbourhood where all were strangers to him,&mdash;and never outstaying
+    his week! He must have been <i>foolish</i>, read it all how we may.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so am <i>I</i>, to write this 'personal talk' to you when you will not
+    care for it&mdash;yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though
+    Wordsworth's tea-kettle outsings it all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and
+    his Italian poets, in the <i>Examiner</i>. How I liked to be pulled by the
+    sleeve to your translations!&mdash;How I liked everything!&mdash;Pulci, Pietro
+    ... and you, best!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet here's a naiveté which I found in your letter! I will write it out
+    that you may read it&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    'However it' (the headache) 'was no sooner gone in a degree, than a
+    worse plague came&mdash;<i>I sate thinking of you</i>.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Very satisfactory <i>that</i> is, and very clear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold
+    makes me <i>languid</i>, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not
+    unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your worse ... worst plague</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written 'a long
+    letter' <i>to</i> the letter!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 11, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My sweetest 'plague,' <i>did</i> I really write that sentence so, without
+    gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it&mdash;but you
+    know well, well where the real plague lay,&mdash;that I thought of you as
+    thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had
+    kept me from you&mdash;and if I did not dwell more particularly on that
+    thinking of <i>yours</i>, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a
+    plague when brought before me <i>with</i> the thought of you,&mdash;if I passed
+    this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take
+    up the care and stop the 'reverie serene' of&mdash;ah, the rhyme <i>lets</i> me
+    say&mdash;'sweetest eyes were ever seen'&mdash;were <i>ever</i> seen! And yourself
+    confess, in the Saturday's note, to having been 'unhappy for half an
+    hour till' &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;and do not I feel <i>that</i> here, and am not I
+    plagued by it?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back
+    gently (that is backwards) and tell you I 'sate thinking' too, and
+    with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the
+    window was frozen ('so as to bear sparrows' somebody said) and I knew
+    you would feel it&mdash;'but you are not unwell'&mdash;really? thank God&mdash;and
+    the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance&mdash;you asked me once
+    if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you
+    say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for
+    a book, an old fancy seized me to try the 'sortes' and dip into the
+    first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said 'what
+    will be the event of my love for Her'&mdash;in so many words&mdash;and my book
+    turned out to be&mdash;'Cerutti's Italian Grammar!'&mdash;a propitious source of
+    information ... the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some
+    assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative
+    absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible
+    pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush ... such
+    dreadful possibilities of stumbling on 'conditional moods,' 'imperfect
+    tenses,' 'singular numbers,'&mdash;I should have been too glad to put up
+    with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than
+    afforded by such a word as 'Conjunction,' 'possessive pronoun&mdash;,'
+    secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and
+    what did I find? <i>This</i>&mdash;which I copy from the book now&mdash;'<i>If we love
+    in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to
+    eternity</i>'&mdash;from 'Promiscuous Exercises,' to be translated into
+    Italian, at the end.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now I reach Horne and his characteristics&mdash;of which I can tell you
+    with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not
+    altogether false&mdash;whether it proceed from inability to see what one
+    may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne,
+    but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of
+    those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses,
+    meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter
+    he had hired once,&mdash;how it galloped and could not walk; also he
+    propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when
+    a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the
+    sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in
+    that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself&mdash;but when thrown there,
+    he can talk, with Miss Mitford's leave, admirably,&mdash;I never heard
+    better stories than Horne's&mdash;some Spanish-American incidents of travel
+    want printing&mdash;or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares
+    for nobody's poetry is <i>false</i>, he praises more unregardingly of his
+    own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,&mdash;(do I speak
+    clearly?)&mdash;less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the
+    'line' of the other man he is praising&mdash;which 'somewhat' has to be
+    guarded in its interests, &amp;c., less like the poor professional praise
+    of the 'craft' than any other I ever met&mdash;instance after instance
+    starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him
+    allude&mdash;unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time
+    we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by
+    somebody's withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article,
+    and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which
+    does not look like 'boasting of his income'! As for the heiresses&mdash;I
+    don't believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and
+    trafficking. Altogether, what miserable 'set-offs' to the achievement
+    of an 'Orion,' a 'Marlowe,' a 'Delora'! Miss Martineau understands him
+    better.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now&mdash;at all
+    events, much better, just a little turning in the head&mdash;since you
+    appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee&mdash;thank you, indeed thank you,
+    but nothing after the '<i>oenomel</i>' and before half past six. <i>I</i> know
+    all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not&mdash;and can
+    tell you&mdash;, how truly...!
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">The thirst that from the soul doth rise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Doth ask a drink divine&mdash;<br>
+But might I of Jove's nectar sup<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+I would not change for thine! <i>No, no, no!</i>
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of
+    wine, 'that I do not touch it'&mdash;not habitually, nor so as to feel the
+    loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now, 'Luria', so long as the parts cohere and the whole is
+    discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think
+    of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia
+    is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,&mdash;it
+    was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so
+    narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper 'pro memoria'
+    was, under the 'Act V.' '<i>she loves</i>'&mdash;to which I could not bring it,
+    you see! Yet the play requires it still,&mdash;something may yet be
+    effected, though.... I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa
+    with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry&mdash;I suppose it is
+    no use publishing much before Easter&mdash;I will try and remember what my
+    whole character <i>did</i> mean&mdash;it was, in two words, understood at the
+    time by 'panther's-beauty'&mdash;on which hint I ought to have spoken! But
+    the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire
+    on the hearth <i>nec vult panthera domari</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the 'Soul's Tragedy'&mdash;<i>that</i> will surprise you, I think. There is
+    no trace of you there,&mdash;you have not put out the black face of
+    <i>it</i>&mdash;it is all sneering and <i>disillusion</i>&mdash;and shall not be printed
+    but burned if you say the word&mdash;now wait and see and then say! I will
+    bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now, dearest, I am with you&mdash;and the other matters are forgotten
+    already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I
+    trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, February 12, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah, the 'sortes'! Is it a double oracle&mdash;'swan and shadow'&mdash;do you
+    think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? 'I shall
+    love thee to eternity'&mdash;I <i>shall</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you 'as my wont
+    is,' because I understood simply that 'habitually' you abstained from
+    wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your
+    health to take it habitually. It <i>might</i>, you know&mdash;not that I pretend
+    to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes
+    into one's thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold
+    water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare
+    to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver <i>me</i>
+    from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison.
+    And your 'quite well' means that dreadful 'turning' still ... still!
+    Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor 'try to remember,'
+    which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read
+    your 'Luria,' the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with
+    all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try
+    to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in 'coming between,' and
+    all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just
+    <i>that</i>, and then with a white conscience 'I shall love thee to
+    eternity!... dearest! You have made a golden work out of your
+    'golden-hearted Luria'&mdash;as once you called him to me, and I hold it in
+    the highest admiration&mdash;<i>should</i>, if you were precisely nothing to me.
+    And still, the fifth act <i>rises</i>! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem
+    to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do
+    not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other
+    persons&mdash;we do not see the <i>panther</i>,&mdash;no, certainly we do not&mdash;but
+    you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a
+    time ... and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript
+    before, you should not have a page of it&mdash;<i>now</i>, you are only to rest.
+    What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I
+    read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows&mdash;and as to 'faded
+    lines,' you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it.
+    Also, no one can say 'This is not clearly written.' The people who are
+    at 'words of one syllable' may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth
+    together this time ... as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts
+    you always must have, in and out of 'Sordello'&mdash;and the objectors
+    would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that
+    ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific
+    confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he
+    had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see
+    me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took <i>Saturday</i>!!'
+    So I let him mistake the one week for the other&mdash;'Mr. Browning took
+    Saturday,' it was true, both ways. Well&mdash;and then he went on to tell
+    me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell,
+    and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire
+    besides&mdash;now, what do you think, she enquired besides? 'how you and
+    ... Browning were' said Mr. Kenyon&mdash;I write his words. He is coming,
+    perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday&mdash;Saturday is to have a twofold
+    safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think
+    of coming if you are ill ... unwell even. I shall not be frightened
+    next time, as I told you&mdash;I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to
+    think! 'It has never happened <i>so</i>&mdash;there must be a cause&mdash;and if it
+    is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell <i>me</i> ... it will not
+    seem <i>my</i> concern'&mdash;<i>that</i> was my thought on Saturday. But another
+    time ... only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved,
+    and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for
+    your suffering ... my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the
+    future that you may have the headache&mdash;and do you remember it too!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. <i>She
+    blots</i> with her <i>eyes</i> sometimes. She hates ... and loves, in extreme
+    degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of
+    mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to
+    observe the trust on one side and the <i>dyspathy</i> on the other&mdash;using
+    the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in
+    quite a strange element of society,&mdash;he, an artist in his good and his
+    evil,&mdash;and the people there, 'county families,' smoothly plumed in
+    their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of
+    using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then,
+    meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times
+    worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated
+    impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses,&mdash;all
+    these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I
+    dare say, and just the things suited to the <i>genus</i> poet, and to
+    himself specifically,&mdash;were understood by the natives and their 'rural
+    deities' to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county,
+    and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known
+    better&mdash;<i>she</i> should. And she <i>would</i> have known better, if she had
+    liked him&mdash;for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences.
+    She is too fervent a friend&mdash;she can be. Generous too, she can be
+    without an effort; and I have had much affection from her&mdash;and accuse
+    myself for seeming to have less&mdash;but&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you!&mdash;I end in haste after this long lingering.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not unwell&mdash;<i>I</i> am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 13, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two nights ago I read the 'Soul's Tragedy' once more, and though there
+    were not a few points which still struck me as successful in design
+    and execution, yet on the whole I came to a decided opinion, that it
+    will be better to postpone the publication of it for the present. It
+    is not a good ending, an auspicious wind-up of this series;
+    subject-matter and style are alike unpopular even for the literary
+    <i>grex</i> that stands aloof from the purer <i>plebs</i>, and uses that
+    privilege to display and parade an ignorance which the other is
+    altogether unconscious of&mdash;so that, if 'Luria' is <i>clearish</i>, the
+    'Tragedy' would be an unnecessary troubling the waters. Whereas, if I
+    printed it first in order, my readers, according to custom, would make
+    the (comparatively) little they did not see into, a full excuse for
+    shutting their eyes at the rest, and we may as well part friends, so
+    as not to meet enemies. But, at bottom, I believe the proper objection
+    is to the immediate, <i>first</i> effect of the whole&mdash;its moral
+    effect&mdash;which is dependent on the contrary supposition of its being
+    really understood, in the main drift of it. Yet I don't know; for I
+    wrote it with the intention of producing the best of all
+    effects&mdash;perhaps the truth is, that I am tired, rather, and desirous
+    of getting done, and 'Luria' will answer my purpose so far. Will not
+    the best way be to reserve this unlucky play and in the event of a
+    second edition&mdash;as Moxon seems to think such an apparition
+    possible&mdash;might not this be quietly inserted?&mdash;in its place, too, for
+    it was written two or three years ago. I have lost, of late, interest
+    in dramatic writing, as you know, and, perhaps, occasion. And,
+    dearest, I mean to take your advice and be quiet awhile and let my
+    mind get used to its new medium of sight; seeing all things, as it
+    does, through you: and then, let all I have done be the prelude and
+    the real work begin. I felt it would be so before, and told you at the
+    very beginning&mdash;do you remember? And you spoke of Io 'in the proem.'
+    How much more should follow now!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if nothing follows, I have <i>you</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall see you to-morrow and be happy. To-day&mdash;is it the weather or
+    what?&mdash;something depresses me a little&mdash;to-morrow brings the remedy
+    for it all. I don't know why I mention such a matter; except that I
+    tell you everything without a notion of after-consequence; and because
+    your dearest, dearest presence seems under any circumstances as if
+    created just to help me <i>there</i>; if my spirits rise they fly to you;
+    if they fall, they hold by you and cease falling&mdash;as now. Bless you,
+    Ba&mdash;my own best blessing that you are! But a few hours and I am with
+    you, beloved!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest, though you wanted to make me say one thing displeasing
+    to you to-day, I had not courage to say two instead ... which I might
+    have done indeed and indeed! For I am capable of thinking both
+    thoughts of 'next year,' as you suggested them:&mdash;because while you are
+    with me I see only <i>you</i>, and you being you, I cannot doubt a power of
+    yours nor measure the deep loving nature which I feel to be so
+    deep&mdash;so that there may be ever so many 'mores,' and no 'more' wonder
+    of mine!&mdash;but afterwards, when the door is shut and there is no 'more'
+    light nor speaking until Thursday, why <i>then</i>, that I do not see <i>you</i>
+    but <i>me</i>,&mdash;<i>then</i> comes the reaction,&mdash;the natural lengthening of the
+    shadows at sunset,&mdash;and <i>then</i>, the 'less, less, less' grows to seem
+    as natural to my fate, as the 'more' seemed to your nature&mdash;I being I!
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Sunday.</i>&mdash;Well!&mdash;you are to try to forgive it all! And the truth,
+    over and under all, is, that I scarcely ever do think of the future,
+    scarcely ever further than to your next visit, and almost never
+    beyond, except for your sake and in reference to that view of the
+    question which I have vexed you with so often, in fearing for your
+    happiness. Once it was a habit of mind with me to live altogether in
+    what I called the future&mdash;but the tops of the trees that looked
+    towards Troy were broken off in the great winds, and falling down into
+    the river beneath, where now after all this time they grow green
+    again, I let them float along the current gently and pleasantly. Can
+    it be better I wonder! And if it becomes worse, can I help it? Also
+    the future never seemed to belong to me so little&mdash;never! It might
+    appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself
+    sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am&mdash;from the sort of
+    anxiety which might be well connected with my own position <i>here</i>, and
+    which is personal to myself. <i>That</i> is all thrown behind&mdash;into the
+    bushes&mdash;long ago it was, and I think I told you of it before.
+    Agitation comes from indecision&mdash;and <i>I</i> was decided from the first
+    hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really.
+    Now,&mdash;as the Euphuists used to say,&mdash;I am 'more thine than my own' ...
+    it is a literal truth&mdash;and my future belongs to you; if it was mine,
+    it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given, and if
+    it was given ... beloved....
+</p>
+<p>
+    So you see!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then I will confess to you that all my life long I have had a rather
+    strange sympathy and dyspathy&mdash;the sympathy having concerned the genus
+    <i>jilt</i> (as vulgarly called) male and female&mdash;and the dyspathy&mdash;the
+    whole class of heroically virtuous persons who make sacrifices of what
+    they call 'love' to what they call 'duty.' There are exceptional cases
+    of course, but, for the most part, I listen incredulously or else with
+    a little contempt to those latter proofs of strength&mdash;or weakness, as
+    it may be:&mdash;people are not usually praised for giving up their
+    religion, for unsaying their oaths, for desecrating their 'holy
+    things'&mdash;while believing them still to be religious and sacramental!
+    On the other side I have always and shall always understand how it is
+    possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women
+    perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the
+    mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and
+    retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth
+    which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most
+    courageous for the truth's sake, and instead of blaming them I hold
+    them in honour, for me, and always did and shall.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And while I write, you are 'very ill'&mdash;very ill!&mdash;how it looks,
+    written down <i>so</i>! When you were gone yesterday and my thoughts had
+    tossed about restlessly for ever so long, I was wise enough to ask
+    Wilson how <i>she</i> thought you were looking, ... and she 'did not know'
+    ... she 'had not observed' ... 'only certainly Mr. Browning ran
+    up-stairs instead of walking as he did the time before.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now promise me dearest, dearest&mdash;not to trifle with your health. Not
+    to neglect yourself ... not to tire yourself ... and besides to take
+    the advice of your medical friend as to diet and general
+    treatment:&mdash;because there must be a wrong and a right in everything,
+    and the right is very important under your circumstances ... if you
+    have a tendency to illness. It may be right for you to have wine for
+    instance. Did you ever try the putting your feet into hot water at
+    night, to prevent the recurrence of the morning headache&mdash;for the
+    affection of the head comes on early in the morning, does it not? just
+    as if the sleeping did you harm. Now I have heard of such a remedy
+    doing good&mdash;and could it <i>increase</i> the evil?&mdash;mustard mixed with the
+    water, remember. Everything approaching to <i>congestion</i> is full of
+    fear&mdash;I tremble to think of it&mdash;and I bring no remedy by this teazing
+    neither! But you will not be 'wicked' nor 'unkind,' nor provoke the
+    evil consciously&mdash;you will keep quiet and forswear the going out at
+    nights, the excitement and noise of parties, and the worse excitement
+    of composition&mdash;you promise. If you knew how I keep thinking of you,
+    and at intervals grow so frightened! Think <i>you</i>, that you are three
+    times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest,&mdash;because
+    you are more than three times the larger planet&mdash;and because too, you
+    have known other sources of light and happiness ... but I need not say
+    this&mdash;and I shall hear on Monday, and may trust to you every day ...
+    may I not? Yet I would trust my soul to you sooner than your own
+    health.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, dear, dearest. If the first part of the 'Soul's
+    Tragedy' should be written out, I can read <i>that</i> perhaps, without
+    drawing you in to think of the second. Still it may be safer to keep
+    off altogether for the present&mdash;and let it be as you incline. I do not
+    speak of 'Luria.'
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">BA.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If it were not for Mr. Kenyon, I should say, almost, Wednesday,
+    instead of Thursday&mdash;I want to see you so much, and to see for myself
+    about the looks and spirits, only it would not do if he found you here
+    on Wednesday. Let him come to-morrow or on Tuesday, and Wednesday will
+    be safe&mdash;shall we consider? what do you think?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is the letter again, dearest: I suppose it gives me the same
+    pleasure, in reading, as you&mdash;and Mr. K. as me, and anybody else as
+    him; if all the correspondence which was claimed again and burnt on
+    some principle or other some years ago be at all of the nature of this
+    sample, the measure seems questionable. Burn anybody's <i>real</i>
+    letters, well and good: they move and live&mdash;the thoughts, feelings,
+    and expressions even,&mdash;in a self-imposed circle limiting the
+    experience of two persons only&mdash;<i>there</i> is the standard, and to <i>that</i>
+    the appeal&mdash;how should a third person know? His presence breaks the
+    line, so to speak, and lets in a whole tract of country on the
+    originally inclosed spot&mdash;so that its trees, which were from side to
+    side there, seem left alone and wondering at their sudden unimportance
+    in the broad land; while its 'ferns such as I never saw before' and
+    which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid
+    the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth's
+    general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole
+    value of such letters&mdash;the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed:
+    but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom
+    it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it
+    and shan't have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to
+    the ineffable mysteries of those 'upper-rooms,' now that the broom and
+    dust pan, stocking-mending and gingerbread-making are invested with
+    such unforeseen reverence ... but the carriage-sweep and quarry,
+    together with Jane and our baskets, and a pleasant shadow of
+    Wordsworth's Sunday hat preceding his own rapid strides in the
+    direction of Miss Fenwick's house&mdash;surely, 'men's eyes were made to
+    see, so let them gaze' at all <i>this</i>! And so I, gazing with a clear
+    conscience, am very glad to hear so much good of a very good person
+    and so well told. She plainly sees the proper use and advantage of a
+    country-life; and <i>that</i> knowledge gets to seem a high point of
+    attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of&mdash;for
+    <i>mine</i> he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a '<i>great</i>'
+    poet before? Put one trait with the other&mdash;the theory of rural
+    innocence&mdash;alternation of 'vulgar trifles' with dissertating with
+    style of 'the utmost grandeur that <i>even you</i> can conceive' (speak for
+    yourself, Miss M.!)&mdash;and that amiable transition from two o'clock's
+    grief at the death of one's brother to three o'clock's happiness in
+    the 'extraordinary mesmeric discourse' of one's friend. All this, and
+    the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of
+    'unpunctuality' can ruin, and to which the guardian 'angel' brings as
+    crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly&mdash;of
+    this&mdash;what can one say but that&mdash;no, best hold one's tongue and read
+    the 'Lyrical Ballads' with finger in ear. Did not Shelley say long ago
+    'He had no more <i>imagination</i> than a pint-pot'&mdash;though in those days
+    he used to walk about France and Flanders like a man? <i>Now</i>, he is
+    'most comfortable in his worldly affairs' and just this comes of it!
+    He lives the best twenty years of his life after the way of his own
+    heart&mdash;and when one presses in to see the result of the rare
+    experiment ... what the <i>one</i> alchemist whom fortune has allowed to
+    get all his coveted materials and set to work at last in earnest with
+    fire and melting-pot&mdash;what <i>he</i> produces after all the talk of him and
+    the like of him; why, you get <i>pulvis et cinis</i>&mdash;a man at the mercy of
+    the tongs and shovel!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well! Let us despair at nothing, but, wishing success to the newer
+    aspirant, expect better things from Miss M. when the 'knoll,' and
+    'paradise,' and their facilities, operate properly; and that she will
+    make a truer estimate of the importance and responsibilities of
+    'authorship' than she does at present, if I understand rightly the
+    sense in which she describes her own life as it means to be; for in
+    one sense it is all good and well, and quite natural that she should
+    like 'that sort of strenuous handwork' better than book-making; like
+    the play better than the labour, as we are apt to do. If she realises
+    a very ordinary scheme of literary life, planned under the eye of God
+    not 'the public,' and prosecuted under the constant sense of the
+    night's coming which ends it good or bad&mdash;then, she will be sure to
+    'like' the rest and sport&mdash;teaching her maids and sewing her gloves
+    and making delicate visitors comfortable&mdash;so much more rational a
+    resource is the worst of them than gin-and-water, for instance. But
+    if, as I rather suspect, these latter are to figure as a virtual
+    <i>half</i> duty of the whole Man&mdash;as of equal importance (on the ground of
+    the innocence and utility of such occupations) with the book-making
+    aforesaid&mdash;always supposing <i>that</i> to be of the right kind&mdash;<i>then</i> I
+    respect Miss M. just as I should an Archbishop of Canterbury whose
+    business was the teaching A.B.C. at an infant-school&mdash;he who might set
+    on the Tens to instruct the Hundreds how to convince the Thousands of
+    the propriety of doing that and many other things. Of course one will
+    respect him only the more if when <i>that</i> matter is off his mind he
+    relaxes at such a school instead of over a chess-board; as it will
+    increase our love for Miss M. to find that making 'my good Jane (from
+    Tyne-mouth)'&mdash;'happier and&mdash;I hope&mdash;wiser' is an amusement, or more,
+    after the day's progress towards the 'novel for next year' which is to
+    inspire thousands, beyond computation, with the ardour of making
+    innumerable other Janes and delicate relatives happier and wiser&mdash;who
+    knows but as many as Burns did, and does, so make happier and wiser?
+    Only, <i>his quarry</i> and after-solace was that 'marble bowl often
+    replenished with whiskey' on which Dr. Curry discourses mournfully,
+    'Oh, be wiser Thou!'&mdash;and remember it was only <i>after</i> Lord Bacon had
+    written to an end <i>his</i> Book&mdash;given us for ever the Art of
+    Inventing&mdash;whether steam-engine or improved dust-pan&mdash;that he took on
+    himself to do a little exemplary 'hand work'; got out on that cold St.
+    Alban's road to stuff a fowl with snow and so keep it fresh, and got
+    into his bed and died of the cold in his hands ('strenuous <i>hand</i>
+    work'&mdash;) before the snow had time to melt. He did not begin in his
+    youth by saying&mdash;'I have a horror of merely writing 'Novum Organums'
+    and shall give half my energies to the stuffing fowls'!
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this it is <i>my</i> amusement, of an indifferent kind, to put down
+    solely on the pleasant assurance contained in that postscript, of the
+    one way of never quarrelling with Miss M.&mdash;'by joining in her plan
+    and practice of plain speaking'&mdash;could she but 'get people to do it!'
+    Well, she gets me for a beginner: the funny thing would be to know
+    what Chorley's desperate utterance amounted to! Did you ever hear of
+    the plain speaking of some of the continental lottery-projectors? An
+    estate on the Rhine, for instance, is to be disposed of, and the
+    holder of the lucky ticket will find himself suddenly owner of a
+    mediæval castle with an unlimited number of dependencies&mdash;vineyards,
+    woods, pastures, and so forth&mdash;all only waiting the new master's
+    arrival&mdash;while inside, all is swept and garnished (not to say,
+    varnished)&mdash;the tables are spread, the wines on the board, all is
+    ready for the reception <i>but</i> ... here 'plain speaking' becomes
+    necessary&mdash;it prevents quarrels, and, could the projector get people
+    to practise it as he does all would be well; so he, at least, will
+    speak plainly&mdash;you hear what <i>is</i> provided but, he cannot, dares not
+    withhold what is <i>not</i>&mdash;there is then, to speak plainly,&mdash;no night
+    cap! You <i>will</i> have to bring your own night cap. The projector
+    furnishes somewhat, as you hear, but not <i>all</i>&mdash;and now&mdash;the worst is
+    heard,&mdash;will you quarrel with him? Will my own dear, dearest Ba please
+    and help me here, and fancy Chorley's concessions, and tributes, and
+    recognitions, and then, at the very end, the 'plain words,' to
+    counterbalance all, that have been to overlook and pardon?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh, my own Ba, hear <i>my</i> plain speech&mdash;and how this is <i>not</i> an
+    attempt to frighten you out of your dear wish to '<i>hear</i> from me'&mdash;no,
+    indeed&mdash;but a whim, a caprice,&mdash;and now it is out! over, done with!
+    And now I am with you again&mdash;it is to <i>you</i> I shall write next. Bless
+    you, ever&mdash;my beloved. I am much better, indeed&mdash;and mean to be well.
+    And you! But I will write&mdash;this goes for nothing&mdash;or only <i>this</i>, that
+    I am your very own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My long letter is with you, dearest, to show how serious my illness
+    was 'while you wrote': unless you find that letter too foolish, as I
+    do on twice thinking&mdash;or at all events a most superfluous bestowment
+    of handwork while the heart was elsewhere, and with you&mdash;never more
+    so! Dear, dear Ba, your adorable goodness sinks into me till it nearly
+    pains,&mdash;so exquisite and strange is the pleasure: <i>so</i> you care for
+    me, and think of me, and write to me!&mdash;I shall never die for you, and
+    if it could be so, what would death prove? But I can live on, your own
+    as now,&mdash;utterly your own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear Ba, do you suppose we differ on so plain a point as that of the
+    superior wisdom, and generosity, too, of announcing such a change &amp;c.
+    at the eleventh hour? There can be no doubt of it,&mdash;and now, what of
+    it to me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I am not going to write to-day&mdash;only this&mdash;that I am better,
+    having not been quite so well last night&mdash;so I shut up books (that is,
+    of my own) and mean to think about nothing but you, and you, and still
+    you, for a whole week&mdash;so all will come right, I hope! <i>May</i> I take
+    Wednesday? And do you say that,&mdash;hint at the possibility of that,
+    because you have been reached by my own remorse at feeling that if I
+    had kept my appointment <i>last</i> Saturday (but one)&mdash;Thursday would have
+    been my day this past week, and this very Monday had been gained?
+    Shall I not lose a day for ever unless I get Wednesday and
+    Saturday?&mdash;yet ... care ... dearest&mdash;let nothing horrible happen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If I do not hear to the contrary to-morrow&mdash;or on Wednesday early&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But write and bless me dearest, most dear Ba. God bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 17, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Méchant comme quatre!</i> you are, and not deserving to be let see the
+    famous letter&mdash;is there any grammar in <i>that</i> concatenation, can you
+    tell me, now that you are in an arch-critical humour? And remember
+    (turning back to the subject) that personally she and I are strangers
+    and that therefore what she writes for me is naturally scene-painting
+    to be looked at from a distance, done with a masterly hand and most
+    amiable intention, but quite a different thing of course from the
+    intimate revelations of heart and mind which make a living thing of a
+    letter. If she had sent such to me, I should not have sent it to Mr.
+    Kenyon, but then, she would not have sent it to me in any case. What
+    she <i>has</i> sent me might be a chapter in a book and has the life proper
+    to itself, and I shall not let you try it by another standard, even if
+    you wished, but you don't&mdash;for I am not so <i>bête</i> as not to understand
+    how the jest crosses the serious all the way you write. Well&mdash;and Mr.
+    Kenyon wants the letter the second time, not for himself, but for Mr.
+    Crabb Robinson who promises to let me have a new sonnet of
+    Wordsworth's in exchange for the loan, and whom I cannot refuse
+    because he is an intimate friend of Miss Martineau's and once allowed
+    me to read a whole packet of letters from her to him. She does not
+    object (as I have read under her hand) to her letters being shown
+    about in MS., notwithstanding the anathema against all printers of the
+    same (which completes the extravagance of the unreason, I think) and
+    people are more anxious to see them from their presumed nearness to
+    annihilation. I, for my part, value letters (to talk literature) as
+    the most vital part of biography, and for any rational human being to
+    put his foot on the traditions of his kind in this particular class,
+    does seem to me as wonderful as possible. Who would put away one of
+    those multitudinous volumes, even, which stereotype Voltaire's
+    wrinkles of wit&mdash;even Voltaire? I can read book after book of such
+    reading&mdash;or could! And if her principle were carried out, there would
+    be an end! Death would be deader from henceforth. Also it is a wrong
+    selfish principle and unworthy of her whole life and profession,
+    because we should all be ready to say that if the secrets of our daily
+    lives and inner souls may instruct other surviving souls, let them be
+    open to men hereafter, even as they are to God now. Dust to dust, and
+    soul-secrets to humanity&mdash;there are natural heirs to all these things.
+    Not that I do not intimately understand the shrinking back from the
+    idea of publicity on any terms&mdash;not that I would not myself destroy
+    papers of mine which were sacred to <i>me</i> for personal reasons&mdash;but
+    then I never would call this natural weakness, virtue&mdash;nor would I, as
+    a teacher of the public, announce it and attempt to justify it as an
+    example to other minds and acts, I hope.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How hard you are on the mending of stockings and the rest of it! Why
+    not agree with me and like that sort of homeliness and simplicity in
+    combination with such large faculty as we must admit <i>there</i>? Lord
+    Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl
+    you mention&mdash;which I did not remember: and in fact, all the great work
+    done in the world, is done just by the people who know how to
+    trifle&mdash;do you not think so? When a man makes a principle of 'never
+    losing a moment,' he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an
+    hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. 'What are you doing' said
+    somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford
+    as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground&mdash;'Only a little
+    algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground
+    are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for
+    meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be
+    sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of
+    pastime <i>I</i> should choose&mdash;who do things quite as trifling without the
+    utility&mdash;and even your Seigneurie peradventure.... I stop there for
+    fear of growing impertinent. The <i>argumentum ad hominem</i> is apt to
+    bring down the <i>argumentum ad baculum</i>, it is as well to remember in
+    time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Wordsworth ... you are right in a measure and by a standard&mdash;but I
+    have heard such really desecrating things of him, of his selfishness,
+    his love of money, his worldly <i>cunning</i> (rather than prudence) that I
+    felt a relief and gladness in the new chronicle;&mdash;and you can
+    understand how <i>that</i> was. Miss Mitford's doctrine is that everything
+    put into the poetry, is taken out of the man and lost utterly by him.
+    Her general doctrine about poets, quite amounts to that&mdash;I do not say
+    it too strongly. And knowing that such opinions are held by minds not
+    feeble, it is very painful (as it would be indeed in any case) to see
+    them apparently justified by royal poets like Wordsworth. Ah, but I
+    know an answer&mdash;I see one in my mind!
+</p>
+<p>
+    So again for the letters. Now ought I not to know about letters, I who
+    have had so many ... from chief minds too, as society goes in England
+    and America? And <i>your</i> letters began by being first to my intellect,
+    before they were first to my heart. All the letters in the world are
+    not like yours ... and I would trust them for that verdict with any
+    jury in Europe, if they were not so far too dear! Mr. Kenyon wanted to
+    make me show him your letters&mdash;I did show him the first, and resisted
+    gallantly afterwards, which made him say what vexed me at the moment,
+    ... 'oh&mdash;you let me see only <i>women's</i> letters,'&mdash;till I observed that
+    it was a breach of confidence, except in some cases, ... and that <i>I</i>
+    should complain very much, if anyone, man or woman, acted so by
+    myself. But nobody in the world writes like you&mdash;not so <i>vitally</i>&mdash;and
+    I have a right, if you please, to praise my letters, besides the
+    reason of it which is as good.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah&mdash;you made me laugh about Mr. Chorley's free speaking&mdash;and, without
+    the personal knowledge, I can comprehend how it could be nothing very
+    ferocious ... some 'pardonnez moi, vous êtes un ange.' The amusing
+    part is that by the same post which brought me the Ambleside document,
+    I heard from Miss Mitford 'that it was an admirable thing of Chorley
+    to have persisted in not allowing Harriet Martineau to quarrel with
+    him' ... so that there are laurels on both sides, it appears.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I am delighted to hear from you to-day just <i>so</i>, though I
+    reproach you in turn just <i>so</i> ... because you were not 'depressed' in
+    writing all this and this and this which has made me laugh&mdash;you were
+    not, dearest&mdash;and you call yourself better, 'much better,' which means
+    a very little perhaps, but is a golden word, let me take it as I may.
+    May God bless you. Wednesday seems too near (now that this is Monday
+    and you are better) to be <i>our</i> day ... perhaps it does,&mdash;and Thursday
+    <i>is</i> close beside it at the worst.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Dearest I am your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Evening.<br>
+[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now forgive me, dearest of all, but I must teaze you just a little,
+    and entreat you, if only for the love of me, to have medical advice
+    and follow it <i>without further delay</i>. I like to have recourse to
+    these medical people quite as little as you can&mdash;but I am persuaded
+    that it is necessary&mdash;that it is at least <i>wise</i>, for you to do so
+    now, and, you see, you were 'not quite so well' again last night! So
+    will you, for me? Would <i>I</i> not, if you wished it? And on Wednesday,
+    yes, on Wednesday, come&mdash;that is, if coming on Wednesday should really
+    be not bad for you, for you <i>must</i> do what is right and kind, and I
+    doubt whether the omnibus-driving and the noises of every sort betwixt
+    us, should not keep you away for a little while&mdash;I trust you to do
+    what is best for both of us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And it is not best ... it is not good even, to talk about 'dying for
+    me' ... oh, I do beseech you never to use such words. You make me feel
+    as if I were choking. Also it is nonsense&mdash;because nobody puts out a
+    candle for the light's sake.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Write <i>one line</i> to me to-morrow&mdash;literally so little&mdash;just to say how
+    you are. I know by the writing here, what <i>is</i>. Let me have the one
+    line by the eight o'clock post to-morrow, Tuesday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest it may be my 'goodness' or my badness, but the world
+    seems to have sunk away beneath my feet and to have left only you to
+    look to and hold by. Am I not to <i>feel</i>, then, any trembling of the
+    hand? the least trembling?
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless both of us&mdash;which is a double blessing for me
+    notwithstanding my badness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>I trust you about Wednesday</i>&mdash;and if it should be wise and kind not
+    to come quite so soon, we will take it out of other days and lose not
+    one of them. And as for anything 'horrible' being likely to happen, do
+    not think of that either,&mdash;there can be nothing horrible while you are
+    not ill. So be well&mdash;try to be well&mdash;use the means and, well or ill,
+    let me have the one line to-morrow ... Tuesday. I send you the foolish
+    letter I wrote to-day in answer to your too long one&mdash;too long, was it
+    not, as you felt? And I, the writer of the foolish one, am
+    twice-foolish, and push poor 'Luria' out of sight, and refuse to
+    finish my notes on him till the harm he has done shall have passed
+    away. In my badness I bring false accusation, perhaps, against poor
+    Luria.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So till Wednesday&mdash;or as you shall fix otherwise.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">6-1/2 Tuesday Evening.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My dearest, your note reaches me only <i>now</i>, with an excuse from the
+    postman. The answer you expect, you shall have the only way possible.
+    I must make up a parcel so as to be able to knock and give it. I shall
+    be with you to-morrow, God willing&mdash;being quite well.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 19, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My sweetest, best, dearest Ba I <i>do</i> love you less, much less already,
+    and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of
+    you&mdash;I am yours just as much as those flowers; and you may pluck those
+    flowers to pieces or put them in your breast; it is not because you so
+    bless me now that you may not if you please one day&mdash;you will stop me
+    here; but it is the truth and I live in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am quite well; indeed, this morning, <i>noticeably</i> well, they tell
+    me, and well I mean to keep if I can.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I got home last evening I found this note&mdash;and I have <i>accepted</i>,
+    that I might say I could also keep an engagement, if so minded, at
+    Harley Street&mdash;thereby insinuating that other reasons <i>may</i> bring me
+    into the neighbourhood than <i>the</i> reason&mdash;but I shall either not go
+    there, or only for an hour at most. I also found a note headed
+    'Strictly private and confidential'&mdash;so here it goes from my mouth to
+    my heart&mdash;pleasantly proposing that I should start in a few days for
+    St. Petersburg, as secretary to somebody going there on a 'mission of
+    humanity'&mdash;<i>grazie tante</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did you hear of my meeting someone at the door whom I take to have
+    been one of your brothers?
+</p>
+<p>
+    One thing vexed me in your letter&mdash;I will tell you, the praise of
+    <i>my</i> letters. Now, one merit they have&mdash;in language mystical&mdash;that of
+    having <i>no</i> merit. If I caught myself trying to write finely,
+    graphically &amp;c. &amp;c., nay, if I found myself conscious of having in my
+    own opinion, so written, all would be over! yes, over! I should be
+    respecting you inordinately, paying a proper tribute to your genius,
+    summoning the necessary collectedness,&mdash;plenty of all that! But the
+    feeling with which I write to you, not knowing that it is
+    writing,&mdash;with <i>you</i>, face and mouth and hair and eyes opposite me,
+    touching me, knowing that all <i>is</i> as I say, and helping out the
+    imperfect phrases from your own intuition&mdash;<i>that</i> would be gone&mdash;and
+    <i>what</i> in its place? 'Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we write to
+    Ambleside.' No, no, love, nor can it ever be so, nor should it ever be
+    so if&mdash;even if, preserving all that intimate relation, with the
+    carelessness, <i>still</i>, somehow, was obtained with no effort in the
+    world, graphic writing and philosophic and what you please&mdash;for I
+    <i>will</i> be&mdash;<i>would</i> be, better than my works and words with an infinite
+    stock beyond what I put into convenient circulation whether in fine
+    speeches fit to remember, or fine passages to quote. For the rest, I
+    had meant to tell you before now, that you often put me 'in a maze'
+    when you particularize letters of mine&mdash;'such an one was kind' &amp;c. I
+    know, sometimes I seem to give the matter up in despair, I take out
+    paper and fall thinking on you, and bless you with my whole heart and
+    then begin: 'What a fine day this is?' I distinctly remember having
+    done that repeatedly&mdash;but the converse is not true by any means, that
+    (when the expression may happen to fall more consentaneously to the
+    mind's motion) that less is felt, oh no! But the particular thought at
+    the time has not been of the <i>insufficiency</i> of expression, as in the
+    other instance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I will leave off&mdash;to begin elsewhere&mdash;for I am always with you,
+    beloved, best beloved! Now you will write? And walk much, and sleep
+    more? Bless you, dearest&mdash;ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own,
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-marks, Mis-sent to Mitcham. February 19 and 20, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Best and kindest of all that ever were to be loved in dreams, and
+    wondered at and loved out of them, you are indeed! I cannot make you
+    feel how I felt that night when I knew that to save me an anxious
+    thought you had come so far so late&mdash;it was almost too much to feel,
+    and <i>is</i> too much to speak. So let it pass. You will never act so
+    again, ever dearest&mdash;you shall not. If the post sins, why leave the
+    sin to the post; and I will remember for the future, will be ready to
+    remember, how postmen are fallible and how you live at the end of a
+    lane&mdash;and not be uneasy about a silence if there should be one
+    unaccounted for. For the Tuesday coming, I shall remember that
+    too&mdash;who could forget it?... I put it in the niche of the wall, one
+    golden lamp more of your giving, to throw light purely down to the end
+    of my life&mdash;I do thank you. And the truth is, I <i>should</i> have been in
+    a panic, had there been no letter that evening&mdash;I was frightened the
+    day before, then reasoned the fears back and waited: and if there had
+    been no letter after all&mdash;. But you are supernaturally good and kind.
+    How can I ever 'return' as people say (as they might say in their
+    ledgers) ... any of it all? How indeed can I who have not even a heart
+    left of my own, to love you with?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I quite trust to your promise in respect to the medical advice, if
+    walking and rest from work do not prevent at once the recurrence of
+    those sensations&mdash;it was a promise, remember. And you will tell me the
+    very truth of how you are&mdash;and you will try the music, and not be
+    nervous, dearest. Would not <i>riding</i> be good for you&mdash;consider. And
+    why should you be 'alone' when your sister is in the house? How I keep
+    thinking of you all day&mdash;you cannot really be alone with so many
+    thoughts ... such swarms of thoughts, if you could but see them,
+    drones and bees together!
+</p>
+<p>
+    George came in from Westminster Hall after we parted yesterday and
+    said that he had talked with the junior counsel of the wretched
+    plaintiffs in the Ferrers case, and that the belief was in the mother
+    being implicated, although not from the beginning. It was believed too
+    that the miserable girl had herself taken step after step into the
+    mire, involved herself gradually, the first guilt being an
+    extravagance in personal expenses, which she lied and lied to account
+    for in the face of her family. 'Such a respectable family,' said
+    George, 'the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone
+    indignant upon being so disgraced by her!' But for the respectability
+    in the best sense, I do not quite see. That all those people should
+    acquiesce in the indecency (according to every standard of English
+    manners in any class of society) of thrusting the personal expenses of
+    a member of their family on Lord Ferrers, she still bearing their
+    name&mdash;and in those peculiar circumstances of her supposed position
+    too&mdash;where is the respectability? And they are furious with her, which
+    is not to be wondered at after all. Her counsel had an interview with
+    her previous to the trial, to satisfy themselves of her good faith,
+    and she was quite resolute and earnest, persisting in every statement.
+    On the coming out of the anonymous letters, Fitzroy Kelly said to the
+    juniors that if anyone could suggest a means of explanation, he would
+    be eager to carry forward the case, ... but for him he saw no way of
+    escaping from the fact of the guilt of their client. Not a voice could
+    speak for her. So George was told. There is no ground for a
+    prosecution for a conspiracy, he says, but she is open to the charge
+    for <i>forgery</i>, of course, and to the dreadful consequences, though it
+    is not considered at all likely that Lord Ferrers could wish to
+    disturb her beyond the ruin she has brought on her own life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Think of Miss Mitford's growing quite cold about Mr. Chorley who has
+    spent two days with her lately, and of her saying in a letter to me
+    this morning that he is very much changed and grown to be 'a
+    presumptuous coxcomb.' He has displeased her in some way&mdash;that is
+    clear. What changes there are in the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Should I ever change to <i>you</i>, do you think, ... even if you came to
+    'love me less'&mdash;not that I meant to reproach you with that
+    possibility. May God bless you, dear dearest. It is another miracle
+    (beside the many) that I get nearer to the mountains yet still they
+    seem more blue. Is not <i>that</i> strange?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever and wholly</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your <SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I offended you by praising your letters&mdash;or rather <i>mine</i>, if you
+    please&mdash;as if I had not the right! Still, you shall not, shall not
+    fancy that I meant to praise them in the way you seem to think&mdash;by
+    calling them 'graphic,' 'philosophic,'&mdash;why, did I ever use such
+    words? I agree with you that if I could play critic upon your letters,
+    it would be an end!&mdash;but no, no ... I did not, for a moment. In what I
+    said I went back to my first impressions&mdash;and they were <i>vital</i>
+    letters, I said&mdash;which was the résumé of my thoughts upon the early
+    ones you sent me, because I felt your letters to be <i>you</i> from the
+    very first, and I began, from the beginning, to read every one several
+    times over. Nobody, I felt, nobody of all these writers, did write as
+    you did. Well!&mdash;and had I not a right to say <i>that</i> now at last, and
+    was it not natural to say just <i>that</i>, when I was talking of other
+    people's letters and how it had grown almost impossible for me to read
+    them; and do I deserve to be scolded? No indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if I had the misfortune to think now, when you say it is a fine
+    day, that <i>that</i> is said in more music than it could be said in by
+    another&mdash;where is the sin against <i>you</i>, I should like to ask. It is
+    yourself who is the critic, I think, after all. But over all the
+    brine, I hold my letters&mdash;just as Camoens did his poem. They are <i>best
+    to me</i>&mdash;and they are <i>best</i>. I knew what <i>they</i> were, before I knew
+    what <i>you</i> were&mdash;all of you. And I like to think that I never fancied
+    anyone on a level with you, even in a letter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What makes you take them to be so bad, I suppose, is just feeling in
+    them how near we are. <i>You say that!</i>&mdash;not I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bad or good, you <i>are</i> better&mdash;yes, 'better than the works and
+    words'!&mdash;though it was very shameful of you to insinuate that I talked
+    of fine speeches and passages and graphical and philosophical
+    sentences, as if I had proposed a publication of 'Elegant Extracts'
+    from your letters. See what blasphemy one falls into through a
+    beginning of light speech! It is wiser to talk of St. Petersburg; for
+    all Voltaire's ... '<i>ne disons pas de mal de Nicolas</i>.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wiser&mdash;because you will not go. If you were going ... well!&mdash;but there
+    is no danger&mdash;it would not do you good to go, I am so happy this time
+    as to be able to think&mdash;and your 'mission of humanity' lies
+    nearer&mdash;'strictly private and confidential'? but not in Harley
+    Street&mdash;so if you go <i>there</i>, dearest, keep to the 'one hour' and do
+    not suffer yourself to be tired and stunned in those hot rooms and
+    made unwell again&mdash;it is plain that you cannot bear that sort of
+    excitement. For Mr. Kenyon's note, ... it was a great temptation to
+    make a day of Friday&mdash;but I resist both for Monday's sake and for
+    yours, because it seems to me safer not to hurry you from one house to
+    another till you are tired completely. I shall think of you so much
+    the nearer for Mr. Kenyon's note&mdash;which is something gained. In the
+    meanwhile you are better, which is everything, or seems so. Ever
+    dearest, do you remember what it is to me that you should be better,
+    and keep from being worse again&mdash;I mean, of course, <i>try</i> to keep from
+    being worse&mdash;be wise ... and do not stay long in those hot Harley
+    Street rooms. Ah&mdash;now you will think that I am afraid of the
+    unicorns!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Through your being ill the other day I forgot, and afterwards went on
+    forgetting, to speak of and to return the ballad&mdash;which is delightful;
+    I have an unspeakable delight in those suggestive ballads, which seem
+    to make you touch with the end of your finger the full warm life of
+    other times ... so near they bring you, yet so suddenly all passes in
+    them. Certainly there is a likeness to your Duchess&mdash;it is a curious
+    crossing. And does it not strike you that a verse or two must be
+    wanting in the ballad&mdash;there is a gap, I fancy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tell Mr. Kenyon (if he enquires) that you come here on Monday instead
+    of Saturday&mdash;and if you can help it, do not mention Wednesday&mdash;it will
+    be as well, not. You met Alfred at the door&mdash;he came up to me
+    afterwards and observed that 'at last he had seen you!' 'Virgilium
+    tantum vidi!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter,
+    and which you 'stop' yourself in saying ... <i>I</i> need not stop you in
+    it....
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night. May God bless
+    you, dearest, dearest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must be your own while He blesses <i>me</i>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is my Ba's dearest <i>first</i> letter come four hours after the
+    second, with '<i>Mis-sent to Mitcham</i>' written on its face as a
+    reason,&mdash;one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I <i>do</i> have
+    it at last&mdash;what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the
+    first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all
+    you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are
+    the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White&mdash;I go for
+    <i>him</i>) if even that&mdash;for to-morrow night I must go out again, I
+    fear&mdash;to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.'s
+    <i>soirée</i> at Lord Northampton's. And then comes Monday&mdash;and to-night
+    any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch.
+    (N.B.&mdash;should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant
+    Extracts'&mdash;mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when
+    walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we
+    found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a
+    ditch&mdash;'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the
+    king'&mdash;he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly
+    things. One remembers Regan's 'Oh Heaven&mdash;so you will rail at <i>me</i>,
+    when you are in the mood.' But what a want of self-respect such
+    judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect
+    is: 'So I believed yesterday, and <i>so</i> now&mdash;and yet am neither hasty,
+    nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent'&mdash;what then?
+</p>
+<p>
+    &mdash;But I will say more of my mind&mdash;(not of that)&mdash;to-morrow, for time
+    presses a little&mdash;so bless you my ever ever dearest&mdash;I love you
+    wholly.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 21, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in
+    the evening, I never heard till just now and <i>from Papa himself</i>, that
+    'George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.' How
+    surprised you will be. It must have been a sudden thought of Mr.
+    Kenyon's.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you
+    then a letter all but ... insolent ... which, do you know, I feel half
+    ashamed to look back upon this morning&mdash;particularly what I wrote
+    about 'missions of humanity'&mdash;now was it not insolent of me to write
+    so? If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between
+    the lilies, instead of the post office:&mdash;but I can't&mdash;so if you
+    wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it
+    was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes
+    ... first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of
+    yours, and secondly because you were 'noticeably' better you said, or
+    'noticeably well' rather, to mind my quotations. So I wrote what I
+    wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give it
+    to Henrietta who goes out before eight in the morning and often takes
+    charge of my letters, and it was too late, at the earliest this
+    morning, to feel a little ashamed. Miss Thomson told me that she had
+    determined to change the type of the few pages of her letterpress
+    which had been touched, and that therefore Mr. Burges's revisions of
+    my translations should be revised back again. She appears to be a very
+    acute person, full of quick perceptions&mdash;naturally quick, and
+    carefully trained&mdash;a little over anxious perhaps about mental lights,
+    and opening her eyes still more than she sees, which is a common fault
+    of clever people, if one must call it a fault. I like her, and she is
+    kind and cordial. Will she ask you to help her book with a translation
+    or two, I wonder. Perhaps&mdash;if the courage should come. Dearest, how I
+    shall think of you this evening, and how near you will seem, not to be
+    here. I had a letter from Mr. Mathews the other day, and smiled to
+    read in it just what I had expected, that he immediately sent Landor's
+    verses on you to a <i>few editors</i>, friends of his, in order to their
+    communication to the public. He received my apology for myself with
+    the utmost graciousness. A kind good man he is.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all, do you know, I am a little vexed that I should have even
+    <i>seemed</i> to do wrong in my speech about the letters. It must have been
+    wrong, if it seemed so to you, I fancy now. Only I really did no more
+    mean to try your letters ... mine ... such as they are to me now, by
+    the common critical measure, than the shepherds praised the pure tenor
+    of the angels who sang 'Peace upon earth' to them. It was enough that
+    they knew it for angels' singing. So do <i>you</i> forgive me, beloved, and
+    put away from you the thought that I have let in between us any
+    miserable stuff 'de métier,' which I hate as you hate. And I will not
+    say any more about it, not to run into more imprudences of mischief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the other hand I warn you against saying again what you began to
+    say yesterday and stopped. Do not try it again. What may be quite good
+    sense from me, is from <i>you</i> very much the reverse, and pray observe
+    that difference. Or did you think that I was making my own road clear
+    in the the thing I said about&mdash;'jilts'? No, you did not. Yet I am
+    ready to repeat of myself as of others, that if I ceased to love you,
+    I certainly would act out the whole consequence&mdash;but <i>that</i> is an
+    impossible 'if' to my nature, supposing the conditions of it otherwise
+    to be probable. I never loved anyone much and ceased to love that
+    person. Ask every friend of mine, if I am given to change even in
+    friendship! <i>And to you...!</i> Ah, but you never think of such a thing
+    seriously&mdash;and you are conscious that you did not say it very sagely.
+    You and I are in different positions. Now let me tell you an apologue
+    in exchange for your Wednesday's stories which I liked so, and mine
+    perhaps may make you 'a little wiser'&mdash;who knows?
+</p>
+<p>
+    It befell that there stood in hall a bold baron, and out he spake to
+    one of his serfs ... 'Come thou; and take this baton of my baronie,
+    and give me instead thereof that sprig of hawthorn thou holdest in
+    thine hand.' Now the hawthorn-bough was no larger a thing than might
+    be carried by a wood-pigeon to the nest, when she flieth low, and the
+    baronial baton was covered with fine gold, and the serf, turning it
+    in his hands, marvelled greatly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And he answered and said, 'Let not my lord be in haste, nor jest with
+    his servant. Is it verily his will that I should keep his golden
+    baton? Let him speak again&mdash;lest it repent him of his gift.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    And the baron spake again that it was his will. 'And I'&mdash;he said once
+    again&mdash;'shall it be lawful for me to keep this sprig of hawthorn, and
+    will it not repent thee of thy gift?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then all the servants who stood in hall, laughed, and the serf's hands
+    trembled till they dropped the baton into the rushes, knowing that his
+    lord did but jest....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Which mine did not. Only, <i>de te fabula narratur</i> up to a point.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I have your letter. 'What did I expect?' Why I expected just
+    <i>that</i>, a letter in turn. Also I am graciously pleased (yes, and very
+    much pleased!) to '<i>let</i> you write to-morrow.' How you spoil me with
+    goodness, which makes one 'insolent' as I was saying, now and then.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The worst is, that I write 'too kind' letters&mdash;I!&mdash;and what does that
+    criticism mean, pray? It reminds me, at least, of ... now I will tell
+    you what it reminds me of.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few days ago Henrietta said to me that she was quite uncomfortable.
+    She had written to somebody a not kind enough letter, she thought, and
+    it might be taken ill. 'Are <i>you</i> ever uncomfortable, Ba, after you
+    have sent letters to the post?' she asked me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Yes,' I said, 'sometimes, but from a reason just the very reverse of
+    your reason, <i>my</i> letters, when they get into the post, seem too
+    kind,&mdash;rather.' And my sisters laughed ... laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But if <i>you</i> think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see,
+    to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time <i>dis
+    faventibus</i>, though it will be difficult.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon's dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. <i>You</i> are
+    invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and '<i>no one else</i>.'
+    George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and '<i>no one
+    else</i>'&mdash;just those words. The '<i>absolu</i>' (do you remember Balzac's
+    beautiful story?) is just <i>you</i> and 'no one else,' the other elements
+    being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not 'too <i>wise</i>' in any case,
+    which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being
+    'well,' ever and ever dearest. Keep so for <i>me</i>. May God bless you
+    hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Miss Mitford ...
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">But people are not angels quite ...
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her
+    way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She
+    is affectionate to <i>me</i> beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I
+    were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low
+    enough for <i>me</i>. I always feel <i>that</i>. She would advertise me directly
+    for a wretch proper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me
+    just now to hold the sparrows!&mdash;in respect to a great crowd of people,
+    and she is among them&mdash;for reasons&mdash;for reasons.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 23, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    So all was altered, my love&mdash;and, instead of Miss T. and the other
+    friend, I had your brother and Procter&mdash;to my great pleasure. After, I
+    went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning
+    in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after
+    dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is&mdash;(Here your letter
+    reaches me&mdash;let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing
+    you, dearest beyond all dearness&mdash;My own heart's Ba!)&mdash;oh, as I am
+    used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied
+    elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue
+    utter 'Miss Barrett ... that is, Mrs. Jameson says' ... or 'does ...
+    or does not.' I forget which! And if anybody noticed the <i>gaucherie</i>
+    it must have been just your brother!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can
+    put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it
+    as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday&mdash;there is, I see,
+    and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be
+    scientifically appreciated, <i>proved there</i>&mdash;but over and above, is it
+    in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper&mdash;here does
+    the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day
+    I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta&mdash;wherein he avers
+    that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal
+    properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,&mdash;and
+    that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of
+    elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a
+    decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may
+    discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were&mdash;ah, what were
+    they? Curious thinking won't do for me and the wise head which is
+    mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand
+    that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one
+    person&mdash;which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.&mdash;to make me
+    supremely happy, and that you have your wish&mdash;you <i>do</i> bless me! More
+    and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new
+    comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life,
+    <i>will this last</i>, let <i>me</i> begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live
+    this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put
+    in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not
+    deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I
+    do feel, as I say&mdash;it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With which conviction&mdash;renewed conviction time by time, of your
+    extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,&mdash;will it seem
+    characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening
+    me, all the same, with threats of writing <i>less</i> kindly? That must not
+    be, love, for <i>your</i> sake now&mdash;if you had not thrown open those
+    windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord
+    on whom the King leaned 'how such things might be'&mdash;but, once their
+    influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut
+    up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of
+    blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever&mdash;so let all be as it is, pray,
+    <i>pray</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    No&mdash;not <i>all</i>. No more, ever, of that strange
+    suspicion&mdash;'insolent'&mdash;oh, what a word!&mdash;nor suppose I shall
+    particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to <i>that</i>, of all
+    other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect
+    the existence of such a quality <i>there</i> as elsewhere: how <i>can</i> such a
+    thing, <i>could</i> such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, <i>do</i>
+    you know me better! <i>Do</i> feel that I know you, I am bold to believe,
+    and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be
+    sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon's touch, for my entire good,
+    that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or
+    spoken&mdash;I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to
+    the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other
+    peoples' words, people in the world. But <i>your</i> words! And about the
+    'mission'; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have
+    begun, as I did&mdash;as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected
+    then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear.
+    The 'humanity' however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen
+    to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants
+    <i>somebody</i>, and urgently, I can well believe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for your apologue, it is naught&mdash;as you felt, and so broke off&mdash;for
+    the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which
+    once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and
+    be glorious with leaves and musical with birds' nests, and a fairy
+    safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish
+    baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it <i>were</i>, and
+    spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men
+    pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering
+    tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his
+    heart and was happy&mdash;in spite of his disastrous chase the night
+    before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a
+    respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had
+    doubtless cost to rear her&mdash;'insolence!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing
+    was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday.
+    So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I
+    love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone,
+    out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and
+    with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you
+    brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling!
+    Doing the 'honour due' to the flowers, makes your presence a little
+    longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time,
+    and then drops, till the next letter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could
+    <i>not</i> have answered it so that you should have my answer on
+    Sunday&mdash;no, I should still have had to write first.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only
+    to the hearing second. I would rather write than not&mdash;I! But to be
+    written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of
+    liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed)
+    you cannot pretend to think that <i>yours</i> are not more to <i>me</i>, most to
+    <i>me</i>! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look
+    another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have
+    said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all
+    the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I
+    and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of
+    life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all
+    the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and
+    black, as if for playing at fox and goose ... only there is no fox,
+    and I will not agree to be goose for one ... <i>that</i> is <i>you</i> perhaps,
+    for being 'too easily' satisfied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any
+    rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a 'religious hermit' who wrote
+    'poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove'; and religious
+    hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say,
+    through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St.
+    Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your
+    Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then,
+    how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter,
+    fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you ... think
+    how it is the one light, seen without distractions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>I</i> was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather
+    before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of
+    you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to
+    reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such
+    an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and
+    forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book,
+    because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the
+    original of Mr. Ward's 'Tremaine,' because nothing would do for <i>her</i>,
+    she insisted, except just <i>that</i> excess of so-called refinement, with
+    the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (<i>loue qui peut</i>,
+    Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could
+    not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say
+    the wise:&mdash;and <i>this</i> being otherwise with <i>me</i> is miraculous
+    compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant,
+    overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much,
+    as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the
+    degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a
+    level to meet on. One's ideal must be above one, as a matter of
+    course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one's eyes
+    (soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine ... shall I tell
+    you? ... even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the
+    complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you,
+    if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair
+    quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out
+    fully and make you smile half.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love <i>you</i> when you came to
+    see me&mdash;no indeed ... any more than I did your caring on your side. My
+    ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should
+    forget I was a woman (being weary and <i>blasée</i> of the empty written
+    gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps
+    from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence),
+    that you should forget <i>that</i> and let us be friends, and consent to
+    teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and
+    give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper
+    and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to
+    write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used
+    to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other
+    letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you <i>influenced</i> me, in a
+    way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words
+    you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the
+    same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house
+    by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I
+    mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes ... and to prove
+    how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has
+    occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning ...
+    'it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset
+    me&mdash;I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some
+    degree&mdash;but it haunts me ... it is a persecution.' On which he smiled
+    and said that 'it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.'
+    When the letter came....
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in
+    this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it,
+    and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you
+    chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that
+    you read <i>them</i> as you read the newspaper&mdash;examined them, and fastened
+    them down writhing under your long entomological pins&mdash;ah, do you
+    remember the entomology of it all?
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the power was used upon <i>me</i>&mdash;and I never doubted that you had
+    mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional
+    weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you
+    admitted yesterday ... yes, I saw <i>that</i> very early ... that you had
+    come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should
+    find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount
+    of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more
+    determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine.
+    Well&mdash;and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I
+    be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that
+    the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe
+    that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself,
+    <i>then</i>, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe
+    your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world
+    (except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to
+    me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy
+    that I am <i>vain</i> of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If
+    it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I
+    may say <i>before</i> God and you, that of all the events of my life,
+    inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your
+    love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it <i>is</i>, and I tell you. Your
+    love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of
+    it kneelers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why all this should be written, I do not know&mdash;but you set me thinking
+    yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and
+    for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts
+    went, that way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Say how you are, beloved&mdash;and do not brood over that 'Soul's Tragedy,'
+    which I wish I had here with 'Luria,' because, so, you should not see
+    it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well&mdash;and remember
+    how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do
+    you want to hear me say
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">I cannot love you less...?
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><i>That</i> is a doubtful phrase. And
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">I cannot love you more
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love
+    you, but it does not sound right, even <i>so</i>, does it? I know what it
+    ought to be, and will put it into the 'seal' and the 'paper' with the
+    ineffable other things.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear
+    it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the
+    Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought
+    not to go, but must&mdash;because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons
+    and such like without bringing in your dear name (not <i>dearest</i> name,
+    my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though
+    possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet <i>may</i> speak, and
+    to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good
+    news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium&mdash;how I do
+    thank you, my dearest&mdash;and desire to thank God through whose goodness
+    it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at
+    length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever
+    effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and
+    think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a
+    letter.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Dearest, dearest&mdash;my perfect blessing you are!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">May God continue his care for us. R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that 'I made you do as I
+    would.' I am quite sure, you make me <i>speak</i> as you would, and not at
+    all as I mean&mdash;and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything
+    half so untrue as that 'I came with the intention of loving whomever I
+    should find'&mdash;No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of
+    caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or
+    so change it as to almost alter, but turn a 'no' into a 'yes' can no
+    echo (except the Irish one), and I said 'no' to such a charge, and
+    still say 'no.' I <i>did</i> have a presentiment&mdash;and though it is hardly
+    possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true
+    colours given to it by the event, yet I <i>can</i> put them aside, if I
+    please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (<i>not</i>
+    that the effect I expected to be produced would be <i>less</i> than in
+    anticipation, certainly I did not hope <i>that</i>, but that it would range
+    itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and
+    friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I <i>could</i>
+    love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to
+    divert me from my intended way of life, I made&mdash;went on making
+    arrangements to return to Italy. You know&mdash;did I not tell you&mdash;I
+    wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so
+    much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist.
+    I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily
+    bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory
+    than to mine, the true one&mdash;but that was instinct,
+    Providence&mdash;anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you!
+    yourself have noticed the difference between the <i>letters</i> and the
+    <i>writer</i>; the greater 'distance of the latter from you,' why was that?
+    Why, if not because the conduct <i>began</i> with <i>him</i>, with one who had
+    now seen you&mdash;was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the
+    feeling, of the letters&mdash;else, they, if <i>near</i>, should have enabled
+    him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of
+    familiarity, to become <i>nearer</i>&mdash;but it was not so! The letters began
+    by loving you after their way&mdash;but what a world-wide difference
+    between <i>that</i> love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and
+    feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so
+    harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from
+    what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels
+    meant for ordinary service than Lord N's! But I <i>don't</i> know that
+    handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if
+    you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came
+    and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it
+    was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more
+    unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of
+    truths that here, ('how begot? how nourished?')&mdash;here is the whole
+    wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it,
+    because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At
+    the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think
+    that it would be <i>so</i> difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes
+    to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to 'justify my
+    presentiment?' Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could
+    account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of
+    your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps!
+    So let us go on&mdash;taking a lesson out of the world's book in a
+    different sense. You shall think I love you for&mdash;(tell me, you must,
+    what for) while in my secret heart I know what my 'mission of
+    humanity' means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures
+    me. Enough&mdash;Wait, one word about the 'too kind letters'&mdash;could not the
+    same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his
+    thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his
+    next gift by merely <i>ten</i>? It <i>is</i> all too kind&mdash;but I shall feel the
+    diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however,
+    not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all&mdash;dearest
+    letter of all&mdash;till the next! I looked yesterday over the 'Tragedy,'
+    and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next
+    time, and 'Luria' take away, if you let me, so all will be off my
+    mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don't think I am going to
+    take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the 'Tragedy' I
+    should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring
+    as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works
+    fetter it, if left behind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing&mdash;if <i>you</i>, in any
+    respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me,
+    beyond words&mdash;beyond dreams&mdash;if, because I find you, your own works
+    <i>stop</i>&mdash;'then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.' Oh, no, no,
+    dearest, <i>so</i> would the help cease to be help&mdash;the joy to be joy, Ba
+    herself to be <i>quite</i> Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear
+    love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and
+    promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I
+    will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the
+    world, proud of you&mdash;and <i>vain</i>, too, very likely, which is all the
+    sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my
+    heart on your fulfilling your mission&mdash;my heart is on it! Bless you,
+    my Ba&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)&mdash;and I
+    walk, especially near the elms and stile&mdash;and mean to walk, and be
+    very well&mdash;and you, dearest?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that
+    they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to
+    something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off
+    the chrystals&mdash;they <i>are</i> so brittle, then? do you know <i>that</i> by an
+    'instinct.' But I agree that it is best not to talk&mdash;I 'gave it up' as
+    a riddle long ago. Let there be 'analysis' even, and it will not be
+    solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and
+    the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some
+    snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have
+    <i>his</i> thoughts too, and <i>he</i> would think that if you had been
+    reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or
+    by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person
+    thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I
+    hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks 'damnable
+    iterations' and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now
+    perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little
+    further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and
+    miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it
+    was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for
+    anything&mdash;your having no reason for it is the only way of your not
+    seeming unreasonable. Also <i>for my own sake</i>. I like it to be so&mdash;I
+    cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the
+    baron's hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead
+    since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it
+    last&mdash;take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the
+    tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and
+    length towards and around it. But what then? What does <i>that prove</i>?
+    ... as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of
+    such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental
+    illustrations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not
+    draw the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You
+    are better than the imaginations of my heart, and <i>they</i>, as far as
+    they relate to you (not further) are <i>not</i> desperately wicked, I
+    think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are
+    doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle
+    too, like the rest, now isn't it? When the knock came last night, I
+    knew it was your letter, and not another's. Just another little leaf
+    of my Koran! How I thank you ... thank you! If I write too kind
+    letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not
+    for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me,
+    which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And <i>that</i>
+    is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very
+    often&mdash;as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly
+    out of the ninety-sixth volume of the 'Code of Conventions,' only you
+    are not like another, nor have you been to me like another&mdash;you began
+    with most improvident and (will you let me say?) <i>unmasculine</i>
+    generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the
+    fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But ... but ... you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the
+    matter of the 'Tragedy' and 'Luria'&mdash;you promised to rest&mdash;and <i>you
+    rest for three days</i>. Is it <i>so</i> that people get well? or keep well?
+    Indeed I do not think I shall let you have 'Luria.' Ah&mdash;be careful, I
+    do beseech you&mdash;be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works
+    will profit by it themselves. And <i>you</i>! And I ... if you are ill!&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much
+    as you please ... though I hear about the shower bath with a little
+    suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and
+    why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn't
+    made you rather unwell since the new trial!&mdash;tell me, dear, dearest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy,
+    just that I might not reproach <i>you</i> for the over-business. Confess
+    that <i>that</i> was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are
+    quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground
+    murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write
+    so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away
+    my license to be loved ... I am not to be Ba to you any longer ... you
+    say! And is <i>this</i> right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell
+    off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you. Only you did not
+    mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it,
+    if you please, and unthink it near the elms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the writing, I will write ... I have written ... I am writing.
+    You do not fancy that I have given up writing?&mdash;No. Only I have
+    certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have
+    done, which is not my fault&mdash;nor yours directly&mdash;and I feel an
+    indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul
+    shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the
+    right inclination. Well&mdash;it will come. But all in blots and fragments
+    there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if there were not ... if there were none ... I hold that I should
+    be Ba, and also <i>your</i> Ba ... which is 'insolence' ... will you say?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the
+    beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me&mdash;'the late
+    Robert Hall&mdash;when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate
+    of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of
+    cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't
+    kiss Mind"! May <i>you</i> not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that
+    mere intellectual endowments&mdash;though incontestably of the loftiest
+    character&mdash;mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's&mdash;cannot be
+    <i>kissed</i>&mdash;nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities,
+    those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot,
+    if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us
+    died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person!
+    and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street,
+    suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise
+    an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it
+    augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be
+    <i>wholly, exclusively</i> based on such perishable attractions as the
+    sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to
+    know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent
+    with this&mdash;some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some&mdash;' Would he not
+    say that? But I can't do his platitudes justice because here is our
+    post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect
+    joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing&mdash;dearest,
+    dearest Ba&mdash;let me say more to-morrow&mdash;only this now, that you&mdash;ah,
+    what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you&mdash;till to-morrow
+    when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, <i>lengthen</i> it!)
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Hawthorn'<a href="#note-25"><b>25</b></a>&mdash;to show how Spring gets on!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours,
+    ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices
+    without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in
+    your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of
+    nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with
+    him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:&mdash;he is quite a
+    third person <i>singular</i> for the nonsense he talks!
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The
+    sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was
+    warm enough to go down-stairs&mdash;and I put on my cloak as if I were
+    going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took
+    Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant
+    to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's
+    ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning
+    visitors&mdash;and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me,
+    besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees
+    Cook&mdash;<i>plus</i> his regimentals&mdash;fresh from the royal presence at St.
+    James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of
+    cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be
+    unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after
+    another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told
+    her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the
+    regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me
+    by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and '<i>There</i> is
+    Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I
+    had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too!
+    who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have
+    encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next
+    moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was
+    standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely
+    have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that
+    room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I
+    couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had
+    drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a
+    minute or two&mdash;and the corollary of this interesting history is, that
+    being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking
+    'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves
+    my gigantic strength&mdash;now doesn't it?
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish
+    as any third person in the world. What do you think?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me
+    to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth
+    proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed,
+    it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the
+    kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wanted to hear her speak of you, and was afraid. I <i>could not</i> name
+    you. Yet I <i>did</i> want to hear the last 'Bell' praised.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She goes to Ireland for two months soon, but prints a book first, a
+    collection of essays. I have not seen Mr. Kenyon, with whom she dined
+    yesterday. The Macreadys were to be there, and he told me a week ago
+    that he very nearly committed himself in a 'social mistake' by
+    inviting you to meet them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah my hawthorn spray! Do you know, I caught myself pitying it for
+    being gathered, with that green promise of leaves on it! There is room
+    too on it for the feet of a bird! Still I shall keep it longer than it
+    would have stayed in the hedge, <i>that</i> is certain!
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first you ever gave me was a yellow rose sent in a letter, and
+    shall I tell you what <i>that</i> means&mdash;the yellow rose? '<i>Infidelity</i>,'
+    says the dictionary of flowers. You see what an omen, ... to begin
+    with!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also you see that I am not tired with the great avatar to-day&mdash;the
+    'fell swoop' rather&mdash;mine, into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Jameson's
+    on <i>me</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And I shall hear to-morrow again, really? I '<i>let</i>' you. And you are
+    best, kindest, dearest, every day. Did I ever tell you that you made
+    me do what you choose? I fancied that I only <i>thought</i> so. May God
+    bless you. I am your own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I have the 'Soul's Tragedy' on Saturday?&mdash;any of it? But <i>do not
+    work</i>&mdash;I beseech you to take care.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    To be sure my 'first person' was nonsensical, and, in that respect
+    made speak properly, I hope, only he was cut short in the middle of
+    his performance by the exigencies of the post. So, never mind what
+    such persons say, my sweetest, because they know nothing at all&mdash;<i>quod
+    erat demonstrandum</i>. But you, love, you speak roses, and
+    hawthorn-blossoms when you tell me of the cloak put on, and the
+    descent, and the entry, and staying and delaying. I will have had a
+    hand in all that; I know what I wished all the morning, and now this
+    much came true! But you should have seen the regimentals, if I could
+    have so contrived it, for I confess to a Chinese love for bright
+    red&mdash;the very names 'vermilion' 'scarlet' warm me, yet in this cold
+    climate nobody wears red to comfort one's eye save soldiers and fox
+    hunters, and old women fresh from a Parish Christmas Distribution of
+    cloaks. To dress in floating loose crimson silk, I almost understand
+    being a Cardinal! Do you know anything of Nat Lee's Tragedies? In one
+    of them a man angry with a Cardinal cries&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Stand back, and let me mow this poppy down,<br>
+This rank red weed that spoils the Churches' corn.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">Is not that good? and presently, when the same worthy is poisoned
+    (that is the Cardinal)&mdash;they bid him&mdash;'now, Cardinal, lie down and
+    roar!'
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Think of thy scarlet sins!
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Of the justice of all which, you will judge with no Mrs. Jameson for
+    guide when we see the Sistina together, I trust! By the way, yesterday
+    I went to Dulwich to see some pictures, by old Teniers, Murillo,
+    Gainsborough, Raphael!&mdash;then twenty names about, and last but one, as
+    if just thought of, 'Correggio.' The whole collection, including 'a
+    <i>divine</i> picture by Murillo,' and Titian's Daughter (hitherto supposed
+    to be in the Louvre)&mdash;the whole I would, I think, have cheerfully
+    given a pound or two for the privilege of not possessing&mdash;so execrable
+    as sign-paintings even! 'Are there worse poets in their way than
+    painters?' Yet the melancholy business is here&mdash;that the bad poet goes
+    out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order
+    to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do
+    afterwards&mdash;but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning
+    even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other
+    good do his acquisitions go? This short minute of life our one chance,
+    an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and
+    ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up
+    and conies out after a dozen years with 'Titian's Daughter' and,
+    there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have tried&mdash;my trial is made too!
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to
+    see you so well&mdash;did she not wonder? Ah, to-morrow! There is a lesson
+    from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being
+    corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip,
+    dearest? See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the
+    chrystals, you say! But the writing is but for a time&mdash;'a time and
+    times and half a time!'&mdash;would I knew when the prophetic weeks end!
+    Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization
+    of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush's ears!)
+    meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise
+    diplomacy and say carelessly 'I should be glad to know what Miss B. is
+    like&mdash;' No, that I must not do, something tells me, 'for reasons, for
+    reasons'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    I do not know&mdash;you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my
+    'divine Murillo' of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the
+    pages, but&mdash;in fact my wise head does ache a little&mdash;it is
+    inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone,
+    and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird's foot, which
+    would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching
+    begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite
+    naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved
+    aching now, so I <i>do</i> care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba
+    to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another,
+    even your sister, if&mdash;if&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes,
+    till to-morrow&mdash;Bless you, my own.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a
+    word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek
+    a 'security'! do you know it was not right of you to use such an
+    expression&mdash;indeed no. You were angry with me for just one minute, or
+    you would not have used it&mdash;and why? Now what did I say that was wrong
+    or unkind even by construction? If I did say anything, it was three
+    times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart
+    and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could <i>you</i>.
+    But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under
+    the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then <i>I</i>,
+    remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to
+    scorn, said something to that effect, you <i>know</i>. I once was in
+    company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his
+    constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became
+    his wife at last ... and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at
+    him on that ground as a sort of monster. And can you guess what the
+    constancy meant? Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and
+    she repulsed him. 'And in the meantime, <i>how many</i>?' I had the
+    impertinence to ask a female friend who told me the tale. 'Why,' she
+    answered with the utmost simplicity, 'I understand that Miss A. and
+    Miss B. and Mrs. C. would not listen to him, but he took Miss D.'s
+    rejection most to heart.' That was the head and front of his
+    'constancy' to Miss E., who had been loved, she boasted, for seven
+    years ... that is, once at the beginning and once at the end. It was
+    just a coincidence of the 'premier pas' and the 'pis aller.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beloved, I could not mean this for you; you are not made of such
+    stuff, as we both know.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And for myself, it was my compromise with my own scruples, that you
+    should not be 'chained' to me, not in the merest metaphor, that you
+    should not seem to be bound, in honour or otherwise, so that if you
+    stayed with me it should be your free choice to stay, not the
+    <i>consequence</i> of a choice so many months before. That was my
+    compromise with my scruples, and not my doubt of your affection&mdash;and
+    least of all, was it an intention of trifling with you sooner or later
+    that made me wish to suspend all <i>decisions</i> as long as possible. I
+    have decided (for me) to let it be as you shall please&mdash;now I told you
+    that before. Either we will live on as we are, until an obstacle
+    arises,&mdash;for indeed I do not look for a 'security' where you suppose,
+    and the very appearance of it <i>there</i>, is what most rebuts me&mdash;or I
+    will be yours in the obvious way, to go out of England the next
+    half-hour if possible. As to the steps to be taken (or not taken)
+    before the last step, we must think of those. The worst is that the
+    only question is about a <i>form</i>. Virtually the evil is the same all
+    round, whatever we do. Dearest, it was plain to see yesterday evening
+    when he came into this room for a moment at seven o'clock, before
+    going to his own to dress for dinner ... plain to see, that he was not
+    altogether pleased at finding you here in the morning. There was no
+    pretext for objecting gravely&mdash;but it was plain that he was not
+    pleased. Do not let this make you uncomfortable, he will forget all
+    about it, and I was not <i>scolded</i>, do you understand. It was more
+    manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance:&mdash;and it
+    was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game
+    we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve <i>there</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And to-day I went down-stairs (to prove how my promises stand) though
+    I could find at least ten good excuses for remaining in my own room,
+    for our cousin, Sam Barrett, who brought the interruption yesterday
+    and put me out of humour (it wasn't the fault of the dear little
+    cousin, Lizzie ... my 'portrait' ... who was '<i>so</i> sorry,' she said,
+    dear child, to have missed Papa somewhere on the stairs!) the cousin
+    who should have been in Brittany yesterday instead of here, sate in
+    the drawing-room all this morning, and had visitors there, and so I
+    had excellent excuses for never moving from my chair. Yet, the field
+    being clear at <i>half-past two</i>! I went for half an hour, just&mdash;just
+    for <i>you</i>. Did you think of me, I wonder? It was to meet your thoughts
+    that I went, dear dearest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How clever these sketches are. The expression produced by such
+    apparently inadequate means is quite striking; and I have been making
+    my brothers admire them, and they 'wonder you don't think of employing
+    them in an illustrated edition of your works.' Which might be, really!
+    Ah, you did not ask for 'Luria'! Not that I should have let you have
+    it!&mdash;I think I should not indeed. Dearest, you take care of the head
+    ... and don't make that tragedy of the soul one for mine, by letting
+    it make you ill. Beware too of the shower-bath&mdash;it plainly does not
+    answer for you at this season. And walk, and think of me for <i>your</i>
+    good, if such a combination should be possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And <i>I</i> think of <i>you</i> ... if I do not of Italy. Yet I forget to speak
+    to you of the Dulwich Gallery. I never saw those pictures, but am
+    astonished that the whole world should be wrong in praising them.
+    'Divine' is a bad word for Murillo in any case&mdash;because he is
+    intensely human in his most supernatural subjects. His beautiful
+    Trinity in the National Gallery, which I saw the last time I went out
+    to look at pictures, has no deity in it&mdash;and I seem to see it now. And
+    do you remember the visitation of the angels to Abraham (the Duke of
+    Sutherland's picture&mdash;is it not?) where the mystic visitors look like
+    shepherds who had not even dreamt of God? But I always understood that
+    that Dulwich Gallery was famous for great works&mdash;you surprise me! And
+    for painters ... their badness is more ostentatious than that of
+    poets&mdash;they stare idiocy out of the walls, and set the eyes of
+    sensitive men on edge. For the rest, however, I very much doubt
+    whether they wear their lives more to rags, than writers who mistake
+    their vocation in poetry do. There is a mechanism in poetry as in the
+    other art&mdash;and, to men not native to the way of it, it runs hard and
+    heavily. The 'cudgelling of the brain' is as good labour as the
+    grinding of the colours, ... do you not think?
+</p>
+<p>
+    If ever I am in the Sistine Chapel, it will not be with Mrs.
+    Jameson&mdash;no. If ever I should be there, what teaching I shall want,
+    <i>I</i> who have seen so few pictures, and love them only as children do,
+    with an unlearned love, just for the sake of the thoughts they bring.
+    Wonderfully ignorant I am, to have had eyes and ears so long! There is
+    music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much, ...
+    yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the
+    masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the
+    private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my
+    life&mdash;judge by <i>that</i>! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and
+    divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a
+    composer like Beethoven <i>must</i> stand above the divinest painter in
+    soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, of all artists. And this
+    I felt in my guess, long before I knew you. But observe how, if I had
+    died in this illness, I should have left a sealed world behind me!
+    <i>you</i>, unknown too&mdash;unguessed at, <i>you</i>, ... in many respects,
+    wonderfully unguessed at! Lately I have learnt to despise my own
+    instincts. And apart from those&mdash;and <i>you</i>, ... it was right for me to
+    be melancholy, in the consciousness of passing blindfolded under all
+    the world-stars, and of going out into another side of the creation,
+    with a blank for the experience of this ... the last revelation,
+    unread! How the thought of it used to depress me sometimes!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Talking of music, I had a proposition the other day from certain of
+    Mr. Russell's (the singer's) friends, about his setting to music my
+    'Cry of the Children.' His programme exhibits all the horrors of the
+    world, I see! Lifeboats ... madhouses ... gamblers' wives ... all done
+    to the right sort of moaning. His audiences must go home delightfully
+    miserable, I should fancy. He has set the 'Song of the Shirt' ... and
+    my 'Cry of the Children' will be acceptable, it is supposed, as a
+    climax of agony. Do you know this Mr. Russell, and what sort of music
+    he suits to his melancholy? But to turn my 'Cry' to a 'Song,' a
+    burden, it is said, is required&mdash;he can't sing it without a burden!
+    and behold what has been sent 'for my approval'.... I shall copy it
+    <i>verbatim</i> for you....
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">And the threads twirl, twirl, twirl,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Before each boy and girl;<br>
+And the wheels, big and little, still whirl, whirl, whirl.
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">... accompaniment <i>agitato</i>, imitating the roar of the machinery!
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is not endurable ... ought not to be ... should it now? Do tell
+    me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you, very dearest! Let me hear how you are&mdash;and think
+    how I am
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own....
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, I have been kept in town and just return in time to say why
+    you have <i>no</i> note ... to-morrow I will write ... so much there is to
+    say on the subject of this letter I find.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Bless you, all beloved&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh, do not sleep another night on that horrible error I have led you
+    into! The 'Dulwich Gallery'!&mdash;!!!&mdash;oh, no. Only some pictures to be
+    sold at the Greyhound Inn, Dulwich&mdash;'the genuine property of a
+    gentleman deceased.'
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    One or two words, if no more, I must write to dearest Ba, the night
+    would go down in double blackness if I had neither written nor been
+    written to! So here is another piece of 'kindness' on my part, such as
+    I have received praise for of late! My own sweetest, there is just
+    this good in such praise, that by it one comes to something pleasantly
+    definite amid the hazy uncertainties of mere wishes and
+    possibilities&mdash;while my whole heart does, <i>does</i> so yearn, love, to do
+    something to prove its devotion for you; and, now and then, amuses
+    itself with foolish imaginings of real substantial services to which
+    it should be found equal if fortune so granted; suddenly you interpose
+    with thanks, in such terms as would all too much reward the highest of
+    even those services which are never to be; and for what?&mdash;for a note,
+    a going to Town, a &mdash;&mdash;! Well, there are definite beginnings
+    certainly, if you will recognise them&mdash;I mean, that since you <i>do</i>
+    accept, far from 'despising this day of small things,' then I may
+    take heart, and be sure that even though none of the great
+    achievements should fall to my happy chance, still the barrenest,
+    flattest life will&mdash;<i>must</i> of needs produce in its season better
+    fruits than these poor ones&mdash;I keep it, value it, now, that it may
+    produce such.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Also I determine never again to 'analyse,' nor let you analyse if the
+    sweet mouth can be anyway stopped: the love shall be one and
+    indivisible&mdash;and the Loves we used to know from
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">One another huddled lie ...<br>
+Close beside Her tenderly&mdash;
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">(which is surely the next line). Now am I not anxious to know what
+    your father said? And if anybody else said or wondered ... how  hould
+    I know? Of all fighting&mdash;the warfare with shadows&mdash;what a work is
+    <i>there</i>. But tell me,&mdash;and, with you for me&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless me dearest ever, as the face above mine blesses me&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir Moses set off this morning, I hear&mdash;somebody yesterday called the
+    telescope an 'optical delusion,' anticipating many more of the kind!
+    So much for this 'wandering Jew.'
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Upon the whole, I think, I am glad when you are kept in town and
+    prevented from writing what you call 'much' to me. Because in the
+    first place, the little from <i>you</i>, is always much to <i>me</i>&mdash;and then,
+    besides, <i>the letter comes</i>, and with it the promise of another! Two
+    letters have I had from you to-day, ever dearest! How I thank
+    you!&mdash;yes, <i>indeed</i>! It was like yourself to write yesterday ... to
+    remember what a great gap there would have been otherwise, as it
+    looked on this side&mdash;here. The worst of Saturday is (when you come on
+    it) that Sunday follows&mdash;Saturday night bringing no letter. Well, it
+    was very good of you, best of you!
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the 'analyzing' I give it up willingly, only that I must say what
+    altogether I forgot to say in my last letter, that it was not <i>I</i>, if
+    you please, who spoke of the chrystals breaking away! And you, to
+    quote me with that certainty! "The chrystals are broken off," <i>you
+    say</i>.' <i>I</i> say!! When it was in your letter, and not at all in mine!!
+</p>
+<p>
+    The truth is that I was stupid, rather, about the Dulwich
+    collection&mdash;it was my fault. I caught up the idea of the gallery out
+    of a heap of other thoughts, and really might have known better if I
+    had given myself a chance, by considering.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and has taken out a licence, it seems to me,
+    for praising you, for he praised and praised. Somebody has told him
+    (who had spent several days with you in a house with a large library)
+    that he came away 'quite astounded by the versatility of your
+    learning'&mdash;and that, to complete the circle, you discoursed as
+    scientifically on the training of greyhounds and breeding of ducks as
+    if you had never done anything else all your life. Then dear Mr.
+    Kenyon talked of the poems; and hoped, very earnestly I am sure, that
+    you would finish 'Saul'&mdash;which you ought to do, must do&mdash;<i>only not
+    now</i>. By the way Mrs. Coleridge had written to him to enquire whether
+    you had authority for the 'blue lilies,' rather than white. Then he
+    asked about 'Luria' and 'whether it was obscure'; and I said, not
+    unless the people, who considered it, began by blindfolding
+    themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And where do you think Mr. Kenyon talks of going next February&mdash;a long
+    while off to be sure? To Italy of course. Everybody I ever heard of
+    seems to be going to Italy next winter. He visits his brother at
+    Vienna, and 'may cross the Alps and get to Pisa'&mdash;it is the shadow of
+    a scheme&mdash;nothing certain, so far.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I did not go down-stairs to-day because the wind blew and the
+    thermometer fell. To-morrow, perhaps I may. And <i>you</i>, dearest
+    dearest, might have put into the letters how you were when you wrote
+    them. You might&mdash;but you did not feel well and would not say so.
+    Confess that that was the reason. Reason or no reason, mention
+    yourself to-morrow, and for the rest, do not write a long letter so as
+    to increase the evil. There was nothing which I can remember as
+    requiring an answer in what I wrote to you, and though I <i>will</i> have
+    my letter of course, it shall be as brief as possible, if briefness is
+    good for you&mdash;<i>now always remember that</i>. Why if I, who talk against
+    'Luria,' should work the mischief myself, what should I deserve? I
+    should be my own jury directly and not recommend to mercy ... not to
+    mine. Do take care&mdash;care for <i>me</i> just so much.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, except that taking care of your health, what would you do for me
+    that you have not done? You have given me the best of the possible
+    gifts of one human soul to another, you have made my life new, and am
+    I to count these things as small and insufficient? Ah, you <i>know</i>, you
+    <i>know</i> that I cannot, ought not, will not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. He blesses me in letting me be grateful to you as
+    your Ba.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    First and most important of all,&mdash;dearest, 'angry'&mdash;with you, and for
+    <i>that</i>! It is just as if I had spoken contemptuously of that Gallery I
+    so love and so am grateful to&mdash;having been used to go there when a
+    child, far under the age allowed by the regulations&mdash;those two Guidos,
+    the wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob's vision, such a Watteau, the
+    triumphant three Murillo pictures, a Giorgione music-lesson group,
+    all the Poussins with the 'Armida' and 'Jupiter's nursing'&mdash;and&mdash;no
+    end to 'ands'&mdash;I have sate before one, some <i>one</i> of those pictures I
+    had predetermined to see, a good hour and then gone away ... it used
+    to be a green half-hour's walk over the fields. So much for one error,
+    now for the second like unto it; what I meant by charging you with
+    <i>seeing</i>, (not, <i>not</i> '<i>looking</i> for')&mdash;<i>seeing</i> undue 'security' in
+    <i>that</i>, in the form,&mdash;I meant to say 'you talk about me being 'free'
+    now, free till <i>then</i>, and I am rather jealous of the potency
+    attributed to the <i>form</i>, with all its solemnity, because it <i>is</i> a
+    form, and no more&mdash;yet you frankly agree with me that <i>that</i> form
+    complied with, there is no redemption; yours I am <i>then</i> sure enough,
+    to repent at leisure &amp;c. &amp;c.' So I meant to ask, 'then, all <i>now</i>
+    said, all short of that particular form of saying it, all goes for
+    comparatively nothing'? Here it is written down&mdash;you 'wish to
+    <i>suspend</i> all decisions as long as possible'&mdash;<i>that</i> form effects the
+    decision, then,&mdash;till then, 'where am I'? Which is just what Lord
+    Chesterfield cautions people against asking when they tell stories.
+    Love, Ba, my own heart's dearest, if all is <i>not</i> decided
+    <i>now</i>&mdash;why&mdash;hear a story, à propos of storytelling, and deduce what is
+    deducible. A very old Unitarian minister met a still older evangelical
+    brother&mdash;John Clayton (from whose son's mouth I heard what you shall
+    hear)&mdash;the two fell to argument about the true faith to be held&mdash;after
+    words enough, 'Well,' said the Unitarian, as winding up the
+    controversy with an amicable smile&mdash;'at least let us hope we are both
+    engaged in the <i>pursuit</i> of Truth!'&mdash;'<i>Pursuit</i> do you say?' cried the
+    other, 'here am I with my years eighty and odd&mdash;if I haven't <i>found</i>
+    Truth by this time where is my chance, pray?' My own Ba, if I have not
+    already <i>decided</i>, alas for me and the solemn words that are to help!
+    Though in another point of view there would be some luxurious feeling,
+    beyond the ordinary, in knowing one was kept safe to one's heart's
+    good by yet another wall than the hitherto recognised ones. Is there
+    any parallel in the notion I once heard a man deliver himself of in
+    the street&mdash;a labourer talking with his friends about '<i>wishes</i>'&mdash;and
+    this one wished, if he might get his wish, 'to have a nine gallon cask
+    of strong ale set running that minute and his own mouth to be <i>tied</i>
+    under it'&mdash;the exquisiteness of the delight was to be in the security
+    upon security,&mdash;the being 'tied.' Now, Ba says I shall not be
+    'chained' if she can help!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But now&mdash;here all the jesting goes. You tell me what was observed in
+    the 'moment's' visit; by you, and (after, I suppose) by your sisters.
+    First, I <i>will</i> always see with your eyes <i>there</i>&mdash;next, what I see I
+    will <i>never</i> speak, if it pain you; but just this much truth I ought
+    to say, I think. I always give myself to you for the worst I am,&mdash;full
+    of faults as you will find, if you have not found them. But I <i>will</i>
+    not affect to be so bad, so wicked, as I count wickedness, as to call
+    that conduct other than intolerable&mdash;<i>there</i>, in my conviction of
+    <i>that</i>, is your real 'security' and mine for the future as the
+    present. That a father choosing to give out of his whole day some five
+    minutes to a daughter, supposed to be prevented from participating in
+    what he, probably, in common with the whole world of sensible men, as
+    distinguished from poets and dreamers, consider <i>every</i> pleasure of
+    life, by a complete foregoing of society&mdash;that he, after the Pisa
+    business and the enforced continuance, and as he must believe,
+    permanence of this state in which any other human being would go
+    mad&mdash;I do dare say, for the justification of God, who gave the mind to
+    be <i>used</i> in this world,&mdash;where it saves us, we are taught, or
+    destroys us,&mdash;and not to be sunk quietly, overlooked, and forgotten;
+    that, under these circumstances, finding ... what, you say, unless he
+    thinks he <i>does</i> find, he would close the door of his house instantly;
+    a mere sympathizing man, of the same literary tastes, who comes
+    good-naturedly, on a proper and unexceptionable introduction, to chat
+    with and amuse a little that invalid daughter, once a month, so far as
+    is known, for an hour perhaps,&mdash;that such a father should show
+    himself '<i>not pleased</i> plainly,' at such a circumstance ... my Ba, it
+    is <SPAN class="sc-ex">shocking</span>! See, I go <i>wholly</i> on the supposition that the real
+    relation is not imagined to exist between us. I so completely could
+    understand a repugnance to trust you to me were the truth known, that,
+    I will confess, I have several times been afraid the very reverse of
+    this occurrence would befall; that your father would have at some time
+    or other thought himself obliged, by the usual feeling of people in
+    such cases, to see me for a few minutes and express some commonplace
+    thanks after the customary mode (just as Capt. Domett sent a heap of
+    unnecessary thanks to me not long ago for sending now a letter now a
+    book to his son in New Zealand&mdash;keeping up the spirits of poor dear
+    Alfred now he is cut off from the world at large)&mdash;and if <i>this</i> had
+    been done, I shall not deny that my heart would have accused
+    me&mdash;unreasonably I <i>know</i> but still, suppression, and reserve, and
+    apprehension&mdash;the whole of <i>that is</i> horrible always! But this way of
+    looking on the endeavour of anybody, however humble, to just preserve
+    your life, remedy in some degree the first, if it <i>was</i> the first,
+    unjustifiable measure,&mdash;this being 'displeased'&mdash;is exactly what I did
+    <i>not</i> calculate upon. Observe, that in this <i>only</i> instance I am able
+    to do as I shall be done by; to take up the arms furnished by the
+    world, the usages of society&mdash;this is monstrous on the <i>world's</i>
+    showing! I say this now that I may never need recur to it&mdash;that you
+    may understand why I keep <i>such</i> entire silence henceforth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Get but well, keep but <i>as</i> well, and all is easy now. This wonderful
+    winter&mdash;the spring&mdash;the summer&mdash;you will take exercise, go up and down
+    stairs, get strong. <i>I pray you, at your feet, to do this, dearest!</i>
+    Then comes Autumn, with the natural expectations, as after <i>rouge</i> one
+    expects <i>noir</i>: the <i>likelihood</i> of a <i>severe</i> winter after this mild
+    one, which to prevent, you reiterate your demand to go and save your
+    life in Italy, ought you not to do that? And the matters brought to
+    issue, (with even, if possible, less shadow of ground for a refusal
+    than before, if you are <i>well</i>, plainly well enough to bear the
+    voyage) <i>there</i> I <i>will</i> bid you 'be mine in the obvious way'&mdash;if you
+    shall preserve your belief in me&mdash;and you <i>may</i> in much, in all
+    important to you. Mr. Kenyon's praise is undeserved enough, but
+    yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, <i>tenax
+    propositi</i>, able to make out a life for himself and abide in
+    it&mdash;'for,' he went on, 'you really do live without any of this
+    <i>titillation</i> and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all
+    kinds, they all say they can do without.' That is <i>more</i> true&mdash;and I
+    <i>intend</i> by God's help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole
+    energies in reducing to practice the feeling which occupies me, and in
+    the practical operation of which, the other work I had proposed to do
+    will be found included, facilitated&mdash;I shall be able&mdash;but of this
+    there is plenty time to speak hereafter&mdash;I shall, I believe, be able
+    to do this without even allowing the world to <i>very much</i>
+    misinterpret&mdash;against pure lying there is no defence, but all up to
+    that I hope to hinder or render unimportant&mdash;as you shall know in time
+    and place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have written myself grave, but write to <i>me</i>, dear, dearest, and I
+    will answer in a lighter mood&mdash;even now I can say how it was
+    yesterday's hurry happened. I called on Milnes&mdash;who told me Hanmer had
+    broken a bone in his leg and was laid up, so I called on him too&mdash;on
+    Moxon, by the way, (his brother telling me strangely cheering news,
+    from the grimmest of faces, about my books selling and likely to sell
+    ... your wishes, Ba!)&mdash;then in Bond Street about some business with
+    somebody, then on Mrs. Montagu who was out walking all the time, and
+    home too. I found a letter from Mr. Kenyon, perfectly kind, asking me
+    to go on Monday to meet friends, and with yours to-day comes another
+    confirming the choice of the day. How entirely kind he is!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am very well, much better, indeed&mdash;taking that bath with sensibly
+    good effect, to-night I go to Montagu's again; for shame, having kept
+    away too long.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And the rest shall answer <i>yours</i>&mdash;dear! Not 'much to answer?' And
+    Beethoven, and Painting and&mdash;what <i>is</i> the rest and shall be answered!
+    Bless you, now, my darling&mdash;I love you, ever shall love you, ever be
+    your own.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, but, dearest, you mistake me, or you mistake yourself. I am sure
+    I do not over-care for forms&mdash;it is not my way to do it&mdash;and in this
+    case ... no. Still you must see that here is a fact as well as a form,
+    and involving a frightful quantity of social inconvenience (to use the
+    mildest word) if too hastily entered on. I deny altogether looking
+    for, or 'seeing' any 'security' in it for myself&mdash;it is a mere form
+    for the heart and the happiness: illusions may pass after as before.
+    Still the truth is that if they were to pass with you now, you stand
+    free to act according to the wide-awakeness of your eyes, and to
+    reform your choice ... see! whereas afterward you could not carry out
+    such a reformation while I was alive, even if I helped you. All I
+    could do for you would be to walk away. And you pretend not to see
+    this broad distinction?&mdash;ah. For me I have seen just this and no more,
+    and have felt averse to forestall, to seem to forestall even by an
+    hour, or a word, that stringency of the legal obligation from which
+    there <i>is</i> in a certain sense no redemption. Tie up your drinker under
+    the pour of his nine gallons, and in two minutes he will moan and
+    writhe (as you perfectly know) like a Brinvilliers under the
+    water-torture. That he <i>asked</i> to be tied up, was unwise on his own
+    principle of loving ale. And <i>you</i> sha'n't be 'chained' up, if you
+    were to ask twenty times: if you have found truth or not in the
+    water-well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You do not see aright what I meant to tell you on another subject. If
+    he was displeased, (and it was expressed by a shadow a mere negation
+    of pleasure) it was not with you as a visitor and my friend. You must
+    not fancy such a thing. It was a sort of instinctive indisposition
+    towards seeing you here&mdash;unexplained to himself, I have no doubt&mdash;of
+    course unexplained, or he would have desired me to receive you never
+    again, <i>that</i> would have been done at once and unscrupulously. But
+    without defining his own feeling, he rather disliked seeing you
+    here&mdash;it just touched one of his vibratory wires, brushed by and
+    touched it&mdash;oh, we understand in this house. He is not a nice
+    observer, but, at intervals very wide, he is subject to
+    lightnings&mdash;call them fancies, sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
+    Certainly it was not in the character of a 'sympathising friend' that
+    you made him a very little cross on Monday. And yet you never were nor
+    will be in danger of being <i>thanked</i>, he would not think of it. For
+    the reserve, the apprehension&mdash;dreadful those things are, and
+    desecrating to one's own nature&mdash;but we did not make this position, we
+    only endure it. The root of the evil is the miserable misconception of
+    the limits and character of parental rights&mdash;it is a mistake of the
+    intellect rather than of the heart. Then, after using one's children
+    as one's chattels for a time, the children drop lower and lower toward
+    the level of the chattels, and the duties of human sympathy to them
+    become difficult in proportion. And (it seems strange to say it, yet
+    it is true) <i>love</i>, he does not conceive of at all. He has feeling, he
+    can be moved deeply, he is capable of affection in a peculiar way, but
+    <i>that</i>, he does not understand, any more than he understands Chaldee,
+    respecting it less of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you fancy that I could propose Italy again? after saying too that
+    I never would? Oh no, no&mdash;yet there is time to think of this, a
+    superfluity of time, ... 'time, times and half a time' and to make
+    one's head swim with leaning over a precipice is not wise. The roar
+    of the world comes up too, as you hear and as I heard from the
+    beginning. There will be no lack of 'lying,' be sure&mdash;'pure lying'
+    too&mdash;and nothing you can do, dearest dearest, shall hinder my being
+    torn to pieces by most of the particularly affectionate friends I have
+    in the world. Which I do not think of much, any more than of Italy.
+    You will be mad, and I shall be bad ... and <i>that</i> will be the effect
+    of being poets! 'Till when, where are you?'&mdash;why in the very deepest
+    of my soul&mdash;wherever in it is the fountain head of loving! beloved,
+    <i>there</i> you are!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some day I shall ask you 'in form,'&mdash;as I care so much for forms, it
+    seems,&mdash;what your 'faults' are, these immense multitudinous faults of
+    yours, which I hear such talk of, and never, never, can get to see.
+    Will you give me a catalogue raisonnée of your faults? I should like
+    it, I think. In the meantime they seem to be faults of obscurity, that
+    is, invisible faults, like those in the poetry which do not keep it
+    from selling as I am <i>so, so</i> glad to understand. I am glad too that
+    Mr. Milnes knows you a little.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must end, there is no more time to-night. God bless you, very
+    dearest! Keep better ... try to be well&mdash;as <i>I</i> do for you since you
+    ask me. Did I ever think that <i>you</i> would think it worth while to ask
+    me <i>that</i>? What a dream! reaching out into the morning! To-day however
+    I did not go down-stairs, because it was colder and the wind blew its
+    way into the passages:&mdash;if I can to-morrow without risk, I will, ...
+    be sure ... be sure. Till Thursday then!&mdash;till eternity!
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Till when, where am I,' but with you? and what, but yours
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have been writing 'autographs' (save my <i>mark</i>) for the North and
+    the South to-day ... the Fens, and Golden Square. Somebody asked for
+    a verse, ... from either 'Catarina' or 'Flush' ... 'those poems' &amp;c.
+    &amp;c.! Such a concatenation of criticisms. So I preferred Flush of
+    course&mdash;i.e. gave him the preferment.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Wednesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah, sweetest, don't mind people and their lies any more than I shall;
+    if the toad <i>does</i> 'take it into his toad's head to spit at you'&mdash;you
+    will not 'drop dead,' I warrant. All the same, if one may make a
+    circuit through a flower-bed and see the less of his toad-habits and
+    general ugliness, so much the better&mdash;no words can express my entire
+    indifference (far below <i>contempt</i>) for what can be said or done. But
+    one thing, only one, I choose to hinder being said, if I can&mdash;the
+    others I would not if I could&mdash;why prevent the toad's puffing himself
+    out thrice his black bigness if it amuses him among those wet stones?
+    We shall be in the sun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I dare say I am unjust&mdash;hasty certainly, in the other matter&mdash;but all
+    faults are such inasmuch as they are 'mistakes of the
+    intellect'&mdash;toads may spit or leave it alone,&mdash;but if I ever see it
+    right, exercising my intellect, to treat any human beings like my
+    'chattels'&mdash;I shall pay for that mistake one day or another, I am
+    convinced&mdash;and I very much fear that you would soon discover what one
+    fault of mine is, if you were to hear anyone assert such a right in my
+    presence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, I shall see you to-morrow&mdash;had I better come a little later, I
+    wonder?&mdash;half-past three, for instance, staying, as last time, till
+    ... ah, it is ill policy to count my treasure aloud! Or shall I come
+    at the usual time to-morrow? If I do <i>not</i> hear, at the usual
+    time!&mdash;because, I think you would&mdash;am sure you would have considered
+    and suggested it, were it necessary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, dearest&mdash;ever your own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said nothing about that Mr. Russell and his proposition&mdash;by all
+    means, yes&mdash;let him do more good with that noble, pathetic 'lay'&mdash;and
+    do not mind the 'burthen,' if he is peremptory&mdash;so that he duly
+    specify '<i>by the singer</i>'&mdash;with <i>that</i> precaution nothing but good can
+    come of his using it.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Thursday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest I lose no time in writing, you see, so as to be written
+    to at the soonest&mdash;and there is another reason which makes me hasten
+    to write ... it is not all mercantile calculation. I want you to
+    understand me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now listen! I seem to understand myself: it seems to me that every
+    word I ever said to you on one subject, is plainly referable to a
+    class of feelings of which you could not complain ... could not. But
+    this is <i>my</i> impression; and yours is different:&mdash;you do not
+    understand, you do not see by my light, and perhaps it is natural that
+    you should not, as we stand on different steps of the argument. Still
+    I, who said what I did, <i>for you</i>, and from an absorbing consideration
+    of what was best <i>for you</i>, cannot consent, even out of anxiety for
+    your futurity, to torment you now, to vex you by a form of speech
+    which you persist in translating into a want of trust in you ... (<i>I</i>,
+    want trust in you!!) into a need of more evidence about you from
+    others ... (<i>could</i> you say so?) and even into an indisposition on my
+    part to fulfil my engagement&mdash;no, dearest dearest, it is not right of
+    you. And therefore, as you have these thoughts reasonably or
+    unreasonably, I shall punish you for them at once, and 'chain' you ...
+    (as you wish to be chained), chain you, rivet you&mdash;do you feel how the
+    little fine chain twists round and round you? do you hear the stroke
+    of the riveting? and you may <i>feel that</i> too. Now, it is done&mdash;now,
+    you are chained&mdash;<i>Bia</i> has finished the work&mdash;I, <i>Ba</i>! (observe the
+    anagram!) and not a word do you say, of Prometheus, though you have
+    the conscience of it all, I dare say. Well! you must be pleased, ...
+    as it was 'the weight of too much liberty' which offended you: and now
+    you believe, perhaps, that I trust you, love you, and look to you over
+    the heads of the whole living world, without any one head needing to
+    stoop; you <i>must</i>, if you please, because you belong to me now and
+    shall believe as I choose. There's a ukase for you! Cry out ... repent
+    ... and I will loose the links, and let you go again&mdash;<i>shall</i> it be
+    '<i>My dear Miss Barrett</i>?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Seriously, you shall not think of me such things as you half said, if
+    not whole said, to-day. If all men were to speak evil of you, my heart
+    would speak of you the more good&mdash;<i>that</i> would be the one result with
+    <i>me</i>. Do I not know you, soul to soul? should I believe that any of
+    them could know you as I know you? Then for the rest, I am not afraid
+    of 'toads' now, not being a child any longer. I am not inclined to
+    mind, if <i>you</i> do not mind, what may be said about us by the
+    benevolent world, nor will other reasons of a graver kind affect me
+    otherwise than by the necessary pain. Therefore the whole rests with
+    you&mdash;unless illness should intervene&mdash;and you will be kind and good
+    (will you not?) and not think hard thoughts of me ever again&mdash;no. It
+    wasn't the sense of being less than you had a right to pretend to,
+    which made me speak what you disliked&mdash;for it is <i>I</i> who am
+    'unworthy,' and not another&mdash;not certainly that other!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I meant to write more to-night of subjects farther off us, but my
+    sisters have come up-stairs and I must close my letter quickly.
+    Beloved, take care of your head! Ah, do not write poems, nor read, nor
+    neglect the walking, nor take that shower-bath. <i>Will</i> you, instead,
+    try the warm bathing? Surely the experiment is worth making for a
+    little while. Dearest beloved, do it for your own
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am altogether your own, dearest&mdash;the words were only words and the
+    playful feelings were play&mdash;while the <i>fact</i> has always been so
+    irresistibly obvious as to make them <i>break</i> on and off it,
+    fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a
+    great solid rock. <i>Now</i> you call the rock, a rock, but you must have
+    known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those
+    light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do
+    what they could. It <i>is</i> a rock; and may be quite barren of good to
+    you,&mdash;not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a
+    mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real
+    rock, that is all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is always <i>I</i> who 'torment' <i>you</i>&mdash;instead of taking the present
+    and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares. I certainly
+    am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much
+    less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own,
+    dearest beloved, <i>that</i> is as different in kind as in degree from any
+    other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of
+    realization. Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us&mdash;oh,
+    be well, my Ba!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let me speak of that letter&mdash;I am ashamed at having mentioned those
+    circumstances, and should not have done so, but for their
+    insignificance&mdash;for I knew that if you ever <i>did</i> hear of them, all
+    any body <i>would</i> say would not amount to enough to be repeated to me
+    and so get explained at once. Now that the purpose is gained, it seems
+    little worth gaining. You bade me not send the letter: I will not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for 'what people say'&mdash;ah&mdash;Here lies a book, Bartoli's 'Simboli'
+    and this morning I dipped into his Chapter XIX. His 'Symbol' is
+    'Socrate fatto ritrar su' Boccali' and the theme of his dissertating,
+    'L'indegnità del mettere in disprezzo i più degni filosofi
+    dell'antichità.' He sets out by enlarging on the horror of it&mdash;then
+    describes the character of Socrates, then tells the story of the
+    representation of the 'Clouds,'and thus gets to his 'symbol'&mdash;'le
+    pazzie fatte spacciare a Socrate in quella commedia ... il misero in
+    tanto scherno e derisione del pubblico, che perfino i vasai
+    dipingevano il suo ritratto sopra gli orci, i fiaschi, i boccali, e
+    ogni vasellamento da più vile servigio. Così quel sommo filosofo ...
+    fu condotto a far di se par le case d'Atene una continua commedia, con
+    solamente vederlo comparir così scontraffatto e ridicolo, come i vasai
+    sel formavano d'invenzione'&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    There you have what a very clever man can say in choice Tuscan on a
+    passage in Ælian which he takes care not to quote nor allude to, but
+    which is the sole authority for the fact. Ælian, speaking of Socrates'
+    magnanimity, says that on the first representation, a good many
+    foreigners being present who were at a loss to know 'who could be this
+    Socrates'&mdash;the sage himself stood up that he might be pointed out to
+    them by the auditory at large ... 'which' says Ælian&mdash;'was no
+    difficulty for them, to whom his features were most familiar,&mdash;<i>the
+    very potters being in the habit of decorating their vessels with his
+    likeness</i>'&mdash;no doubt out of a pleasant and affectionate admiration.
+    Yet see how 'people' can turn this out of its sense,&mdash;'say' their say
+    on the simplest, plainest word or deed, and change it to its opposite!
+    'God's great gift of speech abused' indeed!
+</p>
+<p>
+    But what shall we hear of it <i>there</i>, my Siren?
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Monday&mdash;is it not? <i>Who</i> was it looked into the room just at our
+    leave-taking?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, my ever dearest,&mdash;remember to walk, to go down-stairs&mdash;and
+    be sure that I will endeavour to get well for my part. To-day I am
+    very well&mdash;with this letter!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Always <i>you</i>, is it, who torments me? always <i>you</i>? Well! I agree to
+    bear the torments as Socrates his persecution by the potters:&mdash;and by
+    the way he liked those potters, as Plato shows, and was fain to go to
+    them for his illustrations ... as I to you for all my light. Also,
+    while we are on the subject, I will tell you another fault of your
+    Bartoli ... his 'choice Tuscan' filled one of my pages, in the place
+    of my English better than Tuscan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the letter you mentioned, I meant to have said in mine yesterday,
+    that I was grateful to you for telling me of it&mdash;<i>that</i> was one of the
+    prodigalities of your goodness to me ... not thrown away, in one
+    sense, however superfluous. Do you ever think how I must feel when you
+    overcome me with all this generous tenderness, only beloved! I cannot
+    say it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Because it is colder to-day I have not been down-stairs but let
+    to-morrow be warm enough&mdash;<i>facilis descensus</i>. There's something
+    infernal to me really, in the going down, and now too that our cousin
+    is here! Think of his beginning to attack Henrietta the other day....
+    '<i>So</i> Mr. C. has retired and left the field to Surtees Cook. Oh ...
+    you needn't deny ... it's the news of all the world except your
+    father. And as to <i>him</i>, I don't blame you&mdash;he never will consent to
+    the marriage of son or daughter. Only you should consider, you know,
+    because he won't leave you a shilling, &amp;c. &amp;c....' You hear the sort
+    of man. And then in a minute after ... 'And what is this about Ba?'
+    'About Ba' said my sisters, 'why who has been persuading you of such
+    nonsense?' 'Oh, my authority is very good,&mdash;perfectly unnecessary for
+    you to tell any stories, Arabel,&mdash;a literary friendship, is it?' ...
+    and so on ... after that fashion! This comes from my brothers of
+    course, but we need not be afraid of its passing <i>beyond</i>, I think,
+    though I was a good deal vexed when I heard first of it last night and
+    have been in cousinly anxiety ever since to get our Orestes safe away
+    from those Furies his creditors, into Brittany again. He is an
+    intimate friend of my brothers besides the relationship, and they talk
+    to him as to each other, only they oughtn't to have talked <i>that</i>, and
+    without knowledge too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I forgot to tell you that Mr. Kenyon was in an immoderate joy the day
+    I saw him last, about Mr. Poe's 'Raven' as seen in the <i>Athenæum</i>
+    extracts, and came to ask what I knew of the poet and his poetry, and
+    took away the book. It's the rhythm which has taken him with 'glamour'
+    I fancy. Now you will stay on Monday till the last moment, and go to
+    him for dinner at six.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Who 'looked in at the door?' Nobody. But Arabel a little way opened
+    it, and hearing your voice, went back. There was no harm&mdash;<i>is</i> no fear
+    of harm. Nobody in the house would find his or her pleasure in running
+    the risk of giving me pain. I mean my brothers and sisters would not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Are you trying the music to charm the brain to stillness? Tell me. And
+    keep from that 'Soul's Tragedy' which did so much harm&mdash;oh, that I had
+    bound you by some Stygian oath not to touch it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So my rock ... may the birds drop into your crevices the seeds of all
+    the flowers of the world&mdash;only it is not for <i>those</i>, that I cling to
+    you as the single rock in the salt sea.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever I am&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You call me 'kind'; and by this time I have no heart to call you such
+    names&mdash;I told you, did I not once? that 'Ba' had got to convey
+    infinitely more of you to my sense than 'dearest,' 'sweetest,' all or
+    any epithets that break down with their load of honey like bees&mdash;to
+    say you are 'kind,' you that so entirely and unintermittingly bless
+    me,&mdash;it will never do now, 'Ba.' All the same, one way there is to
+    make even 'Ba' dearer,&mdash;'<i>my</i> Ba,' I say to myself!
+</p>
+<p>
+    About my <i>fears</i>&mdash;whether of opening doors or entering people&mdash;one
+    thing is observable and prevents the possibility of any
+    misconception&mdash;I desire, have been in the habit of desiring, to
+    <i>increase</i> them, far from diminishing&mdash;they relate, of course,
+    entirely to <i>you</i>&mdash;and only through <i>you</i> affect me the least in the
+    world. Put your well-being out of the question, so far as I can
+    understand it to be involved,&mdash;and the pleasure and pride I should
+    immediately choose would be that the whole world knew our position.
+    What pleasure, what pride! But I endeavour to remember on all
+    occasions&mdash;and perhaps succeed in too few&mdash;that it is very easy for me
+    to go away and leave you who cannot go. I only allude to this because
+    some people are 'naturally nervous' and all that&mdash;and I am quite of
+    another kind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last evening I went out&mdash;having been kept at home in the afternoon to
+    see somebody ... went walking for hours. I am quite well to-day and,
+    now your letter comes, my Ba, most happy. And, as the sun shines, you
+    are perhaps making the perilous descent now, while I write&mdash;oh, to
+    meet you on the stairs! And I shall really see you on Monday, dearest?
+    So soon, it ought to feel, considering the dreary weeks that now get
+    to go between our days! For music, I made myself melancholy just now
+    with some 'Concertos for the Harpsichord by Mr. Handel'&mdash;brought home
+    by my father the day before yesterday;&mdash;what were light, modern things
+    once! Now I read not very long ago a French memoir of 'Claude le
+    Jeune' called in his time the Prince of Musicians,&mdash;no,
+    '<i>Phoenix</i>'&mdash;the unapproachable wonder to all time&mdash;that is, twenty
+    years after his death about&mdash;and to this pamphlet was prefixed as
+    motto this startling axiom&mdash;'In Music, the Beau Ideal changes every
+    thirty years'&mdash;well, is not that <i>true</i>? The <i>Idea</i>, mind,
+    changes&mdash;the general standard ... so that it is no answer that a
+    single air, such as many one knows, may strike as freshly as
+    ever&mdash;they were <i>not</i> according to the Ideal of their own time&mdash;just
+    now, they drop into the ready ear,&mdash;next hundred years, who will be
+    the Rossini? who is no longer the Rossini even I remember&mdash;his early
+    overtures are as purely Rococo as Cimarosa's or more. The sounds
+    remain, keep their character perhaps&mdash;the scale's proportioned notes
+    affect the same, that is,&mdash;the major third, or minor seventh&mdash;but the
+    arrangement of these, the sequence the law&mdash;for them, if it <i>should</i>
+    change every thirty years! To Corelli nothing seemed so conclusive in
+    Heaven or earth as this
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image06.png" width="400" height="78"
+alt="Music ">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I don't believe there is one of his sonatas wherein that formula does
+    not do duty. In these things of Handel that seems replaced by
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image07.png" width="466" height="95"
+alt="Music ">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">&mdash;that was the only true consummation! Then,&mdash;to go over the hundred
+    years,&mdash;came Rossini's unanswerable coda:
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image08.png" width="550" height="187"
+alt="Music ">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">which serves as base to the infinity of songs, gone, gone&mdash;<i>so</i> gone
+    by! From all of which Ba draws <i>this</i> 'conclusion' that these may be
+    worse things than Bartoli's Tuscan to cover a page with!&mdash;yet, yet the
+    pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his
+    letters to his mother as 'mother of the famous composer'&mdash;and Henry
+    Lawes, and Dowland's Lute, ah me!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, my conclusion is the best, the everlasting, here and I trust
+    elsewhere&mdash;I am your own, my Ba, ever your
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very
+    indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your 'Soul's Tragedy'
+    last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a
+    mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It
+    is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the
+    first act of 'Luria' did, though I do not mean to compare such
+    dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness 'Luria' is
+    unapproachable&mdash;will prove so, it seems to me. But this 'Tragedy'
+    shows more heat from the first, and then, the words beat down more
+    closely ... well! I am struck by it all as you see. If you keep it up
+    to this passion, if you justify this high key-note, it is a great
+    work, and worthy of a place next 'Luria.' Also do observe how
+    excellently balanced the two will be, and how the tongue of this next
+    silver Bell will swing from side to side. And <i>you</i> to frighten me
+    about it. Yes, and the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the
+    worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be
+    something inferior&mdash;for <i>you</i>&mdash;and the adviseableness of its
+    publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is,
+    that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it
+    be possible that the same
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">'Robert Browning'</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">who (I heard the other day) said once that he could 'wait three
+    hundred years,' should not feel the life of centuries in this work
+    too&mdash;can it be? Why all the pulses of the life of it are beating in
+    even <i>my</i> ears!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tell me, beloved, how you are&mdash;I shall hear it to-night&mdash;shall I not?
+    To think of your being unwell, and forced to go here and go there to
+    visit people to whom your being unwell falls in at best among the
+    secondary evils!&mdash;makes me discontented&mdash;which is one shade more to
+    the uneasiness I feel. Will you take care, and not give away your life
+    to these people? Because I have a better claim than they ... and shall
+    put it in, if provoked ... <i>shall</i>. Then you will not use the
+    shower-bath again&mdash;you promise? I dare say Mr. Kenyon observed
+    yesterday how unwell you were looking&mdash;tell me if he didn't! Now do
+    not work, dearest! Do not think of Chiappino, leave him behind ... he
+    has a good strong life of his own, and can wait for you. Oh&mdash;but let
+    me remember to say of him, that he and the other personages appear to
+    me to articulate with perfect distinctness and clearness ... you need
+    not be afraid of having been obscure in this first part. It is all as
+    lucid as noon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shall I go down-stairs to-day? 'No' say the privy-councillors,
+    'because it is cold,' but I <i>shall</i> go peradventure, because the sun
+    brightens and brightens, and the wind has gone round to the west.
+</p>
+<p>
+    George had come home yesterday before you left me, but the stars were
+    favourable to us and kept him out of this room. Now he is at
+    Worcester&mdash;went this morning, on those never ending 'rounds,' poor
+    fellow, which weary him I am sure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And why should music and the philosophy of it make you 'melancholy,'
+    ever dearest, more than the other arts, which each has the seal of the
+    age, modifying itself after a fashion and <i>to</i> one? Because it changes
+    more, perhaps. Yet all the Arts are mediators between the soul and the
+    Infinite, ... shifting always like a mist, between the Breath on this
+    side, and the Light on that side ... shifted and coloured; mediators,
+    messengers, projected from the Soul, to go and feel, for Her, <i>out
+    there</i>!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You don't call me 'kind' I confess&mdash;but then you call me 'too kind'
+    which is nearly as bad, you must allow on your part. Only you were not
+    in earnest when you said <i>that</i>, as it appeared afterward. <i>Were</i> you,
+    yesterday, in pretending to think that I owed you nothing ... <i>I</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    May God bless you. He knows that to give myself to you, is not to pay
+    you. Such debts are not so paid.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Yet I am your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>People's Journal</i> for March 7th.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear, dear Ba, if you were here I should not much <i>speak</i> to you, not
+    at first&mdash;nor, indeed, at last,&mdash;but as it is, sitting alone, only
+    words can be spoken, or (worse) written, and, oh how different to look
+    into the eyes and imagine what <i>might</i> be said, what ought to be said,
+    though it never can be&mdash;and to sit and say and write, and only imagine
+    who looks above me, looks down, understanding and pardoning all! My
+    love, my Ba, the fault you found once with some expressions of mine
+    about the amount of imperishable pleasures already hoarded in my mind,
+    the indestructible memories of you; that fault, which I refused to
+    acquiesce under the imputation of, at first, you remember&mdash;well,
+    <i>what</i> a fault it was, by this better light! If all stopped here and
+    now; horrible! complete oblivion were the thing to be prayed for,
+    rather! As it is, <i>now</i>, I must go on, must live the life out, and die
+    yours. And you are doing your utmost to advance the event of
+    events,&mdash;the exercise, and consequently (is it not?) necessarily
+    improved sleep, and the projects for the fine days, the walking ... a
+    pure bliss to think of! Well, now&mdash;I think I shall show seamanship of
+    a sort, and 'try another tack'&mdash;do not be over bold, my sweetest; the
+    cold <i>is</i> considerable,&mdash;taken into account the previous mildness. One
+    ill-advised (I, the <i>adviser</i>, I should remember!) too early, or too
+    late descent to the drawing-room, and all might be ruined,&mdash;thrown
+    back so far ... seeing that our flight is to be prayed for 'not in the
+    winter'&mdash;and one would be called on to wait, wait&mdash;in this world where
+    nothing waits, rests, as can be counted on. Now think of this, too,
+    dearest, and never mind the slowness, for the sureness' sake! How
+    perfectly happy I am as you stand by me, as yesterday you stood, as
+    you seem to stand now!
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will write to-morrow more: I came home last night with a head rather
+    worse; which in the event was the better, for I took a little medicine
+    and all is very much improved to-day. I shall go out presently, and
+    return very early and take as much care as is proper&mdash;for I thought of
+    Ba, and the sublimities of Duty, and that gave myself airs of
+    importance, in short, as I looked at my mother's inevitable arrow-root
+    this morning. So now I am well; so now, is dearest Ba well? I shall
+    hear to-night ... which will have its due effect, that circumstance,
+    in quickening my retreat from Forster's Rooms. All was very pleasant
+    last evening&mdash;and your letter &amp;c. went <i>à qui de droit</i>, and Mr. W.
+    <i>Junior</i> had to smile good-naturedly when Mr. Burges began laying down
+    this general law, that the sons of all men of genius were poor
+    creatures&mdash;and Chorley and I exchanged glances after the fashion of
+    two Augurs meeting at some street-corner in Cicero's time, as he says.
+    And Mr. Kenyon was kind, kinder, kindest, as ever, 'and thus ends a
+    wooing'!&mdash;no, a dinner&mdash;my wooing ends never, never; and so prepare
+    to be asked to give, and give, and give till all is given in Heaven!
+    And all I give <i>you</i> is just my heart's blessing; God bless you, my
+    dearest, dearest Ba!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    You find my letter I trust, for it was written this morning in time;
+    and if these two lines should not be flattery ... oh, rank flattery!
+    ... why happy letter is it, to help to bring you home ten minutes
+    earlier, when you never ought to have left home&mdash;no, indeed! I knew
+    how it would be yesterday, and how you would be worse and not better.
+    You are not fit to go out, dear dearest, to sit in the glare of lights
+    and talk and listen, and have the knives and forks to rattle all the
+    while and remind you of the chains of necessity. Oh&mdash;should I bear it,
+    do you think? I was thinking, when you went away&mdash;<i>after</i> you had
+    quite gone. You would laugh to see me at my dinner&mdash;Flush and
+    me&mdash;Flush placing in me such an heroic confidence, that, after he has
+    cast one discriminating glance on the plate, and, in the case of
+    'chicken,' wagged his tail with an emphasis, ... he goes off to the
+    sofa, shuts his eyes and allows a full quarter of an hour to pass
+    before he returns to take his share. Did you ever hear of a dog before
+    who did not persecute one with beseeching eyes at mealtimes? And
+    remember, this is not the effect of <i>discipline</i>. Also if another than
+    myself happens to take coffee or break bread in the room here, he
+    teazes straightway with eyes and paws, ... teazes like a common dog
+    and is put out of the door before he can be quieted by scolding. But
+    with <i>me</i> he is sublime! Moreover he has been a very useful dog in his
+    time (in the point of capacity), causing to disappear supererogatory
+    dinners and impossible breakfasts which, to do him justice, is a feat
+    accomplished without an objection on his side, always.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, when you write me such a letter, I write back to you about Flush.
+    Dearest beloved, but I have read the letter and felt it in my heart,
+    through and through! and it is as wise to talk of Flush foolishly, as
+    to fancy that I <i>could say how</i> it is felt ... this letter! Only when
+    you spoke last of breaking off with such and such recollections, it
+    was the melancholy of the breaking off which I protested against, was
+    it not? and <i>not</i> the insufficiency of the recollections. There might
+    have been something besides in jest. Ah, but <i>you</i> remember, if you
+    please, that <i>I</i> was the first to wish (wishing for my own part, if I
+    could wish exclusively) to break off in the middle the silken thread,
+    and you told me, not&mdash;you forbade me&mdash;do you remember? For, as
+    happiness goes, the recollections were enough, ... <i>are</i> enough for
+    <i>me</i>! I mean that I should acknowledge them to be full compensation
+    for the bitter gift of life, <i>such as it was</i>, to me! if that
+    subject-matter were broken off here! 'Bona verba' let me speak
+    nevertheless. You mean, you say, to run all risks with me, and I don't
+    mean to draw back from my particular risk of ... what am I to do to
+    you hereafter to make you vexed with me? What is there in marriage to
+    make all these people on every side of us, (who all began, I suppose,
+    by talking of love,) look askance at one another from under the silken
+    mask ... and virtually hate one another through the tyranny of the
+    stronger and the hypocrisy of the weaker party. It never could be so
+    with <i>us</i>&mdash;<i>I know that</i>. But you grow awful to me sometimes with the
+    very excess of your goodness and tenderness, and still, I think to
+    myself, if you do not keep lifting me up quite off the ground by the
+    strong faculty of love in you, I shall not help falling short of the
+    hope you have placed in me&mdash;it must be 'supernatural' of you, to the
+    end! or I fall short and disappoint you. Consider this, beloved. Now
+    if I could put my soul out of my body, just to stand up before you
+    and make it clear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I did go to the drawing-room to-day ... would ... should ... did. The
+    sun came out, the wind changed ... where was the obstacle? I spent a
+    quarter of an hour in a fearful solitude, listening for knocks at the
+    door, as a ghost-fearer might at midnight, and 'came home' none the
+    worse in any way. Be sure that I shall 'take care' better than you do,
+    and there, is the worst of it all&mdash;for <i>you</i> let people make you ill,
+    and do it yourself upon occasion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You know from my letter how I found you out in the matter of the
+    'Soul's Tragedy.' Oh! so bad ... so weak, so unworthy of your name! If
+    some other people were half a quarter as much the contrary!
+</p>
+<p>
+    And so, good-night, dear dearest. In spite of my fine speeches about
+    'recollections,' I should be unhappy enough to please you, with <i>only
+    those</i> ... without you beside! I could not take myself back from being
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dear, dear Ba, but indeed I <i>did</i> return home earlier by two or three
+    good hours than the night before&mdash;and to find <i>no</i> letter,&mdash;none of
+    yours! <i>That</i> was reserved for this morning early, and then a rest
+    came, a silence, over the thoughts of you&mdash;and now again, comes this
+    last note! Oh, my love&mdash;why&mdash;what is it you think to do, or become
+    'afterward,' that you may fail in and so disappoint me? It is not very
+    unfit that you should thus punish yourself, and that, sinning by your
+    own ambition of growing something beyond my Ba even, you should 'fear'
+    as you say! For, sweet, why wish, why think to alter ever by a line,
+    change by a shade, turn better if that were possible, and so only rise
+    the higher above me, get further from instead of nearer to my heart?
+    What I expect, what I build my future on, am quite, quite prepared to
+    'risk' everything for,&mdash;is that one belief that you <i>will not alter</i>,
+    will just remain as you are&mdash;meaning by '<i>you</i>,' the love in you, the
+    qualities I have <i>known</i> (for you will stop me, if I do not stop
+    myself) what I have evidence of in every letter, in every word, every
+    look. Keeping these, if it be God's will that the body passes,&mdash;what
+    is that? Write no new letters, speak no new words, look no new
+    looks,&mdash;only tell me, years hence that the present is alive, that what
+    was once, still is&mdash;and I am, must needs be, blessed as ever! You
+    speak of my feeling as if it were a pure speculation&mdash;as if because I
+    <i>see somewhat</i> in you I make a calculation that there must be more to
+    see somewhere or other&mdash;where bdellium is found, the onyx-stone may be
+    looked for in the mystic land of the four rivers! And perhaps ... ah,
+    poor human nature!&mdash;perhaps I <i>do</i> think at times on what <i>may</i> be to
+    find! But what is that to you? I <i>offer</i> for the <i>bdellium</i>&mdash;the other
+    may be found or not found ... what I see glitter on the ground, <i>that</i>
+    will suffice to make me rich as&mdash;rich as&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    So bless you my own Ba! I would not wait for paper, and you must
+    forgive half-sheets, instead of a whole celestial quire to my love and
+    praise. Are you so well? So adventurous? Thank you from my heart of
+    hearts. And I am quite well to-day (and have received a note from
+    Procter <i>just</i> this <i>minute</i> putting off his dinner on account of the
+    death of his wife's sister's husband abroad). Observe <i>this</i> sheet I
+    take as I find&mdash;I mean, that the tear tells of no improper speech
+    repented of&mdash;what English, what sense, what a soul's tragedy! but
+    then, what real, realest love and more than love for my ever dearest
+    Ba possesses her own&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    When my Orpheus writes '<span title="Peri lithôn">&Pi;&epsilon;&rho;&iota; &lambda;&iota;&theta;&omega;&nu;</span>' he makes a great mistake
+    about onyxes&mdash;there is more true onyx in this letter of his that I
+    have just read, than he will ever find in the desert land he goes to.
+    And for what 'glitters on the ground,' it reminds me of the yellow
+    metal sparks found in the Malvern Hills, and how we used to laugh
+    years ago at one of our geological acquaintances, who looked
+    mole-hills up that mountain-range in the scorn of his eyes, saying ...
+    'Nothing but mica!!' Is anybody to be rich through 'mica', I wonder?
+    through 'Nothing but mica?' 'As rich as&mdash;as rich as' ... <i>Walter the
+    Pennyless</i>?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, best you are nevertheless, and it is a sorry jest which I can
+    break upon your poverty, with that golden heart of yours so
+    apprehended of mine! Why if I am 'ambitious'&mdash;is it not because you
+    love me as if I were worthier of your love, and that, <i>so</i>, I get
+    frightened of the opening of your eyelids to the <i>un</i>worthiness? 'A
+    little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to
+    sleep'&mdash;<i>there</i>, is my 'ambition for afterward.' Oh&mdash;you do not
+    understand how with an unspeakable wonder, an astonishment which keeps
+    me from drawing breath, I look to this Dream, and 'see your face as
+    the face of an angel,' and fear for the vanishing, ... because dreams
+    and angels <i>do</i> pass away in this world. But <i>you</i>, <i>I</i> understand
+    <i>you</i>, and all your goodness past expression, past belief of mine, if
+    I had not known you ... just <i>you</i>. If it will satisfy you that I
+    should know you, love you, love you&mdash;why then indeed&mdash;because I never
+    bowed down to any of the false gods I know the gold from the mica, ...
+    I! 'My own beloved'&mdash;you should have my soul to stand on if it could
+    make you stand higher. Yet you shall not call me 'ambitious.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-day I went down-stairs again, and wished to know whether you were
+    walking in your proportion&mdash;and your letter does call you 'better,'
+    whether you walked enough or not, and it bears the Deptford post-mark.
+    On Saturday I shall see how you are looking. So pale you were last
+    time! I know Mr. Kenyon must have observed it, (dear Mr. Kenyon ...
+    for being 'kinder and kindest') and that one of the 'augurs'
+    marvelled at the other! By the way I forgot yesterday to tell you how
+    Mr. Burges's 'apt remark' did amuse me. And Mr. Kenyon who said much
+    the same words to me last week in relation to this very Wordsworth
+    junior, writhed, I am sure, and wished the ingenious observer with the
+    lost plays of Æschylus&mdash;oh, I seem to see Mr. Kenyon's face! He was to
+    have come to tell me how you all behaved at dinner that day, but he
+    keeps away ... you have given him too much to think of perhaps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I heard from Miss Mitford to-day that Mr. Chorley's hope is at an end
+    in respect to the theatre, and (I must tell you) she praises him
+    warmly for his philosophy and fortitude under the disappointment. How
+    much philosophy does it take,&mdash;please to instruct me,&mdash;in order to the
+    decent bearing of such disasters? Can I fancy one, shorter than you by
+    a whole head of the soul, condescending to '<i>bear</i>' such things? No,
+    indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Be good and kind, and do not work at the 'Tragedy' ... do not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So you and I have written out all the paper in London! At least, I
+    send and send in vain to have more envelopes 'after my kind,' and the
+    last answer is, that a 'fresh supply will arrive in eight days from
+    Paris, and that in the meanwhile they are quite <i>out</i> in the article.'
+    An awful sign of the times, is this famine of envelopes ... not to
+    speak of the scarcity of little sheets:&mdash;and the augurs look to it all
+    of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For <i>my</i> part I think more of Chiappino&mdash;Chiappino holds me fast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I must let <i>you</i> go&mdash;it is too late. This dearest letter, which
+    you sent me! I thank you for it with ever so much dumbness. May God
+    bless you and keep you, and make you happy for me.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your <SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How I get to understand this much of Law&mdash;that prior possession is
+    nine points of it! Just because your infinite adroitness got first
+    hold of the point of view whence our connection looks like 'a dream'
+    ... I find myself shut out of my very own, unable to say what is
+    oftenest in my thought; whereas the dear, miraculous dream <i>you</i> were,
+    and are, my Ba! Only, <i>vanish</i>&mdash;<i>that</i> you will never! My own, and for
+    ever!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yesterday I read the poor, inconceivably inadequate notice in the
+    <i>People's Journal</i>. How curiously wrong, too, in the personal guesses!
+    Sad work truly. For my old friend Mrs. Adams&mdash;no, I must be silent:
+    the lyrics seem doggerel in its utter purity. And so the people are to
+    be instructed in the new age of gold! I <i>heard</i> two days ago precisely
+    what I told you&mdash;that there was a quarrel, &amp;c. which this service was
+    to smooth over, no doubt. Chorley told me, in a hasty word only, that
+    all was over, Mr. Webster would not have anything to do with his play.
+    The said W. is one of the poorest of poor creatures, and as Chorley
+    was certainly forewarned, forearmed I will hope him to have been
+    likewise&mdash;still it is very disappointing&mdash;he was apparently nearer
+    than most aspirants to the prize,&mdash;having the best will of the
+    actresses on whose shoulder the burthen was to lie. I hope they have
+    been quite honest with him&mdash;knowing as I do the easy process of
+    transferring all sorts of burthens, in that theatrical world, from
+    responsible to irresponsible members of it, actors to manager, manager
+    to actors, as the case requires. And it is a 'hope deferred' with
+    Chorley; not for the second or third time. I am very glad that he
+    cares no more than you tell me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Still you go down-stairs, and still return safely, and every step
+    leads us nearer to <i>my</i> 'hope.' How unremittingly you bless me&mdash;a
+    visit promises a letter, a letter brings such news, crowns me with
+    such words, and speaks of another visit&mdash;and so the golden links
+    extend. Dearest words, dearest letters&mdash;as I add each to my heap, I
+    say&mdash;I <i>do</i> say&mdash;'I was <i>poor</i>, it now seems, a minute ago, when I had
+    not <i>this</i>!' Bless you, dear, dear Ba. On Saturday I shall be with
+    you, I trust&mdash;may God bless you! Ever your own
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever dearest I am going to say one word first of all lest I should
+    forget it afterward, of the two or three words which you said
+    yesterday and so passingly that you probably forget to-day having said
+    them at all. We were speaking of Mr. Chorley and his house, and you
+    said that you did not care for such and such things for yourself, but
+    that for others&mdash;now you remember the rest. And I just want to say
+    what it would have been simpler to have said at the time&mdash;only not so
+    easy&mdash;(I <i>couldn't</i> say it at the time) that you are not if you please
+    to fancy that because I am a woman I have not the pretension to do
+    with as little in any way as you yourself ... no, it is not <i>that</i> I
+    mean to say.... I mean that you are not, if you please, to fancy that,
+    because I am a woman, I look to be cared for in those outside things,
+    or should have the slightest pleasure in any of them. So never wish
+    nor regret in your thoughts to be able or not to be able to care this
+    and this for <i>me</i>; for while you are thinking so, our thoughts go
+    different ways, which is wrong. Mr. Fox did me a great deal too much
+    honour in calling me 'a religious hermit'; he was 'curiously' in
+    fault, as you saw. It is not my vocation to sit on a stone in a
+    cave&mdash;I was always too fond of lolling upon sofas or in chairs nearly
+    as large,&mdash;and this, which I sit in, was given to me when I was a
+    child by my uncle, the uncle I spoke of to you once, and has been
+    lolled in nearly ever since ... when I was well enough. Well&mdash;<i>that</i>
+    is a sort of luxury, of course&mdash;but it is more idle than expensive, as
+    a habit, and I do believe that it is the 'head and foot of my
+    offending' in that matter. Yes&mdash;'confiteor tibi' besides, that I do
+    hate white dimity curtains, which is highly improper for a religious
+    hermit of course, but excusable in <i>me</i> who would accept brown serge
+    as a substitute with ever so much indifference. It is the white light
+    which comes in the dimity which is so hateful to me. To 'go mad in
+    white dimity' seems perfectly natural, and consequential even. Set
+    aside these foibles, and one thing is as good as another with me, and
+    the more simplicity in the way of living, the better. If I saw Mr.
+    Chorley's satin sofas and gilded ceilings I should call them very
+    pretty I dare say, but never covet the possession of the like&mdash;it
+    would never enter my mind to do so. Then Papa has not kept a carriage
+    since I have been grown up (they grumble about it here in the house,
+    but when people have once had great reverses they get nervous about
+    spending money) so I shall not miss the Clarence and greys ... and I
+    do entreat you <i>not</i> to put those two ideas together again of <i>me</i> and
+    the finery which has nothing to do with me. I have talked a great deal
+    too much of all this, you will think, but I want you, once for all, to
+    apply it broadly to the whole of the future both in the general view
+    and the details, so that we need not return to the subject. Judge for
+    me as for yourself&mdash;<i>what is good for you is good for me</i>. Otherwise I
+    shall be humiliated, you know; just as far as I know your thoughts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon has been here to-day&mdash;and I have been down-stairs&mdash;two
+    great events! He was in brilliant spirits and sate talking ever so
+    long, and named you as he always does. Something he asked, and then
+    said suddenly ... 'But I don't see why I should ask <i>you</i>, when I
+    ought to know him better than you can.' On which I was wise enough to
+    change colour, as I felt, to the roots of my hair. There is the
+    effect of a bad conscience! and it has happened to me before, with Mr.
+    Kenyon, three times&mdash;once particularly, when I could have cried with
+    vexation (to complete the effects!), he looked at me with such
+    infinite surprise in a dead pause of any speaking. <i>That</i> was in the
+    summer; and all to be said for it now, is, that it couldn't be helped:
+    couldn't!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon asked of 'Saul.' (By the way, you never answered about the
+    blue lilies.) He asked of 'Saul' and whether it would be finished in
+    the new number. He hangs on the music of your David. Did you read in
+    the <i>Athenæum</i> how Jules Janin&mdash;no, how the critic on Jules Janin (was
+    it the critic? was it Jules Janin? the glorious confusion is gaining
+    on me I think) has magnificently confounded places and persons in
+    Robert Southey's urn by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord
+    Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after
+    moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to
+    our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme.
+    Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in
+    fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable
+    purity enough, too. It does certainly appear wonderful that we should
+    not sufficiently stand abreast here in Europe, to justify and
+    necessitate the establishment of an European review&mdash;journal
+    rather&mdash;(the 'Foreign Review,' so called, touching only the summits of
+    the hills) a journal which might be on a level with the intelligent
+    readers of all the countries of Europe, and take all the rising
+    reputations of each, with the national light on them as they rise,
+    into observation and judgment. If nobody can do this, it is a pity I
+    think to do so much less&mdash;both in France and England&mdash;to snatch up a
+    French book from over the Channel as ever and anon they do in the
+    <i>Athenæum</i>, and say something prodigiously absurd of it, till people
+    cry out 'oh oh' as in the House of Commons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh&mdash;oh&mdash;and how wise I am to-day, as if I were a critic myself!
+    Yesterday I was foolish instead&mdash;for I couldn't get out of my head all
+    the evening how you said that you would come 'to see a candle held up
+    at the window.' Well! but I do not mean to love you any more just
+    now&mdash;so I tell you plainly. Certainly I will not. I love you already
+    too much perhaps. I feel like the turning Dervishes turning in the sun
+    when you say such words to me&mdash;and I <i>never shall</i> love you any
+    'less,' because it is too much to be made less of.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And you write to-morrow? and will tell me how you are? honestly will
+    tell me? May God bless you, most dear!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">I am yours&mdash;'Tota tua est'</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent?
+    Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard&mdash;the
+    speaker had <i>tried</i> words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not
+    reflect that he did not even try&mdash;so with me now, that loving you, Ba,
+    with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide
+    wondering gratitude and veneration, I press close to you to say so, in
+    this imperfect way, my dear dearest beloved! Why do you not help me,
+    rather than take my words, my proper word, from me and call them
+    yours, when yours they are not? You said lately love of you 'made you
+    humble'&mdash;just as if to hinder <i>me</i> from saying that earnest
+    truth!&mdash;entirely true it is, as I feel ever more convincingly. You do
+    not choose to understand it should be so, nor do I much care, for the
+    one thing you must believe, must resolve to believe in its length and
+    breadth, is that I do love you and live only in the love of you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will rest on the confidence that you do so believe! You <i>know</i> by
+    this that it is no shadowy image of you and <i>not</i> you, which having
+    attached myself to in the first instance, I afterward compelled my
+    fancy to see reproduced, so to speak, with tolerable exactness to the
+    original idea, in you, the dearest real <i>you</i> I am blessed with&mdash;you
+    <i>know</i> what the eyes are to me, and the lips and the hair. And I, for
+    my part, know <i>now</i>, while fresh from seeing you, certainly <i>know</i>,
+    whatever I may have said a short time since, that <i>you</i> will go on to
+    the end, that the arm round me will not let me go,&mdash;over such a blind
+    abyss&mdash;I refuse to think, to fancy, <i>towards</i> what it would be to
+    loose you now! So I give my life, my soul into your hand&mdash;the giving
+    is a mere form too, it is yours, ever yours from the first&mdash;but ever
+    as I see you, sit with you, and come away to think over it all, I find
+    more that seems mine to give; you give me more life and it goes back
+    to you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall hear from you to-morrow&mdash;then, I will go out early and get
+    done with some calls, in the joy and consciousness of what waits me,
+    and when I return I will write a few words. Are these letters, these
+    merest attempts at getting to talk with you through the distance&mdash;yet
+    always with the consolation of feeling that you will know all,
+    interpret all and forgive it and put it right&mdash;can such things be
+    cared for, expected, as you say? Then, Ba, my life <i>must</i> be better
+    ... with the closeness to help, and the 'finding out the way' for
+    which love was always noted. If you begin making in fancy a lover to
+    your mind, I am lost at once&mdash;but the one quality of <i>affection</i> for
+    you, which would sooner or later have to be placed on his list of
+    component graces; <i>that</i> I will dare start supply&mdash;the entire love you
+    could dream of <i>is</i> here. You think you see some of the other
+    adornments, and only too many; and you will see plainer one day, but
+    with that I do not concern myself&mdash;you shall admire the true
+    heroes&mdash;but me you shall love for the love's sake. Let me kiss you,
+    you, my dearest, dearest&mdash;God bless you ever&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed I would, dearest Ba, go with entire gladness and pride to see a
+    light that came from your room&mdash;why should that surprise you? Well,
+    you will <i>know</i> one day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We understand each other too about the sofas and gilding&mdash;oh, I know
+    you, my own sweetest! For me, if I had set those matters to heart, I
+    should have turned into the obvious way of getting them&mdash;not <i>out</i> of
+    it, as I did resolutely from the beginning. All I meant was, to
+    express a very natural feeling&mdash;if one could give you diamonds for
+    flowers, and if you liked diamonds,&mdash;then, indeed! As it is, wherever
+    we are found shall be, if you please, 'For the love's sake found
+    therein&mdash;sweetest <i>house</i> was ever seen!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Kenyon must be merciful. Lilies are of all colours in
+    Palestine&mdash;one sort is particularized as <i>white</i> with a dark blue spot
+    and streak&mdash;the water lily, lotos, which I think I meant, is <i>blue</i>
+    altogether.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have walked this morning to town and back&mdash;I feel much better,
+    'honestly'! The head better&mdash;the spirits rising&mdash;as how should they
+    not, when <i>you</i> think all will go well in the end, when you write to
+    me that you go down-stairs and are stronger&mdash;and when the rest is
+    written?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not more now, dearest, for time is pressing, but you will answer
+    this,&mdash;the love that is not here,&mdash;not the idle words, and I will
+    reply to-morrow. Thursday is so far away yet!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bless you, my very own, only dearest!
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Monday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 17, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, you are dearest always! Talk of Sirens, ... there must be
+    some masculine ones 'rari nantes,' I fancy, (though we may not find
+    them in unquestionable authorities like your Ælian!) to justify this
+    voice I hear. Ah, how you speak, with that pretension, too, to
+    dumbness! What should people be made of, in order to bear such words,
+    do you think? Will all the wax from all the altar-candles in the
+    Sistine Chapel, keep the piercing danger from their ears? Being tied
+    up a good deal tighter than Ulysses did not save <i>me</i>. Dearest
+    dearest: I laugh, you see, as usual, not to cry! But deep down, deeper
+    than the Sirens go, deep underneath the tides, <i>there</i>, I bless and
+    love you with the voice that makes no sound.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Other human creatures (how often I do think it to myself!) have their
+    good things scattered over their lives, sown here and sown there, down
+    the slopes, and by the waysides. But with me ... I have mine all
+    poured down on one spot in the midst of the sands!&mdash;if you knew what I
+    feel at moments, and at half-hours, when I give myself up to the
+    feeling freely and take no thought of red eyes. A woman once was
+    killed with gifts, crushed with the weight of golden bracelets thrown
+    at her: and, knowing myself, I have wondered more than a little, how
+    it was that I could <i>bear</i> this strange and unused gladness, without
+    sinking as the emotion rose. Only I was incredulous at first, and the
+    day broke slowly ... and the gifts fell like the rain ... softly; and
+    God gives strength, by His providence, for sustaining blessings as
+    well as stripes. Dearest&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the rest I understand you perfectly&mdash;perfectly. It was simply to
+    your <i>thoughts</i>, that I replied ... and that you need not say to
+    yourself any more, as you did once to me when you brought me flowers,
+    that you wished they were diamonds. It was simply to prevent the
+    accident of such a <i>thought</i>, that I spoke out mine. You would not
+    wish accidentally that you had a double-barrelled gun to give me, or a
+    cardinal's hat, or a snuff box, and I meant to say that you <i>might as
+    well</i>&mdash;as diamonds and satin sofas à la Chorley. Thoughts are
+    something, and <i>your</i> thoughts are something more. To be sure they
+    are!
+</p>
+<p>
+    You are better you say, which makes me happy of course. And you will
+    not make the 'better' worse again by doing wrong things&mdash;<i>that</i> is my
+    petition. It was the excess of goodness to write those two letters for
+    me in one day, and I thank you, thank you. Beloved, when you write,
+    <i>let</i> it be, if you choose, ever so few lines. Do not suffer me (for
+    my own sake) to tire you, because two lines or three bring <i>you</i> to me
+    ... remember ... just as a longer letter would.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But where, pray, did I say, and when, that 'everything would end
+    well?' Was <i>that</i> in the dream, when we two met on the stairs? I did
+    not really say so I think. And 'well' is how you understand it. If you
+    jump out of the window you succeed in getting to the ground, somehow,
+    dead or alive ... but whether <i>that</i> means 'ending well,' depends on
+    your way of considering matters. I am seriously of opinion
+    nevertheless, that if 'the arm,' you talk of, <i>drops</i>, it will not be
+    for weariness nor even for weakness, but because it is cut off at the
+    shoulder. <i>I</i> will not fail to you,&mdash;may God so deal with me, so bless
+    me, so leave me, as I live only for you and <i>shall</i>. Do you doubt
+    <i>that</i>, my only beloved! Ah, you know well&mdash;<i>too well</i>, people would
+    say ... but I do not think it 'too well' myself, ... knowing <i>you</i>.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a gossip which Mr. Kenyon brought me on Sunday&mdash;disbelieving
+    it himself, he asseverated, though Lady Chantrey said it 'with
+    authority,'&mdash;that Mr. Harness had offered his hand heart and
+    ecclesiastical dignities to Miss Burdett Coutts. It is Lady Chantrey's
+    and Mr. Kenyon's <i>secret</i>, remember.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And ... will you tell me? How can a man spend four or five successive
+    months on the sea, most cheaply&mdash;at the least pecuniary expense, I
+    mean? Because Miss Mitford's friend Mr. Buckingham is ordered by his
+    medical adviser to complete his cure by these means; and he is not
+    rich. Could he go with sufficient comfort by a merchant's vessel to
+    the Mediterranean ... and might he drift about among the Greek
+    islands?
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    'Out of window' would be well, as I see the leap, if it ended (<i>so far
+    as I am concerned</i>) in the worst way imaginable&mdash;I would I 'run the
+    risk' (Ba's other word) rationally, deliberately,&mdash;knowing what the
+    ordinary law of chances in this world justifies in such a case; and if
+    the result after all <i>was</i> unfortunate, it would be far easier to
+    undergo the extremest penalty with so little to reproach myself
+    for,&mdash;than to put aside the adventure,&mdash;waive the wondrous probability
+    of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an
+    adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an
+    eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager
+    sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen
+    times running&mdash;which wager I wisely refused to accept because it was
+    not written in the stars that such a sequence might never be. I had
+    rather, rather a thousand-fold lose my paltry stake, and be the one
+    recorded victim to such an unexampled unluckiness that half a dozen
+    mad comets, suns gone wrong, and lunatic moons must have come
+    laboriously into conjunction for my special sake to bring it to pass,
+    which were no slight honour, properly considered!&mdash;And this is <i>my</i>
+    way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and
+    happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don't
+    sparkle&mdash;underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance,
+    chance! there is <i>no</i> chance here! I <i>have</i> gained enough for my life,
+    I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change
+    altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last
+    minute on what I can remember of this past year&mdash;I <i>could</i> do that.
+    <i>Now</i>, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself&mdash;all would be
+    different, sadly different&mdash;But saying what you do say, promising 'the
+    strength of arm'&mdash;do not wonder that I call it an assurance of all
+    being 'well'! All is <i>best</i>, as you promise&mdash;dear, darling Ba!&mdash;and I
+    say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, <i>as you say</i>,
+    promise as you promise&mdash;only meaning a worship of you that is solely
+    fit for me, fit by position&mdash;are not you my 'mistress?' Come, some
+    good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the
+    Bower's disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the
+    house at Loretto, to the Siren's isle where we shall find it preserved
+    in a beauty 'very rare and absolute')&mdash;is it not right you should be
+    my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I
+    am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet?
+    and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you <i>wholly</i>, my Ba! May God
+    bless you&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your own,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-ship bound for
+    some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another
+    and perhaps a third&mdash;Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on.
+    The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort <i>enormous</i>
+    for an invalid&mdash;the one advantage is the solitariness of the <i>one</i>
+    passenger among all those rough new creatures. <i>I</i> like it much, and
+    soon get deep into their friendship, but another has other ways of
+    viewing matters. No one article provided by the ship in the way of
+    provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and
+    the horrors of dirt and men's ministry are portentous, yet by a little
+    arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own
+    powers of endurance, and counsel nobody to gain my experience. On the
+    other hand, were all to do again, I had rather have seen Venice <i>so</i>,
+    with the five or six weeks' absolute rest of the mind's eyes, than any
+    other imaginable way,&mdash;except Balloon-travelling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do you think they meant Landor's 'Count Julian'&mdash;the 'subject of his
+    tragedy' sure enough,&mdash;and that <i>he</i> was the friend of Southey? So it
+    struck me&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah well&mdash;we shall see. Only remember that it is not my fault if I
+    throw the double sixes, and if you, on [<i>some sun-shiny</i> day, (a day
+    too late to help yourself) stand face to face with a milkwhite
+    unicorn.]<b><a href="#note-26">26</a></b> Ah&mdash;do not be angry. It is ungrateful of me to write
+    so&mdash;I put a line through it to prove I have a conscience after all. I
+    know that you love me, and I know it so well that I was reproaching
+    myself severely not long ago, for seeming to love your love more than
+    you. Let me tell you how I proved <i>that</i>, or seemed. For ever so long,
+    you remember, I have been talking finely about giving you up for your
+    good and so on. Which was sincere as far as the words went&mdash;but oh,
+    the hypocrisy of our souls!&mdash;of mine, for instance! 'I would give you
+    up for your good'&mdash;<i>but</i> when I pressed upon myself the question
+    whether (if I had the power) I would consent to make you willing to be
+    given up, by throwing away your love into the river, in a ring like
+    Charlemagne's, ... why I found directly that I would throw myself
+    there sooner. I could not do it in fact&mdash;I shrank from the test. A
+    very pitiful virtue of generosity, is your Ba's! Still, it is not
+    possible, I think, that she should '<i>love your love more than you</i>.'
+    There must be a mistake in the calculation somewhere&mdash;a figure dropt.
+    It would be too bad for her!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your account of your merchantmen, though with Venice in the distance,
+    will scarcely be attractive to a confirmed invalid, I fear&mdash;and yet
+    the steamers will be found expensive beyond his means. The
+    sugar-vessels, which I hear most about, give out an insufferable smell
+    and steam&mdash;let us talk of it a little on Thursday. On Monday I forgot.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Landor's 'Julian,' oh no, I cannot fancy it to be probable that
+    those Parisians should know anything of Landor, even by a mistake. Do
+    you not suppose that the play is founded (confounded) on Shelley's
+    poem, as the French use materials ... by distraction, into confusion?
+    The 'urn by the Adriatic' (which all the French know how to turn
+    upside down) fixes the reference to Shelley&mdash;does it not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not a word of the head&mdash;what does <i>that</i> mean, I wonder. I have not
+    been down-stairs to-day&mdash;the wind is too cold&mdash;but you have walked?
+    ... there was no excuse for you. God bless you, ever dearest. It is my
+    last word till Thursday's first. A fine queen you have, by the way!&mdash;a
+    queen Log, whom you had better leave in the bushes! Witness our
+    hand....
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba&mdash;Regina</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, dearest, you shall not have <i>last word</i> as you think,&mdash;all the
+    'risk' shall not be mine, neither; how can I, in the event, throw
+    ambs-ace (is not that the old word?) and not peril <i>your</i> stakes too,
+    when once we have common stock and are partners? When I see the
+    unicorn and grieve proportionately, do you mean to say you are not
+    going to grieve too, for my sake? And if so&mdash;why, <i>you</i> clearly run
+    exactly the same risk,&mdash;<i>must</i>,&mdash;unless you mean to rejoice in my
+    sorrow! So your chance is my chance; my success your success, you say,
+    and my failure, your failure, will you not say? You see, you see, Ba,
+    my own&mdash;own! What do you think frightened me in your letter for a
+    second or two? You write 'Let us talk on Thursday ... Monday I
+    forgot'&mdash;which I read,&mdash;'no, not on Thursday&mdash;I had forgotten! It is
+    to be <i>Monday</i> when we meet next'!&mdash;whereat
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ... as a goose<br>
+In death contracts his talons close,
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">as Hudibras sings&mdash;I clutched the letter convulsively&mdash;till relief
+    came.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So till to-morrow&mdash;my all-beloved! Bless you. I am rather hazy in the
+    head as Archer Gurney will find in due season&mdash;(he comes, I told
+    you)&mdash;but all the morning I have been going for once and for ever
+    through the 'Tragedy,' and it is <i>done</i>&mdash;(done <i>for</i>). Perhaps I may
+    bring it to-morrow&mdash;if my sister can copy all; I cut out a huge kind
+    of sermon from the middle and reserve it for a better time&mdash;still it
+    is very long; so long! So, if I ask, may I have 'Luria' back to
+    morrow? So shall printing begin, and headache end&mdash;and 'no more for
+    the present from your loving'
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Friday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 20, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I shall be late with my letter this morning because my sisters have
+    been here talking, talking ... and I did not like to say exactly 'Go
+    away that I may write.' Mr. Kenyon shortened our time yesterday too by
+    a whole half-hour or three quarters&mdash;the stars are against us. He is
+    coming on Sunday, however, he says, and if so, Monday will be safe and
+    clear&mdash;and not a word was said after you went, about you: he was in a
+    good joyous humour, as you saw, and the letter he brought was, oh! so
+    complimentary to me&mdash;I will tell you. The writer doesn't see anything
+    'in Browning and Turner,' she confesses&mdash;'<i>may</i> perhaps with time and
+    study,' but for the present sees nothing,&mdash;only has wide-open eyes of
+    admiration for E.B.B. ... now isn't it satisfactory to <i>me</i>? Do you
+    understand the full satisfaction of just that sort of thing ... to be
+    praised by somebody who sees nothing in Shakespeare?&mdash;to be found on
+    the level of somebody so flat? Better the bad-word of the Britannia,
+    ten times over! And best, to take no thought of bad or good words! ...
+    except such as I shall have to-night, perhaps! Shall I?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will you be pleased to understand in the meanwhile a little about the
+    'risks' I am supposed to run, and not hold to such a godlike
+    simplicity ('gods and bulls,' dearest!) as you made show of yesterday?
+    If we two went to the gaming-table, and you gave me a purse of gold to
+    play with, should I have a right to talk proudly of 'my stakes?' and
+    would any reasonable person say of both of us playing together as
+    partners, that we ran 'equal risks'? I trow not&mdash;and so do <i>you</i> ...
+    when you have not predetermined to be stupid, and mix up the rouge and
+    noir into 'one red' of glorious confusion. What had I to lose on the
+    point of happiness when you knew me first?&mdash;and if now I lose (as I
+    certainly may according to your calculation) the happiness you have
+    given me, why still I am your debtor for <i>the gift</i> ... now see! Yet
+    to bring you down into my ashes ... <i>that</i> has been so intolerable a
+    possibility to me from the first. Well, perhaps I run <i>more</i> risk than
+    you, under that one aspect. Certainly I never should forgive myself
+    again if you were unhappy. 'What had <i>I</i> to do,' I should think, 'with
+    touching your life?' And if ever I am to think so, I would rather that
+    I never had known you, seen your face, heard your voice&mdash;which is the
+    uttermost sacrifice and abnegation. I could not say or sacrifice any
+    more&mdash;not even for <i>you</i>! <i>You</i>, for <i>you</i> ... is all I can!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since you left me I have been making up my mind to your having the
+    headache worse than ever, through the agreement with Moxon. I do, do
+    beseech you to spare yourself, and let 'Luria' go as he is, and above
+    all things not to care for my infinite foolishnesses as you see them
+    in those notes. Remember that if you are ill, it is not so easy to
+    say, 'Now I will be well again.' Ever dearest, care for me in
+    yourself&mdash;say how you are.... I am not unwell to-day, but feel flagged
+    and weak rather with the cold ... and look at your flowers for courage
+    and an assurance that the summer is within hearing. May God bless you
+    ... blessing <i>us</i>, beloved!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Your own</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poe has sent me his poems and tales&mdash;so now I must write to thank
+    him for his dedication. Just now I have the book. As to Mr.
+    Buckingham, he will go, Constantinople and back, before we talk of
+    him.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Saturday Morning.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest,&mdash;it just strikes me that I <i>might</i> by some chance be kept in
+    town this morning&mdash;(having to go to Milnes' breakfast there)&mdash;so as
+    not to find the note I venture to expect, in time for an answer by our
+    last post to-night. But I will try&mdash;this only is a precaution against
+    the possibility. Dear, dear Ba! I cannot thank you, know not how to
+    thank you for the notes! I adopt every one, of course, not as Ba's
+    notes but as Miss Barrett's, not as Miss Barrett's but as anybody's,
+    everybody's&mdash;such incontestable improvements they suggest. When shall
+    I tell you more ... on Monday or Tuesday? <i>That</i> I <i>must</i>
+    know&mdash;because you appointed Monday, 'if nothing happened&mdash;' and Mr. K.
+    happened&mdash;can you let me hear by our early post to-morrow&mdash;as on
+    Monday I am to be with Moxon early, you know&mdash;and no letters arrive
+    before 11-1/2 or 12. I was not very well yesterday, but to-day am much
+    better&mdash;and you,&mdash;I say how <i>I</i> am precisely to have a double right to
+    know <i>all</i> about you, dearest, in this snow and cold! How do you bear
+    it? And Mr. K. spoke of '<i>that</i> being your worst day.' Oh, dear
+    dearest Ba, remember how I live in you&mdash;on the hopes, with the memory
+    of you. Bless you ever!
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    I do not understand how my letters limp so instead of flying as they
+    ought with the feathers I give them, and how you did not receive last
+    night, nor even early this morning, what left me at two o'clock
+    yesterday. But I understand <i>now</i> the not hearing from you&mdash;you were
+    not well. Not well, not well ... <i>that</i> is always 'happening' at
+    least. And Mr. Moxon, who is to have his first sheet, whether you are
+    well or ill! It is wrong ... yes, very wrong&mdash;and if one point of
+    wrongness is touched, we shall not easily get right again&mdash;as I think
+    mournfully, feeling confident (call me Cassandra, but I cannot jest
+    about it) feeling certain that it will end (the means being so
+    persisted in) by some serious illness&mdash;serious sorrow,&mdash;on yours and
+    my part.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to Monday, Mr. Kenyon said he would come again on Sunday&mdash;in which
+    case, Monday will be clear. If he should not come on Sunday, he will
+    or may on Monday,&mdash;yet&mdash;oh, in every case, perhaps you can come on
+    Monday&mdash;there will be no time to let you know of Mr. Kenyon&mdash;and
+    <i>probably</i> we shall be safe, and your being in town seems to fix the
+    day. For myself I am well enough, and the wind has changed, which will
+    make me better&mdash;this cold weather oppresses and weakens me, but it is
+    close to April and can't last and won't last&mdash;it is warmer already.
+    Beware of the notes! They are not Ba's&mdash;except for the insolence, nor
+    EBB's&mdash;because of the carelessness. If I had known, moreover, that you
+    were going to Moxon's on Monday, they should have gone to the fire
+    rather than provoked you into superfluous work for the short interval.
+    Just so much are they despised of both EBB and Ba.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am glad I did not hear from you yesterday because you were not
+    well, and you <i>must never</i> write when you are not well. But if you had
+    been quite well, should I have heard?&mdash;<i>I doubt it</i>. You meant me to
+    hear from you only once, from Thursday to Monday. Is it not the truth
+    now that you hate writing to me?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The <i>Athenæum</i> takes up the 'Tales from Boccaccio' as if they were
+    worth it, and imputes in an underground way the authorship to the
+    members of the 'coterie' so called&mdash;do you observe <i>that</i>? There is an
+    implication that persons named in the poem wrote the poem themselves.
+    And upon <i>whom</i> does the critic mean to fix the song of 'Constancy'
+    ... the song which is 'not to puzzle anybody' who knows the tunes of
+    the song-writers! The perfection of commonplace it seems to me. It
+    might have been written by the 'poet Bunn.' Don't you think so?
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I write this you are in town, but you will not read it till
+    Sunday unless I am more fortunate than usual. On Monday then! And no
+    word before? No&mdash;I shall be sure not to hear to-night. Now do try not
+    to suffer through 'Luria.' Let Mr. Moxon wait a week rather. There is
+    time enough.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Sunday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 23, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oh, my Ba&mdash;how you shall hear of this to-morrow&mdash;that is all: <i>I</i> hate
+    writing? See when presently I <i>only</i> write to you daily, hourly if you
+    let me? Just this <i>now</i>&mdash;I will be with you to-morrow in any case&mdash;I
+    can go away <i>at once</i>, if need be, or stay&mdash;if you like you can stop
+    me by sending a note for me <i>to Moxon's before</i> 10 o'clock&mdash;if
+    anything calls for such a measure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now briefly,&mdash;I am unwell and entirely irritated with this sad
+    'Luria'&mdash;I thought it a failure at first, I find it infinitely worse
+    than I thought&mdash;it is a pure exercise of <i>cleverness</i>, even where most
+    successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by
+    another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry
+    the more to get on, with the printing,&mdash;it is to throw out and away
+    from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected
+    it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better
+    hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, <i>unlike</i> the woman at her
+    spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his <i>flax</i> on the whole far more than
+    of his singing'&mdash;more of his life's sustainment, of dear, dear Ba he
+    hates writing to, than of these wooden figures&mdash;no wonder all is as it
+    is?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a pure piece of the old Chorley leaven for you, just as it
+    reappears ever and anon and throws one back on the mistrust all but
+    abandoned! Chorley <i>knows</i> I have not seen that Powell for nearly
+    fifteen months&mdash;that I never heard of the book till it reached me in a
+    blank cover&mdash;that I never contributed a line or word to it directly or
+    indirectly&mdash;and I should think he <i>also knows</i> that all the sham
+    learning, notes &amp;c., all that saves the book from the deepest deep of
+    contempt, was contributed by Heraud (<i>a regular critic in the
+    'Athenæum'</i>), who received his pay for the same: he knows I never
+    spoke in my life to 'Jones or Stephens'&mdash;that there is no 'coterie' of
+    which I can, by any extension of the word, form a part&mdash;that I am in
+    this case at the mercy of a wretched creature who to get into my
+    favour again (to speak the plain truth) put in the gross, disgusting
+    flattery in the notes&mdash;yet Chorley, knowing this, none so well, and
+    what the writer's end is&mdash;(to have it supposed I, and the others
+    named&mdash;Talfourd, for instance&mdash;<SPAN class="sc-ex">are</span> his friends and helpers)&mdash;he
+    condescends to <i>further</i> it by such a notice, written with that
+    observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid
+    Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie&mdash;<i>so</i> clever but <i>so</i>
+    wicked'!&mdash;a kind of <i>D'Orsay's</i> praise&mdash;while to the rest of his
+    readers, a few depreciatory epithets&mdash;slight sneers convey his real
+    sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an
+    article of him once a quarter and would <i>expect</i> notice. I think I
+    hear Chorley&mdash;'You know, I <i>cannot</i> praise such a book&mdash;it <i>is</i> too
+    bad'&mdash;as if, as if&mdash;oh, it makes one sicker than having written
+    'Luria,' there's one comfort! I shall call on Chorley and ask for
+    <i>his</i> account of the matter. Meantime nobody will read his foolish
+    notice without believing as he and Powell desire! Bless you, my own
+    Ba&mdash;to-morrow makes amends to R.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How ungrateful I was to your flowers yesterday, never looking at them
+    nor praising them till they were put away, and yourself gone away&mdash;and
+    <i>that</i> was <i>your</i> fault, be it remembered, because you began to tell
+    me of the good news from Moxon's, and, in the joy of it, I missed the
+    flowers ... for the nonce, you know. Afterward they had their due, and
+    all the more that you were not there. My first business when you are
+    out of the room and the house, and the street perhaps, is to arrange
+    the flowers and to gather out of them all the thoughts you leave
+    between the leaves and at the end of the stalks. And shall I tell you
+    what happened, not yesterday, but the Thursday before? no, it was the
+    Friday morning, when I found, or rather Wilson found and held up from
+    my chair, a bunch of dead blue violets. Quite dead they seemed! You
+    had dropped them and I had sate on them, and where we murdered them
+    they had lain, poor things, all the night through. And Wilson thought
+    it the vainest of labours when she saw me set about reviving them,
+    cutting the stalks afresh, and dipping them head and ears into
+    water&mdash;but then she did not know how you, and I, and ours, live under
+    a miraculous dispensation, and could only simply be astonished when
+    they took to blowing again as if they never had wanted the dew of the
+    garden, ... yes, and when at last they outlived all the prosperity of
+    the contemporary white violets which flourished in water from the
+    beginning, and were free from the disadvantage of having been sate
+    upon. Now you shall thank me for this letter, it is at once so amusing
+    and instructive. After all, too, it teaches you what the great events
+    of my life are, not that the resuscitation of your violets would not
+    really be a great event to me, even if I led the life of a pirate,
+    between fire and sea, otherwise. But take <i>you</i> away ... out of my
+    life!&mdash;and what remains? The only greenness I used to have (before you
+    brought your flowers) was as the grass growing in deserted streets,
+    ... which brings a proof, in every increase, of the extending
+    desolation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dearest, I persist in thinking that you ought not to be too disdainful
+    to explain your meaning in the Pomegranates. Surely you might say in a
+    word or two that, your title having been doubted about (to your
+    surprise, you <i>might</i> say!), you refer the doubters to the Jewish
+    priest's robe, and the Rabbinical gloss ... for I suppose it is a
+    gloss on the robe ... do you not think so? Consider that Mr. Kenyon
+    and I may fairly represent the average intelligence of your
+    readers,&mdash;and that <i>he</i> was altogether in the clouds as to your
+    meaning ... had not the most distant notion of it,&mdash;while I, taking
+    hold of the priest's garment, missed the Rabbins and the distinctive
+    significance, as completely as he did. Then for Vasari, it is not the
+    handbook of the whole world, however it may be Mrs. Jameson's. Now why
+    should you be too proud to teach such persons as only desire to be
+    taught? I persist&mdash;I shall teaze you.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This morning my brothers have been saying ... 'Ah you had Mr. Browning
+    with you yesterday, I see by the flowers,' ... just as if they said 'I
+    see queen Mab has been with you.' Then Stormie took the opportunity of
+    swearing to me by all his gods that your name was mentioned lately in
+    the House of Commons&mdash;<i>is</i> that true? or untrue? He forgot to tell me
+    at the time, he says,&mdash;and you were named with others and in relation
+    to copyright matters. <i>Is</i> it true?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hornblower Gill is the author of a Hymn to Passion week, and wrote
+    to me as the 'glorifier of pain!' to remind me that the best glory of
+    a soul is shown in the joy of it, and that all chief poets except
+    Dante have seen, felt, and written it so. Thus and therefore was
+    matured his purpose of writing an 'ode to joy,' as I told you. The man
+    seems to have very good thoughts, ... but he writes like a colder
+    Cowley still ... no impulse, no heat for fusing ... no inspiration, in
+    fact. Though I have scarcely done more than glance at his 'Passion
+    week,' and have little right to give an opinion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you have killed Luria as you helped to kill my violets, what shall
+    I say, do you fancy? Well&mdash;we shall see! Do not kill yourself,
+    beloved, in any case! The <span title="iostephanoi Mousai">&iota;&omicron;&sigma;&tau;&epsilon;&phi;&alpha;&nu;&omicron;&iota;
+
+&Mu;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigma;&alpha;&iota;</span> had better die
+    themselves first! Ah&mdash;what am I writing? What nonsense? I mean, in
+    deep earnest, the deepest, that you should take care and exercise, and
+    not be vexed for Luria's sake&mdash;Luria will have his triumph presently!
+    May God bless you&mdash;prays your own
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>R.B. to E.B.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Afternoon.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    My own dearest, if you <i>do</i>&mdash;(for I confess to nothing of the kind),
+    but if you <i>should</i> detect an unwillingness to write at certain times,
+    what would that prove,&mdash;I mean, what that one need shrink from
+    avowing? If I never had you before me except when writing letters to
+    you&mdash;then! Why, we do not even <i>talk</i> much now! witness Mr. Buckingham
+    and his voyage that ought to have been discussed!&mdash;Oh, how coldly I
+    should write,&mdash;how the bleak-looking paper would seem unpropitious to
+    carry my feeling&mdash;if all had to begin and try to find words <i>this</i>
+    way!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, this morning I have been out&mdash;to town and back&mdash;and for all the
+    walking my head aches&mdash;and I have the conviction that presently when I
+    resign myself to think of you wholly, with only the pretext,&mdash;the
+    make-believe of occupation, in the shape of some book to turn over the
+    leaves of,&mdash;I shall see you and soon be well; so soon! You must know,
+    there is a chair (one of the kind called gond<i>ó</i>la-chairs by
+    upholsterers&mdash;with an emphasized o)&mdash;which occupies the precise place,
+    stands just in the same relation to this chair I sit on now, that
+    yours stands in and occupies&mdash;to the left of the fire: and, how often,
+    how <i>always</i> I turn in the dusk and <i>see</i> the dearest real Ba with me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How entirely kind to take that trouble, give those sittings for me! Do
+    you think the kindness has missed its due effect? <i>No, no</i>, I am
+    glad,&mdash;(<i>knowing what I</i> now <i>know</i>,&mdash;what you meant <i>should be</i>, and
+    did all in your power to prevent) that I have <i>not</i> received the
+    picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi&mdash;te!'
+    But I have set my heart on <i>seeing</i> it&mdash;will you remember next time,
+    next Saturday?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will leave off now. To-morrow, dearest, only dearest Ba, I will
+    write a longer letter&mdash;the clock stops it this afternoon&mdash;it is later
+    than I thought, and our poor crazy post! This morning, hoping against
+    hope, I ran to meet our postman coming meditatively up the lane&mdash;with
+    <i>a</i> letter, indeed!&mdash;but Ba's will come to-night&mdash;and I will be happy,
+    already <i>am</i> happy, expecting it. Bless you, my own love,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Ever your&mdash;
+</p>
+<br>
+<h3><i>E.B.B. to R.B.</i> </h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">Tuesday Evening.<br>
+[Post-mark, March 25, 1846.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ah; if I '<i>do</i>' ... if I '<i>should</i>' ... if I <i>shall</i> ... if I <i>will</i>
+    ... if I <i>must</i> ... what can all the 'ifs' prove, but a most
+    hypothetical state of the conscience? And in brief, I beg you to
+    stand convinced of one thing, that whenever the 'certain time' comes
+    for to 'hate writing to me' confessedly, 'avowedly,' (oh what words!)
+    <i>I shall not like it at all</i>&mdash;not for all the explanations ... and the
+    sights in gondola chairs, which the person seen is none the better
+    for! The <span title="eidôlon">&epsilon;&iota;&delta;&omega;&lambda;&omicron;&nu;</span> sits by the fire&mdash;the real Ba is cold at
+    heart through wanting her letter. And that's the doctrine to be
+    preached now, ... is it? I 'shrink,' shrink from it. That's your
+    word!&mdash;and mine! Dearest, I began by half a jest and end by
+    half-gravity, which is the fault of your doctrine and not of me I
+    think. Yet it is ungrateful to be grave, when practically you are good
+    and just about the letters, and generous too sometimes, and I could
+    not bear the idea of obliging you to write to me, even once ...
+    when.... Now do not fancy that I do not understand. I understand
+    perfectly, on the contrary. Only do <i>you</i> try not to dislike writing
+    when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... <i>that</i>, I ask
+    of you, dear dearest&mdash;and forgive me for all this over-writing and
+    teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It
+    is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to
+    receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so,
+    revolt from thinking it lawful for you to dislike.... Well! the
+    Goddess of Dulness herself couldn't have written <i>this</i> better,
+    anyway, nor more characteristically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I will tell you how it is. You have spoilt me just as I have spoilt
+    Flush. Flush looks at me sometimes with reproachful eyes 'a fendre le
+    coeur,' because I refuse to give him my fur cuffs to tear to pieces.
+    And as for myself, I confess to being more than half jealous of the
+    <span title="eidôlon">&epsilon;&iota;&delta;&omega;&lambda;&omicron;&nu;</span> in the gondola chair, who isn't the real Ba after
+    all, and yet is set up there to do away with the necessity 'at certain
+    times' of writing to her. Which is worse than Flush. For Flush, though
+    he began by shivering with rage and barking and howling and gnashing
+    his teeth at the brown dog in the glass, has learnt by experience what
+    that image means, ... and now contemplates it, serene in natural
+    philosophy. Most excellent sense, all this is!&mdash;and dauntlessly
+    'delivered!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your head aches, dearest. Mr. Moxon will have done his worst, however,
+    presently, and then you will be a little better I do hope and
+    trust&mdash;and the proofs, in the meanwhile, will do somewhat less harm
+    than the manuscript. You will take heart again about 'Luria' ... which
+    I agree with you, is more diffuse ... that is, less close, than any of
+    your works, not diffuse in any bad sense, but round, copious, and
+    another proof of that wonderful variety of faculty which is so
+    striking in you, and which signalizes itself both in the thought and
+    in the medium of the thought. You will appreciate 'Luria' in time&mdash;or
+    others will do it for you. It is a noble work under every aspect. Dear
+    'Luria'! Do you remember how you told me of 'Luria' last year, in one
+    of your early letters? Little I thought that ever, ever, I should feel
+    so, while 'Luria' went to be printed! A long trail of thoughts, like
+    the rack in the sky, follows his going. Can it be the same 'Luria,' I
+    think, that 'golden-hearted Luria,' whom you talked of to me, when you
+    complained of keeping 'wild company,' in the old dear letter? And I
+    have learnt since, that '<i>golden-hearted</i>' is not a word for him only,
+    or for him most. May God bless you, best and dearest! I am your own to
+    live and to die&mdash;
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><SPAN class="sc-ex">Ba</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Say how you are.</i> I shall be down-stairs to-morrow if it keeps warm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Miss Thomson wants me to translate the Hector and Andromache scene
+    from the 'Iliad' for her book; and I am going to try it.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+<center>
+    <b>END OF THE FIRST VOLUME </b></center>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Spottiswoode &amp; Co. Printers, New-street Square, London</i>
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<hr>
+<br>
+
+<h3>
+    FOOTNOTES
+</h3>
+<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p><b><u>1</u></b> With this and the following letter the addresses on the
+    envelopes are given; for all subsequent letters the addresses are the
+    same. The correspondence passed through the post.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>2</u></b> 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. <i>Prom.</i> 741).
+</p>
+<a name="note-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>3</u></b> The following is the version of the passage in Mrs.
+    Browning's later translation of the 'Prometheus' (II. 247-251 of the
+    original):
+</p>
+<p><i>Prom.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I did restrain besides<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+My mortals from premeditating death.</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Cho.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Prom.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I set blind hopes to inhabit in their house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Cho.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.</p>
+<a name="note-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>4</u></b> Aeschylus, <i>Prometheus</i>, 228ff.:
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When at first<br>
+He filled his father's throne, he instantly<br>
+Made various gifts of glory to the gods.'
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote>
+<a name="note-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>5</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 439, 440:
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">'For see&mdash;their honours to these new-made gods,<br>
+What other gave but I?'
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote>
+<a name="note-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>6</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 231, 232:
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><p> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'Alone of men,<br>
+Of miserable men, he took no count.'</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote>
+<a name="note-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>7</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 235: 'But I dared it.'
+</p>
+<a name="note-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>8</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 11: 'Leave off his old trick of loving man.'
+</p>
+<a name="note-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>9</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 443, 444:
+</p>
+<blockquote><blockquote><p> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'Being fools before,<br>
+I made them wise and true in aim of soul.'
+</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote><a name="note-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>10</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 250: 'Blind hopes.'
+</p>
+<a name="note-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>11</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 251: 'A great benefit.'
+</p>
+<a name="note-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>12</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 92: 'Behold what I suffer.'
+</p>
+<a name="note-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>13</u></b> <i>Ib.</i> 1093: 'Dost see how I suffer this wrong?'
+</p>
+<a name="note-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>14</u></b> A rough sketch follows in the original.
+</p>
+<a name="note-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>15</u></b> Aeschylus, <i>Agamemnon</i> 36: 'An ox hath trodden on my
+    tongue'&mdash;a Greek proverb implying silence.
+</p>
+<a name="note-16"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>16</u></b> Envelope endorsed by Robert Browning:&mdash;Tuesday, May 20,
+    1845, 3-4-1/2 p.m.
+</p>
+<a name="note-17"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>17</u></b> 'What have I to do with thee?'
+</p>
+<a name="note-18"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>18</u></b> ... me on Tuesday, or Wednesday? if on Tuesday, I shall
+    come by the three o'clock train; if on Wednesday, <i>early</i> in the
+    morning, as I shall be anxious to secure rooms ... so that your Uncle
+    and Arabel may come up on Thursday.
+</p>
+<a name="note-19"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>19</u></b> Aeschylus, <i>Prometheus</i> II.: 'trick of loving men,' see
+    <a href="#note-8">note 3</a>, on <a href="#39">p. 39</a> above. [Transcriber's
+    note: note 3 has been renumbered note 8 in this e-book.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-20"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>20</u></b> 'R. Benjamin of Tudela' added in Robert Browning's
+    handwriting.
+</p>
+<a name="note-21"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>21</u></b> Mr. Browning's letter is written in an unusually bold
+    hand.
+</p>
+<a name="note-22"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>22</u></b> Envelope endorsed by E.B.B. 'hair.'
+</p>
+<a name="note-23"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>23</u></b> 'Purg.' v. 52 7.
+</p>
+<a name="note-24"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>24</u></b> The cutting enclosed is:&mdash;'A Few Rhymes for the Present
+    Christmas' by J. Purchas, Esq., B.A. It is headed by several
+    quotations, the first of which is signed 'Elizabeth B. Barrett:'
+</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-indent: 0em">'This age shows to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,<br>
+Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.'
+</p>
+</blockquote><p>
+    This is followed by extracts from Pindar, 'Lear,' and the Hon. Mrs.
+    Norton.
+</p>
+<a name="note-25"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>25</u></b> Sprig of Hawthorn enclosed with letter.
+</p>
+<a name="note-26"><!--Note--></a>
+<p>
+<b><u>26</u></b> The words in brackets are struck out.
+</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846, Edited by Robert Browning
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF BROWNING ***
+
+***** This file should be named 16182-h.htm or 16182-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/1/8/16182/
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image01.png b/16182-h/images/image01.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c37725
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image01.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image01a.png b/16182-h/images/image01a.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13a12ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image01a.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image01b.png b/16182-h/images/image01b.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..845c6e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image01b.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image02.png b/16182-h/images/image02.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5898002
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image02.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image03.png b/16182-h/images/image03.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62c3f06
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image03.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image04.png b/16182-h/images/image04.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2230df8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image04.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image05.png b/16182-h/images/image05.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc8dab8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image05.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image06.png b/16182-h/images/image06.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca94064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image06.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image07.png b/16182-h/images/image07.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2636a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image07.png
diff --git a/16182-h/images/image08.png b/16182-h/images/image08.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..720bd9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182-h/images/image08.png
diff --git a/16182.txt b/16182.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fda6d16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21258 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846, Edited by
+Robert B. Browning
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846
+
+Author: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
+
+Editor: Robert B. Browning
+
+Release Date: July 2, 2005 [EBook #16182]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF BROWNING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS
+
+OF
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+AND
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT
+
+1845-1846
+
+
+_WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES_
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+FOURTH IMPRESSION
+
+LONDON
+
+SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
+
+1900
+
+
+[Illustration: Robert Browning
+
+from an oil painting by Gordigiani]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+In considering the question of publishing these letters, which are all
+that ever passed between my father and mother, for after their
+marriage they were never separated, it seemed to me that my only
+alternatives were to allow them to be published or to destroy them. I
+might, indeed, have left the matter to the decision of others after my
+death, but that would be evading a responsibility which I feel that I
+ought to accept.
+
+Ever since my mother's death these letters were kept by my father in a
+certain inlaid box, into which they exactly fitted, and where they
+have always rested, letter beside letter, each in its consecutive
+order and numbered on the envelope by his own hand.
+
+My father destroyed all the rest of his correspondence, and not long
+before his death he said, referring to these letters: 'There they are,
+do with them as you please when I am dead and gone!'
+
+A few of the letters are of little or no interest, but their omission
+would have saved only a few pages, and I think it well that the
+correspondence should be given in its entirety.
+
+I wish to express my gratitude to my father's friend and mine, Mrs.
+Miller Morison, for her unfailing sympathy and assistance in
+deciphering some words which had become scarcely legible owing to
+faded ink.
+
+                                                      R.B.B.
+
+1898.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+
+The correspondence contained in these volumes is printed exactly as it
+appears in the original letters, without alteration, except in respect
+of obvious slips of the pen. Even the punctuation, with its
+characteristic dots and dashes, has for the most part been preserved.
+The notes in square brackets [] have been added mainly in order to
+translate the Greek phrases, and to give the references to Greek
+poets. For these, thanks are due to Mr. F.G. Kenyon, who has revised
+the proofs with the assistance of Mr. Roger Ingpen, the latter being
+responsible for the Index.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF ROBERT BROWNING                 _Frontispiece_
+  _After the picture by Gordigiani_
+
+FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ROBERT BROWNING      _To face p. 578_
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+AND
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT
+
+1845-1846
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1845.]
+
+I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,--and this is
+no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,--whatever else,
+no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius, and there a
+graceful and natural end of the thing. Since the day last week when I
+first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been
+turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you
+of their effect upon me, for in the first flush of delight I thought I
+would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when
+I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration--perhaps even,
+as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some
+little good to be proud of hereafter!--but nothing comes of it all--so
+into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living
+poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew--Oh, how
+different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat, and prized
+highly, and put in a book with a proper account at top and bottom,
+and shut up and put away ... and the book called a 'Flora,' besides!
+After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time;
+because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give a reason
+for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music,
+the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave
+thought; but in this addressing myself to you--your own self, and for
+the first time, my feeling rises altogether. I do, as I say, love
+these books with all my heart--and I love you too. Do you know I was
+once not very far from seeing--really seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to
+me one morning 'Would you like to see Miss Barrett?' then he went to
+announce me,--then he returned ... you were too unwell, and now it is
+years ago, and I feel as at some untoward passage in my travels, as if
+I had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel or crypt,
+only a screen to push and I might have entered, but there was some
+slight, so it now seems, slight and just sufficient bar to admission,
+and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles,
+and the sight was never to be?
+
+Well, these Poems were to be, and this true thankful joy and pride
+with which I feel myself,
+
+                                      Yours ever faithfully,
+
+                                           ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+Miss Barrett,[1]
+  50 Wimpole St.
+R. Browning.
+
+[Footnote 1: With this and the following letter the addresses on the
+envelopes are given; for all subsequent letters the addresses are the
+same. The correspondence passed through the post.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                           50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 11, 1845.
+
+I thank you, dear Mr. Browning, from the bottom of my heart. You meant
+to give me pleasure by your letter--and even if the object had not
+been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly
+answered. Such a letter from such a hand! Sympathy is dear--very dear
+to me: but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the
+quintessence of sympathy to me! Will you take back my gratitude for
+it?--agreeing, too, that of all the commerce done in the world, from
+Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most
+princely thing!
+
+For the rest you draw me on with your kindness. It is difficult to get
+rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure--_that_
+is a fact, and we will not stop for the moral of it. What I was going
+to say--after a little natural hesitation--is, that if ever you emerge
+without inconvenient effort from your 'passive state,' and will _tell_
+me of such faults as rise to the surface and strike you as important
+in my poems, (for of course, I do not think of troubling you with
+criticism in detail) you will confer a lasting obligation on me, and
+one which I shall value so much, that I covet it at a distance. I do
+not pretend to any extraordinary meekness under criticism and it is
+possible enough that I might not be altogether obedient to yours. But
+with my high respect for your power in your Art and for your
+experience as an artist, it would be quite impossible for me to hear a
+general observation of yours on what appear to you my master-faults,
+without being the better for it hereafter in some way. I ask for only
+a sentence or two of general observation--and I do not ask even for
+_that_, so as to tease you--but in the humble, low voice, which is so
+excellent a thing in women--particularly when they go a-begging! The
+most frequent general criticism I receive, is, I think, upon the
+style,--'if I _would_ but change my style'! But _that_ is an objection
+(isn't it?) to the writer bodily? Buffon says, and every sincere
+writer must feel, that '_Le style c'est l'homme_'; a fact, however,
+scarcely calculated to lessen the objection with certain critics.
+
+Is it indeed true that I was so near to the pleasure and honour of
+making your acquaintance? and can it be true that you look back upon
+the lost opportunity with any regret? _But_--you know--if you had
+entered the 'crypt,' you might have caught cold, or been tired to
+death, and _wished_ yourself 'a thousand miles off;' which would have
+been worse than travelling them. It is not my interest, however, to
+put such thoughts in your head about its being 'all for the best'; and
+I would rather hope (as I do) that what I lost by one chance I may
+recover by some future one. Winters shut me up as they do dormouse's
+eyes; in the spring, _we shall see_: and I am so much better that I
+seem turning round to the outward world again. And in the meantime I
+have learnt to know your voice, not merely from the poetry but from
+the kindness in it. Mr. Kenyon often speaks of you--dear Mr.
+Kenyon!--who most unspeakably, or only speakably with tears in my
+eyes,--has been my friend and helper, and my book's friend and helper!
+critic and sympathiser, true friend of all hours! You know him well
+enough, I think, to understand that I must be grateful to him.
+
+I am writing too much,--and notwithstanding that I am writing too
+much, I will write of one thing more. I will say that I am your
+debtor, not only for this cordial letter and for all the pleasure
+which came with it, but in other ways, and those the highest: and I
+will say that while I live to follow this divine art of poetry, in
+proportion to my love for it and my devotion to it, I must be a devout
+admirer and student of your works. This is in my heart to say to
+you--and I say it.
+
+And, for the rest, I am proud to remain
+
+                                  Your obliged and faithful
+
+                                       ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Robert Browning, Esq.
+  New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
+                                 Jan. 13, 1845.
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--I just shall say, in as few words as I can, that
+you make me very happy, and that, now the beginning is over, I dare
+say I shall do better, because my poor praise, number one, was nearly
+as felicitously brought out, as a certain tribute to no less a
+personage than Tasso, which I was amused with at Rome some weeks ago,
+in a neat pencilling on the plaister-wall by his tomb at
+Sant'Onofrio--'Alla cara memoria--di--(please fancy solemn interspaces
+and grave capital letters at the new lines) di--Torquato Tasso--il
+Dottore Bernardini--offriva--il seguente Carme--_O tu_'--and no
+more,--the good man, it should seem, breaking down with the overload
+of love here! But my 'O tu'--was breathed out most sincerely, and now
+you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will come after.
+Only,--and which is why I write now--it looks as if I have introduced
+some phrase or other about 'your faults' so cleverly as to give
+exactly the opposite meaning to what I meant, which was, that in my
+first ardour I had thought to tell you of _everything_ which impressed
+me in your verses, down, even, to whatever 'faults' I could find,--a
+good earnest, when I had got to _them_, that I had left out not much
+between--as if some Mr. Fellows were to say, in the overflow of his
+first enthusiasm of rewarded adventure: 'I will describe you all the
+outer life and ways of these Lycians, down to their very
+sandal-thongs,' whereto the be-corresponded one rejoins--'Shall I get
+next week, then, your dissertation on sandal-thongs'? Yes, and a
+little about the 'Olympian Horses,' and God-charioteers as well!
+
+What 'struck me as faults,' were not matters on the removal of which,
+one was to have--poetry, or high poetry,--but the very highest poetry,
+so I thought, and that, to universal recognition. For myself, or any
+artist, in many of the cases there would be a positive loss of time,
+peculiar artist's pleasure--for an instructed eye loves to see where
+the brush has dipped twice in a lustrous colour, has lain insistingly
+along a favourite outline, dwelt lovingly in a grand shadow; for these
+'too muches' for the everybody's picture are so many helps to the
+making out the real painter's picture as he had it in his brain. And
+all of the Titian's Naples Magdalen must have once been golden in its
+degree to justify that heap of hair in her hands--the _only_ gold
+effected now!
+
+But about this soon--for night is drawing on and I go out, yet cannot,
+quiet at conscience, till I report (to _myself_, for I never said it
+to you, I think) that your poetry must be, cannot but be, infinitely
+more to me than mine to you--for you _do_ what I always wanted, hoped
+to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first time. You speak
+out, _you_,--I only make men and women speak--give you truth broken
+into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in
+me, but I am going to try; so it will be no small comfort to have your
+company just now, seeing that when you have your men and women
+aforesaid, you are busied with them, whereas it seems bleak,
+melancholy work, this talking to the wind (for I have begun)--yet I
+don't think I shall let _you_ hear, after all, the savage things about
+Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.
+
+See how I go on and on to you, I who, whenever now and then pulled, by
+the head and hair, into letter-writing, get sorrowfully on for a line
+or two, as the cognate creature urged on by stick and string, and then
+come down 'flop' upon the sweet haven of page one, line last, as
+serene as the sleep of the virtuous! You will never more, I hope, talk
+of 'the honour of my acquaintance,' but I will joyfully wait for the
+delight of your friendship, and the spring, and my Chapel-sight after
+all!
+
+                                 Ever yours most faithfully,
+
+                                      R. BROWNING.
+
+For Mr. Kenyon--I have a convenient theory about _him_, and his
+otherwise quite unaccountable kindness to me; but 'tis quite night
+now, and they call me.
+
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                           50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 15, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Browning,--The fault was clearly with me and not with you.
+
+When I had an Italian master, years ago, he told me that there was an
+unpronounceable English word which absolutely expressed me, and which
+he would say in his own tongue, as he could not in mine--'_testa
+lunga_.' Of course, the signor meant _headlong_!--and now I have had
+enough to tame me, and might be expected to stand still in my stall.
+But you see I do not. Headlong I was at first, and headlong I
+continue--precipitously rushing forward through all manner of nettles
+and briars instead of keeping the path; guessing at the meaning of
+unknown words instead of looking into the dictionary--tearing open
+letters, and never untying a string,--and expecting everything to be
+done in a minute, and the thunder to be as quick as the lightning. And
+so, at your half word I flew at the whole one, with all its possible
+consequences, and wrote what you read. Our common friend, as I think
+he is, Mr. Horne, is often forced to entreat me into patience and
+coolness of purpose, though his only intercourse with me has been by
+letter. And, by the way, you will be sorry to hear that during his
+stay in Germany _he_ has been 'headlong' (out of a metaphor) twice;
+once, in falling from the Drachenfels, when he only just saved himself
+by catching at a vine; and once quite lately, at Christmas, in a fall
+on the ice of the Elbe in skating, when he dislocated his left
+shoulder in a very painful manner. He is doing quite well, I believe,
+but it was sad to have such a shadow from the German Christmas tree,
+and he a stranger.
+
+In art, however, I understand that it does not do to be headlong, but
+patient and laborious--and there is a love strong enough, even in me,
+to overcome nature. I apprehend what you mean in the criticism you
+just intimate, and shall turn it over and over in my mind until I get
+practical good from it. What no mere critic sees, but what you, an
+artist, know, is the difference between the thing desired and the
+thing attained, between the idea in the writer's mind and the [Greek:
+eidolon] cast off in his work. All the effort--the quick'ning of the
+breath and beating of the heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and
+injurious to the general effect of a composition; all which you call
+'insistency,' and which many would call superfluity, and which _is_
+superfluous in a sense--_you_ can pardon, because you understand. The
+great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would
+be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours,
+if the desire did not master the despondency. 'Oh for a horse with
+wings!' It is wrong of me to write so of myself--only you put your
+finger on the root of a fault, which has, to my fancy, been a little
+misapprehended. I do not _say everything I think_ (as has been said of
+me by master-critics) but I _take every means to say what I think_,
+which is different!--or I fancy so!
+
+In one thing, however, you are wrong. Why should you deny the full
+measure of my delight and benefit from your writings? I could tell you
+why you should not. You have in your vision two worlds, or to use the
+language of the schools of the day, you are both subjective and
+objective in the habits of your mind. You can deal both with abstract
+thought and with human passion in the most passionate sense. Thus, you
+have an immense grasp in Art; and no one at all accustomed to consider
+the usual forms of it, could help regarding with reverence and
+gladness the gradual expansion of your powers. Then you are
+'masculine' to the height--and I, as a woman, have studied some of
+your gestures of language and intonation wistfully, as a thing beyond
+me far! and the more admirable for being beyond.
+
+Of your new work I hear with delight. How good of you to tell me. And
+it is not dramatic in the strict sense, I am to understand--(am I
+right in understanding so?) and you speak, in your own person 'to the
+winds'? no--but to the thousand living sympathies which will awake to
+hear you. A great dramatic power may develop itself otherwise than in
+the formal drama; and I have been guilty of wishing, before this hour
+(for reasons which I will not thrust upon you after all my tedious
+writing), that you would give the public a poem unassociated directly
+or indirectly with the stage, for a trial on the popular heart. I
+reverence the drama, but--
+
+_But_ I break in on myself out of consideration for you. I might have
+done it, you will think, before. I vex your 'serene sleep of the
+virtuous' like a nightmare. Do not say 'No.' I am _sure_ I do! As to
+the vain parlance of the world, I did not talk of the 'honour of your
+acquaintance' without a true sense of honour, indeed; but I shall
+willingly exchange it all (and _now_, if you please, at this moment,
+for fear of worldly mutabilities) for the 'delight of your
+friendship.'
+
+                   Believe me, therefore, dear Mr. Browning,
+
+                        Faithfully yours, and gratefully,
+
+                             ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+For Mr. Kenyon's kindness, as _I_ see it, no theory will account. I
+class it with mesmerism for that reason.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                           New Cross, Hatcham, Monday Night.
+                           [Post-mark, January 28, 1845.]
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--Your books lie on my table here, at arm's length
+from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches
+or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance
+for either green-covered volume, as if it were so much fresh trefoil
+to feel in one's hands this winter-time,--and round I turn, and,
+putting a decisive elbow on three or four half-done-with 'Bells' of
+mine, read, read, read, and just as I have shut up the book and walked
+to the window, I recollect that you wanted me to find faults there,
+and that, in an unwise hour, I engaged to do so. Meantime, the days
+go by (the whitethroat is come and sings now) and as I would not have
+you 'look down on me from your white heights' as promise breaker,
+evader, or forgetter, if I could help: and as, if I am very candid and
+contrite, you may find it in your heart to write to me again--who
+knows?--I shall say at once that the said faults cannot be lost, must
+be _somewhere_, and shall be faithfully brought you back whenever they
+turn up,--as people tell one of missing matters. I am rather exacting,
+myself, with my own gentle audience, and get to say spiteful things
+about them when they are backward in their dues of appreciation--but
+really, _really_--could I be quite sure that anybody as good as--I
+must go on, I suppose, and say--as myself, even, were honestly to feel
+towards me as I do, towards the writer of 'Bertha,' and the 'Drama,'
+and the 'Duchess,' and the 'Page' and--the whole two volumes, I should
+be paid after a fashion, I know.
+
+One thing I can do--pencil, if you like, and annotate, and dissertate
+upon that I love most and least--I think I can do it, that is.
+
+Here an odd memory comes--of a friend who,--volunteering such a
+service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality
+in a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting
+off the beginning three lines with, of course, 'bad, worse,
+worst'--made by a generous mintage of words to meet the sudden run of
+his epithets, 'worser, worserer, worserest' pay off the second terzet
+in full--no 'badder, badderer, badderest' fell to the _Second's_
+allowance, and 'worser' &c. answered the demands of the Third;
+'worster, worsterer, worsterest' supplied the emergency of the Fourth;
+and, bestowing his last 'worserestest and worstestest' on lines 13 and
+14, my friend (slapping his forehead like an emptied strong-box)
+frankly declared himself bankrupt, and honourably incompetent, to
+satisfy the reasonable expectations of the rest of the series!
+
+What an illustration of the law by which opposite ideas suggest
+opposite, and contrary images come together!
+
+See now, how, of that 'Friendship' you offer me (and here Juliet's
+word rises to my lips)--I feel sure once and for ever. I have got
+already, I see, into this little pet-handwriting of mine (not anyone
+else's) which scratches on as if theatrical copyists (ah me!) and
+BRADBURY AND EVANS' READER were not! But you shall get something
+better than this nonsense one day, if you will have patience with
+me--hardly better, though, because this does me real good, gives real
+relief, to write. After all, you know nothing, next to nothing of me,
+and that stops me. Spring is to come, however!
+
+If you hate writing to me as I hate writing to nearly everybody, I
+pray you never write--if you do, as you say, care for anything I have
+done. I will simply assure you, that meaning to begin work in deep
+earnest, _begin_ without affectation, God knows,--I do not know what
+will help me more than hearing from you,--and therefore, if you do not
+so very much hate it, I know I _shall_ hear from you--and very little
+more about your 'tiring me.'
+
+                                      Ever yours faithfully,
+
+                                           ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            50 Walpole Street: Feb. 3, 1845.
+[Transcriber's Note: So in original. Should be "Wimpole Street."]
+
+Why how could I hate to write to you, dear Mr. Browning? Could you
+believe in such a thing? If nobody likes writing to everybody (except
+such professional letter writers as you and I are _not_), yet
+everybody likes writing to somebody, and it would be strange and
+contradictory if I were not always delighted both to hear from _you_
+and to write to _you_, this talking upon paper being as good a social
+pleasure as another, when our means are somewhat straitened. As for
+me, I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people
+shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls. Not
+that I write to many in the way of regular correspondence, as our
+friend Mr. Horne predicates of me in his romances (which is mere
+romancing!), but that there are a few who will write and be written to
+by me without a sense of injury. Dear Miss Mitford, for instance. You
+do not know her, I think, personally, although she was the first to
+tell me (when I was very ill and insensible to all the glories of the
+world except poetry), of the grand scene in 'Pippa Passes.' _She_ has
+filled a large drawer in this room with delightful letters, heart-warm
+and soul-warm, ... driftings of nature (if sunshine could drift like
+snow), and which, if they should ever fall the way of all writing,
+into print, would assume the folio shape as a matter of course, and
+take rank on the lowest shelf of libraries, with Benedictine editions
+of the Fathers, [Greek: k.t.l.]. I write this to you to show how I can
+have pleasure in letters, and never think them too long, nor too
+frequent, nor too illegible from being written in little 'pet hands.'
+I can read any MS. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will
+only promise to treat me _en bon camarade_, without reference to the
+conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen,' taking no thought for
+your sentences (nor for mine), nor for your blots (nor for mine), nor
+for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling (nor
+for mine), and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you
+are in the mind for it, and with as little ceremony and less
+legibility than you would think it necessary to employ towards your
+printer--why, _then_, I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to
+rejoice in being 'articled' as your correspondent. Only _don't_ let us
+have any constraint, any ceremony! _Don't_ be civil to me when you
+feel rude,--nor loquacious when you incline to silence,--nor yielding
+in the manners when you are perverse in the mind. See how out of the
+world I am! Suffer me to profit by it in almost the only profitable
+circumstance, and let us rest from the bowing and the courtesying,
+you and I, on each side. You will find me an honest man on the whole,
+if rather hasty and prejudging, which is a different thing from
+prejudice at the worst. And we have great sympathies in common, and I
+am inclined to look up to you in many things, and to learn as much of
+everything as you will teach me. On the other hand you must prepare
+yourself to forbear and to forgive--will you? While I throw off the
+ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.
+
+Is it true, as you say, that I 'know so "little"' of you? And is it
+true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake
+of his real nature, ... that in the minor sense, man is not made in
+the image of God? It is _not_ true, to my mind--and therefore it is
+not true that I know little of you, except in as far as it is true
+(which I believe) that your greatest works are to come. Need I assure
+you that I shall always hear with the deepest interest every word you
+will say to me of what you are doing or about to do? I hear of the
+'old room' and the '"Bells" lying about,' with an interest which you
+may guess at, perhaps. And when you tell me besides, of _my poems
+being there_, and of your caring for them so much beyond the tide-mark
+of my hopes, the pleasure rounds itself into a charm, and prevents its
+own expression. Overjoyed I am with this cordial sympathy--but it is
+better, I feel, to try to justify it by future work than to thank you
+for it now. I think--if I may dare to name myself with you in the
+poetic relation--that we both have high views of the Art we follow,
+and stedfast purpose in the pursuit of it, and that we should not,
+either of _us_, be likely to be thrown from the course, by the casting
+of any Atalanta-ball of speedy popularity. But I do not know, I cannot
+guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard criticism
+and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too often
+exposed to--or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the
+exercise of Art the filling joy of your life. Not that praise must not
+always, of necessity, be delightful to the artist, but that it may be
+redundant to his content. Do you think so? or not? It appears to me
+that poets who, like Keats, are highly susceptible to criticism, must
+be jealous, in their own persons, of the future honour of their works.
+Because, if a work is worthy, honour must follow it, though the worker
+should not live to see that following overtaking. Now, is it not
+enough that the work be honoured--enough I mean, for the worker? And
+is it not enough to keep down a poet's ordinary wearing anxieties, to
+think, that if his work be worthy it will have honour, and, if not,
+that 'Sparta must have nobler sons than he'? I am writing nothing
+applicable, I see, to anything in question, but when one falls into a
+favourite train of thought, one indulges oneself in thinking on. I
+began in thinking and wondering what sort of artistic constitution you
+had, being determined, as you may observe (with a sarcastic smile at
+the impertinence), to set about knowing as much as possible of you
+immediately. Then you spoke of your 'gentle audience' (_you began_),
+and I, who know that you have not one but many enthusiastic
+admirers--the 'fit and few' in the intense meaning--yet not the
+_diffused_ fame which will come to you presently, wrote on, down the
+margin of the subject, till I parted from it altogether. But, after
+all, we are on the proper matter of sympathy. And after all, and after
+all that has been said and mused upon the 'natural ills,' the anxiety,
+and wearing out experienced by the true artist,--is not the _good_
+immeasurably greater than the _evil_? Is it not great good, and great
+joy? For my part, I wonder sometimes--I surprise myself wondering--how
+without such an object and purpose of life, people find it worth while
+to live at all. And, for happiness--why, my only idea of happiness, as
+far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, (but I have been
+straightened in some respects and in comparison with the majority of
+livers!) lies deep in poetry and its associations. And then, the
+escape from pangs of heart and bodily weakness--when you throw off
+_yourself_--what you feel to be _yourself_--into another atmosphere
+and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new,
+and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the
+sun! Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of
+depreciating and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible,
+certainly--but reasonable, not at all--and grateful, less than
+anything!
+
+My faults, my faults--Shall I help you? Ah--you see them too well, I
+fear. And do you know that _I_ also have something of your feeling
+about 'being about to _begin_,' or I should dare to praise you for
+having it. But in you, it is different--it is, in you, a virtue. When
+Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io,
+and declared at last that he was [Greek: medepo en prooimiois],[1]
+poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the
+'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may
+well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our
+hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you _will_ do
+what is greater. It is my faith for you.
+
+And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to
+promise and vow' for you,--and whether you have held true to early
+tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and
+what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!--(if it
+isn't proved already).
+
+But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if
+I ever write to you again--I mean, if you wish it--it may be in the
+other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of
+Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,--you
+might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet--which I guessed at
+once--and of course--
+
+    I have no joy in this contract to-day!
+    It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.
+
+                                      Ever faithfully yours,
+
+                                           ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. _Prom._ 741).]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Hatcham, Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a
+matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is
+hard to prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance,
+used certain words and ways to a mother or a father _could_, even if
+by the devil's help he _would_, reproduce or mimic them with any
+effect to anybody else that was to be won over--and so, if 'I love
+you' were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose,
+be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last
+night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain
+ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the
+fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for _that_ we
+could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes
+the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear
+Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I _said_ (to use a mild word)
+'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke
+of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was
+this--that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and
+syllables with a masoretic _other_ sound and sense, make my 'dear'
+something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a
+thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came
+of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c., which I
+should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter
+with its unmistakable eyes. _Now_, what you say of the 'bowing,' and
+convention that is to be, and _tant de facons_ that are not to be,
+helps me once and for ever--for have I not a right to say simply that,
+for reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might
+if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most
+likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me
+know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you
+care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea,
+nor a troop of true lovers!--Are not their fates written? there! Don't
+you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with
+a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But
+then--what I have printed gives _no_ knowledge of me--it evidences
+abilities of various kinds, if you will--and a dramatic sympathy with
+certain modifications of passion ... _that_ I think--But I never have
+begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end--'R.B. a
+poem'--and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you
+have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it
+is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so--these scenes and
+song-scraps _are_ such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which
+lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have
+watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery,
+bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a
+moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind
+wall between it and you; and, no doubt, _then_, precisely, does the
+poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim
+the wick--for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard--(this
+head of mine knows better)--but the work has been _inside_, and not
+when at stated times I held up my light to you--and, that there is no
+self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by
+opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of
+wood, I _could_ make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the
+whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the
+same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have
+done what was published, and half done what may never be, I say with
+some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I _hope_ sometimes,
+though phrenologists will have it that I _cannot_, and am doing
+better with this darling 'Luria'--so safe in my head, and a tiny slip
+of paper I cover with my thumb!
+
+Then you inquire about my 'sensitiveness to criticism,' and I shall be
+glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a
+course you might else not understand. I shall live always--that is for
+me--I am living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a
+thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief
+that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things
+considered--that is for _me_, and, so being, the not being listened to
+by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of
+course I must, if for merely scientific purposes, know all about this
+1845, its ways and doings, and something I do know, as that for a
+dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might
+demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market,--and that for a
+dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many
+plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought
+to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring
+me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold currency, seeing the other
+traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won't pay
+me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please,
+say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties 'decamp to the crows,' in
+Greek phrase, and _yet_ go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of
+rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens
+I should have been able to buy the last number of _Punch_, and go
+through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind
+clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they
+had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of
+this and the other 'favourable critique,' and--at least so folks
+hold--I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds,
+whereas--but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in
+the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper,
+'It's nothing to _you_, critics, hucksters, all of you, if I _have_
+this garden and this conscience--I might go die at Rome, or take to
+gin and the newspaper, for what _you_ would care!' So I don't quite
+lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have
+met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly
+and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty
+praisers--and no bad reviewers--I am quite content with my share.
+No--what I laughed at in my 'gentle audience' is a sad trick the real
+admirers have of admiring at the wrong place--enough to make an
+apostle swear. _That_ does make me savage--_never_ the other kind of
+people; why, think now--take your own 'Drama of Exile' and let _me_
+send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your
+door to-day and after--of whom the first five are the Postman, the
+seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders,
+and the Tax-gatherer--will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa's
+assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on,
+this 'Drama'--and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair
+English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the
+general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to
+affirm. But then--once again, I get these people together and give
+them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the
+Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats,
+one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red
+collar,--that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into
+vogue, and so on with the rest--and won't you just wish for your
+_Spectators_ and _Observers_ and Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Hebdomadal
+_Mercuries_ back again! You see the inference--I do sincerely esteem
+it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so
+well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to
+'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite
+inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the
+_Quarterly_ and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the
+world--out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!
+
+Out comes the sun, in comes the _Times_ and eleven strikes (it _does_)
+already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that
+this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should
+'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt--nor will you
+henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy
+writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me
+for yours ever faithfully,
+
+                                                R. BROWNING.
+
+I don't dare--yet I will--ask _can_ you read this? Because I _could_
+write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as
+you do now!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                       50 Wimpole Street, February 17, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Browning,--To begin with the end (which is only
+characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your
+handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font.
+If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I
+couldn't do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle.
+Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the
+making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons
+... Mr. Landor, for instance, who writes as if he had the sky for a
+copybook and dotted his _i_'s in proportion. People who do such things
+should wear gauntlets; yes, and have none to wear; or they wouldn't
+waste their time so. People who write--by profession--shall I
+say?--never should do it, or what will become of them when most of
+their strength retires into their head and heart, (as is the case with
+some of us and may be the case with all) and when they have to write a
+poem twelve times over, as Mr. Kenyon says I should do if I were
+virtuous? Not that I do it. Does anybody do it, I wonder? Do _you_,
+ever? From what you tell me of the trimming of the light, I imagine
+not. And besides, one may be laborious as a writer, without copying
+twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a
+moment what three times six is, without 'doing it' on their fingers;
+and in the same way one may work one's verses in one's head quite as
+laboriously as on paper--I maintain it. I consider myself a very
+patient, laborious writer--though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn
+when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were
+netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my
+stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste,
+I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by
+the mind, _will_ draw and concentrate the powers of the mind--and Art,
+you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man--or woman. I
+cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one--though
+one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,--and though all
+are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility--and to
+entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of
+facility. You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like
+Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet
+on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the
+twenty and the three. And also, as you say, the lamp is trimmed behind
+the wall--and the act of utterance is the evidence of foregone study
+still more than it is the occasion to study. The deep interest with
+which I read all that you had the kindness to write to me of yourself,
+you must trust me for, as I find it hard to express it. It is sympathy
+in one way, and interest every way! And now, see! Although you proved
+to me with admirable logic that, for reasons which you know and
+reasons which you don't know, I couldn't possibly know anything about
+you; though that is all true--and proven (which is better than
+true)--I really did understand of you before I was told, exactly what
+you told me. Yes, I did indeed. I felt sure that as a poet you fronted
+the future--and that your chief works, in your own apprehension, were
+to come. Oh--I take no credit of sagacity for it; as I did not long
+ago to my sisters and brothers, when I professed to have knowledge of
+all their friends whom I never saw in my life, by the image coming
+with the name; and threw them into shouts of laughter by giving out
+all the blue eyes and black eyes and hazel eyes and noses Roman and
+Gothic ticketed aright for the Mr. Smiths and Miss Hawkinses,--and hit
+the bull's eye and the true features of the case, ten times out of
+twelve! But _you_ are different. _You_ are to be made out by the
+comparative anatomy system. You have thrown out fragments of _os_ ...
+_sublime_ ... indicative of soul-mammothism--and you live to develop
+your nature,--_if_ you live. That is easy and plain. You have taken a
+great range--from those high faint notes of the mystics which are
+beyond personality ... to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature,
+'gr-r-r- you swine'; and when these are thrown into harmony, as in a
+manner they are in 'Pippa Passes' (which I could find in my heart to
+covet the authorship of, more than any of your works--), the
+combinations of effect must always be striking and noble--and you must
+feel yourself drawn on to such combinations more and more. But I do
+not, you say, know yourself--you. I only know abilities and faculties.
+Well, then, teach me yourself--you. I will not insist on the
+knowledge--and, in fact, you have not written the R.B. poem yet--your
+rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight. I see you only in
+your moon. Do tell me all of yourself that you can and will ... before
+the R.B. poem comes out. And what is 'Luria'? A poem and not a drama?
+I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you
+sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works
+into the great mill of the 'rank, popular' playhouse, to be ground to
+pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one,
+would as soon have 'my soul among lions.' 'There is a fascination in
+it,' says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for
+it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but to distil the dregs of the
+public and baptise oneself in that acrid moisture, where can be the
+temptation? I could swear by Shakespeare, as was once sworn 'by those
+dead at Marathon,' that I do not see where. I love the drama too. I
+look to our old dramatists as to our Kings and princes in poetry. I
+love them through all the deeps of their abominations. But the theatre
+in those days was a better medium between the people and the poet; and
+the press in those days was a less sufficient medium than now. Still,
+the poet suffered by the theatre even then; and the reasons are very
+obvious.
+
+How true--how true ... is all you say about critics. My convictions
+follow you in every word. And I delighted to read your views of the
+poet's right aspect towards criticism--I read them with the most
+complete appreciation and sympathy. I have sometimes thought that it
+would be a curious and instructive process, as illustrative of the
+wisdom and apprehensiveness of critics, if anyone would collect the
+critical soliloquies of every age touching its own literature, (as far
+as such may be extant) and _confer_ them with the literary product of
+the said ages. Professor Wilson has begun something of the kind
+apparently, in his initiatory paper of the last _Blackwood_ number on
+critics, beginning with Dryden--but he seems to have no design in his
+notice--it is a mere critique on the critic. And then, he should have
+begun earlier than Dryden--earlier even than Sir Philip Sydney, who in
+the noble 'Discourse on Poetry,' gives such singular evidence of being
+stone-critic-blind to the gods who moved around him. As far as I can
+remember, he saw even Shakespeare but indifferently. Oh, it was in his
+eyes quite an unillumed age, that period of Elizabeth which _we_ see
+full of suns! and few can see what is close to the eyes though they
+run their heads against it; the denial of contemporary genius is the
+rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest,
+till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown. And here we
+speak of understanding men, such as the Sydneys and the Drydens. Of
+the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better
+than might be expected of their badness, only the fact of their
+_influence_ is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not
+be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the
+world over. But the influence is for to-day, for this hour--not for
+to-morrow and the day after--unless indeed, as you say, the poet do
+himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it. Do you know
+Tennyson?--that is, with a face to face knowledge? I have great
+admiration for him. In execution, he is exquisite,--and, in music, a
+most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs. That such a poet
+should submit blindly to the suggestions of his critics, (I do not say
+that suggestions from without may not be accepted with discrimination
+sometimes, to the benefit of the acceptor), blindly and implicitly to
+the suggestions of his critics, is much as if Babbage were to take my
+opinion and undo his calculating machine by it. Napoleon called poetry
+_science creuse_--which, although he was not scientific in poetry
+himself, is true enough. But anybody is qualified, according to
+everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chymistry
+and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But
+then these are more serious things.
+
+Yes--and it does delight me to hear of your garden full of roses and
+soul full of comforts! You have the right to both--you have the key to
+both. You have written enough to live by, though only beginning to
+write, as you say of yourself. And this reminds me to remind you that
+when I talked of coveting most the authorship of your 'Pippa,' I did
+not mean to call it your finest work (you might reproach me for
+_that_), but just to express a personal feeling. Do you know what it
+is to covet your neighbour's poetry?--not his fame, but his poetry?--I
+dare say not. You are too generous. And, in fact, beauty is beauty,
+and, whether it comes by our own hand or another's, blessed be the
+coming of it! _I_, besides, feel _that_. And yet--and yet, I have been
+aware of a feeling within me which has spoken two or three times to
+the effect of a wish, that I had been visited with the vision of
+'Pippa,' before you--and _confiteor tibi_--I confess the baseness of
+it. The conception is, to my mind, most exquisite and altogether
+original--and the contrast in the working out of the plan, singularly
+expressive of various faculty.
+
+Is the poem under your thumb, emerging from it? and in what metre? May
+I ask such questions?
+
+And does Mr. Carlyle tell you that he has forbidden all 'singing' to
+this perverse and froward generation, which should work and not sing?
+And have you told Mr. Carlyle that song is work, and also the
+condition of work? I am a devout sitter at his feet--and it is an
+effort to me to think him wrong in anything--and once when he told me
+to write prose and not verse, I fancied that his opinion was I had
+mistaken my calling,--a fancy which in infinite kindness and
+gentleness he stooped immediately to correct. I never shall forget the
+grace of that kindness--but then! For _him_ to have thought ill of
+_me_, would not have been strange--I often think ill of myself, as God
+knows. But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season,
+the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my
+thoughts ever since. I do not know him personally at all. But as his
+disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems,
+and I heard from him as a consequence. 'Dear and noble' he is
+indeed--and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You
+feel it so--do you not? And the 'dear sir' has let him have the
+'letter of Cromwell,' I hope; and satisfied 'the obedient servant.'
+The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the
+upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the
+Romans in the farmyard--and it seems all quite natural that it should
+be so, both to geese and Romans!
+
+But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for
+reasons which I know and for reasons which I don't know. You will let
+me be grateful to you,--will you not? You must, if you will or not.
+And also--I would not wait for more leave--if I could but see your
+desk--as I do your death's heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but
+the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.
+
+                                      Ever faithfully yours,
+
+                                           ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Wednesday Morning--Spring!
+                             [Post-mark, February 26, 1845.]
+
+Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in
+Spring I shall see you, surely see you--for when did I once fail to
+get whatever I had set my heart upon? As I ask myself sometimes, with
+a strange fear.
+
+I took up this paper to write a great deal--now, I don't think I shall
+write much--'I shall see you,' I say!
+
+That 'Luria' you enquire about, shall be my last play--for it is but a
+play, woe's me! I have one done here, 'A Soul's Tragedy,' as it is
+properly enough called, but _that_ would not do to end with (end I
+will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello's country, and devotes himself
+to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows--all in
+my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my
+Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan,
+good true fellow, this one), and Domizia the Lady--loosen all these on
+dear foolish (ravishing must his folly be), golden-hearted Luria, all
+these with their worldly-wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways; and, for me,
+the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with these as with
+him,--so there can no good come of keeping this wild company any
+longer, and 'Luria' and the other sadder ruin of one Chiappino--these
+got rid of, I will do as you bid me, and--say first I have some
+Romances and Lyrics, all dramatic, to dispatch, and _then_, I shall
+stoop of a sudden under and out of this dancing ring of men and women
+hand in hand, and stand still awhile, should my eyes dazzle, and when
+that's over, they will be gone and you will be there, _pas vrai_? For,
+as I think I told you, I always shiver involuntarily when I look--no,
+glance--at this First Poem of mine to be. '_Now_,' I call it, what,
+upon my soul,--for a solemn matter it is,--what is to be done _now_,
+believed _now_, so far as it has been revealed to me--solemn words,
+truly--and to find myself writing them to any one else! Enough now.
+
+I know Tennyson 'face to face,'--no more than that. I know Carlyle and
+love him--know him so well, that I would have told you he had shaken
+that grand head of his at 'singing,' so thoroughly does he love and
+live by it. When I last saw him, a fortnight ago, he turned, from I
+don't know what other talk, quite abruptly on me with, 'Did you never
+try to write a _Song_? Of all things in the world, _that_ I should be
+proudest to do.' Then came his definition of a song--then, with an
+appealing look to Mrs. C., 'I always say that some day in _spite of
+nature and my stars_, I shall burst into a song' (he is not
+mechanically 'musical,' he meant, and the music is the poetry, he
+holds, and should enwrap the thought as Donne says 'an amber-drop
+enwraps a bee'), and then he began to recite an old Scotch song,
+stopping at the first rude couplet, 'The beginning words are merely to
+set the tune, they tell me'--and then again at the couplet about--or,
+to the effect that--'give me' (but in broad Scotch) 'give me but my
+lass, I care not for my cogie.' '_He says_,' quoth Carlyle
+magisterially, 'that if you allow him the love of his lass, you may
+take away all else, even his cogie, his cup or can, and he cares not,'
+just as a professor expounds Lycophron. And just before I left
+England, six months ago, did not I hear him croon, if not certainly
+sing, 'Charlie is my darling' ('my _darling_' with an adoring
+emphasis), and then he stood back, as it were, from the song, to look
+at it better, and said 'How must that notion of ideal wondrous
+perfection have impressed itself in this old Jacobite's "young
+Cavalier"--("They go to save their land, and the _young
+Cavalier_!!")--when I who care nothing about such a rag of a man,
+cannot but feel as he felt, in speaking his words after him!' After
+saying which, he would be sure to counsel everybody to get their heads
+clear of all singing! Don't let me forget to clap hands, we got the
+letter, dearly bought as it was by the 'Dear Sirs,' &c., and
+insignificant scrap as it proved, but still it is got, to my
+encouragement in diplomacy.
+
+Who told you of my sculls and spider webs--Horne? Last year I petted
+extraordinarily a fine fellow, (a _garden_ spider--there was the
+singularity,--the thin clever-even-for-a-spider-sort, and they are
+_so_ 'spirited and sly,' all of them--this kind makes a long cone of
+web, with a square chamber of vantage at the end, and there he sits
+loosely and looks about), a great fellow that housed himself, with
+real gusto, in the jaws of a great scull, whence he watched me as I
+wrote, and I remember speaking to Horne about his good points.
+Phrenologists look gravely at that great scull, by the way, and hope,
+in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end. He looks
+quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind. I have no little
+insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with
+a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for
+instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits
+obliged to face each other for ever,--prints put together in
+portfolios. My Polidoro's perfect Andromeda along with 'Boors
+Carousing,' by Ostade,--where I found her,--my own father's doing, or
+I would say more.
+
+And when I have said I like 'Pippa' better than anything else I have
+done yet, I shall have answered all you bade me. And now may _I_
+begin questioning? No,--for it is all a pure delight to me, so that
+you do but write. I never was without good, kind, generous friends and
+lovers, so they say--so they were and are,--perhaps they came at the
+wrong time--I never wanted them--though that makes no difference in my
+gratitude I trust,--but I know myself--surely--and always have done
+so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a
+boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, _his_ marginal note that
+'the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in
+a sane human being.' So I never deceived myself much, nor called my
+feelings for people other than they were. And who has a right to say,
+if I have not, that I had, but I said that, supernatural or no. Pray
+tell me, too, of your present doings and projects, and never write
+yourself 'grateful' to me, who _am_ grateful, very grateful to
+you,--for none of your words but I take in earnest--and tell me if
+Spring _be not_ coming, come, and I will take to writing the gravest
+of letters, because this beginning is for gladness' sake, like
+Carlyle's song couplet. My head aches a little to-day too, and, as
+poor dear Kirke White said to the moon, from his heap of mathematical
+papers,
+
+    'I throw aside the learned sheet;
+    I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so--mildly sweet.'
+
+Out on the foolish phrase, but there's hard rhyming without it.
+
+                                      Ever yours faithfully,
+
+                                           ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                           50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.
+
+Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new
+'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets.
+To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow--it feels
+as cold underfoot--and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the
+turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart,
+and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. _That_ is
+my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the _new style_! A little
+later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from
+which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at
+all. How happy you are, to be able to listen to the 'birds' without
+the commentary of the east wind, which, like other commentaries,
+spoils the music. And how happy I am to listen to you, when you write
+such kind open-hearted letters to me! I am delighted to hear all you
+say to me of yourself, and 'Luria,' and the spider, and to do him no
+dishonour in the association, of the great teacher of the age,
+Carlyle, who is also yours and mine. He fills the office of a
+poet--does he not?--by analysing humanity back into its elements, to
+the destruction of the conventions of the hour. That is--strictly
+speaking--the office of the poet, is it not?--and he discharges it
+fully, and with a wider intelligibility perhaps as far as the
+contemporary period is concerned, than if he did forthwith 'burst into
+a song.'
+
+But how I do wander!--I meant to say, and I will call myself back to
+say, that spring will really come some day I hope and believe, and the
+warm settled weather with it, and that then I shall be probably fitter
+for certain pleasures than I can appear even to myself now.
+
+And, in the meantime, I seem to see 'Luria' instead of you; I have
+visions and dream dreams. And the 'Soul's Tragedy,' which sounds to me
+like the step of a ghost of an old Drama! and you are not to think
+that I blaspheme the Drama, dear Mr. Browning; or that I ever thought
+of exhorting you to give up the 'solemn robes' and tread of the
+buskin. It is the theatre which vulgarises these things; the modern
+theatre in which we see no altar! where the thymele is replaced by the
+caprice of a popular actor. And also, I have a fancy that your great
+dramatic power would work more clearly and audibly in the less
+definite mould--but you ride your own faculty as Oceanus did his
+sea-horse, 'directing it by your will'; and woe to the impertinence,
+which would dare to say 'turn this way' or 'turn from that way'--it
+should not be _my_ impertinence. Do not think I blaspheme the Drama. I
+have gone through 'all such reading as should never be read' (that is,
+by women!), through my love of it on the contrary. And the dramatic
+faculty is strong in you--and therefore, as 'I speak unto a wise man,
+judge what I say.'
+
+For myself and my own doings, you shall hear directly what I have been
+doing, and what I am about to do. Some years ago, as perhaps you may
+have heard, (but I hope not, for the fewer who hear of it the
+better)--some years ago, I translated or rather _undid_ into English,
+the 'Prometheus' of AEschylus. To speak of this production moderately
+(not modestly), it is the most miserable of all miserable versions of
+the class. It was completed (in the first place) in thirteen days--the
+iambics thrown into blank verse, the lyrics into rhymed octosyllabics
+and the like,--and the whole together as cold as Caucasus, and as flat
+as the nearest plain. To account for this, the haste may be something;
+but if my mind had been properly awakened at the time, I might have
+made still more haste and done it better. Well,--the comfort is, that
+the little book was unadvertised and unknown, and that most of the
+copies (through my entreaty of my father) are shut up in the wardrobe
+of his bedroom. If ever I get well I shall show my joy by making a
+bonfire of them. In the meantime, the recollection of this sin of mine
+has been my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot
+on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst
+not say I did it'--I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away
+the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an
+honest straightforward proof of repentance--was it not? and I have
+completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If
+AEschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little
+breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed according
+to his claims, but in proportion to my faculty. Whether I shall ever
+publish or not (remember) remains to be considered--that is a
+different side of the subject. If I do, it _may_ be in a
+magazine--or--but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head
+to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,--not a long
+poem, but a monologue of AEschylus as he sate a blind exile on the
+flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before
+the eagle cracked his great massy skull with a stone.
+
+But my chief _intention_ just now is the writing of a sort of
+novel-poem--a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,'
+running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into
+drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so,
+meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and
+speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my
+intention. It is not mature enough yet to be called a plan. I am
+waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one,
+and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties
+with them in the treatment.
+
+Who told me of your skulls and spiders? Why, couldn't I know it
+without being told? Did Cornelius Agrippa know nothing without being
+told? Mr. Horne never spoke it to my ears--(I never saw him face to
+face in my life, although we have corresponded for long and long), and
+he never wrote it to my eyes. Perhaps he does not know that I know it.
+Well, then! if I were to say that _I heard it from you yourself_, how
+would you answer? _And it was so._ Why, are you not aware that these
+are the days of mesmerism and clairvoyance? Are you an infidel? I have
+believed in your skulls for the last year, for my part.
+
+And I have some sympathy in your habit of feeling for chairs and
+tables. I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little
+clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly
+because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I
+was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the
+pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses
+written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them,
+but from pure gratitude. Other books I used to treat in a like
+manner--and to talk to the trees and the flowers, was a natural
+inclination--but between me and that time, the cypresses grow thick
+and dark.
+
+Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they _do_, are
+they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them _un_fulfilled? Oh,
+this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost
+believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of
+the window--at least, for me.
+
+Of course you are _self-conscious_--How could you be a poet otherwise?
+Tell me.
+
+                                      Ever faithfully yours,
+
+                                           E.B.B.
+
+And was the little book written with Mr. Mill, pure metaphysics, or
+what?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].
+
+Dear Miss Barrett,--I seem to find of a sudden--surely I knew
+before--anyhow, I _do_ find now, that with the octaves on octaves of
+quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp
+with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you
+touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this
+morning, 'just escaping' &c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as
+they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do!
+See now, this sad feeling is so strange to me, that I must write it
+out, _must_, and you might give me great, the greatest pleasure for
+years and yet find me as passive as a stone used to wine libations,
+and as ready in expressing my sense of them, but when I am pained, I
+find the old theory of the uselessness of communicating the
+circumstances of it, singularly untenable. I have been 'spoiled' in
+this world--to such an extent, indeed, that I often _reason_ out--make
+clear to myself--that I might very properly, so far as myself am
+concerned, take any step that would peril the whole of my future
+happiness--because the past is gained, secure, and on record; and,
+though not another of the old days should dawn on me, I shall not have
+lost my life, no! Out of all which you are--please--to make a sort of
+sense, if you can, so as to express that I have been deeply struck to
+find a new real unmistakable sorrow along with these as real but not
+so new joys you have given me. How strangely this connects itself in
+my mind with another subject in your note! I looked at that
+translation for a minute, not longer, years ago, knowing nothing about
+it or you, and I _only_ looked to see what rendering a passage had
+received that was often in my thoughts.[1] I forget your version (it
+was not _yours_, my _'yours' then_; I mean I had no extraordinary
+interest about it), but the original makes Prometheus (telling over
+his bestowments towards human happiness) say, as something [Greek:
+peraitero tonde], that he stopped mortals [Greek: me proderkesthai
+moron--to poion euron], asks the Chorus, [Greek: tesde pharmakon
+nosou]? Whereto he replies, [Greek: tuphlas en autois elpidas
+katokisa] (what you hear men dissertate upon by the hour, as proving
+the immortality of the soul apart from revelation, undying yearnings,
+restless longings, instinctive desires which, unless to be eventually
+indulged, it were cruel to plant in us, &c. &c.). But, [Greek: meg'
+ophelema tout' edoreso brotois]! concludes the chorus, like a sigh
+from the admitted Eleusinian AEschylus was! You cannot think how this
+foolish circumstance struck me this evening, so I thought I would e'en
+tell you at once and be done with it. Are you not my dear friend
+already, and shall I not use you? And pray you not to 'lean out of the
+window' when my own foot is only on the stair; do wait a little for
+
+                                          Yours _ever_,
+
+                                               R.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: The following is the version of the passage in Mrs.
+Browning's later translation of the 'Prometheus' (II. 247-251 of the
+original):
+
+_Prom._              I did restrain besides
+             My mortals from premeditating death.
+
+_Cho._ How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?
+
+_Prom._ I set blind hopes to inhabit in their house.
+
+_Cho._ By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                              March 5, 1845.
+
+But I did not mean to strike a 'tragic chord'; indeed I did not!
+Sometimes one's melancholy will be uppermost and sometimes one's
+mirth,--the world goes round, you know--and I suppose that in that
+letter of mine the melancholy took the turn. As to 'escaping with my
+life,' it was just a phrase--at least it did not signify more than
+that the sense of mortality, and discomfort of it, is peculiarly
+strong with me when east winds are blowing and waters freezing. For
+the rest, I am _essentially better_, and have been for several
+winters; and I feel as if it were intended for me to live and not die,
+and I am reconciled to the feeling. Yes! I am satisfied to 'take up'
+with the blind hopes again, and have them in the house with me, for
+all that I sit by the window. By the way, did the chorus utter scorn
+in the [Greek: meg' ophelema]. I think not. It is well to fly towards
+the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of
+wings against the windowpanes, is it not?
+
+There is an obscurer passage, on which I covet your thoughts, where
+Prometheus, after the sublime declaration that, with a full knowledge
+of the penalty reserved for him, he had sinned of free will and
+choice--goes on to say--or to seem to say--that he had _not_, however,
+foreseen the extent and detail of the torment, the skiey rocks, and
+the friendless desolation. See v. 275. The intention of the poet
+might have been to magnify to his audience the torment of the
+martyrdom--but the heroism of the martyr diminishes in proportion--and
+there appears to be a contradiction, and oversight. Or is my view
+wrong? Tell me. And tell me too, if AEschylus not the divinest of all
+the divine Greek souls? People say after Quintilian, that he is savage
+and rude; a sort of poetic Orson, with his locks all wild. But I will
+not hear it of my master! He is strong as Zeus is--and not as a
+boxer--and tender as Power itself, which always is tenderest.
+
+But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not
+to think--whatever I may have written or implied--that I lean either
+to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through
+darkness instead of light, and speaks of it wailingly. Now, may God
+forbid that it should be so with me. I am not desponding by nature,
+and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily
+seclusion, I come out with two learnt lessons (as I sometimes say and
+oftener feel),--the wisdom of cheerfulness--and the duty of social
+intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in
+society; it has been a wholesome and not unnatural reaction. And
+altogether, I may say that the earth looks the brighter to me in
+proportion to my own deprivations. The laburnum trees and rose trees
+are plucked up by the roots--but the sunshine is in their places, and
+the root of the sunshine is above the storms. What we call Life is a
+condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and
+wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these
+faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.
+
+And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to _happiness_, and I
+feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.
+Still, it is obvious too that you have been spared, up to this time,
+the great natural afflictions, against which we are nearly all called,
+sooner or later, to struggle and wrestle--or your step would not be
+'on the stair' quite so lightly. And so, we turn to you, dear Mr.
+Browning, for comfort and gentle spiriting! Remember that as you owe
+your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. And I
+thank you for some of it already.
+
+Also, writing as from friend to friend--as you say rightly that we
+are--I ought to confess that of one class of griefs (which has been
+called too the bitterest), I know as little as you. The cruelty of the
+world, and the treason of it--the unworthiness of the dearest; of
+these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal
+experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions,
+and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the
+moralists. People have been kind to _me_, even without understanding
+me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:--nay, have not the
+very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as
+sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world,
+though I am not of it, as you see. And I have the cream of it in your
+friendship, and a little more, and I do not envy much the milkers of
+the cows.
+
+How kind you are!--how kindly and gently you speak to me! Some things
+you say are very touching, and some, surprising; and although I am
+aware that you unconsciously exaggerate what I can be to you, yet it
+is delightful to be broad awake and think of you as my friend.
+
+May God bless you!
+
+                                           Faithfully yours,
+
+                                               ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 12, 1845.]
+
+Your letter made me so happy, dear Miss Barrett, that I have kept
+quiet this while; is it too great a shame if I begin to want more
+good news of you, and to say so? Because there has been a bitter wind
+ever since. Will you grant me a great favour? Always when you write,
+though about your own works, not Greek plays merely, put me in,
+_always_, a little official bulletin-line that shall say 'I am better'
+or 'still better,' will you? That is done, then--and now, what do I
+wish to tell you first? The poem you propose to make, for the times;
+the fearless fresh living work you describe, is the _only_ Poem to be
+undertaken now by you or anyone that _is_ a Poet at all; the only
+reality, only effective piece of service to be rendered God and man;
+it is what I have been all my life intending to do, and now shall be
+much, much nearer doing, since you will along with me. And you _can_
+do it, I know and am sure--so sure, that I could find in my heart to
+be jealous of your stopping in the way even to translate the
+Prometheus; though the accompanying monologue will make amends too. Or
+shall I set you a task I meant for myself once upon a time?--which,
+oh, how you would fulfil! Restore the Prometheus [Greek: purphoros] as
+Shelley did the [Greek: Lyomenos]; when I say 'restore,' I know, or
+very much fear, that the [Greek: purphoros] was the same with the
+[Greek: purkaeus] which, by a fragment, we sorrowfully ascertain to
+have been a Satyric Drama; but surely the capabilities of the subject
+are much greater than in this, we now wonder at; nay, they include all
+those of this last--for just see how magnificently the story unrolls
+itself. The beginning of Jupiter's dynasty, the calm in Heaven after
+the storm, the ascending--(stop, I will get the book and give the
+words), [Greek: opos tachista ton patroon eis thronon kathezet',
+euthus daimosin nemei gera alloisin alla--k.t.l.],[1] all the while
+Prometheus being the first among the first in honour, as [Greek:
+kaitoi theoisi tois neois toutois gera tis allos, e 'go, pantelos
+diorise]?[2] then the one black hand-cloudlet storming the joyous
+blue and gold everywhere, [Greek: broton de ton talaiporon logon ouk
+eschen oudena],[3] and the design of Zeus to blot out the whole race,
+and plant a new one. And Prometheus with his grand solitary [Greek:
+ego d' etolmesa],[4] and his saving them, as the _first_ good, from
+annihilation. Then comes the darkening brow of Zeus, and estrangement
+from the benign circle of grateful gods, and the dissuasion of old
+confederates, and all the Right that one may fancy in Might, the
+strongest reasons [Greek: pauesthai tropou philanthropou][5] coming
+from the own mind of the Titan, if you will, and all the while he
+shall be proceeding steadily in the alleviation of the sufferings of
+mortals whom, [Greek: nepious ontas to prin, ennous kai phrenon
+epebolous etheke],[6] while still, in proportion, shall the doom he is
+about to draw on himself, manifest itself more and more distinctly,
+till at the last, he shall achieve the salvation of man, body (by the
+gift of fire) and soul (by even those [Greek: tuphlai elpides],[7]
+hopes of immortality), and so having rendered him utterly, according
+to the mythos here, _independent_ of Jove--for observe, Prometheus in
+the play never talks of helping mortals more, of fearing for them
+more, of even benefiting them more by his sufferings. The rest is
+between Jove and himself; he will reveal the master-secret to Jove
+when he shall have released him, &c. There is no stipulation that the
+gifts to mortals shall be continued; indeed, by the fact that it is
+Prometheus who hangs on Caucasus while 'the ephemerals possess fire,'
+one sees that somehow mysteriously _they_ are past Jove's harming now.
+Well, this wholly achieved, the price is as wholly accepted, and off
+into the darkness passes in calm triumphant grandeur the Titan, with
+Strength and Violence, and Vulcan's silent and downcast eyes, and then
+the gold clouds and renewed flushings of felicity shut up the scene
+again, with Might in his old throne again, yet with a new element of
+mistrust, and conscious shame, and fear, that writes significantly
+enough above all the glory and rejoicing that all is not as it was,
+nor will ever be. Such might be the framework of your Drama, just what
+cannot help striking one at first glance, and would not such a Drama
+go well before your translation? Do think of this and tell me--it
+nearly writes itself. You see, I meant the [Greek: meg' ophelema][8]
+to be a deep great truth; if there were no life beyond this, I think
+the hope in one would be an incalculable blessing _for_ this life,
+which is melancholy for one like AEschylus to feel, if he could _only_
+hope, because the argument as to the ulterior good of those hopes is
+cut clean away, and what had he left?
+
+I do not find it take away from my feeling of the magnanimity of
+Prometheus that he should, in truth, complain (as he does from
+beginning to end) of what he finds himself suffering. He could have
+prevented all, and can stop it now--of that he never thinks for a
+moment. That was the old Greek way--they never let an antagonistic
+passion neutralise the other which was to influence the man to his
+praise or blame. A Greek hero fears exceedingly and battles it out,
+cries out when he is wounded and fights on, does not say his love or
+hate makes him see no danger or feel no pain. AEschylus from first word
+to last ([Greek: idesthe me, oia pascho][9] to [Greek: esoras me, hos
+ekdika pascho][10]) insists on the unmitigated reality of the
+punishment which only the sun, and divine ether, and the godhead of
+his mother can comprehend; still, still that is only what I suppose
+AEschylus to have done--in your poem you shall make Prometheus our way.
+
+And now enough of Greek, which I am fast forgetting (for I never look
+at books I loved once)--it was your mention of the translation that
+brought out the old fast fading outlines of the Poem in my brain--the
+Greek poem, that is. You think--for I must get to _you_--that I
+'unconsciously exaggerate what you are to me.' Now, you don't know
+what _that_ is, nor can I very well tell you, because the language
+with which I talk to myself of these matters is spiritual Attic, and
+'loves contractions,' as grammarians say; but I read it myself, and
+well know what it means, that's why I told you I was self-conscious--I
+meant that I never yet mistook my own feelings, one for
+another--there! Of what use is talking? Only do you stay here with me
+in the 'House' these few short years. Do you think I shall see you in
+two months, three months? I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to
+like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated
+it--have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by
+foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true
+time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I
+have done most of what is to be done, _any_ lodge in a garden of
+cucumbers for me! I don't even care about reading now--the world, and
+pictures of it, rather than writings about the world! But you must
+read books in order to get words and forms for 'the public' if you
+_write_, and _that_ you needs must do, if you fear God. I have no
+pleasure in writing myself--none, in the mere act--though all pleasure
+in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real
+best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a
+poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other! But I think
+you like the operation of writing as I should like that of painting or
+making music, do you not? After all, there is a great delight in the
+heart of the thing; and use and forethought have made me ready at all
+times to set to work--but--I don't know why--my heart sinks whenever I
+open this desk, and rises when I shut it. Yet but for what I have
+written you would never have heard of me--and _through_ what you have
+written, not properly _for_ it, I love and wish you well! Now, will
+you remember what I began my letter by saying--how you have promised
+to let me know if my wishing takes effect, and if you still continue
+better? And not even ... (since we are learned in magnanimity) don't
+even tell me that or anything else, if it teases you,--but wait your
+own good time, and know me for ... if these words were but my own, and
+fresh-minted for this moment's use!...
+
+                                      Yours ever faithfully,
+
+                                           R. BROWNING.
+
+[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Prometheus_, 228ff.:
+
+                                'When at first
+    He filled his father's throne, he instantly
+    Made various gifts of glory to the gods.']
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ib._ 439, 440:
+
+    'For see--their honours to these new-made gods,
+    What other gave but I?']
+
+[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 231, 232:
+
+                 'Alone of men,
+    Of miserable men, he took no count.']
+
+[Footnote 4: _Ib._ 235: 'But I dared it.']
+
+[Footnote 5: _Ib._ 11: 'Leave off his old trick of loving man.']
+
+[Footnote 6: _Ib._ 443, 444:
+
+                   'Being fools before,
+    I made them wise and true in aim of soul.']
+
+[Footnote 7: _Ib._ 250: 'Blind hopes.']
+
+[Footnote 8: _Ib._ 251: 'A great benefit.']
+
+[Footnote 9: _Ib._ 92: 'Behold what I suffer.']
+
+[Footnote 10: _Ib._ 1093: 'Dost see how I suffer this wrong?']
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                          50 Wimpole Street: March 20, 1845.
+
+Whenever I delay to write to you, dear Mr. Browning, it is not, be
+sure, that I take my 'own good time,' but submit to my own bad time.
+It was kind of you to wish to know how I was, and not unkind of me to
+suspend my answer to your question--for indeed I have not been very
+well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather!
+this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be
+well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been
+nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be--I only grow
+weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a
+corner--and then all this must end! April is coming. There will be
+both a May and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps,
+after all, we may. And as to seeing _you_ besides, I observe that you
+distrust me, and that perhaps you penetrate my morbidity and guess how
+when the moment comes to see a living human face to which I am not
+accustomed, I shrink and grow pale in the spirit. Do you? You are
+learned in human nature, and you know the consequences of leading such
+a secluded life as mine--notwithstanding all my fine philosophy about
+social duties and the like--well--if you have such knowledge or if you
+have it not, I cannot say, but I do say that I will indeed see you
+when the warm weather has revived me a little, and put the earth 'to
+rights' again so as to make pleasures of the sort possible. For if you
+think that I shall not _like_ to see you, you are wrong, for all your
+learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first--though I am not, in
+writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that
+have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely--quivering at a
+step and breath.
+
+And what you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts
+of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life
+full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with
+_sorrow_, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I
+was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the
+world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than
+I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the
+country--had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and
+poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards
+the ground like an untrained honeysuckle--and but for _one_, in my own
+house--but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green
+like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in--and
+domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about
+the grass. And so time passed, and passed--and afterwards, when my
+illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all
+done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the
+threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some
+bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life had given me room and
+time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was about to
+leave--that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters
+of the earth were _names_ to me, that I had beheld no great mountain
+or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read
+Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also
+know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live
+on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that
+I labour under signal disadvantages--that I am, in a manner, as a
+_blind poet_? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have
+had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness
+and self-analysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main.
+But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering,
+ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life
+and man, for some....
+
+But all grumbling is a vile thing. We should all thank God for our
+measures of life, and think them enough for each of us. I write so,
+that you may not mistake what I wrote before in relation to society,
+although you do not see from my point of view; and that you may
+understand what I mean fully when I say, that I have lived all my
+chief _joys_, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that
+name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone.
+Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I
+write--it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink
+and breathe,--but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of
+being, passionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition
+surely--not always--but when the wheel goes round and the procession
+is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? oh--it must be so. For the
+rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular
+case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly
+transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of
+power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment;
+and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote
+a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took
+me at the right moment! I have a _seasonable_ humility, I do assure
+you.
+
+How delightful to talk about oneself; but as you 'tempted me and I did
+eat,' I entreat your longsuffering of my sin, and ah! if you would
+but sin back so in turn! You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious
+harmony ... as in the 'si no, si no' of an Italian duet. I want to see
+more of men, and you have seen too much, you say. I am in ignorance,
+and you, in satiety. 'You don't even care about reading now.' Is it
+possible? And I am as 'fresh' about reading, as ever I was--as long as
+I keep out of the shadow of the dictionaries and of theological
+controversies, and the like. Shall I whisper it to you under the
+memory of the last rose of last summer? _I am very fond of romances_;
+yes! and I read them not only as some wise people are known to do, for
+the sake of the eloquence here and the sentiment there, and the
+graphic intermixtures here and there, but for the story! just as
+little children would, sitting on their papa's knee. My childish love
+of a story never wore out with my love of plum cake, and now there is
+not a hole in it. I make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the
+romances that other people are kind enough to write--and woe to the
+miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in
+you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If
+you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself--I give you
+notice,--with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite
+laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,'
+with a sort of deprecating reference to the _descriptions_ in the
+book, just as if I never read a novel--_I!_ I wrote a confession back
+to him which made him shake his head perhaps, and now I confess to
+_you_, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague,
+listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not
+even 'see the better part,' I am so silly.
+
+Ah! you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! _I_, who have just
+escaped with my life, after treading Milton's ground, you would send
+me to AEschylus's. No, _I do not dare_. And besides ... I am inclined
+to think that we want new _forms_, as well as thoughts. The old gods
+are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds, classical
+moulds, as they are so improperly called? If it is a necessity of Art
+to do so, why then those critics are right who hold that Art is
+exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my
+part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be
+the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to _Life_,
+and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these
+conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it
+instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For
+there is poetry _everywhere_; the 'treasure' (see the old fable) lies
+all over the field. And then Christianity is a worthy _myth_, and
+poetically acceptable.
+
+I had much to say to you, or at least something, of the 'blind hopes'
+&c., but am ashamed to take a step into a new sheet. If you mean 'to
+travel,' why, I shall have to miss you. Do you really mean it? How is
+the play going on? and the poem?
+
+May God bless you!
+
+                                       Ever and truly yours,
+
+                                            E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Monday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 31, 1845.]
+
+When you read Don Quixote, my dear romance-reader, do you ever notice
+that flower of an incident of good fellowship where the friendly
+Squire of Him of the Moon, or the Looking glasses, (I forget which)
+passes to Sancho's dry lips, (all under a cork-tree one morning)--a
+plump wine-skin,--and do you admire dear brave Miguel's knowledge of
+thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously
+considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be,
+fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a
+deep musing of an hour's length, or thereabouts, and then ... mark ...
+only _then_, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with ... such a
+piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and
+the Teian (if he wasn't a Byzantine monk, alas!) and our Mr. Kenyon's
+stately self--(since my own especial poet _a moi_, that can do all
+with anybody, only 'sips like a fly,' she says, and so cares not to
+compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)--Well, then ...
+(oh, I must get quick to the sentence's end, and be brief as an
+oracle-explainer!)--the giver is you and the taker is I, and the
+letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and
+the brown study is--how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this
+new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among
+men, that have each and all their friend, so they say (... not that I
+believe all they say--they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,--I once
+was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion
+'Dere Smith,--I calls you "_dere_" ... because you are so in your
+shop!')--and the great sigh is,--there is no deserving nor being
+grateful at all,--and the breaking silence is, and the praise is ...
+ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for
+you--10 strikes by the clock now--tell me if at 10 this morning you
+feel any good from my heart's wishes for you--I would give you all you
+want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that
+should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at
+me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid ...
+and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its
+owner 'travels' next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port
+wine--_Dii meliora piis_, and, among them to
+
+                   Yours every where, and at all times yours
+
+                        R. BROWNING.
+
+I have all to say yet--next letter. R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Night.
+                                [Post-mark, April 16, 1845.]
+
+I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the
+other evening, of Mr. Kenyon--how this wind must hurt you! And
+yesterday I had occasion to go your way--past, that is, Wimpole
+Street, the end of it,--and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave
+from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I
+came to yours,--much least than less, look up when I did come there.
+So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather
+loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of
+certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the 'Athenaeum'
+last night,--one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it--'to such
+little purpose' said my friend--'for he is so inoffensive--now, if one
+were to style _you_ that--' 'Or you'--I said--and so we hugged
+ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the
+papers to-day about Maynooth, and a meeting presided over by Lord
+Mayor Gibbs, and the Reverend Mr. Somebody's speech. And Mrs. Norton
+has gone and book-made at a great rate about the Prince of Wales,
+pleasantly putting off till his time all that used of old to be put
+off till his mother's time;--altogether, I should dearly like to hear
+from you, but not till the wind goes, and sun comes--because I shall
+see Mr. Kenyon next week and get him to tell me some more. By the way,
+do you suppose anybody else looks like him? If you do, the first room
+full of real London people you go among you will fancy to be lighted
+up by a saucer of burning salt and spirits of wine in the back ground.
+
+Monday--last night when I could do nothing else I began to write to
+you, such writing as you have seen--strange! The proper time and
+season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech--when
+ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of
+mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you
+should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and _that_ is
+sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and
+sorrow,--and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little
+stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw
+breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But _you_ are
+the real deep wonder of a creature,--and I sail these paper-boats on
+you rather impudently. But I always mean to be very grave one
+day,--when I am in better spirits and can go _fuori di me_.
+
+And one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that all you gain
+by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done
+rightly in trusting to your innate ideas--or not rightly in
+distrusting them, as the case may be. You get, too, a little ...
+perhaps a considerable, good, in finding the world's accepted _moulds_
+everywhere, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal,--but
+not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After
+this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to
+yourself, that's all. Three scratches with a pen,[1] even with this
+pen,--and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and
+heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I
+have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all.
+
+                              Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett,
+
+                                   R. BROWNING.
+
+[Footnote 1: A rough sketch follows in the original.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Thursday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]
+
+If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not
+this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ...
+in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that
+the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the
+great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind;
+for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once
+to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all
+your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good
+to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was
+better that day--and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so
+long since. And _therefore_, I was logically bound to believe that you
+had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me!
+_That_ was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not
+been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your
+kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism.
+In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything--it
+_doesn't_, you know.
+
+But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and
+_motiving_, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was
+conclusive.
+
+Ah--but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well,
+for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view,
+and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say
+that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and
+act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one
+does--but every life requires a full experience, a various
+experience--and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has
+been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a
+lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the
+results in you from the external influences at work around you, that
+you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not
+_directly_, I know--but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever
+acts upon you, becomes _you_--and whatever you love or hate, whatever
+charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes _you_. Have
+you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel,
+just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his
+soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.
+
+As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but
+what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance--what a
+strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or
+something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin _manners_,
+... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account
+of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying
+that many can look like him or talk like him or _be_ like him. I know
+enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that
+I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true--I am
+getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel
+stronger in myself.
+
+But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music--and for the rest, there
+are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without
+being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! _if you think it worth
+while_!
+
+                                  Ever yours,
+
+                                       ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+And _is it_ nothing to be 'justified to one's self in one's
+resources?' '_That's all_,' indeed! For the 'soul's country' we will
+have it also--and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was
+by the way to see your letter!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Wednesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]
+
+If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the 'full stop' after
+'Morning' just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,--and how
+for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been
+reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it,
+and the folly of it....
+
+By this time you see what you have got in me--You ask me questions,
+'if I like novels,' 'if the "Improvisatore" is not good,' 'if travel
+and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,' and 'what I am
+devising--play or poem,'--and I shall not say I could not answer at
+all manner of lengths--but, let me only begin some good piece of
+writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was
+going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,--in a parallel
+case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the
+meaning--There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode
+of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,--well, you go
+breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last
+the end _must_ come, you feel--and the tangled threads draw to one,
+and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps
+them, the people, wonderfully on,--and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian
+Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,--and a detachment of the party is
+drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop
+behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady's
+uncle, 'in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a
+small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted
+wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the
+characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature'--this ends the
+page,--which you don't turn at once! But when you _do_, in bitterness
+of soul, turn it, you read--'On consideration, I' (Ben, himself)
+'shall keep them for Mr. Colburn's _New Magazine_'--and deeply you
+draw thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty
+sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings--you will ask what it
+means--and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and
+reasoning and all,--that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about
+whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I
+think of another)--
+
+I think I will really write verse to you some day--_this_ day, it is
+quite clear I had better give up trying.
+
+No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as
+Ophelia with her swan's-song,--for it grows too absurd. But remember
+that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and
+much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of
+truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in
+Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old
+belief--that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no
+more--pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante
+even--material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their
+thousands, on the contrary--strange that those great wide black eyes
+should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri,
+with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen
+tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with
+matting over it--as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of
+the soil they are said to spring from,--think of 'Saulle,' and his
+Greek attempts!
+
+I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he
+kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am
+sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the
+quarter to pray for--But surely the weather was a little better last
+week, and you, were you not better? And do you know--but it's all
+self-flattery I believe,--still I cannot help fancying the East wind
+does my head harm too!
+
+                                      Ever yours faithfully,
+
+                                           R. BROWNING.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                   Thursday.
+                                   [Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]
+
+People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the
+darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk
+a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once
+I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an
+argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor _you_ up) for a mere
+mystery. Nor that I can '_see what you have got in you_,' from a mere
+guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not
+because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our
+sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the
+lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see
+_you_ by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and
+because I am willing for you to know _me_ from the beginning, with all
+my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people
+who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you
+were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to _Colburn's
+Magazine_, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a
+perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in
+my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the
+right--why the end would be that _you_ would take to 'running after
+the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ...
+then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my
+desk...! (_Not_ a 'full stop'!.)
+
+Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making
+conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I
+wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps.
+Certainly not to _you_. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards
+to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you
+know,--and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of
+'making conversation' in a letter to _you_--never. Women are said to
+partake of the nature of children--and my brothers call me 'absurdly
+childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest'
+about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's!
+Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as
+you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of
+course. _But_--give me something to vow by--whatever you meant in the
+'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be
+much more wrong--which is a comfortable reflection.
+
+Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown--or you do not leap, ... you
+simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel
+leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for
+the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ...
+before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail,
+rather than in rain--but count me the drops congealed in one
+hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the Duchess'--do let us hear more of
+her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a
+flatterer.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                   Saturday Morning.
+                                   [Post-mark, May 3, 1845.]
+
+Now shall you see what you shall see--here shall be 'sound speech not
+to be reproved,'--for this morning you are to know that the soul of me
+has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool
+nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me
+who only coaxed my good-natured--(really)--body up, after its
+three-hours' night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about,
+incognito and without consequences--and so it shall, all but my
+right-hand which is half-spirit and 'cuts' its poor relation, and
+passes itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly
+active and ready on such occasions--Now I shall tell you all about it,
+first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then
+that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought
+not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an
+uninterrupted clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least
+having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your
+dogs--but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further
+that when I _did_ think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: omoi], let
+me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what
+dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away
+(not from _you_, but from you in your special capacity of being
+_written_-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown
+formidable somehow--though that's not the word,--nor are you the
+person, either,--it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend
+this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of
+than taking it up with talk about books and I don't know what. Write
+what I will, you would read for once, I think--well, then,--what I
+shall write shall be--something on this book, and the other book, and
+my own books, and Mary Hewitt's books, and at the end of it--good bye,
+and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the
+thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast
+with what I suppose I ought to say ... all these things are against
+me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told--and is
+part and parcel of an older--indeed primitive body of mine, which I
+shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot
+do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no
+seeing and getting and enjoying _wholly_--and in this case, moreover,
+you are _you_, and know something about me, if not much, and have read
+Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have
+confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will _subaudire_ when
+I pull out my Mediaeval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (so it was, I
+remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives ... though,
+after all, it was none of Vivian's doing, that,--all the uncle kind or
+man's, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say
+some nonsense (I very vaguely think _what_) about Dante--some
+desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as
+when a painter at his wits' end and hunger's beginning says 'Here
+shall the figure's hand be'--and spots _that_ down, meaning to reach
+it naturally from the other end of his canvas,--and leaving off tired,
+there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and
+rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and
+leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their
+old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,--anyhow
+Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head
+and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine
+passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being
+made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a
+man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just
+under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the
+sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern
+writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of
+those who never did anything else,--and try and make out, for
+yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk
+under,--as you might bid _them_, those tree and flower loving
+creatures, pick out of _our_ North poetry a notion of what _our_
+daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are--'Odorosi
+fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you
+eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Shelley' and so told me years
+ago that in the mountains it was a feast
+
+    When one should find those globes of deep red gold--
+    Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
+    Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
+
+so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer
+over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little
+ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so
+well--'Niursi--sorbi!' No, no,--does not all Naples-bay and half
+Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta
+fete only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in
+their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring
+the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet
+dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it
+out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the
+founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows
+he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never
+enough of telling you--bring all your sympathies, come with loosest
+sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find 'elbow
+room,' oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek,
+Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it,
+but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir
+of its fellow, so that I don't go about now wanting the fixed stars
+before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and--what
+other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all,
+though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without
+it;--perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other
+people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have
+been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late--I
+have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only
+very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my 'Luria' and much
+besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is
+gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight
+to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I
+said 'this must _go_, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss
+Barrett why this and this is not done,'--but I mean to tell you all,
+or more of the truth, because you call me 'flatterer,' so that my eyes
+widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of _you_, at all
+events,--of whom then? _Do_ tell me, because I want to stand with
+you--and am quite in earnest there. And 'The Flight of the Duchess,'
+to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some
+time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's
+notice,--the true stuff and story is all to come, the 'Flight,' and
+what you allude to is the mere introduction--but the Magazine has
+passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some 'Bell' or
+other--it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain 'Saul' I
+should like to show you one day--an ominous liking--for nobody ever
+sees what I do till it is printed. But as you _do_ know the printed
+little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all
+I have _really_ done,--written in the portfolio there,--though that
+would be far enough from _this_ me, that wishes to you now. I should
+like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!
+
+I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the
+difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of 'reproaching you
+for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else'--but that
+... why, '_that_' which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I
+will tell you--Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or
+other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to
+open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his
+soul--Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely
+ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of
+glebe-land,--and I _could_ say such--'could,'--the plague of it! So no
+more at present from your loving.... Or, let me tell you I am going to
+see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.--that you do not tell me how you are,
+and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ... I shall
+not see you--not--not--not--what 'knots' to untie! Surely the wind
+that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green
+now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,--that is
+South West, surely! God bless you, and me in that--and do write to me
+soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was
+
+                                                   Yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                   Monday--and Tuesday.
+                                   [Post-mark, May 6, 1845.]
+
+So when wise people happen to be ill, they sit up till six o'clock in
+the morning and get up again at nine? Do tell me how Lurias can ever
+be made out of such ungodly imprudences. If the wind blows east or
+west, where can any remedy be, while such evil deeds are being
+committed? And what is to be the end of it? And what is the
+reasonableness of it in the meantime, when we all know that thinking,
+dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear
+instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others, ...
+throwing over and buckling in that fold of death, to stroke the
+life-purple smoother. You have to live your own personal life, and
+also Luria's life--and therefore you should sleep for both. It is
+logical indeed--and rational, ... which logic is not always ... and if
+I had 'the tongue of men and of angels,' I would use it to persuade
+you. Polka, for the rest, may be good; but sleep is better. I think
+better of sleep than I ever did, now that she will not easily come
+near me except in a red hood of poppies. And besides, ... praise your
+'goodnatured body' as you like, ... it is only a seeming goodnature!
+Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!--appear mild and
+smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and
+the _soul has it_, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase!
+You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or
+tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really,
+really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by
+it--and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.
+
+This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. _What
+do you mean about your manuscripts ... about 'Saul' and the
+portfolio?_ for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses--and
+your 'Bos' comes to [Greek: bous epi glosse].[1] I get half bribed to
+silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible
+that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I
+reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am
+afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being
+flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I
+should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ...
+however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask
+impudently of them now? Is that plain?
+
+It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if _you_ would like to 'write
+something together' with me, _I_ should like it still better. I should
+like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the
+less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical
+Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting
+into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? _you_ would
+not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations
+deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes--but I dare not do it, ... I
+mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a
+Mediaeval-Gothic-architectural manuscript.
+
+The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with
+whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to
+'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of
+one of Miss Mitford's annual editorships; and ever since, he has had
+the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to
+write at all, in my dreary Devonshire days, I was his debtor for
+various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my
+opinion he is a truehearted and generous man. Do you not think so?
+Well--long and long ago, he asked me to write a drama with him on the
+Greek model; that is, for me to write the choruses, and for him to do
+the dialogue. Just then it was quite doubtful in my own mind, and
+worse than doubtful, whether I ever should write again; and the very
+doubtfulness made me speak my 'yes' more readily. Then I was desired
+to make a subject, ... to conceive a plan; and my plan was of a man,
+haunted by his own soul, ... (making her a separate personal Psyche, a
+dreadful, beautiful Psyche)--the man being haunted and terrified
+through all the turns of life by her. Did you ever feel afraid of your
+own soul, as I have done? I think it is a true wonder of our
+humanity--and fit subject enough for a wild lyrical drama. I should
+like to write it by myself at least, well enough. But with him I will
+not now. It was delayed ... delayed. He cut the plan up into scenes
+... I mean into a list of scenes ... a sort of ground-map to work
+on--and there it lies. Nothing more was done. It all lies in one
+sheet--and I have offered to give up my copyright of idea in it--if he
+likes to use it alone--or I should not object to work it out alone on
+my own side, since it comes from me: only I will not consent now to a
+_double work_ in it. There are objections--none, be it well
+understood, in Mr. Horne's disfavour,--for I think of him as well at
+this moment, and the same in all essential points, as I ever did. He
+is a man of fine imagination, and is besides good and generous. In the
+course of our acquaintance (on paper--for I never saw him) I never was
+angry with him except once; and then, _I_ was quite wrong and had to
+confess it. But this is being too 'mediaeval.' Only you will see from
+it that I am a little entangled on the subject of compound works, and
+must look where I tread ... and you will understand (if you ever hear
+from Mr. Kenyon or elsewhere that I am going to write a compound-poem
+with Mr. Horne) how it _was_ true, and isn't true any more.
+
+Yes--you are going to Mr. Kenyon's on the 12th--and yes--my brother
+and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to
+dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me,
+I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May--it can't be May
+after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but
+for a few hours--the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest
+opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub
+with a bearde,' even so has the east wind had a 'bearde' of late, in a
+full growth of bristling exaggerations--the English spring-winds have
+excelled themselves in evil this year; and I have not been down-stairs
+yet.--_But_ I am certainly stronger and better than I was--that is
+undeniable--and I _shall_ be better still. You are not going away
+soon--are you? In the meantime you do not know what it is to be ... a
+little afraid of Paracelsus. So right about the Italians! and the
+'rose porporine' which made me smile. How is the head?
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Is the 'Flight of the Duchess' in the portfolio? Of course you must
+ring the Bell. That poem has a strong heart in it, to begin _so_
+strongly. Poor Hood! And all those thoughts fall mixed together. May
+God bless you.
+
+[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_ 36: 'An ox hath trodden on my
+tongue'--a Greek proverb implying silence.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Sunday--in the last hour of it.
+                             [Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
+
+May I ask how the head is? just under the bag? Mr. Kenyon was here
+to-day and told me such bad news that I cannot sleep to-night
+(although I did think once of doing it) without asking such a question
+as this, dear Mr. Browning.
+
+Let me hear how you are--Will you? and let me hear (if I can) that it
+was prudence or some unchristian virtue of the sort, and not a dreary
+necessity, which made you put aside the engagement for Tuesday--for
+Monday. I had been thinking so of seeing you on Tuesday ... with my
+sister's eyes--for the first sight.
+
+And now if you have done killing the mules and the dogs, let me have
+a straight quick arrow for myself, if you please. Just a word, to say
+how you are. I ask for no more than a word, lest the writing should be
+hurtful to you.
+
+                                   May God bless you always.
+
+                                        Your friend,
+
+                                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Monday.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
+
+My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it--but this is
+how it was,--I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to
+ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it;
+and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner
+somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my
+friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no
+better--and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear
+kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were
+broken with as little warning,--so I thought it best to forego all
+hopes of seeing him, at such a risk. And that done, I got rid of every
+other promise to pay visits for next week and next, and told
+everybody, with considerable dignity, that my London season was over
+for this year, as it assuredly is--and I shall be worried no more, and
+let walk in the garden, and go to bed at ten o'clock, and get done
+with what is most expedient to do, and my 'flesh shall come again like
+a little child's,' and one day, oh the day, I shall see you with my
+own, own eyes ... for, how little you understand me; or rather,
+yourself,--if you think I would dare see you, without your leave, that
+way! Do you suppose that your power of giving and refusing ends when
+you have shut your room-door? Did I not tell you I turned down another
+street, even, the other day, and why not down yours? And often as I
+see Mr. Kenyon, have I ever dreamed of asking any but the merest
+conventional questions about you; your health, and no more?
+
+I will answer your letter, the last one, to-morrow--I have said
+nothing of what I want to say.
+
+                                                  Ever yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Tuesday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]
+
+Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear
+Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began
+reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a 'more' or a 'most'
+in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about
+you--as, do you not know?
+
+Thank you, from my soul.
+
+Now, let me never pass occasion of speaking well of Horne, who
+deserves your opinion of him,--it is my own, too.--He has unmistakable
+genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow--it is
+the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think--the people he
+has praised fancying that they 'pose' themselves sculpturesquely in
+playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each
+other's hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a
+dishonour: _I_ feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous
+criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's
+standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man
+too,--for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature,
+which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer
+'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done
+over blue)--and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a
+'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite
+an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a
+jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of
+grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;--a thing he cannot
+understand--_so_, I am not the one he would have picked out to
+praise, had he not been _loyal_. I know he admires your poetry
+properly. God help him, and send some great artist from the country,
+(who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who
+'exasperates his H's' when the feat is to be done)--to undertake the
+part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The
+subject of your play is tempting indeed--and reminds one of that wild
+Drama of Calderon's which frightened Shelley just before his
+death--also, of Fuseli's theory with reference to his own Picture of
+Macbeth in the witches' cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed
+head from the cauldron is Macbeth's own.
+
+'If you ask me, I must ask myself'--that is, when I am to see you--I
+will _never_ ask you! You do _not_ know what I shall estimate that
+permission at,--nor do I, quite--but you do--do not you? know so much
+of me as to make my 'asking' worse than a form--I do not 'ask' you to
+write to me--not _directly_ ask, at least.
+
+I will tell you--I ask you _not_ to see me so long as you are unwell,
+or mistrustful of--
+
+No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me
+not be only writing myself
+
+                                                   Yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are
+to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly
+well--all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its
+
+[Illustration: Music: bass clef, B-flat, _Sostenuto_]
+
+That you are better I am most thankful.
+
+'Next letter' to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and
+Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them
+and mend them!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Thursday.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]
+
+But how 'mistrustfulness'? And how 'that way?' What have I said or
+done, _I_, who am not apt to _be_ mistrustful of anybody and should be
+a miraculous monster if I began with _you_! What can I have said, I
+say to myself again and again.
+
+One thing, at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have
+made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed
+to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--and by position and
+experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by
+leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by
+others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not
+mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do
+not write as I write, surely! for wasn't it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or
+who?) who said that with five lines from anyone's hand, he could take
+off his head for a corollary? I think so.
+
+Well!--but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say,
+that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my
+gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You
+will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am
+'fast bound' to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself,
+whom I receive of choice and willingly) I _cannot_ admit visitors in a
+general way--and putting the question of health quite aside, it would
+be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an
+infirmity, and hold a beggar's hat for sympathy. I should blame it in
+another woman--and the sense of it has had its weight with me
+sometimes.
+
+For the rest, ... when you write, that _I_ do not know how you would
+value, &c. _nor yourself quite_, you touch very accurately on the
+truth ... and _so_ accurately in the last clause, that to read it,
+made me smile 'tant bien que mal.' Certainly you cannot 'quite know,'
+or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from
+knowing me otherwise than on this paper--and I, for my part, 'quite
+know' my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely
+to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me--I
+never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that
+brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is
+worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most
+and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of
+me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I
+write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel
+ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because
+you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be
+nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so
+at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall
+understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in
+any case; and a friend. And do not answer this--I do not write it as a
+fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much.
+Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot
+be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that
+dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of
+coming until _that_ is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is
+done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr.
+Kenyon or to come alone--and if you would come alone, you must just
+tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should
+be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And
+my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or _you_
+will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as
+you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon,
+you must wait, I imagine, till June,--because he goes away on Monday
+and is not likely immediately to return--no, on Saturday, to-morrow.
+
+In the meantime, why I should be '_thanked_,' is an absolute mystery
+to me--but I leave it!
+
+You are generous and impetuous; _that_, I can see and feel; and so far
+from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do
+profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had
+known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius.
+Believe this of me--for it is spoken truly.
+
+In the matter of Shakespeare's 'poor players' you are severe--and yet
+I was glad to hear you severe--it is a happy excess, I think. When men
+of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to
+be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there
+will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of
+such things--but I have _heard_. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from
+Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a
+writer's medium--_not at all_, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what
+he has printed on the subject.
+
+Yes--he has been infamously used on the point of the 'New
+Spirit'--only he should have been prepared for the infamy--it was
+leaping into a gulph, ... not to 'save the republic,' but '_pour
+rire_': it was not merely putting one's foot into a hornet's nest, but
+taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of Dickens being
+dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson's friends grumbling!--he himself
+did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately
+treated--and above all, you were not placed with your _peers_ in that
+chapter--but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that
+there _is_ a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and
+am sure,--and that _you_ should be sensible to this, is only what I
+should know and be sure of _you_. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow,
+vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached,
+too justly sometimes, on men of letters.
+
+I go on writing as if I were not going to see you--soon perhaps.
+Remember that the how and the when rest with you--except that it
+cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.
+
+                                         Always your friend,
+
+                                              E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Friday Night.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
+
+My friend is not 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I
+shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or
+turn an article for _Colburn's_ on her sayings and doings
+up-stairs,--but spite of that, she does mistrust ... _so_ mistrust my
+common sense,--nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on
+asserting it!--all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch
+struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with
+name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I
+won't, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole
+tribe into the Red Sea--and those horns and tails and scalewings are
+best forgotten altogether. And now will I say a cutting thing and have
+done. Have I trusted _my_ friend so,--or said even to myself, much
+less to her, she is even as--'Mr. Simpson' who desireth the honour of
+the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his,
+Simpson's, especial solace in private--and who accordingly is led to
+that personage by a mutual friend--Simpson blushing as only adorable
+ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor
+giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the
+rooms are growing hot--or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if
+there will be another adjournment of the House to-night--whereupon Mr.
+S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his
+sleeve, and takes to his assurance once more, in something of a huff,
+and after staying his five minutes out for decency's sake, noddeth
+familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel ejaculateth
+mentally--'Well, I _did_ expect to see something different from that
+little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there
+_was_ some precious trash in that book of his'--Have _I_ said 'so will
+Miss Barrett ejaculate?'
+
+Dear Miss Barrett, I thank you for the leave you give me, and for the
+infinite kindness of the way of giving it. I will call at 2 on
+Tuesday--not sooner, that you may have time to write should any
+adverse circumstances happen ... not that they need inconvenience you,
+because ... what I want particularly to tell you for now and
+hereafter--do not mind my coming in the least, but--should you be
+unwell, for instance,--just send or leave word, and I will come again,
+and again, and again--my time is of _no_ importance, and I have
+acquaintances thick in the vicinity.
+
+Now if I do not seem grateful enough to you, _am_ I so much to blame?
+You see it is high time you _saw_ me, for I have clearly written
+myself _out_!
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Saturday.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
+
+I shall be ready on Tuesday I hope, but I hate and protest against
+your horrible 'entomology.' Beginning to explain, would thrust me
+lower and lower down the circles of some sort of an 'Inferno'; only
+with my dying breath I would maintain that I never could, consciously
+or unconsciously, mean to distrust you; or, the least in the world, to
+Simpsonize you. What I said, ... it was _you_ that put it into my head
+to say it--for certainly, in my usual disinclination to receive
+visitors, such a feeling does not enter. There, now! There, I am a
+whole 'giro' lower! Now, you will say perhaps that I distrust _you_,
+and nobody else! So it is best to be silent, and bear all the 'cutting
+things' with resignation! _that_ is certain.
+
+Still I must really say, under this dreadful incubus-charge of
+Simpsonism, ... that you, who know everything, or at least make awful
+guesses at everything in one's feelings and motives, and profess to be
+able to pin them down in a book of classified inscriptions, ... should
+have been able to understand better, or misunderstand less, in a
+matter like this--Yes! I think so. I think you should have made out
+the case in some such way as it was in nature--viz. that you had
+lashed yourself up to an exorbitant wishing to see me, ... (you who
+could see, any day, people who are a hundredfold and to all social
+purposes, my superiors!) because I was unfortunate enough to be shut
+up in a room and silly enough to make a fuss about opening the door;
+and that I grew suddenly abashed by the consciousness of this. How
+different from a distrust of _you_! how different!
+
+Ah--if, after this day, you ever see any interpretable sign of
+distrustfulness in me, you may be 'cutting' again, and I will not cry
+out. In the meantime here is a fact for your 'entomology.' I have not
+so much _distrust_, as will make a _doubt_, as will make a _curiosity_
+for next Tuesday. Not the simplest modification of _curiosity_ enters
+into the state of feeling with which I wait for Tuesday:--and if you
+are angry to hear me say so, ... why, you are more unjust than ever.
+
+(Let it be three instead of two--if the hour be as convenient to
+yourself.)
+
+Before you come, try to forgive me for my 'infinite kindness' in the
+manner of consenting to see you. Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when
+you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?
+Well! but we are friends till Tuesday--and after perhaps.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+If on Tuesday you should be not well, _pray do not come_--Now, that is
+my request to your kindness.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Envelope endorsed by Robert Browning:--Tuesday, May 20,
+1845, 3-4-1/2 p.m.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Tuesday Evening.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 21, 1845.]
+
+I trust to you for a true account of how you are--if tired, if not
+tired, if I did wrong in any thing,--or, if you please, _right_ in any
+thing--(only, not one more word about my 'kindness,' which, to get
+done with, I will grant is exceptive)--but, let us so arrange matters
+if possible,--and why should it not be--that my great happiness, such
+as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be
+obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can
+contrive. For an instance--just what strikes me--they all say here I
+speak very loud--(a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf
+relative of mine). And did I stay too long?
+
+I will tell _you_ unhesitatingly of such 'corrigenda'--nay, I will
+again say, do not humiliate me--_do not_ again,--by calling me 'kind'
+in that way.
+
+I am proud and happy in your friendship--now and ever. May God bless
+you!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Wednesday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 22, 1845.]
+
+Indeed there was nothing wrong--how could there be? And there was
+everything right--as how should there not be? And as for the 'loud
+speaking,' I did not hear any--and, instead of being worse, I ought to
+be better for what was certainly (to speak it, or be silent of it,)
+happiness and honour to me yesterday.
+
+Which reminds me to observe that you are so restricting our
+vocabulary, as to be ominous of silence in a full sense, presently.
+First, one word is not to be spoken--and then, another is not. And
+why? Why deny me the use of such words as have natural feelings
+belonging to them--and how can the use of such be 'humiliating' to
+_you_? If my heart were open to you, you could see nothing offensive
+to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been
+there--but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology
+(and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of
+some poems by some Mr. Gurney where he speaks of 'the reflective
+wisdom of a Wordsworth and the profound psychological utterances of a
+Browning') it is hard for you to understand what my mental position is
+after the peculiar experience I have suffered, and what [Greek: ti
+emoi kai soi][1] a sort of feeling is irrepressible from me to you,
+when, from the height of your brilliant happy sphere, you ask, as you
+did ask, for personal intercourse with me. What words but 'kindness'
+... but 'gratitude'--but I will not in any case be _un_kind and
+_un_grateful, and do what is displeasing to you. And let us both leave
+the subject with the words--because we perceive in it from different
+points of view; we stand on the black and white sides of the shield;
+and there is no coming to a conclusion.
+
+But you will come really on Tuesday--and again, when you like and can
+together--and it will not be more 'inconvenient' to me to be pleased,
+I suppose, than it is to people in general--will it, do you think?
+Ah--how you misjudge! Why it must obviously and naturally be
+delightful to me to receive you here when you like to come, and it
+cannot be necessary for me to say so in set words--believe it of
+
+                                                Your friend,
+
+                                                     E.B.B.
+
+[Mr. Browning's letter, to which the following is in answer was
+destroyed, see page 268 of the present volume.]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'What have I to do with thee?']
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Friday Evening.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
+
+I intended to write to you last night and this morning, and could
+not,--you do not know what pain you give me in speaking so wildly. And
+if I disobey you, my dear friend, in speaking, (I for my part) of your
+wild speaking, I do it, not to displease you, but to be in my own
+eyes, and before God, a little more worthy, or less unworthy, of a
+generosity from which I recoil by instinct and at the first glance,
+yet conclusively; and because my silence would be the most disloyal of
+all means of expression, in reference to it. Listen to me then in
+this. You have said some intemperate things ... fancies,--which you
+will not say over again, nor unsay, but _forget at once_, and _for
+ever, having said at all_; and which (so) will die out between _you
+and me alone_, like a misprint between you and the printer. And this
+you will do _for my sake_ who am your friend (and you have none
+truer)--and this I ask, because it is a condition necessary to our
+future liberty of intercourse. You remember--surely you do--that I am
+in the most exceptional of positions; and that, just _because of it_,
+I am able to receive you as I did on Tuesday; and that, for me to
+listen to 'unconscious exaggerations,' is as unbecoming to the
+humilities of my position, as unpropitious (which is of more
+consequence) to the prosperities of yours. Now, if there should be one
+word of answer attempted to this; or of reference; _I must not_ ... I
+_will not see you again_--and you will justify me later in your heart.
+So for my sake you will not say it--I think you will not--and spare me
+the sadness of having to break through an intercourse just as it is
+promising pleasure to me; to me who have so many sadnesses and so few
+pleasures. You will!--and I need not be uneasy--and I shall owe you
+that tranquillity, as one gift of many. For, that I have much to
+receive from you in all the free gifts of thinking, teaching,
+master-spirits, ... _that_, I know!--it is my own praise that I
+appreciate you, as none can more. Your influence and help in poetry
+will be full of good and gladness to me--for with many to love me in
+this house, there is no one to judge me ... _now_. Your friendship and
+sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed
+leave them with me so long or so little. Your mistakes in me ... which
+_I_ cannot mistake (--and which have humbled me by too much
+honouring--) I put away gently, and with grateful tears in my eyes;
+because _all that hail_ will beat down and spoil crowns, as well as
+'blossoms.'
+
+If I put off next Tuesday to the week after--I mean your visit,--shall
+you care much? For the relations I named to you, are to be in London
+next week; and I am to see one of my aunts whom I love, and have not
+met since my great affliction--and it will all seem to come over
+again, and I shall be out of spirits and nerves. On Tuesday week you
+can bring a tomahawk and do the criticism, and I shall try to have my
+courage ready for it--Oh, you will do me so much good--and Mr. Kenyon
+calls me 'docile' sometimes I assure you; when he wants to flatter me
+out of being obstinate--and in good earnest, I believe I shall do
+everything you tell me. The 'Prometheus' is done--but the monodrama is
+where it was--and the novel, not at all. But I think of some half
+promises half given, about something I read for 'Saul'--and the
+'Flight of the Duchess'--where is she?
+
+You are not displeased with me? _no, that_ would be hail and lightning
+together--I do not write as I might, of some words of yours--but you
+know that I am not a stone, even if silent like one. And if in the
+_un_silence, I have said one word to vex you, pity me for having had
+to say it--and for the rest, may God bless you far beyond the reach of
+vexation from my words or my deeds!
+
+                             Your friend in grateful regard,
+
+                                  E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Saturday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
+
+Don't you remember I told you, once on a time that you 'knew nothing
+of me'? whereat you demurred--but I meant what I said, and knew it was
+so. To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a
+Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of
+black cold water--and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes,
+because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction--and
+the ice grows and grows--still this last is true part of me, most
+characteristic part, _best_ part perhaps, and I disown
+nothing--only,--when you talked of '_knowing_ me'! Still, I am utterly
+unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating
+anything about _that_ to another person (all my writings are purely
+dramatic as I am always anxious to say) that when I make never so
+little an attempt, no wonder if I _bungle_ notably--'language,' too is
+an organ that never studded this heavy heavy head of mine. Will you
+not think me very brutal if I tell you I could almost smile at your
+misapprehension of what I meant to write?--Yet I _will_ tell you,
+because it will undo the bad effect of my thoughtlessness, and at the
+same time exemplify the point I have all along been honestly earnest
+to set you right upon ... my real inferiority to you; just that and no
+more. I wrote to you, in an unwise moment, on the spur of being again
+'thanked,' and, unwisely writing just as if thinking to myself, said
+what must have looked absurd enough as seen apart from the horrible
+counterbalancing never-to-be-written _rest of me_--by the side of
+which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to
+its proper and relative place, and become a mere 'thank you' for your
+good opinion--which I assure you is far too generous--for I really
+believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable
+till _you_ see that, too--since I hope for your sympathy and
+assistance, and 'frankness is everything in such a case.' I do assure
+you, that had you read my note, _only_ having '_known_' so much of me
+as is implied in having inspected, for instance, the contents, merely,
+of that fatal and often-referred-to 'portfolio' there (_Dii meliora
+piis!_), you would see in it, (the note not the portfolio) the
+blandest utterance ever mild gentleman gave birth to. But I forgot
+that one may make too much noise in a silent place by playing the few
+notes on the 'ear-piercing fife' which in Othello's regimental band
+might have been thumped into decent subordination by his
+'spirit-stirring drum'--to say nothing of gong and ophicleide. Will
+you forgive me, on promise to remember for the future, and be more
+considerate? Not that you must too much despise me, neither; nor, of
+all things, apprehend I am attitudinizing a la Byron, and giving you
+to understand unutterable somethings, longings for Lethe and all
+that--far from it! I never committed murders, and sleep the soundest
+of sleeps--but 'the heart is desperately wicked,' that is true, and
+though I dare not say 'I know' mine, yet I have had signal
+opportunities, I who began life from the beginning, and can forget
+nothing (but names, and the date of the battle of Waterloo), and have
+known good and wicked men and women, gentle and simple, shaking hands
+with Edmund Kean and Father Mathew, you and--Ottima! Then, I had a
+certain faculty of self-consciousness, years and years ago, at which
+John Mill wondered, and which ought to be improved by this time, if
+constant use helps at all--and, meaning, on the whole, to be a Poet,
+if not _the_ Poet ... for I am vain and ambitious some nights,--I do
+myself justice, and dare call things by their names to myself, and say
+boldly, this I love, this I hate, this I would do, this I would not
+do, under all kinds of circumstances,--and talking (thinking) in this
+style _to myself_, and beginning, however tremblingly, in spite of
+conviction, to write in this style _for myself_--on the top of the
+desk which contains my 'Songs of the Poets--NO. I M.P.', I
+wrote,--what you now forgive, I know! Because I am, from my heart,
+sorry that by a foolish fit of inconsideration I should have given
+pain for a minute to you, towards whom, on every account, I would
+rather soften and 'sleeken every word as to a bird' ... (and, not such
+a bird as my black self that go screeching about the world for 'dead
+horse'--corvus (picus)--mirandola!) I, too, who have been at such
+pains to acquire the reputation I enjoy in the world,--(ask Mr.
+Kenyon,) and who dine, and wine, and dance and enhance the company's
+pleasure till they make me ill and I keep house, as of late: Mr.
+Kenyon, (for I only quote where you may verify if you please) _he_
+says my common sense strikes him, and its contrast with my muddy
+metaphysical poetry! And so it shall strike you--for though I am glad
+that, since you _did_ misunderstand me, you said so, and have given me
+an opportunity of doing by another way what I wished to do in
+_that_,--yet, if you had _not_ alluded to my writing, as I meant you
+should not, you would have certainly understood _something_ of its
+drift when you found me next Tuesday precisely the same quiet (no, for
+I feel I speak too loudly, in spite of your kind disclaimer, but--)
+the same mild man-about-town you were gracious to, the other
+morning--for, indeed, my own way of worldly life is marked out long
+ago, as precisely as yours can be, and I am set going with a hand,
+winker-wise, on each side of my head, and a directing finger before my
+eyes, to say nothing of an instinctive dread I have that a certain
+whip-lash is vibrating somewhere in the neighbourhood in playful
+readiness! So 'I hope here be proofs,' Dogberry's satisfaction that,
+first, I am but a very poor creature compared to you and entitled by
+my wants to look up to you,--all I meant to say from the first of the
+first--and that, next, I shall be too much punished if, for this piece
+of mere inconsideration, you deprive me, more or less, or sooner or
+later, of the pleasure of seeing you,--a little over boisterous
+gratitude for which, perhaps, caused all the mischief! The reasons you
+give for deferring my visits next week are too cogent for me to
+dispute--that is too true--and, being now and henceforward 'on my good
+behaviour,' I will at once cheerfully submit to them, if needs
+must--but should your mere kindness and forethought, as I half
+suspect, have induced you to take such a step, you will now smile with
+me, at this new and very unnecessary addition to the 'fears of me' I
+have got so triumphantly over in your case! Wise man, was I not, to
+clench my first favourable impression so adroitly ... like a recent
+Cambridge worthy, my sister heard of; who, being on his theological
+(or rather, scripture-historical) examination, was asked by the Tutor,
+who wished to let him off easily, 'who was the first King of
+Israel?'--'Saul' answered the trembling youth. 'Good!' nodded
+approvingly the Tutor. 'Otherwise called _Paul_,' subjoined the youth
+in his elation! Now I have begged pardon, and blushingly assured you
+_that_ was only a slip of the tongue, and that I did really _mean_ all
+the while, (Paul or no Paul), the veritable son of Kish, he that owned
+the asses, and found listening to the harp the best of all things for
+an evil spirit! Pray write me a line to say, 'Oh ... if _that's_ all!'
+and remember me for good (which is very compatible with a moment's
+stupidity) and let me not for one fault, (and that the only one that
+shall be), lose _any pleasure_ ... for your friendship I am sure I
+have not lost--God bless you, my dear friend!
+
+                                                R. BROWNING.
+
+And by the way, will it not be better, as co-operating with you more
+effectually in your kind promise to forget the 'printer's error' in my
+blotted proof, to send me back that same 'proof,' if you have not
+inflicted proper and summary justice on it? When Mephistopheles last
+came to see us in this world outside here, he counselled sundry of us
+'never to write a letter,--and never to burn one'--do you know that?
+But I never mind what I am told! Seriously, I am ashamed.... I shall
+next ask a servant for my paste in the 'high fantastical' style of my
+own 'Luria.'
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                             Sunday
+                                             [May 25, 1845].
+
+I owe you the most humble of apologies dear Mr. Browning, for having
+spent so much solemnity on so simple a matter, and I hasten to pay it;
+confessing at the same time (as why should I not?) that I am quite as
+much ashamed of myself as I ought to be, which is not a little. You
+will find it difficult to believe me perhaps when I assure you that I
+never made such a mistake (I mean of over-seriousness to indefinite
+compliments), no, never in my life before--indeed my sisters have
+often jested with me (in matters of which they were cognizant) on my
+supernatural indifference to the superlative degree in general, as if
+it meant nothing in grammar. I usually know well that 'boots' may be
+called for in this world of ours, just as you called for yours; and
+that to bring '_Bootes_,' were the vilest of mal-a-pro-pos-ities.
+Also, I should have understood 'boots' where you wrote it, in the
+letter in question; if it had not been for _the relation of two
+things_ in it--and now I perfectly seem to see _how_ I mistook that
+relation; ('_seem to see_'; because I have not looked into the letter
+again since your last night's commentary, and will not--) inasmuch as
+I have observed before in my own mind, that a good deal of what is
+called obscurity in you, arises from a habit of very subtle
+association; so subtle, that you are probably unconscious of it, ...
+and the effect of which is to throw together on the same level and in
+the same light, things of likeness and unlikeness--till the reader
+grows confused as I did, and takes one for another. I may say however,
+in a poor justice to myself, that I wrote what I wrote so
+unfortunately, _through reverence for you_, and not at all from vanity
+in my own account ... although I do feel palpably while I write these
+words here and now, that I might as well leave them unwritten; for
+that no man of the world who ever lived in the world (not even _you_)
+could be expected to believe them, though said, sung, and sworn.
+
+For the rest, it is scarcely an apposite moment for you to talk, even
+'dramatically,' of my 'superiority' to you, ... unless you mean, which
+perhaps you do mean, my superiority in _simplicity_--and, verily, to
+some of the 'adorable ingenuousness,' sacred to the shade of Simpson,
+I may put in a modest claim, ... 'and have my claim allowed.' 'Pray do
+not mock me' I quote again from your Shakespeare to you who are a
+dramatic poet; ... and I will admit anything that you like, (being
+humble just now)--even that I _did not know you_. I was certainly
+innocent of the knowledge of the 'ice and cold water' you introduce me
+to, and am only just shaking my head, as Flush would, after a first
+wholesome plunge. Well--if I do not know you, I shall learn, I
+suppose, in time. I am ready to try humbly to learn--and I may
+perhaps--if you are not done in Sanscrit, which is too hard for me,
+... notwithstanding that I had the pleasure yesterday to hear, from
+America, of my profound skill in 'various languages less known than
+Hebrew'!--a liberal paraphrase on Mr. Horne's large fancies on the
+like subject, and a satisfactory reputation in itself--as long as it
+is not necessary to deserve it. So I here enclose to you your letter
+back again, as you wisely desire; although you never could doubt, I
+hope, for a moment, of its safety with me in the completest of senses:
+and then, from the heights of my superior ... stultity, and other
+qualities of the like order, ... I venture to advise you ... however
+(to speak of the letter critically, and as the dramatic composition it
+is) it is to be admitted to be very beautiful, and well worthy of the
+rest of its kin in the portfolio, ... 'Lays of the Poets,' or
+otherwise, ... I venture to advise you to burn it at once. And then,
+my dear friend, I ask you (having some claim) to burn at the same time
+the letter I was fortunate enough to write to you on Friday, and this
+present one--don't send them back to me; I hate to have letters sent
+back--but burn them for me and never mind Mephistopheles. After which
+friendly turn, you will do me the one last kindness of forgetting all
+this exquisite nonsense, and of refraining from mentioning it, by
+breath or pen, _to me or another_. Now I trust you so far:--you will
+put it with the date of the battle of Waterloo--and I, with every date
+in chronology; seeing that I can remember none of them. And we will
+shuffle the cards and take patience, and begin the game again, if you
+please--and I shall bear in mind that you are a dramatic poet, which
+is not the same thing, by any means, with _us_ of the primitive
+simplicities, who don't tread on cothurns nor shift the mask in the
+scene. And I will reverence you both as 'a poet' and as '_the_ poet';
+because it is no false 'ambition,' but a right you have--and one which
+those who live longest, will see justified to the uttermost.... In the
+meantime I need not ask Mr. Kenyon if you have any sense, because I
+have no doubt that you have quite sense enough--and even if I had a
+doubt, I shall prefer judging for myself without interposition; which
+I can do, you know, as long as you like to come and see me. And you
+can come this week if you do like it--because our relations don't come
+till the end of it, it appears--not that I made a pretence 'out of
+kindness'--pray don't judge me so outrageously--but if you like to
+come ... not on Tuesday ... but on Wednesday at three o'clock, I shall
+be very glad to see you; and I, for one, shall have forgotten
+everything by that time; being quick at forgetting my own faults
+usually. If Wednesday does not suit you, I am not sure that I _can_
+see you this week--but it depends on circumstances. Only don't think
+yourself _obliged_ to come on Wednesday. You know I _began_ by
+entreating you to be open and sincere with me--and no more--I
+_require_ no 'sleekening of every word.' I love the truth and can bear
+it--whether in word or deed--and those who have known me longest would
+tell you so fullest. Well!--May God bless you. We shall know each
+other some day perhaps--and I am
+
+                          Always and faithfully your friend,
+
+                               E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  [Post-mark, May 26, 1845.]
+
+Nay--I _must_ have last word--as all people in the wrong desire to
+have--and then, no more of the subject. You said I had given you
+_great pain_--so long as I stop _that_, think anything of me you
+choose or can! But _before_ your former letter came, I saw the
+pre-ordained uselessness of mine. Speaking is to some _end_, (apart
+from foolish self-relief, which, after all, I can do without)--and
+where there is _no_ end--you see! or, to finish
+characteristically--since the offering to cut off one's right-hand to
+save anybody a headache, is in vile taste, even for our melodramas,
+seeing that it was never yet believed in on the stage or off it,--how
+much worse to really make the ugly chop, and afterwards come
+sheepishly in, one's arm in a black sling, and find that the
+delectable gift had changed aching to nausea! There! And now, 'exit,
+prompt-side, nearest door, Luria'--and enter R.B.--next Wednesday,--as
+boldly as he suspects most people do just after they have been soundly
+frightened!
+
+I shall be most happy to see you on the day and at the hour you
+mention.
+
+                              God bless you, my dear friend,
+
+                                   R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Monday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 27, 1845.]
+
+You will think me the most changeable of all the changeable; but
+indeed it is _not_ my fault that I cannot, as I wished, receive you on
+Wednesday. There was a letter this morning; and our friends not only
+come to London but come to this house on Tuesday (to-morrow) to pass
+two or three days, until they settle in an hotel for the rest of the
+season. Therefore you see, it is doubtful whether the two days may not
+be three, and the three days four; but if they go away in time, and
+if Saturday should suit you, I will let you know by a word; and you
+can answer by a yea or nay. While they are in the house, I must give
+them what time I can--and indeed, it is something to dread altogether.
+
+                                                    Tuesday.
+
+I send you the note I had begun before receiving yours of last night,
+and also a fragment[1] from Mrs. Hedley's herein enclosed, a full and
+complete certificate, ... that you may know ... quite _know_, ... what
+the real and only reason of the obstacle to Wednesday is. On Saturday
+perhaps, or on Monday more certainly, there is likely to be no
+opposition, ... at least not on the 'cote gauche' (_my_ side!) to our
+meeting--but I will let you know more.
+
+For the rest, we have both been a little unlucky, there's no denying,
+in overcoming the embarrassments of a first acquaintance--but suffer
+me to say as one other last word, (and _quite, quite the last this
+time_!) in case there should have been anything approaching, however
+remotely, to a distrustful or unkind tone in what I wrote on Sunday,
+(and I have a sort of consciousness that in the process of my
+self-scorning I was not in the most sabbatical of moods perhaps--)
+that I do recall and abjure it, and from my heart entreat your pardon
+for it, and profess, notwithstanding it, neither to 'choose' nor 'to
+be able' to think otherwise of you than I have done, ... as of one
+_most_ generous and _most_ loyal; for that if I chose, I could not;
+and that if I could, I should not choose.
+
+                            Ever and gratefully your friend,
+
+                                 E.B.B.
+
+--And now we shall hear of 'Luria,' shall we not? and much besides.
+And Miss Mitford has sent me the most high comical of letters to
+read, addressed to her by 'R.B. Haydon historical painter' which has
+made me quite laugh; and would make _you_; expressing his righteous
+indignation at the 'great fact' and gross impropriety of any man who
+has 'thoughts too deep for tears' agreeing to wear a 'bag-wig' ... the
+case of poor Wordsworth's going to court, you know.--Mr. Haydon being
+infinitely serious all the time, and yet holding the doctrine of the
+divine right of princes in his left hand.
+
+How is your head? may I be hoping the best for it? May God bless you.
+
+[Footnote 1: ... me on Tuesday, or Wednesday? if on Tuesday, I shall
+come by the three o'clock train; if on Wednesday, _early_ in the
+morning, as I shall be anxious to secure rooms ... so that your Uncle
+and Arabel may come up on Thursday.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  [Post-mark, May 28, 1845.]
+
+Saturday, Monday, as you shall appoint--no need to say that, or my
+thanks--but this note troubles you, out of my bounden duty to help
+you, or Miss Mitford, to make the Painter run violently down a steep
+place into the sea, if that will amuse you, by further informing him,
+what I know on the best authority, that Wordsworth's 'bag-wig,' or at
+least, the more important of his court-habiliments, were considerately
+furnished for the nonce by _Mr. Rogers_ from his own wardrobe, to the
+manifest advantage of the Laureate's pocket, but more problematic
+improvement of his person, when one thinks on the astounding
+difference of 'build' in the two Poets:--the fact should be put on
+record, if only as serving to render less chimerical a promise
+sometimes figuring in the columns of provincial newspapers--that the
+two apprentices, some grocer or other advertises for, will be 'boarded
+and _clothed_ like _one_ of the family.' May not your unfinished
+(really good) head of the great man have been happily kept waiting for
+the body which can now be added on, with all this picturesqueness of
+circumstances. Precept on precept ... but then, _line upon line_, is
+allowed by as good authority, and may I not draw _my_ confirming black
+line after yours, yet not break pledge? I am most grateful to you for
+doing me justice--doing yourself, your own judgment, justice, since
+even the play-wright of Theseus and the Amazon found it one of his
+hardest devices to 'write me a speech, lest the lady be frightened,
+wherein it shall be said that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but &c. &c.'
+God bless you--one thing more, but one--you _could never have_
+misunderstood the _asking for the letter again_, I feared you might
+refer to it 'pour constater le fait'--
+
+                                        And now I am yours--
+
+                                             R.B.
+
+My head is all but well now; thank you.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Friday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, May 30, 1845.]
+
+Just one word to say that if Saturday, to-morrow, should be
+fine--because in the case of its raining I _shall not expect you_; you
+will find me at three o'clock.
+
+Yes--the circumstances of the costume were mentioned in the letter;
+Mr. Rogers' bag-wig and the rest, and David Wilkie's sword--and also
+that the Laureate, so equipped, fell down upon both knees in the
+superfluity of etiquette, and had to be picked up by two
+lords-in-waiting. It is a large exaggeration I do not doubt--and then
+I never sympathised with the sighing kept up by people about that
+acceptance of the Laureateship which drew the bag-wig as a corollary
+after it. Not that the Laureateship honoured _him_, but that he
+honoured it; and that, so honouring it, he preserves a symbol
+instructive to the masses, who are children and to be taught by
+symbols now as formerly. Isn't it true? or at least may it not be
+true? And won't the court laurel (such as it is) be all the worthier
+of _you_ for Wordsworth's having worn it first?
+
+And in the meantime I shall see you to-morrow perhaps? or if it should
+rain, on Monday at the same hour.
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Friday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
+
+When I see all you have done for me in this 'Prometheus,' I feel more
+than half ashamed both of it and of me for using your time so, and
+forced to say in my own defence (not to you but myself) that I never
+thought of meaning to inflict such work on you who might be doing so
+much better things in the meantime both for me and for
+others--because, you see, it is not the mere reading of the MS., but
+the 'comparing' of the text, and the melancholy comparisons between
+the English and the Greek, ... quite enough to turn you from your
+[Greek: philanthropou tropou][1] that I brought upon you; and indeed I
+did not mean so much, nor so soon! Yet as you have done it for me--for
+me who expected a few jottings down with a pencil and a general
+opinion; it is of course of the greatest value, besides the pleasure
+and pride which come of it; and I must say of the translation, (before
+putting it aside for the nonce), that the circumstance of your paying
+it so much attention and seeing any good in it, is quite enough reward
+for the writer and quite enough motive for self-gratulation, if it
+were all torn to fragments at this moment--which is a foolish thing to
+say because it is so obvious, and because you would know it if I said
+it or not.
+
+And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not
+to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very
+princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest
+of the small family of distrust--or of hypocrisy ... who knows? Well!
+but you are wrong ... wrong ... to think so; and you will let me say
+one word to show where you are wrong--not for you to controvert, ...
+because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your
+cognizance, and is something which I _must know best_ after all. And
+it is, ... that you persist in putting me into a false position, with
+respect to _fixing days_ and the like, and in making me feel somewhat
+as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the
+chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I
+did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly 'was 'ware' (as we
+say in the ballads) of the walls' growing alive behind me and
+extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to
+the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and
+I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised
+bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the
+chimney-piece's, ... is the necessity you provide for me in the shape
+of my having to name this day, or that day, ... and of your coming
+because I name it, and of my having to think and remember that you
+come because I name it. Through a weakness, perhaps, or morbidness, or
+one knows not how to define it, I _cannot help_ being uncomfortable in
+having to do this,--it is impossible. Not that I distrust _you_--you
+are the last in the world I could distrust: and then (although you may
+be sceptical) I am naturally given to trust ... to a fault ... as some
+say, or to a sin, as some reproach me:--and then again, if I were ever
+such a distruster, it could not be of _you_. But if you knew me--! I
+will tell you! if one of my brothers omits coming to this room for two
+days, ... I never ask why it happened! if my own father omits coming
+up-stairs to say 'good night,' I never say a word; and not from
+indifference. Do try to make out these readings of me as a _dixit
+Casaubonus_; and don't throw me down as a corrupt text, nor convict me
+for an infidel which I am not. On the contrary I am grateful and happy
+to believe that you like to come here; and even if you came here as a
+pure act of charity and pity to me, as long as you _chose to come_ I
+should not be too proud to be grateful and happy still. I could not be
+proud to _you_, and I hope you will not fancy such a possibility,
+which is the remotest of all. Yes, and _I_ am anxious to ask you to be
+wholly generous and leave off such an interpreting philosophy as you
+made use of yesterday, and forgive me when I beg you to fix your own
+days for coming for the future. Will you? It is the same thing in one
+way. If you like to come really every week, there is no hindrance to
+it--you can do it--and the privilege and obligation remain equally
+mine:--and if you name a day for coming on any week, where there is an
+obstacle on my side, you will learn it from me in a moment. Why I
+might as well charge _you_ with distrusting _me_, because you persist
+in making me choose the days. And it is not for me to do it, but for
+you--I must feel that--and I cannot help chafing myself against the
+thought that for me to begin to fix days in this way, just because you
+have quick impulses (like all imaginative persons), and wish me to do
+it now, may bring me to the catastrophe of asking you to come when you
+would rather not, ... which, as you say truly, would not be an
+important vexation to you; but to me would be worse than vexation; to
+_me_--and therefore I shrink from the very imagination of the
+possibility of such a thing, and ask you to bear with me and let it be
+as I prefer ... left to your own choice of the moment. And bear with
+me above all--because this shows no want of faith in you ... none ...
+but comes from a simple fact (with its ramifications) ... that you
+know little of me personally yet, and that _you guess_, even, but very
+little of the influence of a peculiar experience over me and out of
+me; and if I wanted a proof of this, we need not seek further than the
+very point of discussion, and the hard worldly thoughts you thought I
+was thinking of you yesterday,--I, who thought not one of them! But I
+am so used to discern the correcting and ministering angels by the
+same footsteps on the ground, that it is not wonderful I should look
+down there at any approach of a [Greek: philia taxis] whatever to this
+personal _me_. Have I not been ground down to browns and blacks? and
+is it my fault if I am not green? Not that it is my _complaint_--I
+should not be justified in complaining; I believe, as I told you, that
+there is more gladness than sadness in the world--that is, generally:
+and if some natures have to be refined by the sun, and some by the
+furnace (the less genial ones) both means are to be recognised as
+_good_, ... however different in pleasurableness and painfulness, and
+though furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit. I assured
+you there was nothing I had any power of teaching you: and there _is_
+nothing, except grief!--which I would not teach you, you know, if I
+had the occasion granted.
+
+It is a multitude of words about nothing at all, ... this--but I am
+like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the
+mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can--and believe how
+profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all,
+much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as
+you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get up
+enough pomp and circumstance to write on purpose to certify the
+important fact of my being a little stronger or a little weaker on one
+particular morning. That I am always ready and rejoiced to write to
+you, you know perfectly well, and I have proved, by 'superfluity of
+naughtiness' and prolixity through some twenty posts:--and this, and
+therefore, you will agree altogether to attribute no more to me on
+these counts, and determine to read me no more backwards with your
+Hebrew, putting in your own vowel points without my leave! Shall it be
+so?
+
+Here is a letter grown from a note which it meant to be--and I have
+been interrupted in the midst of it, or it should have gone to you
+earlier. Let what I have said in it of myself pass unquestioned and
+unnoticed, because it is of _me_ and not of _you_, ... and, if in any
+wise lunatical, all the talking and writing in the world will not put
+the implied moon into another quarter. Only be patient with me a
+little, ... and let us have a smooth ground for the poems which I am
+foreseeing the sight of with such pride and delight--Such pride and
+delight!
+
+And one thing ... which is chief, though it seems to come last!... you
+_will_ have advice (will you not?) if that pain does not grow much
+better directly? It cannot be prudent or even _safe_ to let a pain in
+the head go on so long, and no remedy be attempted for it, ... and you
+cannot be sure that it is a merely nervous pain and that it may not
+have consequences; and this, quite apart from the consideration of
+suffering. So you will see some one with an opinion to give, and take
+it? _Do_, I beseech you. You will not say 'no'? Also ... if on
+Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come on
+Thursday instead, I hope, ... seeing that it must be right for you to
+be quiet and silent when you suffer so, and a journey into London can
+let you be neither. Otherwise, I hold to my day, ... Wednesday. And
+may God bless you my dear friend.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+You are right I see, nearly everywhere, if not quite everywhere in the
+criticisms--but of course I have not looked very closely--that is, I
+have read your papers but not in connection with a _my_ side of the
+argument--but I shall lose the post after all.
+
+[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Prometheus_ II.: 'trick of loving men,' see
+note 3, on p. 39 above.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Saturday Morning,
+                                  [Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
+
+I ventured to hope this morning might bring me news of you--First
+East-winds on you, then myself, then those criticisms!--I do assure
+you I am properly apprehensive. How are you? May I go on Wednesday
+without too much [Greek: anthadia].
+
+Pray remember what I said and wrote, to the effect that my exceptions
+were, in almost every case, to the 'reading'--not to your version of
+it: but I have not specified the particular ones--not written down the
+Greek, of my suggested translations--have I? And if you do not find
+them in the margin of your copy, how you must wonder! Thus, in the
+last speech but one, of Hermes, I prefer Porson and Blomfield's
+[Greek: ei med' atychon ti chala manion];--to the old combinations
+that include [Greek: eutyche]--though there is no MS. authority for
+emendation, it seems. But in what respect does Prometheus 'fare
+_well_,' or 'better' even, since the beginning? And is it not the old
+argument over again, that when a man _fails_ he should repent of his
+ways?--And while thinking of Hermes, let me say that '[Greek: mede moi
+diplas odous prosbales]' is surely--'Don't subject me to the trouble
+of a second journey ... by paying no attention to the first.' So says
+Scholiast A, and so backs him Scholiast B, especially created, it
+should appear, to show there could be _in rerum natura_ such another
+as his predecessor. A few other remarks occur to me, which I will tell
+you if you please; _now_, I really want to know how you are, and write
+for that.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  [Post-mark, June 9, 1845.]
+
+Just after my note left, yours came--I will try so to answer it as to
+please you; and I begin by promising cheerfully to do all you bid me
+about naming days &c. I do believe we are friends now and for ever.
+There can be no reason, therefore, that I should cling tenaciously to
+any one or other time of meeting, as if, losing that, I lost
+everything--and, for the future, I will provide against sudden
+engagements, outrageous weather &c., to your heart's content. Nor am I
+going to except against here and there a little wrong I could get up,
+as when you _imply_ from my quick impulses and the like. No, my dear
+friend--for I seem sure I shall have quite, quite time enough to do
+myself justice in your eyes--Let time show!
+
+Perhaps I feel none the less sorely, when you 'thank' me for such
+company as mine, that I cannot avoid confessing to myself that it
+would not be so absolutely out of my power, perhaps, to contrive
+really and deserve thanks in a certain acceptation--I _might_ really
+_try_, at all events, and amuse you a little better, when I do have
+the opportunity,--and I _do not_--but there is the thing! It is all of
+a piece--I _do not_ seek your friendship in order to do you good--any
+good--only to do myself good. Though I _would_, God knows, do that
+too.
+
+Enough of this.
+
+I am much better, indeed,--but will certainly follow your advice
+should the pain return. And you--you have tried a new journey from
+your room, have you not?
+
+Do recollect, at any turn, any chance so far in my favour,--that I am
+here and yours should you want any fetching and carrying in this
+outside London world. Your brothers may have their own business to
+mind, Mr. Kenyon is at New York, we will suppose; here am I--what
+else, _what else_ makes me count my cleverness to you, as I know I
+have done more than once, by word and letter, but the real wish to be
+set at work? I should have, I hope, better taste than to tell any
+everyday acquaintance, who could not go out, one single morning even,
+on account of a headache, that the weather was delightful, much less
+that I had been walking five miles and meant to run ten--yet to you I
+boasted once of polking and waltzing and more--but then would it not
+be a very superfluous piece of respect in the four-footed bird to keep
+his wings to himself because his Master Oceanos could fly forsooth?
+Whereas he begins to wave a flap and show how ready they are to be
+off--for what else were the good of him? Think of this--and
+
+                                           Know me for yours
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+For good you are, to those notes--you shall have more,--that is, the
+rest--on Wednesday then, at 3, except as you except. God bless you.
+
+Oh, let me tell you--I suppose Mr. Horne must be in town--as I
+received a letter two days ago, from the contriver of some literary
+society or other who had before written to get me to belong to it,
+protesting _against_ my reasons for refusing, and begging that 'at all
+events I would suspend my determination till I had been visited by Mr.
+H. on the subject'--and, as they can hardly mean to bring him express
+from the Drachenfels for just that, he is returned no doubt--and as he
+is your friend, I take the opportunity of mentioning the course I
+shall pursue with him or any other friend of yours I may meet,--(and
+everybody else, I may add--) the course I understand you to desire,
+with respect to our own intimacy. While I may acknowledge, I believe,
+that I correspond with you, I shall not, in any case, suffer it to be
+known that I see, or have seen you. This I just remind you of, lest
+any occasion of embarrassment should arise, for a moment, from your
+not being quite sure how _I_ had acted in any case.--Con che, le bacio
+le mani--a rivederla!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 10, 1845.]
+
+I must thank you by one word for all your kindness and
+consideration--which could not be greater; nor more felt by me. In the
+first place, afterwards (if that should not be Irish dialect) do
+understand that my letter passed from my hands to go to yours on
+_Friday_, but was thrown aside carelessly down stairs and 'covered up'
+they say, so as not to be seen until late on Saturday; and I can only
+humbly hope to have been cross enough about it (having conscientiously
+tried) to secure a little more accuracy another time.--And then, ...
+if ever I should want anything done or found, ... (a roc's egg or the
+like) you may believe me that I shall not scruple to ask you to be the
+finder; but at this moment I want nothing, indeed, except your poems;
+and that is quite the truth. Now do consider and think what I could
+possibly want in your 'outside London world'; you, who are the 'Genius
+of the lamp'!--Why if you light it and let me read your romances, &c.,
+by it, is not that the best use for it, and am I likely to look for
+another? Only I shall remember what you say, gratefully and seriously;
+and if ever I should have a good fair opportunity of giving you
+trouble (as if I had not done it already!), you may rely upon my evil
+intentions; even though dear Mr. Kenyon should not actually be at New
+York, ... which he is not, I am glad to say, as I saw him on Saturday.
+
+Which reminds me that _he_ knows of your having been here, of course!
+and will not mention it; as he understood from me that _you_ would
+not.--Thank you! Also there was an especial reason which constrained
+me, on pain of appearing a great hypocrite, to tell Miss Mitford the
+bare fact of my having seen you--and reluctantly I did it, though
+placing some hope in her promise of discretion. And how necessary the
+discretion is, will appear in the awful statistical fact of our having
+at this moment, as my sisters were calculating yesterday, some forty
+relations in London--to say nothing of the right wing of the enemy.
+For Mr. Horne, I could have told you, and really I thought I _had_
+told you of his being in England.
+
+Last paragraph of all is, that I _don't want to be amused_, ... or
+rather that I _am_ amused by everything and anything. Why surely,
+surely, you have some singular ideas about me! So, till to-morrow,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Instead of writing this note to you yesterday, as should have been, I
+went down-stairs--or rather was carried--and am not the worse.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Friday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
+
+Yes, the poem _is_ too good in certain respects for the prizes given
+in colleges, (when all the pure parsley goes naturally to the
+rabbits), and has a great deal of beauty here and there in image and
+expression. Still I do not quite agree with you that it reaches the
+Tennyson standard any wise; and for the blank verse, I cannot for a
+moment think it comparable to one of the grand passages in 'Oenone,'
+and 'Arthur' and the like. In fact I seem to hear more in that latter
+blank verse than you do, ... to hear not only a 'mighty line' as in
+Marlowe, but a noble full orbicular wholeness in complete
+passages--which always struck me as the mystery of music and great
+peculiarity in Tennyson's versification, inasmuch as he attains to
+these complete effects without that shifting of the pause practised by
+the masters, ... Shelley and others. A 'linked music' in which there
+are no links!--_that_, you would take to be a contradiction--and yet
+something like that, my ear has always seemed to perceive; and I have
+wondered curiously again and again how there could be so much union
+and no fastening. Only of course it is not model versification--and
+for dramatic purposes, it must be admitted to be bad.
+
+Which reminds me to be astonished for the second time how you could
+think such a thing of me as that I wanted to read only your lyrics,
+... or that I 'preferred the lyrics' ... or something barbarous in
+that way? You don't think me 'ambidexter,' or 'either-handed' ... and
+both hands open for what poems you will vouchsafe to me; and yet if
+you would let me see anything you may have in a readable state by you,
+... 'The Flight of the Duchess' ... or act or scene of 'The Soul's
+Tragedy,' ... I shall be so glad and grateful to you! Oh--if you
+change your mind and choose to be _bien prie_, I will grant it is your
+right, and begin my liturgy directly. But this is not teazing (in the
+intention of it!) and I understand all about the transcription, and
+the inscrutableness of rough copies,--that is, if you write as I do,
+so that my guardian angel or M. Champollion cannot read what is
+written. Only whatever they can, (remember!) _I_ can: and you are not
+to mind trusting me with the cacistography possible to mortal readers.
+
+The sun shines so that nobody dares complain of the east wind--and
+indeed I am better altogether. May God bless you, my dear friend.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
+
+When I ask my wise self what I really do remember of the Prize poem,
+the answer is--both of Chapman's lines a-top, quite worth any prize
+for their quoter--then, the good epithet of 'Green Europe' contrasting
+with Africa--then, deep in the piece, a picture of a Vestal in a
+vault, where I see a dipping and winking lamp plainest, and last of
+all the ominous 'all was dark' that dismisses you. I read the poem
+many years ago, and never since, though I have an impression that the
+versification is good, yet from your commentary I see I must have said
+a good deal more in its praise than that. But have you not discovered
+by this time that I go on talking with my thoughts away?
+
+I know, I have always been jealous of my own musical faculty (I can
+write music).--Now that I see the uselessness of such jealousy, and am
+for loosing and letting it go, it may be cramped possibly. Your music
+is more various and exquisite than any modern writer's to my ear. One
+should study the mechanical part of the art, as nearly all that there
+is to be studied--for the more one sits and thinks over the creative
+process, the more it confirms itself as 'inspiration,' nothing more
+nor less. Or, at worst, you write down old inspirations, what you
+remember of them ... but with _that_ it begins. 'Reflection' is
+exactly what it names itself--a _re_-presentation, in scattered rays
+from every angle of incidence, of what first of all became present in
+a great light, a whole one. So tell me how these lights are born, if
+you can! But I can tell anybody how to make melodious verses--let him
+do it therefore--it should be exacted of all writers.
+
+You do not understand what a new feeling it is for me to have someone
+who is to like my verses or I shall not ever like them after! So far
+differently was I circumstanced of old, that I used rather to go about
+for a subject of offence to people; writing ugly things in order to
+warn the ungenial and timorous off my grounds at once. I shall never
+do so again at least! As it is, I will bring all I dare, in as great
+quantities as I can--if not next time, after then--certainly. I must
+make an end, print this Autumn my last four 'Bells,' Lyrics, Romances,
+'The Tragedy,' and 'Luna,' and then go on with a whole heart to my own
+Poem--indeed, I have just resolved not to begin any new song, even,
+till this grand clearance is made--I will get the Tragedy transcribed
+to bring--
+
+'To bring!' Next Wednesday--if you know how happy you make me! may I
+not say _that_, my dear friend, when I feel it from my soul?
+
+I thank God that you are better: do pray make fresh endeavours to
+profit by this partial respite of the weather! All about you must urge
+that: but even from my distance some effect might come of such wishes.
+But you _are_ better--look so and speak so! God bless you.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+You let 'flowers be sent you in a letter,' every one knows, and this
+hot day draws out our very first yellow rose.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 17, 1845.]
+
+Yes, I quite believe as you do that what is called the 'creative
+process' in works of Art, is just inspiration and no less--which made
+somebody say to me not long since; And so you think that Shakespeare's
+'Othello' was of the effluence of the Holy Ghost?'--rather a startling
+deduction, ... only not quite as final as might appear to somebodies
+perhaps. At least it does not prevent my going on to agree with the
+saying of _Spiridion_, ... do you remember?... 'Tout ce que l'homme
+appelle inspiration, je l'appelle aussi revelation,' ... if there is
+not something too self-evident in it after all--my sole objection! And
+is it not true that your inability to analyse the mental process in
+question, is one of the proofs of the fact of inspiration?--as the
+gods were known of old by not being seen to move their feet,--coming
+and going in an equal sweep of radiance.--And still more wonderful
+than the first transient great light you speak of, ... and far beyond
+any work of _re_flection, except in the pure analytical sense in which
+you use the word, ... appears that gathering of light on light upon
+particular points, as you go (in composition) step by step, till you
+get intimately near to things, and see them in a fullness and
+clearness, and an intense trust in the truth of them which you have
+not in any sunshine of noon (called _real_!) but which you have _then_
+... and struggle to communicate:--an ineffectual struggle with most
+writers (oh, how ineffectual!) and when effectual, issuing in the
+'Pippa Passes,' and other master-pieces of the world.
+
+You will tell me what you mean exactly by being jealous of your own
+music? You said once that you had had a false notion of music, or had
+practised it according to the false notions of other people: but did
+you mean besides that you ever had meant to despise music
+altogether--because _that_, it is hard to set about trying to believe
+of you indeed. And then, you _can_ praise my verses for music?--Why,
+are you aware that people blame me constantly for wanting
+harmony--from Mr. Boyd who moans aloud over the indisposition of my
+'trochees' ... and no less a person than Mr. Tennyson, who said to
+somebody who repeated it, that in the want of harmony lay the chief
+defect of the poems, 'although it might verily be retrieved, as he
+could fancy that I had an ear by nature.' Well--but I am pleased that
+you should praise me--right or wrong--I mean, whether I am right or
+wrong in being pleased! and I say so to you openly, although my belief
+is that you are under a vow to our Lady of Loretto to make giddy with
+all manner of high vanities, some head, ... not too strong for such
+things, but too low for them, ... before you see again the embroidery
+on her divine petticoat. Only there's a flattery so far beyond praise
+... even _your_ praise--as where you talk of your verses being liked
+&c., and of your being happy to bring them here, ... that is scarcely
+a lawful weapon; and see if the Madonna may not signify so much to
+you!--Seriously, you will not hurry too uncomfortably, or
+uncomfortably at all, about the transcribing? Another day, you know,
+will do as well--and patience is possible to me, if not 'native to the
+soil.'
+
+Also I am behaving very well in going out into the noise; not quite
+out of doors yet, on account of the heat--and I am better as you say,
+without any doubt at all, and stronger--only my looks are a little
+deceitful; and people are apt to be heated and flushed in this
+weather, one hour, to look a little more ghastly an hour or two after.
+Not that it _is_ not true of me that I am better, mind! Because I am.
+
+The 'flower in the letter' was from one of my sisters--from Arabel
+(though many of these poems are _ideal_ ... will you understand?) and
+your rose came quite alive and fresh, though in act of dropping its
+beautiful leaves, because of having to come to me instead of living on
+in your garden, as it intended. But I thank you--for this, and all, my
+dear friend.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Thursday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 19, 1845.]
+
+When I next see you, do not let me go on and on to my confusion about
+matters I am more or less ignorant of, but always ignorant. I tell
+you plainly I only trench on them, and intrench in them, from
+gaucherie, pure and respectable ... I should certainly grow
+instructive on the prospects of hay-crops and pasture-land, if
+deprived of this resource. And now here is a week to wait before I
+shall have any occasion to relapse into Greek literature when I am
+thinking all the while, 'now I will just ask simply, what flattery
+there was,' &c. &c., which, as I had not courage to say then, I keep
+to myself for shame now. This I will say, then--wait and know me
+better, as you will one long day at the end.
+
+Why I write now, is because you did not promise, as before, to let me
+know how you are--this morning is miserably cold again--Will you tell
+me, at your own time?
+
+God bless you, my dear friend.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Thursday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 20, 1845.]
+
+If on Greek literature or anything else it is your pleasure to
+cultivate a reputation for ignorance, I will respect your desire--and
+indeed the point of the deficiency in question being far above my
+sight I am not qualified either to deny or assert the existence of it;
+so you are free to have it all your own way.
+
+About the 'flattery' however, there is a difference; and I must deny a
+little having ever used such a word ... as far as I can recollect, and
+I have been trying to recollect, ... as that word of flattery. Perhaps
+I said something about your having vowed to make me vain by writing
+this or that of my liking your verses and so on--and perhaps I said it
+too lightly ... which happened because when one doesn't know whether
+to laugh or to cry, it is far best, as a general rule, to laugh. But
+the serious truth is that it was all nonsense together what I wrote,
+and that, instead of talking of your making me vain, I should have
+talked (if it had been done sincerely) of your humbling me--inasmuch
+as nothing does humble anybody so much as being lifted up too high.
+You know what vaulting Ambition did once for himself? and when it is
+done for him by another, his fall is still heavier. And one moral of
+all this general philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you
+persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to
+say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I
+shall have no help for my dumbness. So I tell you beforehand--nothing
+extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so
+much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence'
+which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness'
+which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems
+gradually going and going--and really it would not be very strange
+(without that) if _I_ who was born a hero worshipper and have so
+continued, and who always recognised your genius, should find it
+impossible to bring out critical doxies on the workings of it. Well--I
+shall do what I can--as far as _impressions_ go, you understand--and
+_you_ must promise not to attach too much importance to anything said.
+So that is a covenant, my dear friend!--
+
+And I am really gaining strength--and I will not complain of the
+weather. As long as the thermometer keeps above sixty I am content for
+one; and the roses are not quite dead yet, which they would have been
+in the heat. And last and not least--may I ask if you were told that
+the pain in the head was not important (or was) in the causes, ... and
+was likely to be well soon? or was not? I am at the end.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Upon second or third thoughts, isn't it true that you are a little
+suspicious of me? suspicious at least of suspiciousness?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Sunday Afternoon.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 23, 1845.]
+
+And if I am 'suspicious of your suspiciousness,' who gives cause,
+pray? The matter was long ago settled, I thought, when you first took
+exception to what I said about higher and lower, and I consented to
+this much--that you should help seeing, if you could, our true
+intellectual and moral relation each to the other, so long as you
+would allow _me_ to see what _is_ there, fronting me. 'Is my eye evil
+because yours is not good?' My own friend, if I wished to 'make you
+vain,' if having 'found the Bower' I did really address myself to the
+wise business of spoiling its rose-roof,--I think that at least where
+there was such a will, there would be also something not unlike a
+way,--that I should find a proper hooked stick to tear down flowers
+with, and write you other letters than these--quite, quite others, I
+feel--though I am far from going to imagine, even for a moment, what
+might be the precise prodigy--like the notable Son of Zeus, that _was_
+to have been, and done the wonders, only he did not, because &c. &c.
+
+But I have a restless head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well,
+you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being
+positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are
+neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special
+naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to
+signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more than that ... you
+will know exactly why it happens. I will finish and transcribe the
+'Flight of the Duchess' since you spoke of that first.
+
+I am truly happy to hear that your health improves still.
+
+For me, going out does me good--reading, writing, and, what is
+odd,--infinitely most of all, _sleeping_ do me the harm,--never any
+very great harm. And all the while I am yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]
+
+I had begun to be afraid that I did not deserve to have my questions
+answered; and I was afraid of asking them over again. But it is worse
+to be afraid that you are not better at all in any essential manner
+(after all your assurances) and that the medical means have failed so
+far. Did you go to somebody who knows anything?--because there is no
+excuse, you see, in common sense, for not having the best and most
+experienced opinion when there is a choice of advice--and I am
+confident that that pain should not be suffered to go on without
+something being done. What I said about _nerves_, related to what you
+had told me of your mother's suffering and what you had fancied of the
+relation of it to your own, and not that I could be thinking about
+imaginary complaints--I wish I could. Not (either) that I believe in
+the relation ... because such things are not hereditary, are they? and
+the bare coincidence is improbable. Well, but, I wanted particularly
+to say this--_Don't bring the 'Duchess' with you on Wednesday._ I
+shall not expect anything, I write distinctly to tell you--and I would
+far far rather that you did not bring it. You see it is just as I
+thought--for that whether too much thought or study did or did not
+bring on the illness, ... yet you admit that reading and writing
+increase it ... as they would naturally do any sort of pain in the
+head--therefore if you will but be in earnest and try to get well
+_first_, we will do the 'Bells' afterwards, and there will be time for
+a whole peal of them, I hope and trust, before the winter. Now do
+admit that this is reasonable, and agree reasonably to it. And if it
+does you good to go out and take exercise, why not go out and take it?
+nay, why not go _away_ and take it? Why not try the effect of a little
+change of air--or even of a great change of air--if it should be
+necessary, or even expedient? Anything is better, you know ... or if
+you don't know, _I_ know--than to be ill, really, seriously--I mean
+for _you_ to be ill, who have so much to do and to enjoy in the world
+yet ... and all those bells waiting to be hung! So that if you will
+agree to be well first, I will promise to be ready afterwards to help
+you in any thing I can do ... transcribing or anything ... to get the
+books through the press in the shortest of times--and I am capable of
+a great deal of that sort of work without being tired, having the
+habit of writing in any sort of position, and the long habit, ...
+since, before I was ill even, I never used to write at a table (or
+scarcely ever) but on the arm of a chair, or on the seat of one,
+sitting myself on the floor, and calling myself a Lollard for dignity.
+So you will put by your 'Duchess' ... will you not? or let me see just
+that one sheet--if one should be written--which is finished? ... up to
+this moment, you understand? finished _now_.
+
+And if I have tired and teazed you with all these words it is a bad
+opportunity to take--and yet I will persist in saying through good and
+bad opportunities that I never did 'give cause' as you say, to your
+being 'suspicious of my suspiciousness' as I believe I said before. I
+deny my 'suspiciousness' altogether--it is not one of my faults. Nor
+is it quite my fault that you and I should always be quarrelling about
+over-appreciations and under-appreciations--and after all I have no
+interest nor wish, I do assure you, to depreciate myself--and you are
+not to think that I have the remotest claim to the Monthyon prize for
+good deeds in the way of modesty of self-estimation. Only when I know
+you better, as you talk of ... and when _you_ know _me_ too well, ...
+the right and the wrong of these conclusions will appear in a fuller
+light than ever so much arguing can produce now. Is it unkindly
+written of me? _no_--I _feel_ it is not!--and that 'now and ever we
+are friends,' (just as you think) _I_ think besides and am happy in
+thinking so, and could not be distrustful of you if I tried. So may
+God bless you, my ever dear friend--and mind to forget the 'Duchess'
+and to remember every good counsel!--Not that I do particularly
+confide in the medical oracles. They never did much more for _me_
+than, when my pulse was above a hundred and forty with fever, to give
+me digitalis to make me weak--and, when I could not move without
+fainting (with weakness), to give me quinine to make me feverish
+again. Yes--and they could tell from the stethoscope, how very little
+was really wrong in me ... if it were not on a vital organ--and how I
+should certainly live ... if I didn't die sooner. But then, nothing
+_has_ power over affections of the chest, except God and his
+winds--and I do hope that an obvious quick remedy may be found for
+your head. But _do_ give up the writing and all that does harm!--
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      E.B.B.
+
+Miss Mitford talked of spending Wednesday with me--and I have put it
+off to Thursday:--and if you should hear from Mr. Chorley that he is
+coming to see _her and me together on any day_, do understand that it
+was entirely her proposition and not mine, and that certainly it won't
+be acceded to, as far as _I_ am concerned; as I have explained to her
+finally. I have been vexed about it--but she can see him down-stairs
+as she has done before--and if she calls me perverse and capricious
+(which she will do) I shall stop the reflection by thanking her again
+and again (as I can do sincerely) for her kindness and goodness in
+coming to see me herself, so far!--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Morning,
+                                 [Post-mark, June 24, 1845.]
+
+(So my friend did not in the spirit see me write that _first_ letter,
+on Friday, which was too good and true to send, and met, five minutes
+after, its natural fate accordingly. Then on Saturday I thought to
+take health by storm, and walked myself half dead all the
+morning--about town too: last post-hour from this Thule of a
+suburb--4 P.M. on Saturdays, next expedition of letters, 8 A.M. on
+Mondays;--and then my real letter set out with the others--and, it
+should seem, set at rest a 'wonder whether thy friend's questions
+deserved answering'--de-served--answer-ing--!)
+
+Parenthetically so much--I want most, though, to tell you--(leaving
+out any slightest attempt at thanking you) that I am much better,
+quite well to-day--that my doctor has piloted me safely through two or
+three illnesses, and knows all about me, I do think--and that he talks
+confidently of getting rid of all the symptoms complained of--and
+_has_ made a good beginning if I may judge by to-day. As for going
+abroad, that is just the thing I most want to avoid (for a reason not
+so hard to guess, perhaps, as why my letter was slow in arriving).
+
+So, till to-morrow,--my light through the dark week.
+
+                            God ever bless you, dear friend,
+
+                                 R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 25, 1845.]
+
+What will you think when I write to ask you _not_ to come to-morrow,
+Wednesday; but ... on Friday perhaps, instead? But do see how it is;
+and judge if it is to be helped.
+
+I have waited hour after hour, hoping to hear from Miss Mitford that
+she would agree to take Thursday in change for Wednesday,--and just as
+I begin to wonder whether she can have received my letter at all, or
+whether she may not have been vexed by it into taking a vengeance and
+adhering to her own devices; (for it appealed to her esprit de sexe on
+the undeniable axiom of women having their way ... and she might
+choose to act it out!) just as I wonder over all this, and consider
+what a confusion of the elements it would be if you came and found her
+here, and Mr. Chorley at the door perhaps, waiting for some of the
+light of her countenance;--comes a note from Mr. Kenyon, to the
+effect that _he_ will be here at four o'clock P.M.--and comes a final
+note from my aunt Mrs. Hedley (supposed to be at Brighton for several
+months) to the effect that _she_ will be here at twelve o'clock, M.!!
+So do observe the constellation of adverse stars ... or the covey of
+'bad birds,' as the Romans called them, and that there is no choice,
+but to write as I am writing. It can't be helped--can it? For take
+away the doubt about Miss Mitford, and Mr. Kenyon remains--and take
+away Mr. Kenyon, and there is Mrs. Hedley--and thus it _must be for
+Friday_ ... which will learn to be a fortunate day for the
+nonce--unless Saturday should suit you better. I do not speak of
+Thursday, because of the doubt about Miss Mitford--and if any harm
+should happen to Friday, I will write again; but if you do not hear
+again, and are able to come then, you _will_ come perhaps then.
+
+In the meantime I thank you for the better news in your note--if it is
+really, really to be trusted in--but you know, you have said so often
+that you were better and better, without being really better, that it
+makes people ... 'suspicious.' Yet it is full amends for the
+disappointment to hope ... here I must break off or be too late. May
+God bless you my dear friend.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 12. Wednesday.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 25, 1845.]
+
+Pomegranates you may cut deep down the middle and see into, but not
+hearts,--so why should I try and speak?
+
+Friday is best day because nearest, but Saturday is next best--it is
+next near, you know: if I get no note, therefore, Friday is my day.
+
+Now is Post-time,--which happens properly.
+
+God bless you, and so your own
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Thursday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 27, 1845.]
+
+After all it must be for Saturday, as Mrs. Hedley comes again on
+Friday, to-morrow, from _New Cross_,--or just beyond it, Eltham
+Park--to London for a few days, on account of the illness of one of
+her children. I write in the greatest haste after Miss Mitford has
+left me ... and _so_ tired! to say this, that if you can and will come
+on Saturday, ... or if not on Monday or Tuesday, there is no reason
+against it.
+
+                                         Your friend always,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Friday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 27, 1845.]
+
+Let me make haste and write down _To-morrow_, Saturday, and not later,
+lest my selfishness be thoroughly got under in its struggle with a
+better feeling that tells me you must be far too tired for another
+visitor this week.
+
+What shall I decide on?
+
+Well--Saturday is said--but I will stay not quite so long, nor talk
+nearly so loud as of old-times; nor will you, if you understand
+anything of me, fail to send down word should you be at all
+indisposed. I should not have the heart to knock at the door unless I
+really believed you would do that. Still saying this and providing
+against the other does not amount, I well know, to the generosity, or
+justice rather, of staying away for a day or two altogether. But--what
+'a day or two' may not bring forth! Change to you, change to me--
+
+Not all of me, however, can change, thank God--
+
+                                                  Yours ever
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+Or, write, as last night, if needs be: Monday, Tuesday is not so long
+to wait. Will you write?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Friday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, June 28, 1845.]
+
+You are very kind and always--but really _that_ does not seem a good
+reason against your coming to-morrow--so come, if it should not rain.
+If it rains, it _concludes_ for Monday ... or Tuesday; whichever may
+be clear of rain. I was tired on Wednesday by the confounding
+confusion of more voices than usual in this room; but the effect
+passed off, and though Miss Mitford was with me for hours yesterday I
+am not unwell to-day. And pray speak _bona verba_ about the awful
+things which are possible between this now and Wednesday. You continue
+to be better, I do hope? I am forced to the brevity you see, by the
+post on one side, and my friends on the other, who have so long
+overstayed the coming of your note--but it is enough to assure you
+that you will do no harm by coming--only give pleasure.
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                            Monday.
+                                            [June 30, 1845.]
+
+I send back the prize poems which have been kept far too long even if
+I do not make excuses for the keeping--but our sins are not always to
+be measured by our repentance for them. Then I am well enough this
+morning to have thought of going out till they told me it was not at
+all a right day for it ... too windy ... soft and delightful as the
+air seems to be--particularly after yesterday, when we had some winter
+back again in an episode. And the roses do not die; which is quite
+magnanimous of them considering their reverses; and their buds are
+coming out in most exemplary resignation--like birds singing in a
+cage. Now that the windows may be open, the flowers take heart to live
+a little in this room.
+
+And think of my forgetting to tell you on Saturday that I had known of
+a letter being received by somebody from Miss Martineau, who is at
+Ambleside at this time and so entranced with the lakes and mountains
+as to be dreaming of taking or making a house among them, to live in
+for the rest of her life. Mrs. Trollope, you may have heard, had
+something of the same nympholepsy--no, her daughter was 'settled' in
+the neighbourhood--_that_ is the more likely reason for Mrs. Trollope!
+and the spirits of the hills conspired against her the first winter
+and almost slew her with a fog and drove her away to your Italy where
+the Oreadocracy has gentler manners. And Miss Martineau is practising
+mesmerism and miracles on all sides she says, and counts on Archbishop
+Whately as a new adherent. I even fancy that he has been to see her in
+the character of a convert. All this from Mr. Kenyon.
+
+There's a strange wild book called the Autobiography of Heinrich
+Stilling ... one of those true devout deep-hearted Germans who believe
+everything, and so are nearer the truth, I am sure, than the wise who
+believe nothing; but rather over-German sometimes, and redolent of
+sauerkraut--and _he_ gives a tradition ... somewhere between mesmerism
+and mysticism, ... of a little spirit with gold shoebuckles, who was
+his familiar spirit and appeared only in the sunshine I think ...
+mottling it over with its feet, perhaps, as a child might snow. Take
+away the shoebuckles and I believe in the little spirit--don't _you_?
+But these English mesmerists make the shoebuckles quite conspicuous
+and insist on them broadly; and the Archbishops Whately may be drawn
+by _them_ (who can tell?) more than by the little spirit itself. How
+is your head to-day? now really, and nothing extenuating? I will not
+ask of poems, till the 'quite well' is _authentic_. May God bless you
+always! my dear friend!
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+After all the book must go another day. I live in chaos do you know?
+and I am too hurried at this moment ... yes it is here.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                            Tuesday Morning.
+
+How are you--may I hope to hear soon?
+
+I don't know exactly what possessed me to set my next day so far off
+as Saturday--as it was said, however, so let it be. And I will bring
+the rest of the 'Duchess'--four or five hundred lines,--'heu, herba
+mala crescit'--(as I once saw mournfully pencilled on a white wall at
+Asolo)--but will you tell me if you quite remember the main of the
+_first_ part--(_parts_ there are none except in the necessary process
+of chopping up to suit the limits of a magazine--and I gave them as
+much as I could transcribe at a sudden warning)--because, if you
+please, I can bring the whole, of course.
+
+After seeing _you_, that Saturday, I was caught up by a friend and
+carried to see Vidocq--who did the honours of his museum of knives and
+nails and hooks that have helped great murderers to their purposes--he
+scarcely admits, I observe, an implement with only one attestation to
+its efficacy; but the one or two exceptions rather justify his
+latitude in their favour--thus one little sort of dessert knife _did_
+only take _one_ life.... 'But then,' says Vidocq, 'it was the man's
+own mother's life, with fifty-two blows, and all for' (I think)
+'fifteen francs she had got?' So prattles good-naturedly Vidocq--one
+of his best stories of that Lacenaire--'jeune homme d'un caractere
+fort avenant--mais c'etait un poete,' quoth he, turning sharp on _me_
+out of two or three other people round him.
+
+Here your letter breaks in, and sunshine too.
+
+Why do you send me that book--not let me take it? What trouble for
+nothing!
+
+An old French friend of mine, a dear foolish, very French heart and
+soul, is coming presently--his poor brains are whirling with mesmerism
+in which he believes, as in all other unbelief. He and I are to dine
+alone (I have not seen him these two years)--and I shall never be able
+to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast and
+descending lower, from riveting his two foolish legs to the wintry
+chasm; for I that stammer and answer hap-hazard with you, get
+proportionately valiant and voluble with a mere cupful of Diderot's
+rinsings, and a man into the bargain.
+
+If you were prevented from leaving the house yesterday, assuredly
+to-day you will never attempt such a thing--the wind, rain--all is
+against it: I trust you will not make the first experiment except
+under really favourable auspices ... for by its success you will
+naturally be induced to go on or leave off--Still you are _better_! I
+fully believe, dare to believe, _that_ will continue. As for me, since
+you ask--find me but something _to do_, and see if I shall not be
+well!--Though I _am_ well now almost.
+
+How good you are to my roses--they are not of my making, to be sure.
+Never, by the way, did Miss Martineau work such a miracle as I now
+witness in the garden--I gathered at Rome, close to the fountain of
+Egeria, a handful of _fennel_-seeds from the most indisputable plant
+of fennel I ever chanced upon--and, lo, they are come up ... hemlock,
+or something akin! In two places, moreover. Wherein does hemlock
+resemble fennel? How could I mistake? No wonder that a stone's cast
+off from that Egeria's fountain is the Temple of the God Ridiculus.
+
+Well, on Saturday then--at three: and I will certainly bring the
+verses you mention--and trust to find you still better.
+
+Vivi felice--my dear friend, God bless you!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Wednesday-Thursday Evening
+                                  [Post-mark, July 4, 1845.]
+
+Yes--I know the first part of the 'Duchess' and have it here--and for
+the rest of the poem, don't mind about being very legible, or even
+legible in the usual sense; and remember how it is my boast to be able
+to read all such manuscript writing as never is read by people who
+don't like caviare. Now you won't mind? really I rather like blots
+than otherwise--being a sort of patron-saint of all manner of
+untidyness ... if Mr. Kenyon's reproaches (of which there's a
+stereotyped edition) are justified by the fact--and he has a great
+organ of order, and knows 'disorderly persons' at a glance, I suppose.
+But you won't be particular with _me_ in the matter of transcription?
+_that_ is what I want to make sure of. And even if you are not
+particular, I am afraid you are not well enough to be troubled by
+writing, and writing and the thinking that comes with it--it would be
+wiser to wait till you are quite well--now wouldn't it?--and my fear
+is that the 'almost well' means 'very little better.' And why, when
+there is no motive for hurrying, run any risk? Don't think that I will
+help you to make yourself ill. That I refuse to do even so much work
+as the 'little dessert-knife' in the way of murder, ... _do_ think! So
+upon the whole, I expect nothing on Saturday from this distance--and
+if it comes unexpectedly (I mean the Duchess and not Saturday) _let_
+it be at no cost, or at the least cost possible, will you? I am
+delighted in the meanwhile to hear of the quantity of 'mala herba';
+and hemlock does not come up from every seed you sow, though you call
+it by ever such bad names.
+
+Talking of poetry, I had a newspaper 'in help of social and political
+progress' sent to me yesterday from America--addressed to--just my
+name ... _poetess, London_! Think of the simplicity of those wild
+Americans in 'calculating' that 'people in general' here in England
+know what a poetess is!--Well--the post office authorities, after
+deep meditation, I do not doubt, on all probable varieties of the
+chimpanzee, and a glance to the Surrey Gardens on one side, and the
+Zoological department of Regent's Park on the other, thought of
+'Poet's Corner,' perhaps, and wrote at the top of the parcel, 'Enquire
+at Paternoster Row'! whereupon the Paternoster Row people wrote again,
+'Go to Mr. Moxon'--and I received my newspaper.
+
+And talking of poetesses, I had a note yesterday (again) which quite
+touched me ... from Mr. Hemans--Charles, the son of Felicia--written
+with so much feeling, that it was with difficulty I could say my
+perpetual 'no' to his wish about coming to see me. His mother's memory
+is surrounded to him, he says, 'with almost a divine lustre'--and 'as
+it cannot be to those who knew the writer alone and not the woman.' Do
+you not like to hear such things said? and is it not better than your
+tradition about Shelley's son? and is it not pleasant to know that
+that poor noble pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our
+country, should be so loved and comprehended by some ... by one at
+least ... of her own house? Not that, in naming Shelley, I meant for a
+moment to make a comparison--there is not equal ground for it.
+Vittoria Colonna does not walk near Dante--no. And if you promised
+never to tell Mrs. Jameson ... nor Miss Martineau ... I would confide
+to you perhaps my secret profession of faith--which is ... which is
+... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there _is_ a
+natural inferiority of mind in women--of the intellect ... not by any
+means, of the moral nature--and that the history of Art and of genius
+testifies to this fact openly. Oh--I would not say so to Mrs. Jameson
+for the world. I believe I was a coward to her altogether--for when
+she denounced carpet work as 'injurious to the mind,' because it led
+the workers into 'fatal habits of reverie,' I defended the carpet work
+as if I were striving _pro aris et focis_, (_I_, who am so innocent of
+all that knowledge!) and said not a word for the poor reveries which
+have frayed away so much of silken time for me ... and let her go
+away repeating again and again ... 'Oh, but _you_ may do carpet work
+with impunity--yes! _because_ you can be writing poems all the
+while.'!
+
+Think of people making poems and rugs at once. There's complex
+machinery for you!
+
+I told you that I had a sensation of cold blue steel from her
+eyes!--And yet I really liked and like and shall like her. She is very
+kind I believe--and it was my mistake--and I correct my impressions of
+her more and more to perfection, as _you_ tell me who know more of her
+than I.
+
+Only I should not dare, ... _ever_, I think ... to tell her that I
+believe women ... all of us in a mass ... to have minds of quicker
+movement, but less power and depth ... and that we are under your
+feet, because we can't stand upon our own. Not that we should either
+be quite under your feet! so you are not to be too proud, if you
+please--and there is certainly some amount of wrong--: but it never
+will be righted in the manner and to the extent contemplated by
+certain of our own prophetesses ... nor ought to be, I hold in
+intimate persuasion. One woman indeed now alive ... and only _that_
+one down all the ages of the world--seems to me to justify for a
+moment an opposite opinion--that wonderful woman George Sand; who has
+something monstrous in combination with her genius, there is no
+denying at moments (for she has written one book, Leila, which I could
+not read, though I am not easily turned back,) but whom, in her good
+and evil together, I regard with infinitely more admiration than all
+other women of genius who are or have been. Such a colossal nature in
+every way,--with all that breadth and scope of faculty which women
+want--magnanimous, and loving the truth and loving the people--and
+with that 'hate of hate' too, which you extol--so eloquent, and yet
+earnest as if she were dumb--so full of a living sense of beauty, and
+of noble blind instincts towards an ideal purity--and so proving a
+right even in her wrong. By the way, what you say of the Vidocq museum
+reminds me of one of the chamber of masonic trial scenes in
+'Consuelo.' Could you like to see those knives?
+
+I began with the best intentions of writing six lines--and see what is
+written! And all because I kept my letter back ... from a _doubt about
+Saturday_--but it has worn away, and the appointment stands good ...
+for me: I have nothing to say against it.
+
+But belief in mesmerism is not the same thing as general unbelief--to
+do it justice--now is it? It may be super-belief as well. Not that
+there is not something ghastly and repelling to me in the thought of
+Dr. Elliotson's great bony fingers seeming to 'touch the stops' of a
+whole soul's harmonies--as in phreno-magnetism. And I should have
+liked far better than hearing and seeing _that_, to have heard _you_
+pour the 'cupful of Diderot's rinsings,' out,--and indeed I can fancy
+a little that you and how you could do it--and break the cup too
+afterwards!
+
+Another sheet--and for what?
+
+What is written already, if you read, you do so meritoriously--and
+it's an example of bad writing, if you want one in the poems. I am
+ashamed, you may see, of having written too much, (besides)--which is
+_much_ worse--but one writes and writes: _I_ do at least--for _you_
+are irreproachable. Ever yours my dear friend, as if I had not written
+... or _had_!
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                   Monday Afternoon.
+                                   [Post-mark July 7, 1845.]
+
+While I write this,--3 o'clock you may be going out, I will hope, for
+the day is very fine, perhaps all the better for the wind: yet I got
+up this morning sure of bad weather. I shall not try to tell you how
+anxious I am for the result and to know it. You will of course feel
+fatigued at first--but persevering, as you mean to do, do you
+not?--persevering, the event must be happy.
+
+I thought, and still think, to write to you about George Sand, and
+the vexed question, a very Bermoothes of the 'Mental Claims of the
+Sexes Relatively Considered' (so was called the, ... I do believe, ...
+worst poem I ever read in my life), and Mrs. Hemans, and all and some
+of the points referred to in your letter--but 'by my fay, I cannot
+reason,' to-day: and, by a consequence, I feel the more--so I say how
+I want news of you ... which, when they arrive, I shall read
+'meritoriously'--do you think? My friend, what ought I to tell you on
+that head (or the reverse rather)--of your discourse? I should like to
+match you at a fancy-flight; if I could, give you nearly as pleasant
+an assurance that 'there's no merit in the case,' but the hot weather
+and lack of wit get the better of my good will--besides, I remember
+once to have admired a certain enticing simplicity in the avowal of
+the Treasurer of a Charitable Institution at a Dinner got up in its
+behalf--the Funds being at lowest, Debt at highest ... in fact, this
+Dinner was the last chance of the Charity, and this Treasurer's speech
+the main feature in the chance--and our friend, inspired by the
+emergency, went so far as to say, with a bland smile--'Do not let it
+be supposed that we--_despise_ annual contributors,--we
+_rather_--solicit their assistance.' All which means, do not think
+that I take any 'merit' for making myself supremely happy, I rather
+&c. &c.
+
+Always rather mean to deserve it a little better--but never shall: so
+it should be, for you and me--and as it was in the beginning so it is
+still. You are the--But you know and why should I tease myself with
+words?
+
+Let me send this off now--and to-morrow some more, because I trust to
+hear you have made the first effort and with success.
+
+                                 Ever yours, my dear friend,
+
+                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Monday.
+                                  [Post-mark, July 8, 1845.]
+
+Well--I have really been out; and am really alive after it--which is
+more surprising still--alive enough I mean, to write even _so_,
+to-night. But perhaps I say so with more emphasis, to console myself
+for failing in my great ambition of getting into the Park and of
+reaching Mr. Kenyon's door just to leave a card there vaingloriously,
+... all which I did fail in, and was forced to turn back from the
+gates of Devonshire Place. The next time it will be better
+perhaps--and this time there was no fainting nor anything very wrong
+... not even cowardice on the part of the victim (be it recorded!) for
+one of my sisters was as usual in authority and ordered the turning
+back just according to her own prudence and not my selfwill. Only you
+will not, any of you, ask me to admit that it was all
+delightful--pleasanter work than what you wanted to spare me in taking
+care of your roses on Saturday! don't ask _that_, and I will try it
+again presently.
+
+I ought to be ashamed of writing this I and me-ism--but since your
+kindness made it worth while asking about I must not be over-wise and
+silent on my side.
+
+_Tuesday._--Was it fair to tell me to write though, and be silent of
+the 'Duchess,' and when I was sure to be so delighted--and _you knew
+it_? _I_ think not indeed. And, to make the obedience possible, I go
+on fast to say that I heard from Mr. Horne a few days since and that
+_he_ said--'your envelope reminds me of'--_you_, he said ... and so,
+asked if you were in England still, and meant to write to you. To
+which I have answered that I believe you to be in England--thinking it
+strange about the envelope; which, as far as I remember, was one of
+those long ones, used, the more conveniently to enclose to him back
+again a MS. of his own I had offered with another of his, by his
+desire, to _Colburn's Magazine_, as the productions of a friend of
+mine, when he was in Germany and afraid of his proper fatal
+onymousness, yet in difficulty how to approach the magazines as a
+nameless writer (you will not mention this of course). And when he was
+in Germany, I remember, ... writing just as your first letter came ...
+that I mentioned it to him, and was a little frankly proud of it! but
+since, your name has not occurred once--not once, certainly!--and it
+is strange.... Only he _can't_ have heard of your having been here,
+and it _must_ have been a chance-remark--altogether! taking an
+imaginary emphasis from my evil conscience perhaps. Talking of evils,
+how wrong of you to make that book for me! and how ill I thanked you
+after all! Also, I couldn't help feeling more grateful still for the
+Duchess ... who is under ban: and for how long I wonder?
+
+                            My dear friend, I am ever yours,
+
+                                 E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                  Wednesday Morning.
+                                  [Post-mark, July 9, 1845.]
+
+You are all that is good and kind: I am happy and thankful the
+beginning (and worst of it) is over and so well. The Park and Mr.
+Kenyon's all in good time--and your sister was most prudent--and you
+mean to try again: God bless you, all to be said or done--but, as I
+say it, no vain word. No doubt it was a mere chance-thought, and _a
+propos de bottes_ of Horne--neither he or any other _can_ know or even
+fancy how it is. Indeed, though on other grounds I should be all so
+proud of being known for your friend by everybody, yet there's no
+denying the deep delight of playing the Eastern Jew's part here in
+this London--they go about, you know by travel-books, with the tokens
+of extreme destitution and misery, and steal by blind ways and
+by-paths to some blank dreary house, one obscure door in it--which
+being well shut behind them, they grope on through a dark corridor or
+so, and then, a blaze follows the lifting a curtain or the like, for
+they are in a palace-hall with fountains and light, and marble and
+gold, of which the envious are never to dream! And I, too, love to
+have few friends, and to live alone, and to see you from week to week.
+Do you not suppose I am grateful?
+
+And you do like the 'Duchess,' as much as you have got of it? that
+delights me, too--for every reason. But I fear I shall not be able to
+bring you the rest to-morrow--Thursday, my day--because I have been
+broken in upon more than one morning; nor, though much better in my
+head, can I do anything at night just now. All will come right
+eventually, I hope, and I shall transcribe the other things you are to
+judge.
+
+To-morrow then--only (and that is why I would write) do, do _know_ me
+for what I am and treat me as I deserve in that _one_ respect, and _go
+out_, without a moment's thought or care, if to-morrow should suit
+you--leave word to that effect and I shall be as glad as if I saw you
+or more--_reasoned_ gladness, you know. Or you can write--though that
+is not necessary at all,--do think of all this!
+
+                               I am yours ever, dear friend,
+
+                                    R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 12, 1845.]
+
+You understand that it was not a resolution passed in favour of
+formality, when I said what I did yesterday about not going out at the
+time you were coming--surely you do; whatever you might signify to a
+different effect. If it were necessary for me to go out every day, or
+most days even, it would be otherwise; but as it is, I may certainly
+keep the day you come, free from the fear of carriages, let the sun
+shine its best or worst, without doing despite to you or injury to
+me--and that's all I meant to insist upon indeed and indeed. You see,
+Jupiter Tonans was good enough to come to-day on purpose to deliver
+me--one evil for another! for I confess with shame and contrition,
+that I never wait to enquire whether it thunders to the left or the
+right, to be frightened most ingloriously. Isn't it a disgrace to
+anyone with a pretension to poetry? Dr. Chambers, a part of whose
+office it is, Papa says, 'to reconcile foolish women to their
+follies,' used to take the side of my vanity, and discourse at length
+on the passive obedience of some nervous systems to electrical
+influences; but perhaps my faint-heartedness is besides traceable to a
+half-reasonable terror of a great storm in Herefordshire, where great
+storms most do congregate, (such storms!) round the Malvern Hills,
+those mountains of England. We lived four miles from their roots,
+through all my childhood and early youth, in a Turkish house my father
+built himself, crowded with minarets and domes, and crowned with metal
+spires and crescents, to the provocation (as people used to observe)
+of every lightning of heaven. Once a storm of storms happened, and we
+all thought the house was struck--and a tree was so really, within two
+hundred yards of the windows while I looked out--the bark, rent from
+the top to the bottom ... torn into long ribbons by the dreadful fiery
+hands, and dashed out into the air, over the heads of other trees, or
+left twisted in their branches--torn into shreds in a moment, as a
+flower might be, by a child! Did you ever see a tree after it has been
+struck by lightning? The whole trunk of that tree was bare and
+peeled--and up that new whiteness of it, ran the finger-mark of the
+lightning in a bright beautiful rose-colour (none of your roses
+brighter or more beautiful!) the fever-sign of the certain
+death--though the branches themselves were for the most part
+untouched, and spread from the peeled trunk in their full summer
+foliage; and birds singing in them three hours afterwards! And, in
+that same storm, two young women belonging to a festive party were
+killed on the Malvern Hills--each sealed to death in a moment with a
+sign on the chest which a common seal would cover--only the sign on
+them was not rose-coloured as on our tree, but black as charred wood.
+So I get 'possessed' sometimes with the effects of these impressions,
+and so does one, at least, of my sisters, in a lower degree--and
+oh!--how amusing and instructive all this is to you! When my father
+came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the
+lightning, he was quite angry and called 'it disgraceful to anybody
+who had ever learnt the alphabet'--to which I answered humbly that 'I
+knew it was'--but if I had been impertinent, I _might_ have added that
+wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it? Don't you
+think so in a measure? _non obstantibus_ Bradbury and Evans? There's a
+profane question--and ungrateful too ... after the Duchess--I except
+the Duchess and her peers--and be sure she will be the world's Duchess
+and received as one of your most striking poems. Full of various power
+the poem is.... I cannot say how deeply it has impressed me--but
+though I want the conclusion, I don't _wish_ for it; and in this, am
+reasonable for once! You will not write and make yourself ill--will
+you? or read 'Sybil' at unlawful hours even? Are you better at all?
+What a letter! and how very foolishly to-day
+
+                                                 I am yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Sunday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]
+
+Very well--I shall say no more on the subject--though it was not any
+piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your
+over-kindness exactly--I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind,
+and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you
+must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest
+obligation. I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom
+your well-being is of deeper interest than to me. Well, if that be
+so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of
+proving serviceable to you; nor _set yourself against_ any little
+irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the
+beginning; and you may say, if you like, 'how I shall delight those
+friends, if I can make this newest one grateful'--and, as from the
+known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be
+one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips
+and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen
+'Duchesses': why ought I not to say this when it is so true? Besides,
+people profess as much to their merest friends--for I have been
+looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of
+Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die
+too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so on. I wonder
+whether they have since wanted to borrow money of him on the strength
+of his professions. But you must remember we are in July; the 13th it
+is, and summer will go and cold weather stay ('_come_' forsooth!)--and
+now is the time of times. Still I feared the rain would hinder you on
+Friday--but the thunder did not frighten me--for you: your father must
+pardon me for holding most firmly with Dr. Chambers--his theory is
+quite borne out by my own experience, for I have seen a man it were
+foolish to call a coward, a great fellow too, all but die away in a
+thunderstorm, though he had quite science enough to explain why there
+was no immediate danger at all--whereupon his younger brother
+suggested that he should just go out and treat us to a repetition of
+Franklin's experiment with the cloud and the kite--a well-timed
+proposition which sent the Explainer down with a white face into the
+cellar. What a grand sight your tree was--_is_, for I see it. My
+father has a print of a tree so struck--torn to ribbons, as you
+describe--but the rose-mark is striking and new to me. We had a good
+storm on our last voyage, but I went to bed at the end, as I
+thought--and only found there had been lightning next day by the bare
+poles under which we were riding: but the finest mountain fit of the
+kind I ever saw has an unfortunately ludicrous association. It was at
+Possagno, among the Euganean Hills, and I was at a poor house in the
+town--an old woman was before a little picture of the Virgin, and at
+every fresh clap she lighted, with the oddest sputtering muttering
+mouthful of prayer imaginable, an inch of guttery candle, which, the
+instant the last echo had rolled away, she as constantly blew out
+again for saving's sake--having, of course, to _light the smoke_ of
+it, about an instant after that: the expenditure in wax at which the
+elements might be propitiated, you see, was a matter for curious
+calculation. I suppose I ought to have bought the whole taper for some
+four or five centesimi (100 of which make 8d. English) and so kept the
+countryside safe for about a century of bad weather. Leigh Hunt tells
+you a story he had from Byron, of kindred philosophy in a Jew who was
+surprised by a thunderstorm while he was dining on bacon--he tried to
+eat between-whiles, but the flashes were as pertinacious as he, so at
+last he pushed his plate away, just remarking with a compassionate
+shrug, 'all this fuss about a piece of pork!' By the way, what a
+characteristic of an Italian _late_ evening is Summer-lightning--it
+hangs in broad slow sheets, dropping from cloud to cloud, so long in
+dropping and dying off. The 'bora,' which you only get at Trieste,
+brings wonderful lightning--you are in glorious June-weather, fancy,
+of an evening, under green shock-headed acacias, so thick and green,
+with the cicalas stunning you above, and all about you men, women,
+rich and poor, sitting standing and coming and going--and through all
+the laughter and screaming and singing, the loud clink of the spoons
+against the glasses, the way of calling for fresh 'sorbetti'--for all
+the world is at open-coffee-house at such an hour--when suddenly there
+is a stop in the sunshine, a blackness drops down, then a great white
+column of dust drives straight on like a wedge, and you see the acacia
+heads snap off, now one, then another--and all the people scream 'la
+bora, la bora!' and you are caught up in their whirl and landed in
+some interior, the man with the guitar on one side of you, and the boy
+with a cageful of little brown owls for sale, on the other--meanwhile,
+the thunder claps, claps, with such a persistence, and the rain, for a
+finale, falls in a mass, as if you had knocked out the whole bottom of
+a huge tank at once--then there is a second stop--out comes the
+sun--somebody clinks at his glass, all the world bursts out laughing,
+and prepares to pour out again,--but _you_, the stranger, _do_ make
+the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you
+infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really
+that, of rainwater--that's a _Bora_ (and that comment of yours, a
+justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better,
+the best of all things you do not (_I_ do not) get those. And I shall
+see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the
+poem--that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to
+say, but then, do not you be tempted by that pleasure of pleasing
+which I think is your besetting sin--may it not be?--and so cut me off
+from the other pleasure of being profited. As I told you, I like so
+much to fancy that you see, and will see, what I do as _I_ see it,
+while it is doing, as nobody else in the world should, certainly, even
+if they thought it worth while to want--but when I try and build a
+great building I shall want you to come with me and judge it and
+counsel me before the scaffolding is taken down, and while you have to
+make your way over hods and mortar and heaps of lime, and trembling
+tubs of size, and those thin broad whitewashing brushes I always had a
+desire to take up and bespatter with. And now goodbye--I am to see you
+on Wednesday I trust--and to hear you say you are better, still
+better, much better? God grant that, and all else good for you, dear
+friend, and so for R.B.
+
+                                                 ever yours.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 18, 1845.]
+
+I suppose nobody is ever expected to acknowledge his or her 'besetting
+sin'--it would be unnatural--and therefore you will not be surprised
+to hear me deny the one imputed to me for mine. I deny it quite and
+directly. And if my denial goes for nothing, which is but reasonable,
+I might call in a great cloud of witnesses, ... a thundercloud, ...
+(talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a
+first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me
+see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold
+hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women always are when
+men grow humble' ... there's a charge against all possible and
+probable petticoats beyond mine and through it! Not that either they
+or mine deserve the charge--we do not; to the lowest hem of us! for I
+don't pass to the other extreme, mind, and adopt besetting sins 'over
+the way' and in antithesis. It's an undeserved charge, and unprovoked!
+and in fact, the very flower of self-love self-tormented into ill
+temper; and shall remain unanswered, for _me_, ... and _should_, ...
+even if I could write mortal epigrams, as your Lamia speaks them. Only
+it serves to help my assertion that people in general who know
+something of me, my dear friend, are not inclined to agree with you in
+particular, about my having an 'over-pleasure in pleasing,' for a
+besetting sin. If you had spoken of my sister Henrietta indeed, you
+would have been right--_so_ right! but for _me_, alas, my sins are not
+half as amiable, nor given to lean to virtue's side with half such a
+grace. And then I have a pretension to speak the truth like a Roman,
+even in matters of literature, where Mr. Kenyon says falseness is a
+fashion--and really and honestly I should not be afraid ... I should
+have no reason to be afraid, ... if all the notes and letters written
+by my hand for years and years about presentation copies of poems and
+other sorts of books were brought together and 'conferred,' as they
+say of manuscripts, before my face--I should not shrink and be
+ashamed. Not that I always tell the truth as I see it--_but_ I _never
+do_ speak falsely with intention and consciousness--never--and I do
+not find that people of letters are sooner offended than others are,
+by the truth told in gentleness;--I do not remember to have offended
+anyone in this relation, and by these means. Well!--but _from me to
+you_; it is all different, you know--you must know how different it
+is. I can tell you truly what I think of this thing and of that thing
+in your 'Duchess'--but I must of a necessity hesitate and fall into
+misgiving of the adequacy of my truth, so called. To judge at all of a
+work of yours, I must _look up to it_, and _far up_--because whatever
+faculty _I_ have is included in your faculty, and with a great rim all
+round it besides! And thus, it is not at all from an over-pleasure in
+pleasing _you_, not at all from an inclination to depreciate myself,
+that I speak and feel as I do and must on some occasions; it is simply
+the consequence of a true comprehension of you and of me--and apart
+from it, I should not be abler, I think, but less able, to assist you
+in anything. I do wish you would consider all this reasonably, and
+understand it as a third person would in a moment, and consent not to
+spoil the real pleasure I have and am about to have in your poetry, by
+nailing me up into a false position with your gold-headed nails of
+chivalry, which won't hold to the wall through this summer. Now you
+will not answer this?--you will only understand it and me--and that I
+am not servile but sincere, but earnest, but meaning what I say--and
+when I say I am afraid, you will believe that I am afraid; and when I
+say I have misgivings, you will believe that I have misgivings--you
+will _trust_ me so far, and give me liberty to breathe and feel
+naturally ... according to my own nature. Probably, or certainly
+rather, I have one advantage over you, ... one, of which women are not
+fond of boasting--that of _being older by years_--for the 'Essay on
+Mind,' which was the first poem published by me (and rather more
+printed than published after all), the work of my earliest youth, half
+childhood, half womanhood, was published in 1826 I see. And if I told
+Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but
+because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's
+exercise'; because it is just _that_ and no more, ... no expression
+whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things
+pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I
+would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are
+never like their writers, you know--and those under-age books are
+generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to _get into
+expression_, though I began rhyming from my very infancy, much as you
+did (and this, with no sympathy near to me--I have had to do without
+sympathy in the full sense--), and even in my 'Seraphim' days, my
+tongue clove to the roof of my mouth,--from leading so conventual
+recluse a life, perhaps--and all my better poems were written last
+year, the very best thing to come, if there should be any life or
+courage to come; I scarcely know. Sometimes--it is the real truth--I
+have haste to be done with it all. It is the real truth; however to
+say so may be an ungrateful return for your kind and generous words,
+... which I _do_ feel gratefully, let me otherwise feel as I will, ...
+or must. But then you know you are liable to such prodigious mistakes
+about besetting sins and even besetting virtues--to such a set of
+small delusions, that are sure to break one by one, like other
+bubbles, as you draw in your breath, ... as I see by the law of my own
+star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star
+_Wormwood_, ... on the opposite side of the heavens from the
+constellations of 'the Lyre and the Crown.' In the meantime, it is
+difficult to thank you, or _not_ to thank you, for all your
+kindnesses--[Greek: algos de sigan]. Only Mrs. Jameson told me of Lady
+Byron's saying 'that she knows she is burnt every day in effigy by
+half the world, but that the effigy is so unlike herself as to be
+inoffensive to her,' and just so, or rather just in the converse of
+_so_, is it with me and your kindnesses. They are meant for quite
+another than I, and are too far to be so near. The comfort is ... in
+seeing you throw all those ducats out of the window, (and how many
+ducats go in a figure to a 'dozen Duchesses,' it is profane to
+calculate) the comfort is that you will not be the poorer for it in
+the end; since the people beneath, are honest enough to push them back
+under the door. Rather a bleak comfort and occupation though!--and you
+may find better work for your friends, who are (some of them) weary
+even unto death of the uses of this life. And now, you who are
+generous, _be_ generous, and take no notice of all this. I speak of
+myself, not of you so there is nothing for you to contradict or
+discuss--and if there were, you would be really kind and give me my
+way in it. Also you may take courage; for I promise not to vex you by
+thanking you against _your_ will,--more than may be helped.
+
+Some of this letter was written before yesterday and in reply of
+course to yours--so it is to pass for two letters, being long enough
+for just six. Yesterday you must have wondered at me for being in such
+a maze altogether about the poems--and so now I rise to explain that
+it was assuredly the wine song and no other which I read of yours in
+_Hood's_. And then, what did I say of the Dante and Beatrice? Because
+what I referred to was the exquisite page or two or three on that
+subject in the 'Pentameron.' I do not remember anything else of
+Landor's with the same bearing--do you? As to Montaigne, with the
+threads of my thoughts smoothly disentangled, I can see nothing
+coloured by him ... nothing. Do bring all the _Hood_ poems of your
+own--inclusive of the 'Tokay,' because I read it in such haste as to
+whirl up all the dust you saw, from the wheels of my chariot. The
+'Duchess' is past speaking of here--but you will see how I am
+delighted. And we must make speed--only taking care of your head--for
+I heard to-day that Papa and my aunt are discussing the question of
+sending me off either to Alexandria or Malta for the winter. Oh--it
+is quite a passing talk and thought, I dare say! and it would not _be_
+in any case, until September or October; though in every case, I
+suppose, _I_ should not be much consulted ... and all cases and places
+would seem better to me (if I were) than Madeira which the physicians
+used to threaten me with long ago. So take care of your headache and
+let us have the 'Bells' rung out clear before the summer ends ... and
+pray don't say again anything about clear consciences or unclear ones,
+in granting me the privilege of reading your manuscripts--which is all
+clear privilege to me, with pride and gladness waiting on it. May God
+bless you always my dear friend!
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+You left behind your sister's little basket--but I hope you did not
+forget to thank her for my carnations.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                                   [no date]
+
+I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours
+_ever_, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath
+breaks bubbles,--ought you to write thus having restricted me as you
+once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a
+stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my
+head it goes--I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly
+the same horror once before. 'I was to see you--and you were to
+understand'--_Do_ you? do you understand--my own friend--with that
+superiority in years, too! For I confess to that--you need not throw
+that in my teeth ... as soon as I read your 'Essay on Mind'--(which of
+course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K's positive refusal
+to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the 'Vision
+of Fame' at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time,
+1826--I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in
+years--what then? I have got nearer you considerably--(if only
+nearer)--since then--and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable
+times--such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to
+see--written some time ago--which advises nobody who thinks nobly of
+the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the
+materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it
+is born to make and which--(in its determining, as it must, the whole
+future course and impulses of that soul)--which must endure for ever,
+even though the object that induced the choice should
+disappear--owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically
+determined and produced, at any operator's pleasure, by a definite
+number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent
+&c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of
+operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel
+filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul
+than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does _that_, is
+for this world's immediate uses; and were this world _all, all_ in us
+would be producible and available for use, as it _is_ with the body
+now--but with the soul, what is to be developed _afterward_ is the
+main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights--so that when you
+hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain 'why' ('You' is the
+ordinary creature enough of my poem--_he_ might not be so able.)
+
+There, I will write no more. You will never drop _me_ off the golden
+hooks, I dare believe--and the rest is with God--whose finger I see
+every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask
+leave to come 'to-morrow at the Muezzin' as next Wednesday at three?
+
+God bless you--do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it
+costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as
+truthfuller--this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not
+have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of
+commission with _Hood_,--blame _them_, tell me about them, and
+meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]
+
+But I never _did_ strike you or touch you--and you are not in earnest
+in the complaint you make--and this is really all I am going to say
+to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part,
+while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go
+deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to
+bear without deprecation:--as when, for instance, you talk of being
+'grateful' to _me_!!--Well! I will try that there shall be no more of
+it--no more provocation of generosities--and so, (this once) as you
+express it, I 'will not have the heart to blame' you--except for
+reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr.
+Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook
+literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was
+roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember
+he asked me ... 'Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?'; to which I answered
+that nobody was to be excepted--and thus he was quite right in
+resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were
+quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious?
+Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins
+and yours gladly, to get into the _Hood_ poems which have delighted me
+so--and first to the St. Praxed's which is of course the finest and
+most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of
+death. It has impressed me very much. Then the 'Angel and Child,' with
+all its beauty and significance!--and the 'Garden Fancies' ... some of
+the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in
+them, and grace of every kind--and with that beautiful and musical use
+of the word 'meandering,' which I never remember having seen used in
+relation to _sound_ before. It does to mate with your '_simmering_
+quiet' in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure
+as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much!--you
+have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things
+through and through it. And the 'Laboratory' is hideous as you meant
+to make it:--only I object a little to your tendency ... which is
+almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think, ... of
+making lines difficult for the reader to read ... see the opening
+lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in
+_them_ certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the
+reader's mind off the _rail_ ... and interrupts his progress with you
+and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from
+rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the
+changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to _forget it
+altogether_; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps--but you see how
+I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my
+sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing
+ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of
+them--never!--except the 'Tokay,' which is inferior to all; and that I
+was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood--or at all,
+except this 'Tokay,' and this 'Duchess'! The world is very deaf and
+dumb, I think--but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not
+learning its lesson.
+
+Could you come--for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay
+to write of your poems even, any more to-day--could you come on
+Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on
+Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so--it is not a caprice.
+And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria
+seems discredited just now for Malta--and 'anything but Madeira,' I go
+on saying to myself. These _Hood_ poems are all to be in the next
+'Bells' of course--of necessity?
+
+May God bless you my dear friend, my ever dear friend!--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 22, 1845.]
+
+I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything
+else without your leave).
+
+The temptation of reading the 'Essay' was more than I could bear: and
+a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their
+music--wonderful!
+
+And you go out still--so continue better!
+
+I cannot write this morning--I should say too much and have to be
+sorry and afraid--let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+I am but too proud of your praise--when will the blame come--at Malta?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
+
+Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and
+not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm--nor of the
+reading even, which may do harm--and something does harm to you, you
+see--and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm
+... now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you
+did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think
+that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I
+will not indeed--and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous
+queries yesterday ... and to have omitted to say in relation to them,
+too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just passing thoughts
+of mine for _your_ passing thoughts, ... some right, it may be ...
+some wrong, it must be ... and none, insisted on even by the thinker!
+just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments--now
+_will_ you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to
+strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you--so
+_whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be
+what I meant to strike out_--(there's ingenuity for you!). The poem
+did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very
+greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways ... by the
+versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful
+evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the
+sin of the boar-pinner--successfully evolved, without softening one
+hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now--you will
+not write any more--no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the
+roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help
+thinking it must--and you were not well yesterday morning, you
+admitted. You _will_ take care? And if there should be a wisdom in
+going away...!
+
+Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very
+imprudent, I am afraid--but I never knew how to be prudent--and then,
+there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable
+measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the
+thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker, ... just as I might give
+away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I
+did not do--and would not have done, ... one of those papers singly.
+It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a
+writing of notes ... of slips of paper ... now on one subject, and now
+on another ... which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up
+with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed
+a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed
+at--except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and
+were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx--or ever betrayed;
+because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the
+editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being
+silent and secret. And nothing _is mine_ ... if something is _of me_
+... or _from_ me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see
+plainly--wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against
+time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature
+of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the
+booksellers were barking distraction on every side!--I had some of the
+mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was
+consulted about--or in _one particular way_ it would have been
+better,--as easily it might have been. May God bless you, my dear
+friend,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Friday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
+
+You would let me _now_, I dare say, call myself grateful to you--yet
+such is my jealousy in these matters--so do I hate the material when
+it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship;
+that I could almost tell you I was _not_ grateful, and try if that way
+I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you
+refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not
+admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw
+none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this
+_also_--this last kindness. And you know its value, too--how if there
+were another _you_ in the world, who had done all you have done and
+whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a
+criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you
+know how I would have told you, my _you_ I saw yesterday, all about
+it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:--but the two in one!
+
+For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating--all
+the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so
+thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this
+beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I
+could cooeperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the
+effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed--_that_
+would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,--so
+that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute
+one point. All is for best.
+
+So much for this 'Duchess'--which I shall ever rejoice in--wherever
+was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs
+now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and
+then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places
+where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact,
+yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that
+of _the poem_, the real conception of an evening (two years ago,
+fully)--of _that_, not a line is written,--though perhaps after all,
+what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though
+indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly
+enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as
+I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy's description
+of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover--a _real_
+life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to
+write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the
+insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only--as
+the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing,
+for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.--
+
+Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as
+not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I
+_think_ before writing--or just after writing--such a sentence--but
+reflection only justifies my first feeling; I _would_ rather go
+without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged
+you--my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now--surely I
+might dare say you may if you please get well through God's
+goodness--with persevering patience, surely--and this next winter
+abroad--which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you
+not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the
+cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that 'there was a tide
+in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.' led on to the
+fortune of
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4
+o'clock--that clock I enquired about--and that, ... no, I shall never
+say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that
+you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the
+East you give a beggar something for a few days running--then you miss
+him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and
+murmurs--'And, for yesterday?'--Do I stay too long, I _want_ to
+know,--too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may
+not so soon tire,--knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.
+
+God bless you--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                  Saturday.
+                                  [Post-mark, July 28, 1845]
+
+You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine--and
+particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to
+know and want to know ... _how you are_--for you must observe, if you
+please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written
+after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my
+'Prometheus' (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for
+me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there
+can be gratitude from you to me!--or rather, do not judge--but listen
+when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I
+wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single
+wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look
+again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is
+the suggestion about the line
+
+    Was it singing, was it saying,
+
+which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate
+'or.' Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were
+right, and that there should be and must be no 'or' to disturb the
+listening pause. Now _should_ there? And there was something else,
+which I forget at this moment--and something more than the something
+else. Your account of the production of the poem interests me very
+much--and proves just what I wanted to make out from your statements
+the other day, and they refused, I thought, to let me, ... that you
+are more faithful to your first _Idea_ than to your first _plan_. Is
+it so? or not? 'Orange' is orange--but _which half_ of the orange is
+not predestinated from all eternity--: is it _so_?
+
+_Sunday._--I wrote so much yesterday and then went out, not knowing
+very well how to speak or how to be silent (is it better to-day?) of
+some expressions of yours ... and of your interest in me--which are
+deeply affecting to my feelings--whatever else remains to be said of
+them. And you know that you make great mistakes, ... of fennel for
+hemlock, of four o'clocks for five o'clocks, and of other things of
+more consequence, one for another; and may not be quite right besides
+as to my getting well '_if I please_!' ... which reminds me a little
+of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly
+and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily
+that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition,
+and that if I _pleased_ to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I
+should be as well as ever I was, in a month!... But where is the need
+of talking of it? What I wished to say was this--that if I get better
+or worse ... as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall
+remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the
+generous interest and feeling you have spent on me--_wasted_ on me I
+was going to write--but I would not provoke any answering--and in one
+obvious sense, it need not be so. I never shall forget these things,
+my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly. God's goodness!--I
+believe in it, as in His sunshine here--which makes my head ache a
+little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people
+gayer--it does _me_ good too in a different way. And so, may God bless
+you! and me in this ... just this, ... that I may never have the
+sense, ... intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it ... of
+being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your
+smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones!--In the meantime you
+do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do
+not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if
+the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most
+grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+How could you think that I should speak to Mr. Kenyon of the book? All
+I ever said to him has been that you had looked through my
+'Prometheus' for me--and that I was _not disappointed in you_, these
+two things on two occasions. I do trust that your head is better.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, July 28, 1845.]
+
+How must I feel, and what can, or could I say even if you let me say
+all? I am most grateful, most happy--most happy, come what will!
+
+Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow--before Wednesday
+when I am to see you? I will not hide from you that my head aches now;
+and I have let the hours go by one after one--I am better all the
+same, and will write as I say--'Am I better' you ask!
+
+                  Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Thursday.
+                                 [Post-mark, July 31, 1845.]
+
+In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to
+your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human
+capacity--but as I began, so I shall end. I shall believe you remember
+what I am forced to remember--you who do me the superabundant justice
+on every possible occasion,--you will never do me injustice when I sit
+by you and talk about Italy and the rest.
+
+--To-day I cannot write--though I am very well otherwise--but I shall
+soon get into my old self-command and write with as much 'ineffectual
+fire' as before: but meantime, _you_ will write to me, I hope--telling
+me how you are? I have but one greater delight in the world than in
+hearing from you.
+
+God bless you, my best, dearest friend--think what I would speak--
+
+                                                  Ever yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Thursday.
+                                [Post-mark, August 2, 1845.]
+
+Let me write one word ... not to have it off my mind ... because it is
+by no means heavily _on_ it; but lest I should forget to write it at
+all by not writing it at once. What could you mean, ... I have been
+thinking since you went away ... by applying such a grave expression
+as having a thing 'off your mind' to that foolish subject of the
+stupid book (mine), and by making it worth your while to account
+logically for your wish about my not mentioning it to Mr. Kenyon? You
+could not fancy for one moment that I was vexed in the matter of the
+book? or in the other matter of your wish? Now just hear me. I
+explained to you that I had been silent to Mr. Kenyon, first because
+the fact was so; and next and a little, because I wanted to show how I
+anticipated your wish by a wish of my own ... though from a different
+motive. _Your_ motive I really did take to be (never suspecting my
+dear kind cousin of treason) to be a natural reluctancy of being
+convicted (forgive me!) of such an arch-womanly curiosity. For my own
+motive ... motives ... they are more than one ... you must trust me;
+and refrain as far as you can from accusing me of an over-love of
+Eleusinian mysteries when I ask you to say just as little about your
+visits here and of me as you find possible ... _even to Mr. Kenyon_
+... as _to every other person whatever_. As you know ... and yet more
+than you know ... I am in a peculiar position--and it does not follow
+that you should be ashamed of my friendship or that I should not be
+proud of yours, if we avoid making it a subject of conversation in
+high places, or low places. There! _that_ is my request to you--or
+commentary on what you put 'off your mind' yesterday--probably quite
+unnecessary as either request or commentary; yet said on the chance of
+its not being so, because you seemed to mistake my remark about Mr.
+Kenyon.
+
+And your head, how is it? And do consider if it would not be wise and
+right on that account of your health, to go with Mr. Chorley? You can
+neither work nor enjoy while you are subject to attacks of the
+kind--and besides, and without reference to your present suffering and
+inconvenience, you _ought not_ to let them master you and gather
+strength from time and habit; I am sure you ought not. Worse last week
+than ever, you see!--and no prospect, perhaps, of bringing out your
+"Bells" this autumn, without paying a cost too heavy!--Therefore ...
+the _therefore_ is quite plain and obvious!--
+
+_Friday._--Just as it is how anxious Flush and I are, to be delivered
+from you; by these sixteen heads of the discourse of one of us,
+written before your letter came. Ah, but I am serious--and you will
+consider--will you not? what is best to be done? and do it. You could
+write to me, you know, from the end of the world; if you could take
+the thought of me so far.
+
+And _for_ me, no, and yet yes,--I _will_ say this much; that I am not
+inclined to do you injustice, but justice, when you come here--the
+justice of wondering to myself how you can possibly, possibly, care to
+come. Which is true enough to be _unanswerable_, if you please--or I
+should not say it. '_As I began, so I shall end_--' Did you, as I hope
+you did, thank your sister for Flush and for me? When you were gone,
+he graciously signified his intention of eating the cakes--brought the
+bag to me and emptied it without a drawback, from my hand, cake after
+cake. And I forgot the basket once again.
+
+And talking of Italy and the cardinals, and thinking of some cardinal
+points you are ignorant of, did you ever hear that I was one of
+
+          'those schismatiques
+    of Amsterdam'
+
+whom your Dr. Donne would have put into the dykes? unless he meant the
+Baptists, instead of the Independents, the holders of the Independent
+church principle. No--not '_schismatical_,' I hope, hating as I do
+from the roots of my heart all that rending of the garment of Christ,
+which Christians are so apt to make the daily week-day of this
+Christianity so called--and caring very little for most dogmas and
+doxies in themselves--too little, as people say to me sometimes, (when
+they send me 'New Testaments' to learn from, with very kind
+intentions)--and believing that there is only one church in heaven and
+earth, with one divine High Priest to it; let exclusive religionists
+build what walls they please and bring out what chrisms. But I used to
+go with my father always, when I was able, to the nearest dissenting
+chapel of the Congregationalists--from liking the simplicity of that
+praying and speaking without books--and a little too from disliking
+the theory of state churches. There is a narrowness among the
+dissenters which is wonderful; an arid, grey Puritanism in the clefts
+of their souls: but it seems to me clear that they know what the
+'liberty of Christ' _means_, far better than those do who call
+themselves 'churchmen'; and stand altogether, as a body, on higher
+ground. And so, you see, when I talked of the sixteen points of my
+discourse, it was the foreshadowing of a coming event, and you have
+had it at last in the whole length and breadth of it. But it is not my
+fault if the wind began to blow so that I could not go out--as I
+intended--as I shall do to-morrow; and that you have received my
+dulness in a full libation of it, in consequence. My sisters said of
+the roses you blasphemed, yesterday, that they 'never saw such flowers
+anywhere--anywhere here in London--' and therefore if I had thought so
+myself before, it was not so wrong of me. I put your roses, you see,
+against my letter, to make it seem less dull--and yet I do not forget
+what you say about caring to hear from me--I mean, I do not _affect_
+to forget it.
+
+May God bless you, far longer than I can say so.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Sunday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, August 4, 1845.]
+
+I said what you comment on, about Mr. Kenyon, because I feel I _must_
+always tell you the simple truth--and not being quite at liberty to
+communicate the whole story (though it would at once clear me from the
+charge of over-curiosity ... if I much cared for _that_!)--I made my
+first request in order to prevent your getting at any part of it from
+_him_ which should make my withholding seem disingenuous for the
+moment--that is, till my explanation came, if it had an opportunity of
+coming. And then, when I fancied you were misunderstanding the reason
+of that request--and supposing I was ambitious of making a higher
+figure in _his_ eyes than your own,--I then felt it 'on my mind' and
+so spoke ... a natural mode of relief surely! For, dear friend, I have
+_once_ been _untrue_ to you--when, and how, and why, you know--but I
+thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their
+fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it
+now because if you should ever make _that_ a precedent, and put any
+least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would
+wrong me as you never wronged human being:--and that is done with. For
+the other matter,--the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any
+hint of them can ooze out of the only three persons in the world to
+whom I ever speak of them--my father, mother and sister--to whom my
+appreciation of your works is no novelty since some years, and whom I
+made comprehend exactly your position and the necessity for the
+absolute silence I enjoined respecting the permission to see you. You
+may depend on them,--and Miss Mitford is in your keeping, mind,--and
+dear Mr. Kenyon, if there should be never so gentle a touch of
+'garrulous God-innocence' about those kind lips of his. Come, let me
+snatch at _that_ clue out of the maze, and say how perfect, absolutely
+perfect, are those three or four pages in the 'Vision' which present
+the Poets--a line, a few words, and the man there,--one twang of the
+bow and the arrowhead in the white--Shelley's 'white ideal all
+statue-blind' is--perfect,--how can I coin words? And dear deaf old
+Hesiod--and--all, all are perfect, perfect! But 'the Moon's regality
+will hear no praise'--well then, will she hear blame? Can it be you,
+my own you past putting away, _you_ are a schismatic and frequenter of
+Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to _me_--whose
+father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel
+where they took me, all those years back, to be baptised--and where
+they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who
+officiated on that other occasion! Now will you be particularly
+encouraged by this successful instance to bring forward any other
+point of disunion between us that may occur to you? Please do not--for
+so sure as you begin proving that there is a gulf fixed between us, so
+sure shall I end proving that ... Anne Radcliffe avert it!... that you
+are just my sister: not that I am much frightened, but there are such
+surprises in novels!--Blame the next,--yes, now this _is_ to be real
+blame!--And I meant to call your attention to it before. Why, why, do
+you blot out, in that unutterably provoking manner, whole lines, not
+to say words, in your letters--(and in the criticism on the
+'Duchess')--if it is a fact that you have a second thought, does it
+cease to be as genuine a fact, that first thought you please to
+efface? Why give a thing and take a thing? Is there no significance in
+putting on record that your first impression was to a certain effect
+and your next to a certain other, perhaps completely opposite one? If
+any proceeding of yours could go near to deserve that harsh word
+'impertinent' which you have twice, in speech and writing, been
+pleased to apply to your observations on me; certainly _this_ does go
+as near as can be--as there is but one step to take from Southampton
+pier to New York quay, for travellers Westward. Now will you lay this
+to heart and perpend--lest in my righteous indignation I [some words
+effaced here]! For my own health--it improves, thank you! And I shall
+go abroad all in good time, never fear. For my 'Bells,' Mr. Chorley
+tells me there is no use in the world of printing them before November
+at earliest--and by that time I shall get done with these Romances and
+certainly one Tragedy (_that_ could go to press next week)--in proof
+of which I will bring you, if you let me, a few more hundreds of lines
+next Wednesday. But, 'my poet,' if I would, as is true, sacrifice all
+my works to do your fingers, even, good--what would I not offer up to
+prevent you staying ... perhaps to correct my very verses ... perhaps
+read and answer my very letters ... staying the production of more
+'Berthas' and 'Caterinas' and 'Geraldines,' more great and beautiful
+poems of which I shall be--how proud! Do not be punctual in paying
+tithes of thyme, mint, anise and cummin, and leaving unpaid the real
+weighty dues of the Law; nor affect a scrupulous acknowledgment of
+'what you owe me' in petty manners, while you leave me to settle such
+a charge, as accessory to the hiding the Talent, as best I can! I have
+thought of this again and again, and would have spoken of it to you,
+had I ever felt myself fit to speak of any subject nearer home and me
+and you than Rome and Cardinal Acton. For, observe, you have not done
+... yes, the 'Prometheus,' no doubt ... but with that exception _have_
+you written much lately, as much as last year when 'you wrote all your
+best things' you said, I think? Yet you are better now than then.
+Dearest friend, _I_ intend to write more, and very likely be praised
+more, now I care less than ever for it, but still more do I look to
+have you ever before me, in your place, and with more poetry and more
+praise still, and my own heartfelt praise ever on the top, like a
+flower on the water. I have said nothing of yesterday's storm ...
+_thunder_ ... may you not have been out in it! The evening draws in,
+and I will walk out. May God bless you, and let you hold me by the
+hand till the end--Yes, dearest friend!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+
+Just to show what may be lost by my crossings out, I will tell you the
+story of the one in the 'Duchess'--and in fact it is almost worth
+telling to a metaphysician like you, on other grounds, that you may
+draw perhaps some psychological good from the absurdity of it. Hear,
+then. When I had done writing the sheet of annotations and reflections
+on your poem I took up my pencil to correct the passages reflected on
+with the reflections, by the crosses you may observe, just glancing
+over the writing as I did so. Well! and, where that erasure is, I
+found a line purporting to be extracted from your 'Duchess,' with
+sundry acute criticisms and objections quite undeniably strong,
+following after it; only, to my amazement, as I looked and looked, the
+line so acutely objected to and purporting, as I say, to, be taken
+from the 'Duchess,' was by no means to be found in the 'Duchess,' ...
+nor anything like it, ... and I am certain indeed that, in the
+'Duchess' or out of it, you never wrote such a bad line in your life.
+And so it became a proved thing to me that I had been enacting, in a
+mystery, both poet and critic together--and one so neutralizing the
+other, that I took all that pains you remark upon to cross myself out
+in my double capacity, ... and am now telling the story of it
+notwithstanding. And there's an obvious moral to the myth, isn't
+there? for critics who bark the loudest, commonly bark at their own
+shadow in the glass, as my Flush used to do long and loud, before he
+gained experience and learnt the [Greek: gnothi seauton] in the
+apparition of the brown dog with the glittering dilating eyes, ... and
+as _I_ did, under the erasure. And another moral springs up of itself
+in this productive ground; for, you see, ... '_quand je m'efface il
+n'ya pas grand mal_.'
+
+And I am to be made to work very hard, am I? But you should remember
+that if I did as much writing as last summer, I should not be able to
+do much else, ... I mean, to go out and walk about ... for really I
+think I _could_ manage to read your poems and write as I am writing
+now, with ever so much head-work of my own going on at the same time.
+But the bodily exercise is different, and I do confess that the
+novelty of living more in the outer life for the last few months than
+I have done for years before, make me idle and inclined to be
+idle--and everybody is idle sometimes--even _you_ perhaps--are you
+not? For me, you know, I do carpet-work--ask Mrs. Jameson--and I never
+pretend to be in a perpetual motion of mental industry. Still it may
+not be quite as bad as you think: I have done some work since
+'Prometheus'--only it is nothing worth speaking of and not a part of
+the romance-poem which is to be some day if I live for it--lyrics for
+the most part, which lie written illegibly in pure Egyptian--oh, there
+is time enough, and too much perhaps! and so let me be idle a little
+now, and enjoy your poems while I can. It is pure enjoyment and must
+be--but you do not know how much, or you would not talk as you do
+sometimes ... so wide of any possible application.
+
+And do _not_ talk again of what you would 'sacrifice' for _me_. If you
+affect me by it, which is true, you cast me from you farther than ever
+in the next thought. _That_ is true.
+
+The poems ... yours ... which you left with me,--are full of various
+power and beauty and character, and you must let me have my own
+gladness from them in my own way.
+
+Now I must end this letter. Did you go to Chelsea and hear the divine
+philosophy?
+
+_Tell me the truth always_ ... will you? I mean such truths as may be
+painful to me _though_ truths....
+
+                        May God bless you, ever dear friend.
+
+                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Friday Afternoon.
+                                [Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+
+Then there is one more thing 'off my mind': I thought it might be with
+you as with _me_--not remembering how different are the causes that
+operate against us; different in kind as in degree:--_so_ much reading
+hurts me, for instance,--whether the reading be light or heavy,
+fiction or fact, and _so_ much writing, whether my own, such as you
+have seen, or the merest compliment-returning to the weary tribe that
+exact it of one. But your health--that before all!... as assuring all
+eventually ... and on the other accounts you must know! Never, pray,
+_pray_, never lose one sunny day or propitious hour to 'go out or walk
+about.' But do not surprise _me_, one of these mornings, by 'walking'
+up to me when I am introduced' ... or I shall infallibly, in spite of
+all the after repentance and begging pardon--I shall [words effaced].
+So here you learn the first 'painful truth' I have it in my power to
+tell you!
+
+I sent you the last of our poor roses this morning--considering that I
+fairly owed that kindness to them.
+
+Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone--his wife is in
+the country where he will join her as soon as his book's last sheet
+returns corrected and fit for press--which will be at the month's end
+about. He was all kindness and talked like his own self while he made
+me tea--and, afterward, brought chairs into the little yard, rather
+than garden, and smoked his pipe with apparent relish; at night he
+would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge on my way home.
+
+If I used the word 'sacrifice,' you do well to object--I can imagine
+nothing ever to be done by me worthy such a name.
+
+God bless you, dearest friend--shall I hear from you before Tuesday?
+
+                                               Ever your own
+
+                                                    R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Friday.
+                                [Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
+
+It is very kind to send these flowers--too kind--why are they sent?
+and without one single word ... which is not too kind certainly. I
+looked down into the heart of the roses and turned the carnations over
+and over to the peril of their leaves, and in vain! Not a word do I
+deserve to-day, I suppose! And yet if I don't, I don't deserve the
+flowers either. There should have been an equal justice done to my
+demerits, O Zeus with the scales!
+
+After all I do thank you for these flowers--and they are
+beautiful--and they came just in a right current of time, just when I
+wanted them, or something like them--so I confess _that_ humbly, and
+do thank you, at last, rather as I ought to do. Only you ought not to
+give away all the flowers of your garden to _me_; and your sister
+thinks so, be sure--if as silently as you sent them. Now I shall not
+write any more, not having been written to. What with the Wednesday's
+flowers and these, you may think how I in this room, look down on the
+gardens of Damascus, let _your Jew_[1] say what he pleases of
+_them_--and the Wednesday's flowers are as fresh and beautiful, I must
+explain, as the new ones. They were quite supererogatory ... the new
+ones ... in the sense of being flowers. Now, the sense of what I am
+writing seems questionable, does it not?--at least, more so, than the
+nonsense of it.
+
+Not a word, even under the little blue flowers!!!--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'R. Benjamin of Tudela' added in Robert Browning's
+handwriting.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Sunday Afternoon.
+                               [Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
+
+How good you are to the smallest thing I try and do--(to show I
+_would_ please you for an instant if I could, rather than from any
+hope such poor efforts as I am restricted to, can please you or
+ought.) And that you should care for the note that was not there!--But
+I was surprised by the summons to seal and deliver, since time and the
+carrier were peremptory--and so, I dared divine, almost, I should hear
+from you by our mid-day post--which happened--and the answer to
+_that_, you received on Friday night, did you not? I had to go to
+Holborn, of all places,--not to pluck strawberries in the Bishop's
+Garden like Richard Crouchback, but to get a book--and there I carried
+my note, thinking to expedite its delivery: this notelet of yours,
+quite as little in its kind as my blue flowers,--this came last
+evening--and here are my thanks, dear E.B.B.--dear friend.
+
+In the former note there is a phrase I must not forget to call on you
+to account for--that where it confesses to having done 'some
+work--only nothing worth speaking of.' Just see,--will you be first
+and only compact-breaker? Nor misunderstand me here, please, ... as I
+said, I am quite rejoiced that you go out now, 'walk about' now, and
+put off the writing that will follow thrice as abundantly, all because
+of the stopping to gather strength ... so I want no new word, not to
+say poem, not to say the romance-poem--let the 'finches in the
+shrubberies grow restless in the dark'--_I_ am inside with the lights
+and music: but what is done, is done, _pas vrai_? And 'worth' is, dear
+my friend, pardon me, not in your arbitration quite.
+
+Let me tell you an odd thing that happened at Chorley's the other
+night. I must have mentioned to you that I forget my own verses so
+surely after they are once on paper, that I ought, without
+affectation, to mend them infinitely better, able as I am to bring
+fresh eyes to bear on them--(when I say 'once on paper' that is just
+what I mean and no more, for after the sad revising begins they do
+leave their mark, distinctly or less so according to circumstances).
+Well, Miss Cushman, the new American actress (clever and
+truthful-looking) was talking of a new novel by the Dane Andersen, he
+of the 'Improvisatore,' which will reach us, it should seem, in
+translation, _via_ America--she had looked over two or three proofs of
+the work in the press, and Chorley was anxious to know something about
+its character. The title, she said, was capital--'Only a
+Fiddler!'--and she enlarged on that word, 'Only,' and its
+significance, so put: and I quite agreed with her for several minutes,
+till first one reminiscence flitted to me, then another and at last I
+was obliged to stop my praises and say 'but, now I think of it, _I_
+seem to have written something with a similar title--nay, a play, I
+believe--yes, and in five acts--'Only an Actress'--and from that
+time, some two years or more ago to this, I have been every way
+relieved of it'!--And when I got home, next morning, I made a dark
+pocket in my russet horror of a portfolio give up its dead, and there
+fronted me 'Only a Player-girl' (the real title) and the sayings and
+doings of her, and the others--such others! So I made haste and just
+tore out one sample-page, being Scene the First, and sent it to our
+friend as earnest and proof I had not been purely dreaming, as might
+seem to be the case. And what makes me recall it now is, that it was
+Russian, and about a fair on the Neva, and booths and droshkies and
+fish-pies and so forth, with the Palaces in the back ground. And in
+Chorley's _Athenaeum_ of yesterday you may read a paper of _very_
+simple moony stuff about the death of Alexander, and that Sir James
+Wylie I have seen at St. Petersburg (where he chose to mistake me for
+an Italian--'M. l'Italien' he said another time, looking up from his
+cards).... So I think to tell you.
+
+Now I may leave off--I shall see you start, on Tuesday--hear perhaps
+something definite about your travelling.
+
+Do you know, 'Consuelo' wearies me--oh, wearies--and the fourth volume
+I have all but stopped at--there lie the three following, but who
+cares about Consuelo after that horrible evening with the Venetian
+scamp, (where he bullies her, and it does answer, after all she says)
+as we say? And Albert wearies too--it seems all false, all
+writing--not the first part, though. And what easy work these
+novelists have of it! a Dramatic poet has to _make_ you love or admire
+his men and women,--they must _do_ and _say_ all that you are to see
+and hear--really do it in your face, say it in your ears, and it is
+wholly for _you_, in _your_ power, to _name_, characterize and so
+praise or blame, _what_ is so said and done ... if you don't perceive
+of yourself, there is no standing by, for the Author, and telling you.
+But with these novelists, a scrape of the pen--out blurting of a
+phrase, and the miracle is achieved--'Consuelo possessed to perfection
+this and the other gift'--what would you more? Or, to leave dear
+George Sand, pray think of Bulwer's beginning a 'character' by
+informing you that lone, or somebody in 'Pompeii,' 'was endowed with
+_perfect_ genius'--'genius'! What though the obliging informer might
+write his fingers off before he gave the pitifullest proof that the
+poorest spark of that same, that genius, had ever visited _him_?
+_Ione_ has it '_perfectly_'--perfectly--and that is enough! Zeus with
+the scales? with the false weights!
+
+And now--till Tuesday good-bye, and be willing to get well as (letting
+me send _porter_ instead of flowers--and beefsteaks too!) soon as may
+be! and may God bless you, ever dear friend.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
+
+But if it 'hurts' you to read and write ever so little, why should I
+be asked to write ... for instance ... 'before Tuesday?' And I did
+mean to say before to-day, that I wish you never would write to me
+when you are not _quite well_, as once or twice you have done if not
+much oftener; because there is not a necessity, ... and I do not
+choose that there should ever be, or _seem_ a necessity, ... do you
+understand? And as a matter of personal preference, it is natural for
+me to like the silence that does not hurt you, better than the speech
+that does. And so, remember.
+
+And talking of what may 'hurt' you and me, you would smile, as I have
+often done in the midst of my vexation, if you knew the persecution I
+have been subjected to by the people who call themselves (_lucus a non
+lucendo_) 'the faculty,' and set themselves against the exercise of
+other people's faculties, as a sure way to death and destruction. The
+modesty and simplicity with which one's physicians tell one not to
+think or feel, just as they would tell one not to walk out in the dew,
+would be quite amusing, if it were not too tryingly stupid sometimes.
+I had a doctor once who thought he had done everything because he had
+carried the inkstand out of the room--'Now,' he said, 'you will have
+such a pulse to-morrow.' He gravely thought poetry a sort of
+disease--a sort of fungus of the brain--and held as a serious opinion,
+that nobody could be properly well who exercised it as an art--which
+was true (he maintained) even of men--he had studied the physiology of
+poets, 'quotha'--but that for women, it was a mortal malady and
+incompatible with any common show of health under any circumstances.
+And then came the damnatory clause in his experience ... that he had
+never known 'a system' approaching mine in 'excitability' ... except
+Miss Garrow's ... a young lady who wrote verses for Lady Blessington's
+annuals ... and who was the only other female rhymer he had had the
+misfortune of attending. And she was to die in two years, though she
+was dancing quadrilles then (and has lived to do the same by the
+polka), and _I_, of course, much sooner, if I did not ponder these
+things, and amend my ways, and take to reading 'a course of history'!!
+Indeed I do not exaggerate. And just so, for a long while I was
+persecuted and pestered ... vexed thoroughly sometimes ... my own
+family, instructed to sing the burden out all day long--until the time
+when the subject was suddenly changed by my heart being broken by that
+great stone that fell out of Heaven. Afterwards I was let do anything
+I could best ... which was very little, until last year--and the
+working, last year, did much for me in giving me stronger roots down
+into life, ... much. But think of that absurd reasoning that went
+before!--the _niaiserie_ of it! For, granting all the premises all
+round, it is not the _utterance_ of a thought that _can_ hurt anybody;
+while only the utterance is dependent on the will; and so, what can
+the taking away of an inkstand do? Those physicians are such
+metaphysicians! It's curious to listen to them. And it's wise to leave
+off listening: though I have met with excessive kindness among them,
+... and do not refer to Dr. Chambers in any of this, of course.
+
+I am very glad you went to Chelsea--and it seemed finer afterwards, on
+purpose to make room for the divine philosophy. Which reminds me (the
+going to Chelsea) that my brother Henry confessed to me yesterday,
+with shame and confusion of face, to having mistaken and taken your
+umbrella for another belonging to a cousin of ours then in the house.
+He saw you ... without conjecturing, just at the moment, who you were.
+Do _you_ conjecture sometimes that I live all alone here like Mariana
+in the moated Grange? It is not quite so--: but where there are many,
+as with us, every one is apt to follow his own devices--and my father
+is out all day and my brothers and sisters are in and out, and with
+too large a public of noisy friends for me to bear, ... and I see them
+only at certain hours, ... except, of course, my sisters. And then as
+you have 'a reputation' and are opined to talk generally in blank
+verse, it is not likely that there should be much irreverent rushing
+into this room when you are known to be in it.
+
+The flowers are ... so beautiful! Indeed it was wrong, though, to send
+me the last. It was not just to the lawful possessors and enjoyers of
+them. That it was kind to _me_ I do not forget.
+
+You are too teachable a pupil in the art of obliterating--and _omne
+ignotum pro terrifico_ ... and therefore I won't frighten you by
+walking to meet you for fear of being frightened myself.
+
+So good-bye until Tuesday. I ought not to make you read all this, I
+know, whether you like to read it or not: and I ought not to have
+written it, having no better reason than because I like to write on
+and on. _You_ have better reasons for thinking me very weak--and I,
+too good ones for not being able to reproach you for that natural and
+necessary opinion.
+
+                        May God bless you my dearest friend.
+
+                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Tuesday Evening.
+                               [Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]
+
+What can I say, or hope to say to you when I see what you do for me?
+
+_This_--for myself, (nothing for _you_!)--_this_, that I think the
+great, great good I get by your kindness strikes me less than that
+kindness.
+
+All is right, too--
+
+Come, I WILL have my fault-finding at last! So you can decypher my
+_utterest_ hieroglyphic? Now droop the eyes while I triumph: the
+plains cower, cower beneath the mountains their masters--and the
+Priests stomp over the clay ridges, (a palpable plagiarism from two
+lines of a legend that delighted my infancy, and now instruct my
+maturer years in pretty nearly all they boast of the semi-mythologic
+era referred to--'In London town, when reigned King Lud, His lords
+went stomping thro' the mud'--would all historic records were half as
+picturesque!)
+
+But you know, yes, _you_ know you are too indulgent by far--and treat
+these roughnesses as if they were advanced to many a stage! Meantime
+the pure gain is mine, and better, the kind generous spirit is mine,
+(mine to profit by)--and best--best--best, the dearest friend is mine,
+
+                                                 So be happy
+
+                                                      R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]
+
+Yes, I admit that it was stupid to read that word so wrong. I thought
+there was a mistake somewhere, but that it was _yours_, who had
+written one word, meaning to write another. 'Cower' puts it all right
+of course. But is there an English word of a significance different
+from 'stamp,' in 'stomp?' Does not the old word King Lud's men
+stomped withal, claim identity with our 'stamping.' The _a_ and _o_
+used to 'change about,' you know, in the old English writers--see
+Chaucer for it. Still the 'stomp' with the peculiar significance, is
+better of course than the 'stamp' even with a rhyme ready for it, and
+I dare say you are justified in daring to put this old wine into the
+new bottle; and we will drink to the health of the poem in it. It _is_
+'Italy in England'--isn't it? But I understand and understood
+perfectly, through it all, that it is _unfinished_, and in a rough
+state round the edges. I could not help seeing _that_, even if I were
+still blinder than when I read 'Lower' for 'Cower.'
+
+But do not, I ask of you, speak of my 'kindness' ... my
+kindness!--mine! It is 'wasteful and ridiculous excess' and
+mis-application to use such words of me. And therefore, talking of
+'compacts' and the 'fas' and 'nefas' of them, I entreat you to know
+for the future that whatever I write of your poetry, if it isn't to be
+called 'impertinence,' isn't to be called 'kindness,' any more, ... _a
+fortiori_, as people say when they are sure of an argument. Now, will
+you try to understand?
+
+And talking still of compacts, how and where did I break any compact?
+I do not see.
+
+It was very curious, the phenomenon about your 'Only a Player-Girl.'
+What an un-godlike indifference to your creatures though--your worlds,
+breathed away from you like soap bubbles, and dropping and breaking
+into russet portfolios unobserved! Only a god for the Epicurean, at
+best, can you be? That Miss Cushman went to Three Mile Cross the other
+day, and visited Miss Mitford, and pleased her a good deal, I fancied
+from what she said, ... and with reason, from what _you_ say. And
+'Only a Fiddler,' as I forgot to tell you yesterday, is announced, you
+may see in any newspaper, as about to issue from the English press by
+Mary Howitt's editorship. So we need not go to America for it. But if
+you complain of George Sand for want of art, how could you bear
+Andersen, who can see a thing under his eyes and place it under yours,
+and take a thought separately into his soul and express it insularly,
+but has no sort of instinct towards wholeness and unity; and writes a
+book by putting so many pages together, ... just so!--For the rest,
+there can be no disagreeing with you about the comparative difficulty
+of novel-writing and drama-writing. I disagree a little, lower down in
+your letter, because I could not deny (in my own convictions) a
+certain proportion of genius to the author of 'Ernest Maltravers,' and
+'Alice' (did you ever read those books?), even if he had more
+impotently tried (supposing it to be possible) for the dramatic
+laurel. In fact his poetry, dramatic or otherwise, is 'nought'; but
+for the prose romances, and for 'Ernest Maltravers' above all, I must
+lift up my voice and cry. And I read the _Athenaeum_ about your Sir
+James Wylie who took you for an Italian....
+
+    'Poi vi diro Signor, che ne fu causa
+    Ch' avio fatto al scriver debita pausa.'--
+
+                                                 Ever your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Friday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, August 15, 1845.]
+
+Do you know, dear friend, it is no good policy to stop up all the
+vents of my feeling, nor leave one for safety's sake, as you will do,
+let me caution you never so repeatedly. I know, quite well enough,
+that your 'kindness' is not _so_ apparent, even, in this instance of
+correcting my verses, as in many other points--but on such points, you
+lift a finger to me and I am dumb.... Am I not to be allowed a word
+here neither?
+
+I remember, in the first season of German Opera here, when 'Fidelio's'
+effects were going, going up to the gallery in order to get the best
+of the last chorus--get its oneness which you do--and, while perched
+there an inch under the ceiling, I was amused with the enormous
+enthusiasm of an elderly German (we thought,--I and a cousin of
+mine)--whose whole body broke out in billow, heaved and swayed in the
+perfection of his delight, hands, head, feet, all tossing and striving
+to utter what possessed him. Well--next week, we went again to the
+Opera, and again mounted at the proper time, but the crowd was
+_greater_, and our mild great faced white haired red cheeked German
+was not to be seen, not at first--for as the glory was at its full, my
+cousin twisted me round and made me see an arm, only an arm, all the
+body of its owner being amalgamated with a dense crowd on each side,
+before, and--not behind, because they, the crowd, occupied the last
+benches, over which we looked--and this arm waved and exulted as if
+'for the dignity of the whole body,'--relieved it of its dangerous
+accumulation of repressed excitability. When the crowd broke up all
+the rest of the man disengaged itself by slow endeavours, and there
+stood our friend confessed--as we were sure!
+
+--Now, you would have bade him keep his arm quiet? 'Lady Geraldine,
+you _would_!'
+
+I have read those novels--but I must keep that word of words,
+'genius'--for something different--'talent' will do here surely.
+
+There lies 'Consuelo'--done with!
+
+I shall tell you frankly that it strikes me as precisely what in
+conventional language with the customary silliness is styled a
+_woman's_ book, in its merits and defects,--and supremely timid in all
+the points where one wants, and has a right to expect, some _fruit_ of
+all the pretence and George Sand_ism_. These are occasions when one
+does say, in the phrase of her school, 'que la Femme parle!' or what
+is better, let her act! and how does Consuelo comfort herself on such
+an emergency? Why, she bravely lets the uninspired people throw down
+one by one their dearest prejudices at her feet, and then, like a
+very actress, picks them up, like so many flowers, returning them to
+the breast of the owners with a smile and a courtesy and trips off the
+stage with a glance at the Pit. Count Christian, Baron Frederic,
+Baroness--what is her name--all open their arms, and Consuelo will not
+consent to entail disgrace &c. &c. No, you say--she leaves them in
+order to solve the problem of her true feeling, whether she can really
+love Albert; but remember that this is done, (that is, so much of it
+as ever _is_ done, and as determines her to accept his hand at the
+very last)--this is solved sometime about the next morning--or
+earlier--I forget--and in the meantime, Albert gets that 'benefit of
+the doubt' of which chapter the last informs you. As for the
+hesitation and self examination on the matter of that Anzoleto--the
+writer is turning over the leaves of a wrong dictionary, seeking help
+from Psychology, and pretending to forget there is such a thing as
+Physiology. Then, that horrible Porpora:--if George Sand gives _him_
+to a Consuelo for an absolute master, in consideration of his services
+specified, and is of opinion that _they_ warrant his conduct, or at
+least, oblige submission to it,--then, I find her objections to the
+fatherly rule of Frederic perfectly impertinent--he having a few
+claims upon the gratitude of Prussia also, in his way, I believe! If
+the strong ones _will make_ the weak ones lead them--then, for
+Heaven's sake, let this dear old all-abused world keep on its course
+without these outcries and tearings of hair, and don't be for ever
+goading the Karls and other trodden-down creatures till they get their
+carbines in order (very rationally) to abate the nuisance--when you
+make the man a long speech against some enormity he is about to
+commit, and adjure and beseech and so forth, till he throws down the
+aforesaid carbine, falls on his knees, and lets the Frederic go
+quietly on his way to keep on killing his thousands after the fashion
+that moved your previous indignation. Now is that right,
+consequential--that is, _inferential_; logically deduced, going
+straight to the end--_manly_?
+
+The accessories are not the Principal, the adjuncts--the essence, nor
+the ornamental incidents the book's self, so what matters it if the
+portraits are admirable, the descriptions eloquent, (eloquent, there
+it is--that is her characteristic--what she _has_ to speak, she
+_speaks out_, speaks volubly _forth_, too well, inasmuch as you say,
+advancing a step or two, 'And now speak as completely _here_'--and she
+says nothing)--but all _that_, another could do, as others have
+done--but 'la femme qui parle'--Ah, that, is _this_ all? So I am not
+George Sand's--she teaches me nothing--I look to her for nothing.
+
+I am ever yours, dearest friend. How I write to you--page on page! But
+Tuesday--who could wait till then! Shall I not hear from you?
+
+                                          God bless you ever
+
+                                               R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Saturday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 16, 1845.]
+
+But what likeness is there between opposites; and what has 'M.
+l'Italien' to do with the said 'elderly German'? See how little! For
+to bring your case into point, somebody should have been playing on a
+Jew's harp for the whole of the orchestra; and the elderly German
+should have quoted something about 'Harp of Judah' to the Venetian
+behind him! And there, you would have proved your analogy!--Because
+you see, my dear friend, it was not the expression, but the thing
+expressed, I cried out against--the exaggeration in your mind. I am
+sorry when I write what you do not like--but I have instincts and
+impulses too strong for me when you say things which put me into such
+a miserably false position in respect to you--as for instance, when in
+this very last letter (oh, I _must_ tell you!) you talk of my
+'correcting your verses'! My correcting your verses!!!--Now is _that_
+a thing for you to say?--And do you really imagine that if I kept that
+happily imagined phrase in my thoughts, I should be able to tell you
+one word of my impressions from your poetry, ever, ever again? Do you
+not see at once what a disqualifying and paralysing phrase it must be,
+of simple necessity? So it is _I_ who have reason to complain, ... it
+appears to _me_, ... and by no means _you_--and in your 'second
+consideration' you become aware of it, I do not at all doubt.
+
+As to 'Consuelo' I agree with nearly all that you say of it--though
+George Sand, we are to remember, is greater than 'Consuelo,' and not
+to be depreciated according to the defects of that book, nor
+classified as 'femme qui parle' ... she who is man and woman together,
+... judging her by the standard of even that book in the nobler
+portions of it. For the inconsequency of much in the book, I admit it
+of course--and _you_ will admit that it is the rarest of phenomena
+when men ... men of logic ... follow their own opinions into their
+obvious results--nobody, you know, ever thinks of doing such a thing:
+to pursue one's own inferences is to rush in where angels ... perhaps
+... do _not_ fear to tread, ... but where there will not be much other
+company. So the want of practical logic shall be a human fault rather
+than a womanly one, if you please: and you must please also to
+remember that 'Consuelo' is only 'half the orange'; and that when you
+complain of its not being a whole one, you overlook that hand which is
+holding to you the 'Comtesse de Rudolstadt' in three volumes! Not that
+I, who have read the whole, profess a full satisfaction about Albert
+and the rest--and Consuelo is made to be happy by a mere clap-trap at
+last: and Mme. Dudevant has her specialities,--in which, other women,
+I fancy, have neither part nor lot, ... even _here_!--Altogether, the
+book is a sort of rambling 'Odyssey,' a female 'Odyssey,' if you like,
+but full of beauty and nobleness, let the faults be where they may.
+And then, I like those long, long books, one can live away into ...
+leaving the world and above all oneself, quite at the end of the
+avenue of palms--quite out of sight and out of hearing!--Oh, I have
+felt something like _that_ so often--so often! and _you_ never felt
+it, and never will, I hope.
+
+But if Bulwer had written nothing but the 'Ernest Maltravers' books,
+you would think perhaps more highly of him. Do you _not_ think it
+possible now? It is his most impotent struggling into poetry, which
+sets about proving a negative of genius on him--_that_, which the
+_Athenaeum praises_ as 'respectable attainment in various walks of
+literature'--! _like_ the _Athenaeum_, isn't it? and worthy praise, to
+be administered by professed judges of art? What is to be expected of
+the public, when the teachers of the public teach _so_?--
+
+When you come on Tuesday, do not forget the MS. if any is done--only
+don't let it be done so as to tire and hurt you--mind! And good-bye
+until Tuesday, from
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Sunday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 18, 1845.]
+
+I am going to propose to you to give up Tuesday, and to take your
+choice of two or three other days, say Friday, or Saturday, or
+to-morrow ... Monday. Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and talked of leaving
+London on Friday, and of visiting me again on 'Tuesday' ... he said,
+... but that is an uncertainty, and it may be Tuesday or Wednesday or
+Thursday. So I thought (wrong or right) that out of the three
+remaining days you would not mind choosing one. And if you do choose
+the Monday, there will be no need to write--nor time indeed--; but if
+the Friday or Saturday, I shall hear from you, perhaps. Above all
+things remember, my dear friend, that I shall not expect you
+to-morrow, except as by a _bare possibility_. In great haste, signed
+and sealed this Sunday evening by
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Monday, 7 P.M.
+                               [Post-mark, August 19, 1845.]
+
+I this moment get your note--having been out since the early
+morning--and I must write just to catch the post. You are pure
+kindness and considerateness, _no_ thanks to you!--(since you will
+have it so--). I choose Friday, then,--but I shall hear from you
+before Thursday, I dare hope? I have all but passed your house
+to-day--with an Italian friend, from Rome, whom I must go about with a
+little on weariful sight seeing, so I shall earn Friday.
+
+                                                   Bless you
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Tuesday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
+
+I fancied it was just _so_--as I did not hear and did not see you on
+Monday. Not that you were expected particularly--but that you would
+have written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the
+day, if you had received my note in time. It happened well too,
+altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not
+come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at
+the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any
+visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases,
+go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at
+that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you
+before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not,
+should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn
+to write, ... did you think it was?
+
+Not a word of Malta! except from Mr. Kenyon who talked homilies of it
+last Sunday and wanted to speak them to Papa--but it would not do in
+any way--now especially--and in a little time there will be a
+decision for or against; and I am afraid of _both_ ... which is a
+happy state of preparation. Did I not tell you that early in the
+summer I did some translations for Miss Thomson's 'Classical Album,'
+from Bion and Theocritus, and Nonnus the author of that large (not
+great) poem in some forty books of the 'Dionysiaca' ... and the
+paraphrases from Apuleius? Well--I had a letter from her the other
+day, full of compunction and ejaculation, and declaring the fact that
+Mr. Burges had been correcting all the proofs of the poems; leaving
+out and emending generally, according to his own particular idea of
+the pattern in the mount--is it not amusing? I have been wicked enough
+to write in reply that it is happy for her and all readers ... _sua si
+bona norint_ ... if during some half hour which otherwise might have
+been dedicated by Mr. Burges to patting out the lights of Sophocles
+and his peers, he was satisfied with the humbler devastation of E.B.B.
+upon Nonnus. You know it is impossible to help being amused. This
+correcting is a mania with that man! And then I, who wrote what I did
+from the 'Dionysiaca,' with no respect for 'my author,' and an
+arbitrary will to 'put the case' of Bacchus and Ariadne as well as I
+could, for the sake of the art-illustrations, ... those subjects Miss
+Thomson sent me, ... and did it all with full liberty and persuasion
+of soul that nobody would think it worth while to compare English with
+Greek and refer me back to Nonnus and detect my wanderings from the
+text!! But the critic was not to be cheated so! And I do not doubt
+that he has set me all 'to rights' from beginning to end; and combed
+Ariadne's hair close to her cheeks for me. Have _you_ known Nonnus,
+... _you_ who forget nothing? and have known everything, I think? For
+it is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and
+humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts of
+experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of the world and
+the arts of it; curious knowledge as well as general knowledge ... and
+deep thinking as well as wide acquisition, ... and you, looking none
+the older for it all!--yes, and being besides a man of genius and
+working your faculty and not wasting yourself over a surface or away
+from an end. Dugald Stewart said that genius made naturally a
+lop-sided mind--did he not? He ought to have known _you_. And _I_ who
+do ... a little ... (for I grow more loth than I was to assume the
+knowledge of you, my dear friend)--_I_ do not mean to use that word
+'humiliation' in the sense of having felt the thing myself in any
+_painful_ way, ... because I never for a moment did, or _could_, you
+know,--never could ... never did ... except indeed when you have over
+praised me, which forced another personal feeling in. Otherwise it has
+always been quite pleasant to me to be 'startled and humiliated'--and
+more so perhaps than to be startled and exalted, if I might choose....
+
+Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to
+you. But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring
+on ... and you must endure as you can or will. Also ... as you have a
+friend with you 'from Italy' ... 'from Rome,' and commended me for my
+'kindness and considerateness' in changing Tuesday to Friday ...
+(wasn't it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the
+visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to
+be--I mean, as is most convenient 'for the nonce' to you and your
+friend--because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience,
+to your other friend of this ilk,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
+
+Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that
+your 'kindness and considerateness' consisted, not in putting off
+Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my
+coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and _I_ might
+call another time! And you are NOT, NOT my 'other friend,' any more
+than this head of mine is my _other_ head, seeing that I have got a
+violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told
+in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my
+Romans--who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have
+left the house for a few minutes with my sister--but are not 'with
+me,' as you seem to understand it,--in the house to stay. They were
+kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what
+use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and
+praying you to cry 'hands off' to that dreadful Burgess; have not I
+got a ... but I will tell you to-night--or on Friday which is my day,
+please--Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,
+
+Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings--what have I
+done? God bless you ever dearest friend.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Thursday, 7 o'clock.
+                               [Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]
+
+I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write
+(or, _speak_, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those
+'other friends'--dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve,
+and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a
+few more hours of 'social joy,' 'kindly intercourse,' &c., fall to my
+portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw
+her, not yesterday) by asking 'if I had got as much money as I
+expected by any works published of late?'--to which I answered, of
+course, 'exactly as much'--_e grazioso_! (All the same, if you were to
+ask her, or the like of her, 'how much the stone-work of the Coliseum
+would fetch, properly burned down to lime?'--she would shudder from
+head to foot and call you 'barbaro' with good Trojan heart.) Now you
+suppose--(watch my rhetorical figure here)--you suppose I am going to
+congratulate myself on being so much for the better, _en pays de
+connaissance_, with my 'other friend,' E.B.B., number 2--or 200, why
+not?--whereas I mean to 'fulmine over Greece,' since thunder frightens
+you, for all the laurels,--and to have reason for your taking my own
+part and lot to yourself--I do, will, must, and _will_, again, wonder
+at _you_ and admire _you_, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed,
+immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But
+if to talk you once begin, 'the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly)
+his own again'--I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or
+Panoplite, as I think you call Nonnus, nor ever, like Leigh Hunt's
+'Johnny, ever blythe and bonny, went singing Nonny, nonny' and see
+to-morrow, what a vengeance I will take for your 'mere suspicion in
+that kind'! But to the serious matter ... nay, I said yesterday, I
+believe--keep off that Burgess--he is stark staring mad--mad, do you
+know? The last time I met him he told me he had recovered I forget how
+many of the lost books of Thucydides--found them imbedded in Suidas (I
+think), and had disengaged them from _his_ Greek, without loss of a
+letter, 'by an instinct he, Burgess, had'--(I spell his name wrongly
+to help the proper _hiss_ at the end). Then, once on a time, he found
+in the 'Christus Patiens,' an odd dozen of lines, clearly dropped out
+of the 'Prometheus,' and proving that AEschylus was aware of the
+invention of gunpowder. He wanted to help Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in his
+'Museum'--and scared him, as Schmitz told me. What business has he,
+Burges, with English verse--and what on earth, or under it, has Miss
+Thomson to do with _him_. If she must displease one of two, why is Mr.
+B. not to be thanked and 'sent to feed,' as the French say prettily?
+At all events, do pray see what he has presumed to alter ... you can
+alter at sufficient warrant, profit by suggestion, I should think! But
+it is all Miss Thomson's shame and fault: because she is quite in her
+propriety, saying to such intermeddlers, gently for the sake of their
+poor weak heads, 'very good, I dare say, very desirable emendations,
+only the work is not mine, you know, but my friend's, and you must no
+more alter it without her leave, than alter this sketch, this
+illustration, because you think you could mend Ariadne's face or
+figure,--Fecit Tizianus, scripsit E.B.B.' Dear friend, you will tell
+Miss Thomson to stop further proceedings, will you not? There! only,
+do mind what I say?
+
+And now--till to-morrow! It seems an age since I saw you. I want to
+catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped--I
+need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I
+trust. 'Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the
+door!'
+
+God bless you,--my one friend, without an 'other'--bless you ever--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, August 25, 1845.]
+
+But what have _I_ done that you should ask what have _you_ done? I
+have not brought any accusation, have I ... no, nor _thought_ any, I
+am sure--and it was only the 'kindness and considerateness'--argument
+that was irresistible as a thing to be retorted, when your thanks came
+so naturally and just at the corner of an application. And then, you
+know, it is gravely true, seriously true, sadly true, that I am always
+expecting to hear or to see how tired you are at last of me!--sooner
+or later, you know!--But I did not mean any seriousness in that
+letter. No, nor did I mean ... (to pass to another question ...) to
+provoke you to the
+
+    Mister Hayley ... so are _you_....
+
+reply complimentary. All I observed concerning yourself, was the
+_combination_--which not an idiom in chivalry could treat
+grammatically as a thing common to _me_ and you, inasmuch as everyone
+who has known me for half a day, may know that, if there is anything
+peculiar in me, it lies for the most part in an extraordinary
+deficiency in this and this and this, ... there is no need to describe
+what. Only nuns of the strictest sect of the nunneries are rather
+wiser in some points, and have led less restricted lives than I have
+in others. And if it had not been for my 'carpet-work'--
+
+Well--and do you know that I have, for the last few years, taken quite
+to despise book-knowledge and its effect on the mind--I mean when
+people _live by it_ as most readers by profession do, ... cloistering
+their souls under these roofs made with heads, when they might be
+under the sky. Such people grow dark and narrow and low, with all
+their pains.
+
+_Friday._--I was writing you see before you came--and now I go on in
+haste to speak 'off my mind' some things which are on it. First ... of
+yourself; how can it be that you are unwell again, ... and that you
+should talk (now did you not?--did I not hear you say so?) of being
+'weary in your soul' ... _you_? What should make _you_, dearest
+friend, weary in your soul; or out of spirits in any way?--Do ... tell
+me.... I was going to write without a pause--and almost I might,
+perhaps, ... even as one of the two hundred of your friends, ...
+almost I might say out that 'Do tell me.' Or is it (which I am
+inclined to think most probable) that you are tired of a same life and
+want change? It may happen to anyone sometimes, and is independent of
+your will and choice, you know--and I know, and the whole world knows:
+and would it not therefore be wise of you, in that case, to fold your
+life new again and go abroad at once? What can make you weary in your
+soul, is a problem to me. You are the last from whom I should have
+expected such a word. And you did say so, I _think_. I _think_ that it
+was not a mistake of mine. And _you_, ... with a full liberty, and the
+world in your hand for every purpose and pleasure of it!--Or is it
+that, being unwell, your spirits are affected by _that_? But then you
+might be more unwell than you like to admit--. And I am teasing you
+with talking of it ... am I not?--and being disagreeable is only one
+third of the way towards being useful, it is good to remember in time.
+
+And then the next thing to write off my mind is ... that you must not,
+you must not, make an unjust opinion out of what I said to-day. I have
+been uncomfortable since, lest you should--and perhaps it would have
+been better if I had not said it apart from all context in that way;
+only that you could not long be a friend of mine without knowing and
+seeing what so lies on the surface. But then, ... as far as I am
+concerned, ... no one cares less for a 'will' than I do (and this
+though I never had one, ... in clear opposition to your theory which
+holds generally nevertheless) for a will in the common things of life.
+Every now and then there must of course be a crossing and
+vexation--but in one's mere pleasures and fantasies, one would rather
+be crossed and vexed a little than vex a person one loves ... and it
+is possible to get used to the harness and run easily in it at last;
+and there is a side-world to hide one's thoughts in, and 'carpet-work'
+to be immoral on in spite of Mrs. Jameson, ... and the word
+'literature' has, with me, covered a good deal of liberty as you must
+see ... real liberty which is never enquired into--and it has happened
+throughout my life by an accident (as far as anything is accident)
+that my own sense of right and happiness on any important point of
+overt action, has never run contrariwise to the way of obedience
+required of me ... while in things not exactly _overt_, I and all of
+us are apt to act sometimes up to the limit of our means of acting,
+with shut doors and windows, and no waiting for cognisance or
+permission. Ah--and that last is the worst of it all perhaps! to be
+forced into concealments from the heart naturally nearest to us; and
+forced away from the natural source of counsel and strength!--and
+then, the disingenuousness--the cowardice--the 'vices of
+slaves'!--and everyone you see ... all my brothers, ... constrained
+_bodily_ into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that
+worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of _living_,
+everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters
+on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do _not_ see, what
+you _cannot_ see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all
+those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children 'in the way
+they _must_ go!' and there never was (under the strata) a truer
+affection in a father's heart ... no, nor a worthier heart in itself
+... a heart loyaller and purer, and more compelling to gratitude and
+reverence, than his, as I see it! The evil is in the system--and he
+simply takes it to be his duty to rule, and to make happy according to
+his own views of the propriety of happiness--he takes it to be his
+duty to rule like the Kings of Christendom, by divine right. But he
+loves us through and through it--and _I_, for one, love _him_! and
+when, five years ago, I lost what I loved best in the world beyond
+comparison and rivalship ... far better than himself as he knew ...
+for everyone who knew _me_ could not choose but know what was my first
+and chiefest affection ... when I lost _that_, ... I felt that he
+stood the nearest to me on the closed grave ... or by the unclosing
+sea ... I do not know which nor could ask. And I will tell you that
+not only he has been kind and patient and forbearing to me through the
+tedious trial of this illness (far more trying to standers by than you
+have an idea of perhaps) but that he was generous and forbearing in
+that hour of bitter trial, and never reproached me as he might have
+done and as my own soul has not spared--never once said to me then or
+since, that if it had not been for _me_, the crown of his house would
+not have fallen. He _never did_ ... and he might have said it, and
+more--and I could have answered nothing. Nothing, except that I had
+paid my own price--and that the price I paid was greater than his
+_loss_ ... his!! For see how it was; and how, 'not with my hand but
+heart,' I was the cause or occasion of that misery--and though not
+with the intention of my heart but with its weakness, yet the
+_occasion_, any way!
+
+They sent me down you know to Torquay--Dr. Chambers saying that I
+could not live a winter in London. The worst--what people call the
+worst--was apprehended for me at that time. So I was sent down with my
+sister to my aunt there--and he, my brother whom I loved so, was sent
+too, to take us there and return. And when the time came for him to
+leave me, _I_, to whom he was the dearest of friends and brothers in
+one ... the only one of my family who ... well, but I cannot write of
+these things; and it is enough to tell you that he was above us all,
+better than us all, and kindest and noblest and dearest to _me_,
+beyond comparison, any comparison, as I said--and when the time came
+for him to leave me _I_, weakened by illness, could not master my
+spirits or drive back my tears--and my aunt kissed them away instead
+of reproving me as she should have done; and said that _she_ would
+take care that I should not be grieved ... _she_! ... and so she sate
+down and wrote a letter to Papa to tell him that he would 'break my
+heart' if he persisted in calling away my brother--As if hearts were
+broken _so_! I have thought bitterly since that my heart did not break
+for a good deal more than _that_! And Papa's answer was--burnt into
+me, as with fire, it is--that 'under such circumstances he did not
+refuse to suspend his purpose, but that he considered it to be _very
+wrong in me to exact such a thing_.' So there was no separation
+_then_: and month after month passed--and sometimes I was better and
+sometimes worse--and the medical men continued to say that they would
+not answer for my life ... they! if I were agitated--and so there was
+no more talk of a separation. And once _he_ held my hand, ... how I
+remember! and said that he 'loved me better than them all and that he
+_would not_ leave me ... till I was well,' he said! how I remember
+_that_! And ten days from that day the boat had left the shore which
+never returned; never--and he _had_ left me! gone! For three days we
+waited--and I hoped while I could--oh--that awful agony of three days!
+And the sun shone as it shines to-day, and there was no more wind than
+now; and the sea under the windows was like this paper for
+smoothness--and my sisters drew the curtains back that I might see for
+myself how smooth the sea was, and how it could hurt nobody--and other
+boats came back one by one.
+
+Remember how you wrote in your 'Gismond'
+
+    What says the body when they spring
+    Some monstrous torture-engine's whole
+    Strength on it? No more says the soul,
+
+and you never wrote anything which _lived_ with me more than _that_.
+It is such a dreadful truth. But you knew it for truth, I hope, by
+your genius, and not by such proof as mine--I, who could not speak or
+shed a tear, but lay for weeks and months half conscious, half
+unconscious, with a wandering mind, and too near to God under the
+crushing of His hand, to pray at all. I expiated all my weak tears
+before, by not being able to shed then one tear--and yet they were
+forbearing--and no voice said 'You have done this.'
+
+Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have
+never said so much to a living being--I never _could_ speak or write
+of it. I asked no question from the moment when my last hope went: and
+since then, it has been impossible for me to speak what was in me. I
+have borne to do it to-day and to you, but perhaps if you were to
+write--so do not let this be noticed between us again--_do not_! And
+besides there is no need! I do not reproach myself with such acrid
+thoughts as I had once--I _know_ that I would have died ten times over
+for _him_, and that therefore though it was wrong of me to be weak,
+and I have suffered for it and shall learn by it I hope; _remorse_ is
+not precisely the word for me--not at least in its full sense. Still
+you will comprehend from what I have told you how the spring of life
+must have seemed to break within me _then_; and how natural it has
+been for me to loathe the living on--and to lose faith (even without
+the loathing), to lose faith in myself ... which I have done on some
+points utterly. It is not from the cause of illness--no. And you will
+comprehend too that I have strong reasons for being grateful to the
+forbearance.... It would have been _cruel_, you think, to reproach me.
+Perhaps so! yet the kindness and patience of the desisting from
+reproach, are positive things all the same.
+
+Shall I be too late for the post, I wonder? Wilson tells me that you
+were followed up-stairs yesterday (I write on Saturday this latter
+part) by somebody whom you probably took for my father. Which is
+Wilson's idea--and I hope not yours. No--it was neither father nor
+other relative of mine, but an old friend in rather an ill temper.
+
+And so good-bye until Tuesday. Perhaps I shall ... not ... hear from
+you to-night. Don't let the tragedy or aught else do you harm--will
+you? and try not to be 'weary in your soul' any more--and forgive me
+this gloomy letter I half shrink from sending you, yet will send.
+
+                                          May God bless you.
+
+                                               E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Morning,
+                               [Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]
+
+On the subject of your letter--quite irrespective of the injunction in
+it--I would not have dared speak; now, at least. But I may permit
+myself, perhaps, to say I am _most_ grateful, _most grateful_, dearest
+friend, for this admission to participate, in my degree, in these
+feelings. There is a better thing than being happy in your happiness;
+I feel, now that you teach me, it is so. I will write no more now;
+though that sentence of 'what you are _expecting_,--that I shall be
+tired of you &c.,'--though I _could_ blot that out of your mind for
+ever by a very few words _now_,--for you _would believe_ me at this
+moment, close on the other subject:--but I will take no such
+advantage--I will wait.
+
+I have many things (indifferent things, after those) to say; will you
+write, if but a few lines, to change the associations for that
+purpose? Then I will write too.--
+
+May God bless you,--in what is past and to come! I pray that from my
+heart, being yours
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Morning,
+                               [Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]
+
+But your 'Saul' is unobjectionable as far as I can see, my dear
+friend. He was tormented by an evil spirit--but how, we are not told
+... and the consolation is not obliged to be definite, ... is it? A
+singer was sent for as a singer--and all that you are called upon to
+be true to, are the general characteristics of David the chosen,
+standing between his sheep and his dawning hereafter, between
+innocence and holiness, and with what you speak of as the 'gracious
+gold locks' besides the chrism of the prophet, on his own head--and
+surely you have been happy in the tone and spirit of these lyrics ...
+broken as you have left them. Where is the wrong in all this? For the
+right and beauty, they are more obvious--and I cannot tell you how the
+poem holds me and will not let me go until it blesses me ... and so,
+where are the 'sixty lines' thrown away? I do beseech you ... you who
+forget nothing, ... to remember them directly, and to go on with the
+rest ... _as_ directly (be it understood) as is not injurious to your
+health. The whole conception of the poem, I like ... and the execution
+is exquisite up to this point--and the sight of Saul in the tent, just
+struck out of the dark by that sunbeam, 'a thing to see,' ... not to
+say that afterwards when he is visibly 'caught in his fangs' like the
+king serpent, ... the sight is grander still. How could you doubt
+about this poem....
+
+At the moment of writing which, I receive your note. Do _you_ receive
+my assurances from the deepest of my heart that I never did otherwise
+than _'believe' you_ ... never did nor shall do ... and that you
+completely misinterpreted my words if you drew another meaning from
+them. Believe _me_ in this--will you? I could not believe _you_ any
+more for anything you could say, now or hereafter--and so do not
+avenge yourself on my unwary sentences by remembering them against me
+for evil. I did not mean to vex you ... still less to suspect
+you--indeed I did not! and moreover it was quite your fault that I did
+not blot it out after it was written, whatever the meaning was. So you
+forgive me (altogether) for your own sins: you must:--
+
+For my part, though I have been sorry since to have written you such a
+gloomy letter, the sorrow unmakes itself in hearing you speak so
+kindly. Your sympathy is precious to me, I may say. May God bless you.
+Write and tell me among the 'indifferent things' something not
+indifferent, how you are yourself, I mean ... for I fear you are not
+well and thought you were not looking so yesterday.
+
+                             Dearest friend, I remain yours,
+
+                                  E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Friday Evening.
+                               [Post-mark, August 30, 1845].
+
+I do not hear; and come to you to ask the alms of just one line,
+having taken it into my head that something is the matter. It is not
+so much exactingness on my part, as that you spoke of meaning to write
+as soon as you received a note of mine ... which went to you five
+minutes afterwards ... which is three days ago, or will be when you
+read this. Are you not well--or what? Though I have tried and _wished_
+to remember having written in the last note something very or even a
+little offensive to you, I failed in it and go back to the worse fear.
+For you could not be vexed with me for talking of what was 'your
+fault' ... 'your own fault,' viz. in having to read sentences which,
+but for your commands, would have been blotted out. You could not very
+well take _that_ for serious blame! from _me_ too, who have so much
+reason and provocation for blaming the archangel Gabriel.--No--you
+could not misinterpret so,--and if you could not, and if you are not
+displeased with me, you must be unwell, I think. I took for granted
+yesterday that you had gone out as before--but to-night it is
+different--and so I come to ask you to be kind enough to write one
+word for me by some post to-morrow. Now remember ... I am not asking
+for a letter--but for a _word_ ... or line strictly speaking.
+
+                                    Ever yours, dear friend,
+
+                                         E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]
+
+This sweet Autumn Evening, Friday, comes all golden into the room and
+makes me write to you--not think of you--yet what shall I write?
+
+It must be for another time ... after Monday, when I am to see you,
+you know, and hear if the headache be gone, since your note would not
+round to the perfection of kindness and comfort, and tell me so.
+
+                                God bless my dearest friend.
+
+                                     R.B.
+
+I am much better--well, indeed--thank you.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]
+
+Can you understand me _so_, dearest friend, after all? Do you see
+me--when I am away, or with you--'taking offence' at words, 'being
+vexed' at words, or deeds of yours, even if I could not immediately
+trace them to their source of entire, pure kindness; as I have
+hitherto done in every smallest instance?
+
+I believe in _you_ absolutely, utterly--I believe that when you bade
+me, that time, be silent--that such was your bidding, and I was
+silent--dare I say I think you did not know at that time the power I
+have over myself, that I could sit and speak and listen as I have done
+since? Let me say now--_this only once_--that I loved you from my
+soul, and gave you my life, so much of it as you would take,--and all
+that is _done_, not to be altered now: it was, in the nature of the
+proceeding, wholly independent of any return on your part. I will not
+think on extremes you might have resorted to; as it is, the assurance
+of your friendship, the intimacy to which you admit me, _now_, make
+the truest, deepest joy of my life--a joy I can never think fugitive
+while we are in life, because I KNOW, as to me, I _could_ not
+willingly displease you,--while, as to you, your goodness and
+understanding will always see to the bottom of involuntary or ignorant
+faults--always help me to correct them. I have done now. If I thought
+you were like other women I have known, I should say so
+much!--but--(my first and last word--I _believe_ in you!)--what you
+could and would give me, of your affection, you would give nobly and
+simply and as a giver--you would not need that I tell you--(_tell_
+you!)--what would be supreme happiness to me in the event--however
+distant--
+
+I repeat ... I call on your justice to remember, on your intelligence
+to believe ... that this is merely a more precise stating the _first_
+subject; to put an end to any possible misunderstanding--to prevent
+your henceforth believing that because I _do not write_, from thinking
+too deeply of you, I am offended, vexed &c. &c. I will never recur to
+this, nor shall you see the least difference in my manner next Monday:
+it is indeed, always before me ... how I know nothing of you and
+yours. But I think I ought to have spoken when I did--and to speak
+clearly ... or more clearly what I do, as it is my pride and duty to
+fall back, now, on the feeling with which I have been in the
+meantime--Yours--God bless you--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+Let me write a few words to lead into Monday--and say, you have
+probably received my note. I am much better--with a little headache,
+which is all, and fast going this morning. Of yours you say nothing--I
+trust you see your ... dare I say your _duty_ in the Pisa affair, as
+all else _must_ see it--shall I hear on Monday? And my 'Saul' that you
+are so lenient to.
+
+                                            Bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                          Sunday.
+                                          [August 31, 1845.]
+
+I did not think you were angry--I never said so. But you might
+reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of
+blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the
+amount of my fear--or rather hope ... since I conjectured most that
+you were not well. And after all you did think ... do think ... that
+in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you,
+distrusted you--or why this letter? How have I provoked this letter?
+Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and
+will you believe me that if for the past's sake you sent it, it was
+unnecessary, and if for the future's, irrelevant? Which I say from no
+want of sensibility to the words of it--your words always make
+themselves felt--but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold
+to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be
+holden by them. Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to
+me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to
+choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a
+probability, in my sight and yours? Can you help my sitting with the
+doors all open if I think it right? I do attest to you--while I trust
+you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that
+no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than
+you do in mine,--that you would still stand high and remain
+unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact,
+as now at this moment. And this I must say, since you have said other
+things: and this alone, which _I_ have said, concerns the future, I
+remind you earnestly.
+
+My dearest friend--you have followed the most _generous_ of impulses
+in your whole bearing to me--and I have recognised and called by its
+name, in my heart, each one of them. Yet I cannot help adding that, of
+us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part ... I mean, to a
+generous nature like your own, to which every sort of nobleness comes
+easily. Mine has been more difficult--and I have sunk under it again
+and again: and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a
+lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and
+lightness, unworthy at least of _you_, and perhaps of both of us.
+Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of
+you, to believe in me--in my truth--because I have never failed to you
+in it, nor been capable of _such_ failure: the thing I have said, I
+have meant ... always: and in things I have not said, the silence has
+had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it.
+And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in
+me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I
+required of you on one occasion--and that if I had 'known your power
+over yourself,' I should not have minded ... no! In other words you
+believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall I call it
+for a motive base and small enough?) my own scrupulousness ... freedom
+from embarrassment! of myself in the least of me; in the tying of my
+shoestrings, say!--so much and no more! Now this is so wrong, as to
+make me impatient sometimes in feeling it to be your impression: I
+asked for silence--but _also_ and chiefly for the putting away of ...
+you know very well what I asked for. And this was sincerely done, I
+attest to you. You wrote once to me ... oh, long before May and the
+day we met: that you 'had been so happy, you should be now justified
+to yourself in taking any step most hazardous to the happiness of your
+life'--but if you were justified, could _I_ be therefore justified in
+abetting such a step,--the step of wasting, in a sense, your best
+feelings ... of emptying your water gourds into the sand? What I
+thought then I think now--just what any third person, knowing you,
+would think, I think and feel. I thought too, at first, that the
+feeling on your part was a mere generous impulse, likely to expand
+itself in a week perhaps. It affects me and has affected me, very
+deeply, more than I dare attempt to say, that you should persist
+_so_--and if sometimes I have felt, by a sort of instinct, that after
+all you would not go on to persist, and that (being a man, you know)
+you might mistake, a little unconsciously, the strength of your own
+feeling; you ought not to be surprised; when I felt it was more
+advantageous and happier for you that it should be so. _In any case_,
+I shall never regret my own share in the events of this summer, and
+your friendship will be dear to me to the last. You know I told you
+so--not long since. And as to what you say otherwise, you are right in
+thinking that I would not hold by unworthy motives in avoiding to
+speak what you had any claim to hear. But what could I speak that
+would not be unjust to you? Your life! if you gave it to me and I put
+my whole heart into it; what should I put but anxiety, and more
+sadness than you were born to? What could I give you, which it would
+not be ungenerous to give? Therefore we must leave this subject--and I
+must trust you to leave it without one word more; (too many have been
+said already--but I could not let your letter pass quite silently ...
+as if I had nothing to do but to receive all as matter of course
+_so_!) while you may well trust _me_ to remember to my life's end, as
+the grateful remember; and to feel, as those do who have felt sorrow
+(for where these pits are dug, the water will stand), the full price
+of your regard. May God bless you, my dearest friend. I shall send
+this letter after I have seen you, and hope you may not have expected
+to hear sooner.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+_Monday, 6 p.m._--I send in _dis_obedience to your commands, Mrs.
+Shelley's book--but when books accumulate and when besides, I want to
+let you have the American edition of my poems ... famous for all
+manner of blunders, you know; what is to be done but have recourse to
+the parcel-medium? You were in jest about being at Pisa _before or as
+soon as we were_?--oh no--that must not be indeed--we must wait a
+little!--even if you determine to go at all, which is a question of
+doubtful expediency. Do take more exercise, this week, and make war
+against those dreadful sensations in the head--now, will you?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, September 3, 1845.]
+
+I rather hoped ... with no right at all ... to hear from you this
+morning or afternoon--to know how you are--that, 'how are you,' there
+is no use disguising, is,--vary it how one may--my own life's
+question.--
+
+I had better write no more, now. Will you not tell me something about
+you--the head; and that too, _too_ warm hand ... or was it my fancy?
+Surely the report of Dr. Chambers is most satisfactory,--all seems to
+rest with yourself: you know, in justice to me, you _do_ know that _I_
+know the all but mockery, the absurdity of anyone's counsel 'to be
+composed,' &c. &c. But try, dearest friend!
+
+                                             God bless you--
+
+                                                  I am yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, September 3, 1845.]
+
+Before you leave London, I will answer your letter--all my attempts
+end in nothing now--
+
+                             Dearest friend--I am yours ever
+
+                                  R.B.
+
+But meantime, you will tell me about yourself, will you not? The
+parcel came a few minutes after my note left--Well, I can thank you
+for _that_; for the Poems,--though I cannot wear them round my
+neck--and for the too great trouble. My heart's friend! Bless you--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, September 4, 1845.]
+
+Indeed my headaches are not worth enquiring about--I mean, they are
+not of the slightest consequence, and seldom survive the remedy of a
+cup of coffee. I only wish it were the same with everybody--I mean,
+with every _head_! Also there is nothing the matter otherwise--and I
+am going to prove my right to a 'clean bill of health' by going into
+the park in ten minutes. Twice round the inner enclosure is what I can
+compass now--which is equal to once round the world--is it not?
+
+I had just time to be afraid that the parcel had not reached you. The
+reason why I sent you the poems was that I had a few copies to give to
+my personal friends, and so, wished you to have one; and it was quite
+to please myself and not to please _you_ that I made you have it; and
+if you put it into the 'plum-tree' to hide the errata, I shall be
+pleased still, if not rather more. Only let me remember to tell you
+this time in relation to those books and the question asked of
+yourself by your noble Romans, that just as I was enclosing my
+sixty-pounds debt to Mr. Moxon, I did actually and miraculously
+receive a remittance of fourteen pounds from the selfsame bookseller
+of New York who agreed last year to print my poems at his own risk and
+give me 'ten per cent on the profit.' Not that I ever asked for such a
+thing! They were the terms offered. And I always considered the 'per
+centage' as quite visionary ... put in for the sake of effect, to make
+the agreement look better! But no--you see! One's poetry has a real
+'commercial value,' if you do but take it far away enough from the
+'civilization of Europe.' When you get near the backwoods and the red
+Indians, it turns out to be nearly as good for something as
+'cabbages,' after all! Do you remember what you said to me of cabbages
+_versus_ poems, in one of the first letters you ever wrote to me?--of
+selling cabbages and buying _Punches_?
+
+People complain of Dr. Chambers and call him rough and
+unfeeling--neither of which _I_ ever found him for a moment--and I
+like him for his truthfulness, which is the nature of the man, though
+it is essential to medical morality never to let a patient think
+himself mortal while it is possible to prevent it, and even Dr.
+Chambers may incline to this on occasion. Still he need not have said
+all the good he said to me on Saturday--he _used_ not to say any of
+it; and he must have thought some of it: and, any way, the Pisa-case
+is strengthened all round by his opinion and injunction, so that all
+my horror and terror at the thoughts of his visit, (and it's really
+true that I would rather _suffer_ to a certain extent than be _cured_
+by means of those doctors!) had some compensation. How are you? do not
+forget to say! I found among some papers to-day, a note of yours which
+I asked Mr. Kenyon to give me for an autograph, two years ago.
+
+May God bless you, dearest friend. And I have a dispensation from
+'beef and porter' [Greek: eis tous aionas]. 'On no account' was the
+answer!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Afternoon.
+                             [Post-mark, September 5, 1845.]
+
+What you tell me of Dr. Chambers, 'all the good of you' he said, and
+all I venture to infer; this makes me most happy and thankful. Do you
+use to attach our old [Greek: tuphlas elpidas] (and the practice of
+instilling them) to that medical science in which Prometheus boasted
+himself proficient? I had thought the 'faculty' dealt in fears, on the
+contrary, and scared you into obedience: but I know most about the
+doctors in Moliere. However the joyous truth is--must be, that you are
+better, and if one could transport you quietly to Pisa, save you all
+worry,--what might one not expect!
+
+When I know your own intentions--measures, I should say, respecting
+your journey--mine will of course be submitted to you--it will just be
+'which day next--month'?--Not week, alas.
+
+I can thank you now for this edition of your poems--I have not yet
+taken to read it, though--for it does not, each volume of it, open
+obediently to a thought, here, and here, and here, like my green books
+... no, my Sister's they are; so these you give me are really mine.
+And America, with its ten per cent., shall have my better word
+henceforth and for ever ... for when you calculate, there must have
+been a really extraordinary circulation; and in a few months: it is
+what newspapers call 'a great fact.' Have they reprinted the
+'Seraphim'? Quietly, perhaps!
+
+I shall see you on Monday, then--
+
+And my all-important headaches are tolerably kept under--headaches
+proper they are not--but the noise and slight turning are less
+troublesome--will soon go altogether.
+
+                        Bless you ever--ever dearest friend.
+
+                             R.B.
+
+_Oh, oh, oh!_ As many thanks for that precious card-box and jewel of
+a flower-holder as are consistent with my dismay at finding you _only_
+return _them_ ... and not the costly brown paper wrappages also ... to
+say nothing of the inestimable pins with which my sister uses to
+fasten the same!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, September 8, 1845.]
+
+I am in the greatest difficulty about the steamers. Will you think a
+little for me and tell me what is best to do? It appears that the
+direct Leghorn steamer will not sail on the third, and may not until
+the middle of October, and if forced to still further delay, which is
+possible, will not at all. One of my brothers has been to Mr. Andrews
+of St. Mary Axe and heard as much as this. What shall I do? The middle
+of October, say my sisters ... and I half fear that it may prove so
+... is too late for me--to say nothing for the uncertainty which
+completes the difficulty.
+
+On the 20th of September (on the other hand) sails the Malta vessel;
+and I hear that I may go in it to Gibraltar and find a French steamer
+there to proceed by. Is there an objection to this--except the change
+of steamers ... repeated ... for I must get down to Southampton--and
+the leaving England so soon? Is any better to be done? Do think for me
+a little. And now that the doing comes so near ... and in this dead
+silence of Papa's ... it all seems impossible, ... and I seem to see
+the stars _constellating_ against me, and give it as my serious
+opinion to you that I shall not go. Now, mark.
+
+But I have had the kindest of letters from dear Mr. Kenyon, urging
+it--.
+
+Well--I have no time for writing any more--and this is only a note of
+business to bespeak your thoughts about the steamers. My wisdom looks
+back regretfully ... only rather too late ... on the Leghorn vessel
+of the third of September. It would have been wise if I had gone
+_then_.
+
+                          May God bless you, dearest friend.
+
+                               E.B.B.
+
+But if your head turns still, ... _do_ you walk enough? Is there not
+fault in your not walking, by your own confession? Think of this
+first--and then, if you please, of the steamers.
+
+So, till Monday!--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, September 9, 1845.]
+
+One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well
+enough for the necessary work connected with them, ... a sure reason
+and strong ... nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work
+now--and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them
+through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so,
+why you will not do it--will you?--you will wait for another year,--or
+at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old
+size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no
+retouching. 'Saul' for instance, you might leave--! You will not let
+me hear when I am gone, of your being ill--you will take care ... will
+you not? Because you see ... or rather _I_ see ... you are _not_
+looking well at all--no, you are not! and even if you do not care for
+that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be
+for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute
+hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck
+down before the gate ... should you lose the physical power while
+keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and
+sufficient things in your case--but after all we carry a barrow-full
+of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we
+mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the
+garden. A figure which reminds me ... and I wanted no figure to remind
+me ... to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her
+kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not.
+When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week,
+and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very
+kind--and I take the liberty of saying so moreover ... _as I am not
+thanking you_. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you
+disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when
+they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to
+just _so_. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July ...
+or November ... two months before or after: and that this journey were
+thrown behind or in front ... anywhere to be out of sight. You do not
+know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through
+what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me
+only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn.
+Well!--but I want you to see. George's letter, and how he and Mrs.
+Hedley, when she saw Papa's note of consent to me, give unhesitating
+counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me ...
+which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps ... seeing that it
+goes [Greek: ba ... rbarizon]. We are famous in this house for what
+are called nick-names ... though a few of us have escaped rather by a
+caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at
+all) except by the nom de _paix_ which you find written in the
+letter:--proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just 'half a Ba-by' ...
+no more nor less;--and in fact the name has that precise definition.
+Burn the note when you have read it.
+
+And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters,
+you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in
+these enclosed 'sonnets' which were written a few weeks ago, and
+though only pretending to be 'sketches,' pretend to be like, as far as
+they go, and _are_ like--my brothers thought--when I 'showed them
+against' a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I
+was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his--and
+he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting--and you
+who are in 'high art,' must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the
+elder, and the one who brought you into this room first--and Arabel,
+who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my
+illness and is the least wanted in the house here, ... and perhaps ...
+perhaps--is my favourite--though my heart smites me while I write that
+unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all
+things, and good and lovable in their own beings--very unlike, for the
+rest; one, most caring for the Polka, ... and the other for the sermon
+preached at Paddington Chapel, ... _that_ is Arabel ... so if ever you
+happen to know her you must try not to say before her how 'much you
+hate &c.' Henrietta always 'managed' everything in the house even
+before I was ill, ... because she liked it and I didn't, and I waived
+my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.
+
+I have been thinking much of your 'Sordello' since you spoke of
+it--and even, I _had_ thought much of it before you spoke of it
+yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your
+hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble
+picture with its face to the wall just now--or at least, in the
+shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all
+through: you have _made_ even the darkness of it! And such a work as
+it might become if you chose ... if you put your will to it! What I
+meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses
+than the 'ten per cent' you spoke of ... though it does perhaps ... so
+much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in
+the connections and associations ... which hang as loosely every here
+and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists
+in thinking himself awake.
+
+How do you mean that I am 'lenient'? Do you not believe that I tell
+you what I think, and as I think it? I may _think wrong_, to be
+sure--but _that_ is not my fault:--and so there is no use reproaching
+me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same
+time:--is there, now?
+
+And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and
+receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly
+_himself always_--which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps.
+And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see--and what he
+expects from you--notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to
+write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle's letter--thank you
+for letting me see it. I admire _that_ too! It is as ingenious 'a
+case' against poor Keats, as could well be drawn--but nobody who knew
+very deeply what poetry _is_, _could_, you know, draw any case against
+him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says--but
+then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a 'store-room'
+would ever be like the 'Eve of St. Agnes,' unless dreamed by some
+'animosus infans,' like Keats himself. Still it is all true ... isn't
+it?... what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a
+_seer_ strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions--(to go back to
+Carlyle's letters) ... he writes to the things you were speaking of
+yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton's picture for
+convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men
+of our day and 'the giants which were on the earth,' less ... far less
+... in the faculty ... in the gift, ... or in the general intellect,
+... than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in
+what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton
+if [we] lived them like Milton.
+
+I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as
+you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be ...
+packing trunks perhaps ... or what else in the way of 'active
+usefulness.'
+
+Say how you are--will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is
+good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh,
+this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Thursday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
+
+Here are your beautiful, and I am sure _true_ sonnets; they look
+true--I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares
+exhibit, E.B.B.'s self? And surely 'Alfred's' pencil has not foregone
+its best privilege, not left _the_ face unsketched? Italians call such
+an 'effect defective'--'l'andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.' He must
+have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and ... _he_ will not trust
+me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are
+strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the
+proper price for it--but _you_ would lend it to me, I think, nor need
+I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent
+way--for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do
+you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all
+my pride is gone, pride in that sense--and I mean to take of you for
+ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would,
+you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever
+since I knew you if nothing in the way of _good_ portrait existed--and
+this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you
+have also quieted--have you not?--another old obstinate and very
+likely impertinent questioning of mine--as to the little name which
+was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is
+never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and
+write it--'Ba'--and thank you, and your brother George, and only
+burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by
+wish, one gets one's wishes--at least I do--for one instance, you will
+go to Italy
+
+[Illustration: Music followed by ?]
+
+Why, 'lean and harken after it' as Donne says--
+
+Don't expect Neapolitan Scenery at Pisa, quite in the North, remember.
+Mrs. Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy, at Sorrento,
+she says. Oh that book--does one wake or sleep? The 'Mary dear' with
+the brown eyes, and Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and who
+surely was something better once upon a time--and to go through Rome
+and Florence and the rest, after what I suppose to be Lady
+Londonderry's fashion: the intrepidity of the commonplace quite
+astounds me. And then that way, when she and the like of her are put
+in a new place, with new flowers, new stones, faces, walls, all
+new--of looking wisely up at the sun, clouds, evening star, or
+mountain top and wisely saying 'who shall describe _that_ sight!'--Not
+_you_, we very well see--but why don't you tell us that at Rome they
+eat roasted chestnuts, and put the shells into their aprons, the women
+do, and calmly empty the whole on the heads of the passengers in the
+street below; and that at Padua when a man drives his waggon up to a
+house and stops, all the mouse-coloured oxen that pull it from a beam
+against their foreheads sit down in a heap and rest. But once she
+travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, Rogers in
+hand--to such things and uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art,
+once she lets go of Rio's skirts, are amazing--Fra Angelico, for
+instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &c., she had no eyes for the
+divine _bon-bourgeoisie_ of his pictures; the dear common folk of his
+crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a
+comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint--and the
+children, and women,--divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the
+streets and market place--but she is wrong every where, that is, not
+right, not seeing what is to see, speaking what one expects to hear--I
+quarrel with her, for ever, I think.
+
+I am much better, and mean to be well as you desire--shall correct the
+verses you have seen, and make them do for the present.
+
+Saturday, then! And one other time only, do you say?
+
+God bless you, my own, best friend.
+
+                                                  Yours ever
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Thursday.
+                            [Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
+
+Will you come on Friday ... to-morrow ... instead of Saturday--will it
+be the same thing? Because I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who is to be
+in London on Friday evening he says, and therefore may mean to visit
+me on Saturday I imagine. So let it be Friday--if you should not, for
+any reason, prove Monday to be better still.
+
+                                         May God bless you--
+
+                                              Ever yours,
+
+                                                   E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Saturday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 13, 1845.]
+
+Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in
+reply to your letter of last week--and first of all I have to entreat
+you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words
+the feelings behind them--(should _speak_ rather more easily, I
+think--but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be
+just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and
+again. I will tell you--no, not _you_, but any imaginary other person,
+who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most
+sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that
+avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I
+never dreamed of winning your _love_. I can hardly write this word, so
+incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places
+does it imply--nor, next to that, though long after, _would_ I, if I
+_could_, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have
+taken root in you--_that_ great and solemn one, for instance. I feel
+that if I could get myself _remade_, as if turned to gold, I WOULD not
+even then desire to become more than the mere setting to _that_
+diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me,
+in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is
+all I can take and all too embarrassing, using _all_ my gratitude. And
+yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it
+is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all
+the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand
+the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is
+recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I
+would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which
+your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak
+presently)--I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it
+there, surely there. I could no more 'bind _you_ by words,' than you
+have bound me, as you say--but if I misunderstand you, one assurance
+to that effect will be but too intelligible to me--but, as it _is_, I
+have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which
+I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily
+conceives; while _any one_ of those reasons would impose silence on me
+_for ever_ (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and _would_
+not remove one affection that is already part of you,)--_would_ you,
+being able to speak _so_, only say _that you_ desire not to put 'more
+sadness than I was born to,' into my life?--that you 'could give me
+only what it were ungenerous to give'?
+
+Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that
+you bid me 'leave this subject'? I think if it were so, I would for
+once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous
+self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out--but it is
+not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to
+look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would
+turn to its good or its loss--and I _know_, if one may know anything,
+that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours,
+would render me _supremely happy_, as I said, and say, and feel. My
+whole suit to you is, in that sense, _selfish_--not that I am ignorant
+that _your_ nature would most surely attain happiness in being
+conscious that it made another happy--but _that best, best end of
+all_, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of
+your own gift.
+
+Dearest, I will end here--words, persuasion, arguments, if they were
+at my service I would not use them--I believe in you, altogether have
+faith in you--in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to
+reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might
+at first glance seem to imply--you do not understand me to be living
+and labouring and writing (and _not_ writing) in order to be
+successful in the world's sense? I even convinced the people _here_
+what was my true 'honourable position in society,' &c. &c. therefore I
+shall not have to inform _you_ that I desire to be very rich, very
+great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil
+Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;--much less--enough of
+this nonsense.
+
+'Tell me what I have a claim to hear': I can hear it, and be as
+grateful as I was before and am now--your friendship is my pride and
+happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that
+it was in my power to serve you _there_, to serve you there would
+still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of
+my love, it is all _on_wards--and all possible forms of unkindness ...
+I quite laugh to think how they are _behind_ ... cannot be encountered
+in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you
+implicitly--obey what I am able to conceive of your least desire, much
+more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal,
+among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My
+whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely
+cut down) was long ago calculated--and it supposed _you_, the finding
+such an one as you, utterly impossible--because in calculating one
+goes upon _chances_, not on providence--how could I expect you? So for
+my own future way in the world I have always refused to care--any one
+who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did
+once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I
+now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and
+who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events
+would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the
+Solicitor-Generalship,--such an one need not very much concern himself
+beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near
+this life, all changes--and at a word, I will do all that ought to be
+done, that every one used to say could be done, and let 'all my powers
+find sweet employ' as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be
+got--not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away,
+and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news--at Pisa where
+one may live for some L100 a year--while, lo, I seem to remember, I
+_do_ remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those
+pounds for any play that might suit him--to say nothing of Mr. Colburn
+saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner 'a novel on
+the subject of _Napoleon_'! So may one make money, if one does not
+live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess's
+Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one's faculty.
+
+Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest--all you shall say
+will be best--I am yours--
+
+Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and
+will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 16, 1845.]
+
+I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it
+is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain--and you are
+waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am
+happy--but ungrateful nowhere--and I thank you from my
+heart--profoundly from the depths of my heart ... which is nearly all
+I can do.
+
+One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to
+speak at all if '_from the beginning and at this moment you never
+dreamed of_' ... and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I
+felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a
+moment's advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering
+branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the
+fence of a woman's caution and reserve. You will not say that you have
+not acted as if you 'dreamed'--and I will answer therefore to the
+general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once
+that I _did_ state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself
+... though not all ... and that if I had been worthier of you I should
+have been proportionably less in haste to 'bid you leave that
+subject.' I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to
+have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I
+may not have felt a preference for another ... which you are ready
+'to serve,' you say. Which is generous in you--but in _me_, where were
+the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you
+think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for
+me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall
+I shrink from telling you besides ... you, who have been generous to
+me and have a right to hear it ... and have spoken to me in the name
+of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same
+letter ... that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my
+feelings what you are ... and that if I were different in some
+respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept
+the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully;
+and give away my own life and soul to that end. I _would_ do it ...
+_not, I do_ ... observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only
+meaning that I am not all stone--only proving that I am not likely to
+consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is
+not:--_that_, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you
+... _that_ I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a
+strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to
+the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that
+you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own
+unworthiness between you and me--not being heroic, you know, nor
+pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of
+unworthiness, _God_ has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat
+your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but
+pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you ...
+judge! The present is here to be seen ... speaking for itself! and the
+best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be
+... a thing for making burdens out of ... only not for your carrying,
+as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day
+in his smiling kindness ... 'In ten years you may be strong
+perhaps'--or 'almost strong'! that being the encouragement of my best
+friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or
+guess...! what _could_ he say but that you were ... a poet!--and I ...
+still worse! _Never_ let him know or guess!
+
+And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent
+practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave
+me--these thoughts of me, I mean ... for if we might not be true
+friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth.
+But we may be friends always ... and cannot be so separated, that your
+happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you
+will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded _thus_ ...
+and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into
+another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which
+you tell me 'would silence you for ever.' I might certainly tell you
+that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me _so_, and
+that I had answered you--_so_, even, would not forgive me at the end
+of ten years--and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here
+and in no disrespect to your name and your position ... though he does
+not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the
+world's measures of the means of life ... but for the singular reason
+that he never _does_ tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the
+development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not
+bring to you of my own will--it rang hollow in my ears--perhaps I
+thought even too little of it:--and I brought to you what I thought
+much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts,
+these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the
+heart with any such:--and I will say, in reply to some words of yours,
+that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I
+do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I _wished_ to
+be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I _could not_, with
+three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess
+me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the
+need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.
+
+The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for
+being so. Believe that I am grateful to you--_how_ grateful, cannot be
+shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in
+all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you--but I would
+not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the
+earnestness with which I tell the other truths--of you ... and of this
+subject. The subject will not bear consideration--it breaks in our
+hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to
+you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be
+anyone's, be only yours.
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
+
+I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on
+me--very likely you do, and write it just for that--for I conceive
+_all_ from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect,
+let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any
+fear--though only for a moment and on the outset--that you have been
+misunderstood, that the goodness _outside_, and round and over all,
+hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you
+see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that--can I speak
+it--entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above
+my hopes--and wishes, even, so it seems to me ... and yet could not
+but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out
+of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this
+Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on
+the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, _the_ prize,
+the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at
+present you believe this gift impossible--and I acquiesce entirely--I
+submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am
+capable. Those obstacles are solely for _you_ to see and to declare
+... had _I_ seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or
+myself by affecting to pass them over ... what _were_ obstacles, I
+mean: but you _do_ see them, I must think,--and perhaps they strike me
+the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they
+are,--not that I shall endeavour. After what you _also_ apprise me of,
+I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what
+you now consider them, you who see now _for me_, whom I implicitly
+trust in to see for me; you will _then_, too, see and remember me, and
+how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see,
+and so inform me, I shall never utter a word--for that would involve
+the vilest of implications. I thank God--I _do_ thank him, that in
+this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy
+of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in
+the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my
+mind to the impossibility of loving any woman ... having wondered at
+this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having
+acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and
+become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry ... I say, when
+real love, making itself at once recognized as such, _did_ reveal
+itself to me at last, I _did_ open my heart to it with a cry--nor care
+for its overturning all my theory--nor mistrust its effect upon a mind
+set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more--nor
+apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was
+already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of
+the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the
+pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when
+_it_ did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or
+_should_ speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after
+all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. _Here_
+for instance, _now_ ... 'one' should despair; but 'try again' first,
+and work blindly at removing those obstacles (--if I saw them, I
+should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence,
+I could bid you look where they _were_)--and 'one' would do all this,
+not for the _play-acting's_ sake, or to 'look the character' ...
+(_that_ would be something quite different from folly ...) but from a
+not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an
+acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and
+unabatedness ... the _truth_, in fact, of what had already been
+professed, should get to be questioned--But I believe that you believe
+me--And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will
+hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented
+... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go--) I accept what you
+give me, what those words deliver to me, as--not all I asked for ...
+as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,--_all_, in the best
+sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to,
+and the other--may stand, too--I never attempted to declare, describe
+my feeling for you--one word of course stood for it all ... but having
+to put down some one _point_, so to speak, of it--you could not wonder
+if I took any extreme one _first_ ... never minding all the untold
+portion that _led_ up to it, made it possible and natural--it is true,
+'I could not dream of _that_'--that I was eager to get the horrible
+notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus
+and thus to me _on condition_ of my proving just the same to you--just
+as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we
+ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth
+happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said
+it:--now you have declared what I should never have presumed to
+hope--and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God,
+am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which
+is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see
+clearly. Your regard for me is _all_ success--let the rest come, or
+not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would
+promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would _not_ do
+that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere
+&c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the
+practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher
+motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no
+words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I
+renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them,
+that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an
+apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our
+hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!
+And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream of that'--, now it is
+mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole
+consolation of it at once, _now_--I will be confident that, if I obey
+you, I shall get no wrong for it--if, endeavouring to spare you
+fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed
+'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you;
+you will never say to yourself--so I said--'the "generous impulse"
+_has_ worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work--this was to be
+expected' &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle
+has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to _you_, one
+_you_ may try and overcome'--and I shall be there, and ready--ten
+years hence as now--if alive.
+
+One final word on the other matters--the 'worldly matters'--I shall
+own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because--because _that
+would be_ the _one_ poor sacrifice I could make you--one I would
+cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless
+'sweet habitude of living'--this absolute independence of mine, which,
+if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which
+I have fought so many good battles to preserve--for that has
+happened, too--this light rational life I lead, and know so well that
+I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than--what you know--but
+I _would_ give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose
+disappointment might re-act on you--and I should break no promise to
+myself--the money getting would not be for the sake of _it_; 'the
+labour not for that which is nought'--indeed the necessity of doing
+this, if at all, _now_, was one of the reasons which make me go on to
+that _last request of all_--at once; one must not be too old, they
+say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure
+that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to
+spare--because along with what you have thought _genius_ in me, is
+certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried
+it in various ways, just to be sure that I _was_ a little magnanimous
+in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews
+and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago--in
+the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most
+laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I
+'_did_' for my old French master, and he published--'_that_ was really
+an useful work'!--So that when the only obstacle is only that there is
+so much _per annum_ to be producible, you will tell me. After all it
+would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to
+be _my_ own single stipulation--'an objection' which I could see,
+certainly,--but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of
+removing.
+
+So, now, dearest--let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my
+dearest--this once--dearest, I have done with words for the present. I
+will wait. God bless you and reward you--I kiss your hands _now_. This
+is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but _un_expressed
+now, more and more will become spoken--or understood, that is--we both
+live on--you will know better _what_ it was, how much and manifold,
+what one little word had to give out.
+
+                                             God bless you--
+
+                                                  Your R.B.
+
+On Thursday,--you remember?
+
+This is Tuesday Night--
+
+I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe--all uncertainty
+about the vessel's sailing again for Leghorn--it could not sail before
+the middle of the month--and only then _if_ &c. But if I would leave
+my card &c. &c.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Wednesday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
+
+I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was
+a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the
+beginning--being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it
+has all happened--_only do not blame me_, for I have kept my ground to
+the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that
+there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much
+earnestness into a personal matter--and I spoke face to face and quite
+firmly--so as to pass with my sisters for the 'bravest person in the
+house' without contestation.
+
+Sometimes it seems to me as if it _could not_ end so--I mean, that the
+responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered ... and you see
+how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies, ... no Pisa!
+And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail,
+such as they have been from the beginning.
+
+If you wish to come, it must not be until Saturday at soonest. I have
+a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation--and besides
+there is no haste now: and when you do come, _if you do_, I will trust
+to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell ...
+must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had
+forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you ... the
+_Hood_ poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see
+them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at
+once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of
+it--and more than think.
+
+For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little
+with the last week's turmoil, were impossible--and Mr. Kenyon said to
+me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do
+anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending
+letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If
+anything changes, you shall hear from--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in
+the case.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Wednesday Evening.
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it
+finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in
+obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in
+my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an
+absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at
+all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is
+involved in that, except as an 'idiosyncrasy' is a mystery. But the
+'insurmountable' difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for
+me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a
+confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were
+going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet
+remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of
+my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of 'faith'; but a plain
+fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But
+_don't_ let us speak of it.
+
+I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and
+repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you--and which are _not_
+'ostentatious' though unnecessary words--for, if I were in a position
+to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept _such_ a sacrifice
+... amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease
+and satisfaction ... to an exchange of higher work for lower work ...
+and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for
+anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what
+you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generalships to the
+Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the
+little right, (_over_ the _over_-right you are always doing me) of
+believing that I would not bear or dare to do _you_ so much wrong, if
+I were in the position to do it.
+
+And for all the rest I thank you--believe that I thank you ... and
+that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That _you_ should care at
+all for _me_ has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the
+first hour until now--and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in
+thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known
+me. May God turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot
+expect you ... just at this moment, ... to say more than you say, ...
+and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as
+accessible to the 'unicorn' now as you ever could be at any former
+period of your life. And here I have done. I had done _living_, I
+thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end?
+_That_, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for
+you--which were a sufficient end. If you come on Saturday I trust you
+to leave this subject untouched,--as it must be indeed henceforth.
+
+                                                 I am yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+No word more of Pisa--I shall not go, I think.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+Words!--it was written I should hate and never use them to any
+purpose. I will not say one word here--very well knowing neither word
+nor deed avails--from me.
+
+My letter will have reassured you on the point you seem undecided
+about--whether I would speak &c.
+
+I will come whenever you shall signify that I may ... whenever, acting
+in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in
+any way) to see me--but I fear that on Saturday I must be
+otherwhere--I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but
+melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my
+sister in time. Will you tell me?
+
+It is dark--but I want to save the post--
+
+                                                  Ever yours
+
+                                                       R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Wednesday.
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+Of course you cannot do otherwise than go with your sister--or it will
+be 'Every man _out_ of his humour' perhaps--and you are not so very
+'savage' after all.
+
+On Monday then, if you do not hear--to the contrary.
+
+Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully
+and talking leisurely--and every moment I have expected I confess,
+some word (that did not come) about Pisa. Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot
+end so--and I do sometimes--and in the meantime I do confess to a
+little 'savageness' also--at heart! All I asked him to say the other
+day, was that he was not displeased with me--_and he wouldn't_; and
+for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the
+door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a
+thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal
+advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible! So poor
+Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now--if he would but care for
+_that_!
+
+May God bless you. Amuse yourself well on Saturday. I could not see
+you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day ... staying
+in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant
+kindness.... On Monday then.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Thursday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
+
+But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature,
+_my_ explanation--without which all that I have said and done would be
+pure madness, I think. It _is_ just 'what I see' that I _do_ see,--or
+rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was
+infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the
+writing of _that first letter_, on my first visit, I believed--through
+some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too--that
+your complaint was of quite another nature--a spinal injury
+irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been _so_--now speak for
+_me_, for what you hope I am, and say how _that_ should affect or
+neutralize what you _were_, what I wished to associate with myself in
+you? But _as you now are_:--then if I had married you seven years ago,
+and this visitation came now first, I should be 'fulfilling a pious
+duty,' I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended--a pattern to
+good people in not running away ... for where were _now_ the use and
+the good and the profit and--
+
+I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too
+weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me,
+and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to
+'live among lions' as you once said--but I should best do this if I
+lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like
+Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan--nor that I might
+(beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get,
+over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and
+unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather
+occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I
+might be otherwise addicted to--_this_, also, does not constitute an
+obstacle, as I see obstacles.
+
+But _you_ see them--and I see _you_, and know my first duty and do it
+resolutely if not cheerfully.
+
+As for referring again, till leave by word or letter--you will see--
+
+And very likely, the tone of this letter even will be
+misunderstood--because I studiously cut out all vain words, protesting
+&c.:--No--will it?
+
+I said, unadvisedly, that Saturday was taken from me ... but it was
+dark and I had not looked at the tickets: the hour of the performance
+is later than I thought. If to-morrow does not suit you, as I infer,
+let it be Saturday--at 3--and I will leave earlier, a little, and all
+will be quite right here. One hint will apprise me.
+
+                              God bless you, dearest friend.
+
+                                   R.B.
+
+Something else just heard, makes me reluctantly strike out
+_Saturday_--
+
+_Monday_ then?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Friday Morning.
+                            [Post-mark, September 19, 1845.]
+
+It is not 'misunderstanding' you to know you to be the most generous
+and loyal of all in the world--you overwhelm me with your
+generosity--only while you see from above and I from below, we cannot
+see the same thing in the same light. Moreover, if we _did_, I should
+be more beneath you in one sense, than I am. Do me the justice of
+remembering this whenever you recur in thought to the subject which
+ends here in the words of it.
+
+I began to write last Saturday to thank you for all the delight I had
+had in Shelley, though you beguiled me about the pencil-marks, which
+are few. Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not
+in my copy and were, so, quite new to me. 'Marianne's Dream' I had
+been anxious about to no end--I only know it now.--
+
+On Monday at the usual hour. As to coming twice into town on Saturday,
+that would have been quite foolish if it had been possible.
+
+                                            Dearest friend,
+
+                                                 I am yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 24, 1845.]
+
+I have nothing to say about Pisa, ... but a great deal (if I could say
+it) about _you_, who do what is wrong by your own confession and are
+ill because of it and make people uneasy--now _is_ it right
+altogether? is it right to do wrong?... for it comes to _that_:--and
+is it kind to do so much wrong?... for it comes almost to _that_
+besides. Ah--you should not indeed! I seem to see quite plainly that
+you will be ill in a serious way, if you do not take care and take
+exercise; and so you must consent to be teazed a little into taking
+both. And if you will not take them here ... or not so effectually as
+in other places; _why not go with your Italian friends_? Have you
+thought of it at all? _I_ have been thinking since yesterday that it
+might be best for you to go at once, now that the probability has
+turned quite against me. If I were going, I should ask you not to do
+so immediately ... but you see how unlikely it is!--although I mean
+still to speak my whole thoughts--I _will do that_ ... even though
+for the mere purpose of self-satisfaction. George came last night--but
+there is an adverse star this morning, and neither of us has the
+opportunity necessary. Only both he and I _will speak_--that is
+certain. And Arabel had the kindness to say yesterday that if I liked
+to go, she would go with me at whatever hazard--which is very
+kind--but you know I could not--it would not be right of me. And
+perhaps after all we may gain the point lawfully; and if not ... at
+the worst ... the winter may be warm (it is better to fall into the
+hands of God, as the Jew said) and I may lose less strength than
+usual, ... having more than usual to lose ... and altogether it may
+not be so bad an alternative. As to being the cause of any anger
+against my sister, you would not advise me into such a position, I am
+sure--it would be untenable for one moment.
+
+But _you_ ... in that case, ... would it not be good for your head if
+you went at once? I praise myself for saying so to you--yet if it
+really is good for you, I don't deserve the praising at all. And how
+was it on Saturday--that question I did not ask yesterday--with Ben
+Jonson and the amateurs? I thought of you at the time--I mean, on that
+Saturday evening, nevertheless.
+
+You shall hear when there is any more to say. May God bless you,
+dearest friend! I am ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            Wednesday Evening.
+                            [Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+
+I walked to town, this morning, and back again--so that when I found
+your note on my return, and knew what you had been enjoining me in the
+way of exercise, I seemed as if I knew, too, why that energetic fit
+had possessed me and why I succumbed to it so readily. You shall never
+have to intimate twice to me that such an insignificant thing, even,
+as the taking exercise should be done. Besides, I have many motives
+now for wishing to continue well. But Italy _just now_--Oh, no! My
+friends would go through Pisa, too.
+
+On that subject I must not speak. And you have 'more strength to
+lose,' and are so well, evidently so well; that is, so much better, so
+sure to be still better--can it be that you will not go!
+
+Here are your new notes on my verses. Where are my words for the
+thanks? But you know what I feel, and shall feel--ever feel--for these
+and for all. The notes would be beyond price to me if they came from
+some dear Phemius of a teacher--but from you!
+
+The Theatricals 'went off' with great eclat, and the performance was
+really good, really clever or better. Forster's 'Kitely' was very
+emphatic and earnest, and grew into great interest, quite up to the
+poet's allotted tether, which is none of the longest. He pitched the
+character's key note too gravely, I thought; _beginning_ with
+certainty, rather than mere suspicion, of evil. Dickens' 'Bobadil'
+_was_ capital--with perhaps a little too much of the consciousness of
+entire cowardice ... which I don't so willingly attribute to the noble
+would-be pacificator of Europe, besieger of Strigonium &c.--but the
+end of it all was really pathetic, as it should be, for Bobadil is
+only too clever for the company of fools he makes wonderment for:
+having once the misfortune to relish their society, and to need but
+too pressingly their 'tobacco-money,' what can he do but suit himself
+to their capacities?--And D. Jerrold was very amusing and clever in
+his 'Country Gull'--And Mr. Leech superb in the Town Master Mathew.
+All were good, indeed, and were voted good, and called on, and cheered
+off, and praised heartily behind their backs and before the curtain.
+Stanfield's function had exercise solely in the touching up (very
+effectively) sundry 'Scenes'--painted scenes--and the dresses, which
+were perfect, had the advantage of Mr. Maclise's experience. And--all
+is told!
+
+And now; I shall hear, you promise me, if anything occurs--with what
+feeling, I wait and hope, you know. If there is _no_ best of reasons
+against it, Saturday, you remember, is my day--This fine weather, too!
+
+                           May God bless my dearest friend--
+
+                                Ever yours
+
+                                     R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+
+I have spoken again, and the result is that we are in precisely the
+same position; only with bitterer feelings on one side. If I go or
+stay they _must_ be bitter: words have been said that I cannot easily
+forget, nor remember without pain; and yet I really do almost smile in
+the midst of it all, to think how I was treated this morning as an
+undutiful daughter because I tried to put on my gloves ... for there
+was no worse provocation. At least he complained of the undutifulness
+and rebellion (!!!) of everyone in the house--and when I asked if he
+meant that reproach for _me_, the answer was that he meant it for all
+of us, one with another. And I could not get an answer. He would not
+even grant me the consolation of thinking that I sacrificed what I
+supposed to be good, to _him_. I told him that my prospects of health
+seemed to me to depend on taking this step, but that through my
+affection for him, I was ready to sacrifice those to his pleasure if
+he exacted it--only it was necessary to my self-satisfaction in future
+years, to understand definitely that the sacrifice _was_ exacted by
+him and _was_ made to him, ... and not thrown away blindly and by a
+misapprehension. And he would not answer _that_. I might do my own
+way, he said--_he_ would not speak--_he_ would not say that he was not
+displeased with me, nor the contrary:--I had better do what I
+liked:--for his part, he washed his hands of me altogether.
+
+And so I have been very wise--witness how my eyes are swelled with
+annotations and reflections on all this! The best of it is that now
+George himself admits I can do no more in the way of speaking, ... I
+have no spell for charming the dragons, ... and allows me to be
+passive and enjoins me to be tranquil, and not 'make up my mind' to
+any dreadful exertion for the future. Moreover he advises me to go on
+with the preparations for the voyage, and promises to state the case
+himself at the last hour to the 'highest authority'; and judge finally
+whether it be possible for me to go with the necessary companionship.
+And it seems best to go to Malta on the 3rd of October--if at all ...
+from steam-packet reasons ... without excluding Pisa ... remember ...
+by any means.
+
+Well!--and what do you think? Might it be desirable for me to give up
+the whole? Tell me. I feel aggrieved of course and wounded--and
+whether I go or stay that feeling must last--I cannot help it. But my
+spirits sink altogether at the thought of leaving England _so_--and
+then I doubt about Arabel and Stormie ... and it seems to me that I
+_ought not_ to mix them up in a business of this kind where the
+advantage is merely personal to myself. On the other side, George
+holds that if I give up and stay even, there will be displeasure just
+the same, ... and that, when once gone, the irritation will exhaust
+and smooth itself away--which however does not touch my chief
+objection. Would it be better ... more _right_ ... to give it up?
+Think for me. Even if I hold on to the last, at the last I shall be
+thrown off--_that_ is my conviction. But ... shall I give up _at
+once_? Do think for me.
+
+And I have thought that if you like to come on Friday instead of
+Saturday ... as there is the uncertainty about next week, ... it would
+divide the time more equally: but let it be as you like and according
+to circumstances as you see them. Perhaps you have decided to go at
+once with your friends--who knows? I wish I could know that you were
+better to-day. May God bless you
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
+
+You have said to me more than once that you wished I might never know
+certain feelings _you_ had been forced to endure. I suppose all of us
+have the proper place where a blow should fall to be felt most--and I
+truly wish _you_ may never feel what I have to bear in looking on,
+quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this
+treatment, which I refuse to characterize--so blind is it _for_
+blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and
+a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love's
+caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying
+source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections--you
+remember what--to myself, my own happiness,--did I once allude to,
+much less argue against, or refuse to acknowledge those objections?
+For I wholly sympathize, however it go against me, with the highest,
+wariest, pride and love for you, and the proper jealousy and vigilance
+they entail--but now, and here, the jewel is not being over guarded,
+but ruined, cast away. And whoever is privileged to interfere should
+do so in the possessor's own interest--all common sense
+interferes--all rationality against absolute no-reason at all. And you
+ask whether you ought to obey this no-reason? I will tell you: all
+passive obedience and implicit submission of will and intellect is by
+far too easy, if well considered, to be the course prescribed by God
+to Man in this life of probation--for they _evade_ probation
+altogether, though foolish people think otherwise. Chop off your legs,
+you will never go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will
+find it is difficult to reason ill. 'It is hard to make these
+sacrifices!'--not so hard as to lose the reward or incur the penalty
+of an Eternity to come; 'hard to effect them, then, and go through
+with them'--_not_ hard, when the leg is to be _cut off_--that it is
+rather harder to keep it quiet on a stool, I know very well. The
+partial indulgence, the proper exercise of one's faculties, there is
+the difficulty and problem for solution, set by that Providence which
+might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as those of
+vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as certainly as that
+condition, for instance, by which we breathe so many times in a minute
+to support life. But there is no reward proposed for the feat of
+breathing, and a great one for that of believing--consequently there
+must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is
+implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the
+direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another--for
+all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief,
+and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the
+less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to
+yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine
+the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in
+requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your
+conduct should have its utmost claims considered--your father's in the
+first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few
+days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in
+its whole extent ... the _hereafter_ which all momentary passion
+prevents him seeing ... indeed, the _present_ on either side which
+everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever
+earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion
+you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed ...
+_difficult_, or how were it a duty? Will it _not_ be infinitely harder
+to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who
+can _not_ do that?
+
+I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will
+fall--knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain
+or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better
+light. The hard thing ... this is all I want to say ... is to act on
+one's own best conviction--not to abjure it and accept another will,
+and say '_there_ is my plain duty'--easy it is, whether plain or no!
+
+How 'all changes!' When I first knew you--you know what followed. I
+supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint--and, of course,
+to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest
+alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached
+myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any
+proposition I might then have made--for though I have never been at
+all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with
+it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet
+I could not but feel the consideration, of _what_ failure would _now_
+be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that
+'you could never be poor'--all my solicitude was at an end--I had but
+myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe,
+that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could
+cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing _that_ obstacle. Now
+again the circumstances shift--and you are in what I should wonder at
+as the veriest slavery--and I who _could_ free you from it, I am here
+scarcely daring to write ... though I know you must feel for me and
+forgive what forces itself from me ... what retires so mutely into my
+heart at your least word ... what _shall not_ be again written or
+spoken, if you so will ... that I should be made happy beyond all hope
+of expression by. Now while I _dream_, let me once dream! I would
+marry you now and thus--I would come when you let me, and go when you
+bade me--I would be no more than one of your brothers--'_no
+more_'--that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should
+get Saturday as well--two hours for one--when your head ached I
+should be _here_. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream
+(--of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any
+other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I
+know--And it will continue but a dream.
+
+                                 God bless my dearest E.B.B.
+
+                                      R.B.
+
+You understand that I see you to-morrow, Friday, as you propose.
+
+I am better--thank you--and will go out to-day.
+
+You know what I am, what I would speak, and all I would do.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            Friday Evening.
+                            [Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]
+
+I had your letter late last night, everyone almost, being out of the
+house by an accident, so that it was left in the letter-box, and if I
+had wished to answer it before I saw you, it had scarcely been
+possible.
+
+But it will be the same thing--for you know as well as if you saw my
+answer, what it must be, what it cannot choose but be, on pain of
+sinking me so infinitely below not merely your level but my own, that
+the depth cannot bear a glance down. Yet, though I am not made of such
+clay as to admit of my taking a base advantage of certain noble
+extravagances, (and that I am not I thank God for your sake) I will
+say, I must say, that your words in this letter have done me good and
+made me happy, ... that I thank and bless you for them, ... and that
+to receive such a proof of attachment from _you_, not only overpowers
+every present evil, but seems to me a full and abundant amends for the
+merely personal sufferings of my whole life. When I had read that
+letter last night I _did_ think so. I looked round and round for the
+small bitternesses which for several days had been bitter to me, and I
+could not find one of them. The tear-marks went away in the moisture
+of new, happy tears. Why, how else could I have felt? how else do you
+think I could? How would any woman have felt ... who could feel at all
+... hearing such words said (though 'in a dream' indeed) by such a
+speaker?
+
+And now listen to me in turn. You have touched me more profoundly than
+I thought even _you_ could have touched me--my heart was full when you
+came here to-day. Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you
+harm--and I am yours too much, in my heart, ever to consent to do you
+harm in that way. If I could consent to do it, not only should I be
+less loyal ... but in one sense, less yours. I say this to you without
+drawback and reserve, because it is all I am able to say, and perhaps
+all I _shall_ be able to say. However this may be, a promise goes to
+you in it that none, except God and your will, shall interpose between
+you and me, ... I mean, that if He should free me within a moderate
+time from the trailing chain of this weakness, I will then be to you
+whatever at that hour you shall choose ... whether friend or more than
+friend ... a friend to the last in any case. So it rests with God and
+with you--only in the meanwhile you are most absolutely free ...
+'unentangled' (as they call it) by the breadth of a thread--and if I
+did not know that you considered yourself so, I would not see you any
+more, let the effort cost me what it might. You may force me _feel_:
+... but you cannot force me to _think_ contrary to my first thought
+... that it were better for you to forget me at once in one relation.
+And if better for _you_, can it be bad for _me_? which flings me down
+on the stone-pavement of the logicians.
+
+And now if I ask a boon of you, will you forget afterwards that it
+ever was asked? I have hesitated a great deal; but my face is down on
+the stone-pavement--no--I will not ask to-day--It shall be for another
+day--and may God bless you on this and on those that come after, my
+dearest friend.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 27, 1845.]
+
+Think for me, speak for me, my dearest, _my own_! You that are all
+great-heartedness and generosity, do that one more generous thing?
+
+                                           God bless you for
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+What can it be you ask of me!--'a boon'--once my answer to _that_ had
+been the plain one--but now ... when I have better experience of--No,
+now I have BEST experience of how you understand my interests; that at
+last we _both_ know what is my true good--so ask, ask! _My own_, now!
+For there it is!--oh, do not fear I am '_entangled_'--my crown is
+loose on my head, not nailed there--my pearl lies in my hand--I may
+return it to the sea, if I will!
+
+What is it you ask of me, this first asking?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                            [Post-mark, September 29, 1845.]
+
+Then _first_, ... first, I ask you not to misunderstand. Because we do
+not ... no, we do not ... agree (but disagree) as to 'what is your
+true good' ... but disagree, and as widely as ever indeed.
+
+The other asking shall come in its season ... some day before I go, if
+I go. It only relates to a restitution--and you cannot guess it if you
+try ... so don't try!--and perhaps you can't grant it if you try--and
+I cannot guess.
+
+Cabins and berths all taken in the Malta steamer for both third and
+twentieth of October! see what dark lanterns the stars hold out, and
+how I shall stay in England after all as I think! And thus we are
+thrown back on the old Gibraltar scheme with its shifting of steamers
+... unless we take the dreary alternative of Madeira!--or Cadiz! Even
+suppose Madeira, ... why it were for a few months alone--and there
+would be no temptation to loiter as in Italy.
+
+_Don't_ think too hardly of poor Papa. You have his wrong side ... his
+side of peculiar wrongness ... to you just now. When you have walked
+round him you will have other thoughts of him.
+
+Are you better, I wonder? and taking exercise and trying to be better?
+May God bless you! Tuesday need not be the last day if you like to
+take one more besides--for there is no going until the fourth or
+seventh, ... and the seventh is the more probable of those two. But
+now you have done with me until Tuesday.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 1, 1845.]
+
+I have read to the last line of your 'Rosicrucian'; and my scepticism
+grew and grew through Hume's process of doubtful doubts, and at last
+rose to the full stature of incredulity ... for I never could believe
+Shelley capable of such a book (call it a book!), not even with a
+flood of boarding-school idiocy dashed in by way of dilution.
+Altogether it roused me to deny myself so far as to look at the date
+of the book, and to get up and travel to the other end of the room to
+confront it with other dates in the 'Letters from Abroad' ... (I, who
+never think of a date except the 'A.D.,' and am inclined every now and
+then to write _that_ down as 1548 ...) well! and on comparing these
+dates in these two volumes before my eyes, I find that your
+Rosicrucian was 'printed for Stockdale' in _1822_, and that Shelley
+_died in the July of the same year_!!--There, is a vindicating fact
+for you! And unless the 'Rosicrucian' went into more editions than
+one, and dates here from a later one, ... which is not ascertainable
+from this fragment of a titlepage, ... the innocence of the great poet
+stands proved--now doesn't it? For nobody will say that he published
+such a book in the last year of his life, in the maturity of his
+genius, and that Godwin's daughter helped him in it! That 'dripping
+dew' from the skeleton is the only living word in the book!--which
+really amused me notwithstanding, from the intense absurdity of the
+whole composition ... descriptions ... sentiments ... and morals.
+
+Judge yourself if I had not better say 'No' about the cloak! I would
+take it if you wished such a kindness to me--and although you might
+find it very useful to yourself ... or to your mother or sister ...
+still if you _wished_ me to take it I should like to have it, and the
+mantle of the prophet might bring me down something of his spirit! but
+do you remember ... do you consider ... how many talkers there are in
+this house, and what would be talked--or that it is not worth while to
+provoke it all? And Papa, knowing it, would not like it--and
+altogether it is far better, believe me, that you should keep your own
+cloak, and I, the thought of the kindness you meditated in respect to
+it. I have heard nothing more--nothing.
+
+I was asked the other day by a very young friend of mine ... the
+daughter of an older friend who once followed you up-stairs in this
+house ... Mr. Hunter, an Independent minister ... for 'Mr. Browning's
+autograph.' She wants it for a collection ... for her album--and so,
+will you write out a verse or two on one side of note paper ... not as
+you write for the printers ... and let me keep my promise and send it
+to her? I forgot to ask you before. Or one verse will do ... anything
+will do ... and don't let me be bringing you into vexation. It need
+not be of MS. rarity.
+
+You are not better ... really ... I fear. And your mother's being ill
+affects you more than you like to admit, I fear besides. Will you,
+when you write, say how _both_ are ... nothing extenuating, you know.
+May God bless you, my dearest friend.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Thursday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 2, 1845.]
+
+Well, let us hope against hope in the sad matter of the novel--yet,
+yet,--it _is_ by Shelley, if you will have the truth--as I happen to
+_know_--proof _last_ being that Leigh Hunt told me he unearthed it in
+Shelley's own library at Marlow once, to the writer's horror and
+shame--'He snatched it out of my hands'--said H. Yet I thrust it into
+yours ... so much for the subtle fence of friends who reach your heart
+by a side-thrust, as I told you on Tuesday, after the enemy has fallen
+back breathless and baffled. As for the date, that Stockdale was a
+notorious pirate and raker-up of rash publications ... and, do you
+know, I suspect the _title-page_ is all that boasts such novelty,--see
+if the _book_, the inside leaves, be not older evidently!--a common
+trick of the 'trade' to this day. The history of this and 'Justrozzi,'
+as it is spelt,--the other novel,--may be read in Medwin's
+'Conversations'--and, as I have been told, in Lady Ch. Bury's
+'Reminiscences' or whatever she calls them ... the 'Guistrozzi' was
+_certainly_ 'written in concert with'--somebody or other ... for I
+confess the whole story grows monstrous and even the froth of wine
+strings itself in bright bubbles,--ah, but this was the scum of the
+fermenting vat, do you see? I am happy to say I forget the novel
+entirely, or almost--and only keep the exact impression which you have
+gained ... through me! 'The fair cross of gold _he dashed on the
+floor_'--(_that_ is my pet-line ... because the 'chill dew' of a place
+not commonly supposed to favour humidity is a plagiarism from Lewis's
+'Monk,' it now flashes on me! Yes, Lewis, too, puts the phrase into
+intense italics.) And now, please read a chorus in the 'Prometheus
+Unbound' or a scene from the 'Cenci'--and join company with Shelley
+again!
+
+--From 'chill dew' I come to the _cloak_--you are quite right--and I
+give up that fancy. Will you, then, take one more precaution when
+_all_ proper safe-guards have been adopted; and, when _everything_ is
+sure, contrive some one sureness besides, against cold or wind or
+sea-air; and say '_this_--for the cloak which is not here, and to help
+the heart's wish which is,'--so I shall be there _palpably_. Will you
+do this? Tell me you will, to-morrow--and tell me all good news.
+
+My Mother suffers still.... I hope she is no worse--but a little
+better--certainly better. I am better too, in my unimportant way.
+
+Now I will write you the verses ... some easy ones out of a paper-full
+meant to go between poem and poem in my next number, and break the
+shock of collision.
+
+Let me kiss your hand--dearest! My heart and life--all is yours, and
+forever--God make you happy as I am through you--Bless you
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Saturday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 6, 1845.]
+
+Tuesday is given up in full council. The thing is beyond doubting of,
+as George says and as you thought yesterday. And then George has it in
+his head to beguile the Duke of Palmella out of a smaller cabin, so
+that I might sail from the Thames on the twentieth--and whether he
+succeeds or not, I humbly confess that one of the chief advantages of
+the new plan if not the very chief (as _I_ see it) is just in the
+_delay_.
+
+Your spring-song is full of beauty as you know very well--and 'that's
+the wise thrush,' so characteristic of you (and of the thrush too)
+that I was sorely tempted to ask you to write it 'twice over,' ... and
+not send the first copy to Mary Hunter notwithstanding my promise to
+her. And now when you come to print these fragments, would it not be
+well if you were to stoop to the vulgarism of prefixing some word of
+introduction, as other people do, you know, ... a title ... a name?
+You perplex your readers often by casting yourself on their
+intelligence in these things--and although it is true that readers in
+general are stupid and can't understand, it is still more true that
+they are lazy and won't understand ... and they don't catch your point
+of sight at first unless you think it worth while to push them by the
+shoulders and force them into the right place. Now these fragments ...
+you mean to print them with a line between ... and not one word at the
+top of it ... now don't you! And then people will read
+
+    Oh, to be in England
+
+and say to themselves ... 'Why who is this? ... who's out of England?'
+Which is an extreme case of course; but you will see what I mean ...
+and often I have observed how some of the very most beautiful of your
+lyrics have suffered just from your disdain of the usual tactics of
+writers in this one respect.
+
+And you are not better, still--you are worse instead of better ... are
+you not? Tell me--And what can you mean about 'unimportance,' when you
+were worse last week ... this expiring week ... than ever before, by
+your own confession? And now?--And your mother?
+
+Yes--I promise! And so, ... _Elijah_ will be missed instead of his
+mantle ... which will be a losing contract after all. But it shall be
+as you say. May you be able to say that you are better! God bless you.
+
+                                                 Ever yours.
+
+Never think of the 'White Slave.' I had just taken it up. The trash of
+it is prodigious--far beyond Mr. Smythe. Not that I can settle upon a
+book just now, in all this wind, to judge of it fairly.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Monday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, October 6, 1845.]
+
+I should certainly think that the Duke of Palmella may be induced, and
+with no great difficulty, to give up a cabin under the
+circumstances--and _then_ the plan becomes really objection-proof, so
+far as mortal plans go. But now you must think all the boldlier about
+whatever difficulties remain, just because they are so much the fewer.
+It _is_ cold already in the mornings and evenings--cold and (this
+morning) foggy--I did not ask if you continue to go out from time to
+time.... I am sure you _should_,--you would so prepare yourself
+properly for the fatigue and change--yesterday it was very warm and
+fine in the afternoon, nor is this noontime so bad, if the requisite
+precautions are taken. And do make 'journeys across the room,' and out
+of it, meanwhile, and _stand_ when possible--get all the strength
+ready, now that so much is to be spent. Oh, if I were by you!
+
+Thank you, thank you--I will devise titles--I quite see what you say,
+now you do say it. I am (this Monday morning, the prescribed day for
+efforts and beginnings) looking over and correcting what you read--to
+press they shall go, and then the plays can follow gently, and then
+... 'Oh to be in Pisa. Now that E.B.B. is there!'--And I _shall_ be
+there!... I am much better to-day; and my mother better--and to-morrow
+I shall see you--So come good things together!
+
+Dearest--till to-morrow and ever I am yours, wholly yours--May God
+bless you!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+You do not ask me that 'boon'--why is that?--Besides, I have my own
+_real_ boons to ask too, as you will inevitably find, and I shall
+perhaps get heart by your example.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               [Post-mark, October 7, 1845.]
+
+Ah but the good things do _not_ come together--for just as your letter
+comes I am driven to asking you to leave Tuesday for Wednesday.
+
+On Tuesday Mr. Kenyon is to be here or not to be here, he
+says--there's a doubt; and you would rather go to a clear day. So if
+you do not hear from me again I shall expect you on _Wednesday_ unless
+I hear to the contrary from you:--and if anything happens to Wednesday
+you shall hear. Mr. Kenyon is in town for only two days, or three. I
+never could grumble against him, so good and kind as he is--but he may
+not come after all to-morrow--so it is not grudging the obolus to
+Belisarius, but the squandering of the last golden days at the bottom
+of the purse.
+
+Do I 'stand'--Do I walk? Yes--most uprightly. I 'walk upright every
+day.' Do I go out? no, never. And I am not to be scolded for _that_,
+because when you were looking at the sun to-day, I was marking the
+east wind; and perhaps if I had breathed a breath of it ... farewell
+Pisa. People who can walk don't always walk into the lion's den as a
+consequence--do they? should they? Are you 'sure that they should?' I
+write in great haste. So Wednesday then ... perhaps!
+
+                                        And yours every day.
+
+You understand. Wednesday--if nothing to the contrary.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               12--Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]
+
+Well, dearest, at all events I get up with the assurance I shall see
+you, and go on till the fatal 11-1/4 p.m. believing in the same, and
+_then_, if after all there _does_ come such a note as this with its
+instructions, why, first, it _is_ such a note and such a gain, and
+next it makes a great day out of to-morrow that was to have been so
+little of a day, that is all. Only, only, I am suspicious, now, of a
+real loss to me in the end; for, _putting_ off yesterday, I dared put
+off (on your part) Friday to Saturday ... while _now_ ... what shall
+be said to that?
+
+Dear Mr. Kenyon to be the smiling inconscious obstacle to any pleasure
+of mine, if it were merely pleasure!
+
+But I want to catch our next post--to-morrow, then, excepting what is
+to be excepted!
+
+                                     Bless you, my dearest--
+
+                                          Your own
+
+                                               R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday Evening.
+                               [Post-mark, October 8, 1845.]
+
+Mr. Kenyon never came. My sisters met him in the street, and he had
+been 'detained all day in the city and would certainly be here
+to-morrow,' Wednesday! And so you see what has happened to Wednesday!
+Moreover he may come besides on Thursday, ... I can answer for
+nothing. Only if I do not write and if you find Thursday admissible,
+will you come then? In the case of an obstacle, you shall hear. And it
+is not (in the meantime) my fault--now is it? I have been quite enough
+vexed about it, indeed.
+
+Did the Monday work work harm to the head, I wonder? I do fear so that
+you won't get through those papers with impunity--especially if the
+plays are to come after ... though ever so 'gently.' And if you are to
+suffer, it would be right to tongue-tie that silver Bell, and leave
+the congregations to their selling of cabbages. Which is
+unphilanthropic of me perhaps, ... [Greek: o philtate].
+
+Be sure that I shall be 'bold' when the time for going comes--and both
+bold and capable of the effort. I am desired to keep to the respirator
+and the cabin for a day or two, while the cold can reach us; and
+midway in the bay of Biscay some change of climate may be felt, they
+say. There is no sort of danger for me; except that I shall _stay in
+England_. And why is it that I feel to-night more than ever almost, as
+if I should stay in England? Who can tell? _I_ can tell one thing.
+_If_ I stay, it will not be from a failure in my resolution--_that
+will_ not be--_shall_ not be. Yes--and Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the
+other day that there was something of the tigress-nature very
+distinctly cognisable under what he is pleased to call my
+'Ba-lambishness.'
+
+Then, on Thursday!... unless something happens to _Thursday_ ... and I
+shall write in that case. And I trust to you (as always) to attend to
+your own convenience--just as you may trust to me to remember my own
+'boon.' Ah--you are curious, I think! Which is scarcely wise of
+you--because it _may_, you know, be the roc's egg after all. But no,
+it _isn't_--I will say just so much. And besides I _did_ say that it
+was a 'restitution,' which limits the guesses if it does not put an
+end to them. Unguessable, I choose it to be.
+
+And now I feel as if I should _not_ stay in England. Which is the
+difference between one five minutes and another. May God bless you.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 11, 1845.]
+
+Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here again, and talking so (in his kindness
+too) about the probabilities as to Pisa being against me ... about all
+depending 'on one throw' and the 'dice being loaded' &c. ... that I
+looked at him aghast as if he looked at the future through the folded
+curtain and was licensed to speak oracles:--and ever since I have been
+out of spirits ... oh, out of spirits--and must write myself back
+again, or try. After all he may be wrong like another--and I should
+tell you that he reasons altogether from the delay ... and that 'the
+cabins will therefore be taken' and the 'circular bills' out of reach!
+He _said_ that one of his purposes in staying in town, was to
+'_knout_' me every day--didn't he?
+
+Well--George will probably speak before _he_ leaves town, which will
+be on Monday! and now that the hour approaches, I do feel as if the
+house stood upon gunpowder, and as if I held Guy Fawkes's lantern in
+my right hand. And no: I shall not go. The obstacles will not be those
+of Mr. Kenyon's finding--and what their precise character will be I do
+not see distinctly. Only that they will be sufficient, and thrown by
+one hand just where the wheel should turn, ... _that_, I see--and you
+will, in a few days.
+
+Did you go to Moxon's and settle the printing matter? Tell me. And
+what was the use of telling Mr. Kenyon that you were 'quite well' when
+you know you are not? Will you say to me how you are, saying the
+truth? and also how your mother is?
+
+To show the significance of the omission of those evening or rather
+night visits of Papa's--for they came sometimes at eleven, and
+sometimes at twelve--I will tell you that he used to sit and talk in
+them, and then _always_ kneel and pray with me and for me--which I
+used of course to feel as a proof of very kind and affectionate
+sympathy on his part, and which has proportionably pained me in the
+withdrawing. They were no ordinary visits, you observe, ... and he
+could not well throw me further from him than by ceasing to pay
+them--the thing is quite expressively significant. Not that I pretend
+to complain, nor to have reason to complain. One should not be
+grateful for kindness, only while it lasts: _that_ would be a
+short-breathed gratitude. I just tell you the fact, proving that it
+cannot be accidental.
+
+Did you ever, ever tire me? Indeed no--you never did. And do
+understand that I am not to be tired 'in that way,' though as Mr. Boyd
+said once of his daughter, one may be so 'far too effeminate.' No--if
+I were put into a crowd I should be tired soon--or, apart from the
+crowd, if you made me discourse orations De Corona ... concerning your
+bag even ... I should be tired soon--though peradventure not very much
+sooner than you who heard. But on the smooth ground of quiet
+conversation (particularly when three people don't talk at once as my
+brothers do ... to say the least!) I last for a long while:--not to
+say that I have the pretension of being as good and inexhaustible a
+listener to your own speaking as you could find in the world. So
+please not to accuse me of being tired again. I can't be tired, and
+won't be tired, you see.
+
+And now, since I began to write this, there is a new evil and
+anxiety--a worse anxiety than any--for one of my brothers is ill; had
+been unwell for some days and we thought nothing of it, till to-day
+Saturday: and the doctors call it a fever of the typhoid character ...
+not typhus yet ... but we are very uneasy. You must not come on
+Wednesday if an infectious fever be in the house--_that_ must be out
+of the question. May God bless you--I am quite heavy-hearted to-day,
+but never less yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 13, 1845].
+
+These are bad news, dearest--all bad, except the enduring comfort of
+your regard; the illness of your brother is worst ... that _would_
+stay you, and is the first proper obstacle. I shall not attempt to
+speak and prove my feelings,--you know what even Flush is to me
+through you: I wait in anxiety for the next account.
+
+If after all you do _not_ go to Pisa; why, we must be cheerful and
+wise, and take courage and hope. I cannot but see with your eyes and
+from your place, you know,--and will let this all be one surprizing
+and deplorable mistake of mere love and care ... but no such another
+mistake ought to be suffered, if you escape the effects of this. I
+will not cease to believe in a better event, till the very last,
+however, and it is a deep satisfaction that all has been made plain
+and straight up to this strange and sad interposition like a bar. You
+have done _your_ part, at least--with all that forethought and counsel
+from friends and adequate judges of the case--so, if the bar _will_
+not move, you will consider--will you not, dearest?--where one may
+best encamp in the unforbidden country, and wait the spring and fine
+weather. Would it be advisable to go where Mr. Kenyon suggested, or
+elsewhere? Oh, these vain wishes ... the will here, and no means!
+
+My life is bound up with yours--my own, first and last love. What
+wonder if I feared to tire you--I who, knowing you as I do, admiring
+what is so admirable (let me speak), loving what must needs be loved,
+fain to learn what you only can teach; proud of so much, happy in so
+much of you; I, who, for all this, neither come to admire, nor feel
+proud, nor be taught,--but only, only to live with you and be by
+you--that is love--for I _know_ the rest, as I say. I know those
+qualities are in you ... but at them I could get in so many ways.... I
+have your books, here are my letters you give me; you would answer my
+questions were _I_ in Pisa--well, and it all would amount to nothing,
+infinitely much as I know it is; to nothing if I could not sit by you
+and see you.... I can stop at that, but not before. And it seems
+strange to me how little ... less than little I have laid open of my
+feelings, the nature of them to you--I smile to think how if all this
+while I had been acting with the profoundest policy in intention, so
+as to pledge myself to nothing I could not afterwards perform with the
+most perfect ease and security, I should have done not much unlike
+what I _have_ done--to be sure, one word includes many or all ... but
+I have not said ... what I will not even now say ... you will
+_know_--in God's time to which I trust.
+
+I will answer your note now--the questions. I did go--(it may amuse
+you to write on)--to Moxon's. First let me tell you that when I called
+there the Saturday before, his brother (in his absence) informed me,
+replying to the question when it came naturally in turn with a round
+of like enquiries, that your poems continued to sell 'singularly
+well'--they would 'end in bringing a clear profit,' he said. I thought
+to catch him, and asked if they _had_ done so ... 'Oh; not at the
+beginning ... it takes more time--he answered. On Thursday I saw
+Moxon--he spoke rather encouragingly of my own prospects. I send him a
+sheetful to-morrow, I believe, and we are 'out' on the 1st of next
+month. Tennyson, by the way, has got his pension, L200 per annum--by
+the other way, Moxon has bought the MSS. of Keats in the possession of
+Taylor the publisher, and is going to bring out a complete edition;
+which is pleasant to hear.
+
+After settling with Moxon I went to Mrs. Carlyle's--who told me
+characteristic quaintnesses of Carlyle's father and mother over the
+tea she gave me. And all yesterday, you are to know, I was in a
+permanent mortal fright--for my uncle came in the morning to intreat
+me to go to Paris in _the evening_ about some urgent business of
+his,--a five-minutes matter with his brother there,--and the affair
+being really urgent and material to his and the brother's interest,
+and no substitute being to be thought of, I was forced to promise to
+go--in case a letter, which would arrive in Town at noon, should not
+prove satisfactory. So I calculated times, and found I could be at
+Paris to-morrow, and back again, _certainly_ by Wednesday--and so not
+lose you on that day--oh, the fear I had!--but I was sure then and
+now, that the 17th would not see you depart. But night came, and the
+last Dover train left, and I drew breath freely--this morning I find
+the letter was all right--so may it be with all worse apprehensions!
+What you fear, precisely that, never happens, as Napoleon observed and
+thereon grew bold. I had stipulated for an hour's notice, if go I
+must--and that was to be wholly spent in writing to you--for in quiet
+consternation my mother cared for my carpet bag.
+
+And so, I shall hear from you to-morrow ... that is, you will write
+_then_, telling me _all_ about your brother. As for what you say, with
+the kindest intentions, 'of fever-contagion' and keeping away on
+Wednesday on _that_ account, it is indeed 'out of the question,'--for
+a first reason (which dispenses with any second) because I disbelieve
+altogether in contagion from fevers, and especially from typhus
+fevers--as do much better-informed men than myself--I speak quite
+advisedly. If there should be only _that_ reason, therefore, you will
+not deprive me of the happiness of seeing you next Wednesday.
+
+I am not well--have a cold, influenza or some unpleasant thing, but am
+better than yesterday--My mother is much better, I think (she and my
+sister are resolute non-contagionists, mind you that!)
+
+God bless you and all you love! dearest, I am your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]
+
+It was the merest foolishness in me to write about fevers and the rest
+as I did to-day, just as if it could do any good, all the wringing of
+hands in the world. And there is no typhus _yet_ ... and no danger of
+any sort I hope and trust!--and how weak it is that habit of spreading
+the cloud which is in you all around you, how weak and selfish ... and
+unlike what _you_ would do ... just as you are unlike Mr. Kenyon. And
+you _are_ unlike him--and you were right on Thursday when you said
+so, and I was wrong in setting up a phrase on the other side ... only
+what I said came by an instinct because you seemed to be giving him
+all the sunshine to use and carry, which should not be after all. But
+you are unlike him and must be ... seeing that the producers must
+differ from the 'nati consumere fruges' in the intellectual as in the
+material. You create and he enjoys, and the work makes you pale and
+the pleasure makes him ruddy, and it is so of a necessity. So differs
+the man of genius from the man of letters--and then dear Mr. Kenyon is
+not even a man of letters in a full sense ... he is rather a Sybarite
+of letters. Do you think he ever knew what mental labour is? I fancy
+not. Not more than he has known what mental inspiration is! And not
+more than he has known what the strife of the heart is ... with all
+his tenderness and sensibility. He seems to me to _evade_ pain, and
+where he suffers at all to do so rather negatively than positively ...
+if you understand what I mean by that ... rather by a want than by a
+blow: the secret of all being that he has a certain latitudinarianism
+(not indifferentism) in his life and affections, and has no capacity
+for concentration and intensity. Partly by temperament and partly by
+philosophy he contrives to keep the sunny side of the street--though
+never inclined to forget the blind man at the corner. Ah, dear Mr.
+Kenyon: he is magnanimous in toleration, and excellent in
+sympathy--and he has the love of beauty and the reverence of
+genius--but the faculty of _worship_ he has not: he will not worship
+aright either your heroes or your gods ... and while you do it he only
+'tolerates' the act in you. Once he said ... not to me ... but I heard
+of it: 'What, if genius should be nothing but scrofula?' and he doubts
+(I very much fear) whether the world is not governed by a throw of
+those very same 'loaded dice,' and no otherwise. Yet he reveres genius
+in the acting of it, and recognizes a God in creation--only it is but
+'so far,' and not farther. At least I think not--and I have a right to
+think what I please of him, holding him as I do, in such true
+affection. One of the kindest and most indulgent of human beings has
+he been to me, and I am happy to be grateful to him.
+
+_Sunday._--The Duke of Palmella takes the whole vessel for the 20th
+and therefore if I go it must be on the 17th. Therefore (besides) as
+George must be on sessions to-morrow, he will settle the question with
+Papa to-night. In the meantime our poor Occy is not much better,
+though a little, and is ordered leeches on his head, and is confined
+to his bed and attended by physician and surgeon. It is not decided
+typhus, but they will not answer for its not being infectious; and
+although he is quite at the top of the house, two stories above me, I
+shall not like you to come indeed. And then there will be only room
+for a farewell, and I who am a coward shrink from the saying of it.
+No--not being able to see you to-morrow, (Mr. Kenyon is to be here
+to-morrow, he says) let us agree to throw away Wednesday. I will
+write, ... you will write perhaps--and above all things you will
+promise to write by the 'Star' on Monday, that the captain may give me
+your letter at Gibraltar. You promise? But I shall hear from you
+before then, and oftener than once, and you will acquiesce about
+Wednesday and grant at once that there can be no gain, no good, in
+that miserable good-bye-ing. I do not want the pain of it to remember
+you by--I shall remember very well without it, be sure. Still it shall
+be as you like--as you shall chose--and if you are _disappointed_
+about Wednesday (if it is not vain in me to talk of disappointments)
+why do with Wednesday as you think best ... always understanding that
+there's no risk of infection.
+
+_Monday._--All this I had written yesterday--and to-day it all is
+worse than vain. Do not be angry with me--do not think it my
+fault--but _I do not go to Italy_ ... it has ended as I feared. What
+passed between George and Papa there is no need of telling: only the
+latter said that I 'might go if I pleased, but that going it would be
+under his heaviest displeasure.' George, in great indignation,
+pressed the question fully: but all was vain ... and I am left in this
+position ... to go, if I please, with his displeasure over me, (which
+after what you have said and after what Mr. Kenyon has said, and after
+what my own conscience and deepest moral convictions say aloud, I
+would unhesitatingly do at this hour!) and necessarily run the risk of
+exposing my sister and brother to that same displeasure ... from which
+risk I shrink and fall back and feel that to incur it, is impossible.
+Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here and we have been talking--and he sees
+what I see ... that I am justified in going myself, but not in
+bringing others into difficulty. The very kindness and goodness with
+which they desire me (both my sisters) 'not to think of them,'
+naturally makes me think more of them. And so, tell me that I am not
+wrong in taking up my chain again and acquiescing in this hard
+necessity. The bitterest 'fact' of all is, that I had believed Papa to
+have loved me more than he obviously does: but I never regret
+knowledge ... I mean I never would _un_know anything ... even were it
+the taste of the apples by the Dead sea--and this must be accepted
+like the rest. In the meantime your letter comes--and if I could seem
+to be very unhappy after reading it ... why it would be 'all pretence'
+on my part, believe me. Can you care for me so much ... _you_? Then
+_that_ is light enough to account for all the shadows, and to make
+them almost unregarded--the shadows of the life behind. Moreover dear
+Occy is somewhat better--with a pulse only at ninety: and the doctors
+declare that visitors may come to the house without any manner of
+danger. Or I should not trust to your theories--no, indeed: it was not
+that I expected you to be afraid, but that _I_ was afraid--and if I am
+not ashamed for _that_, why at least I am, for being _lache_ about
+Wednesday, when you thought of hurrying back from Paris only for it!
+You _could_ think _that_!--You _can_ care for me so much!--(I come to
+it again!) When I hold some words to my eyes ... such as these in
+this letter ... I can see nothing beyond them ... no evil, no want.
+There _is_ no evil and no want. Am I wrong in the decision about
+Italy? Could I do otherwise? I had courage and to spare--but the
+question, you see, did not regard myself wholly. For the rest, the
+'unforbidden country' lies within these four walls. Madeira was
+proposed in vain--and any part of England would be as objectionable as
+Italy, and not more advantageous to _me_ than Wimpole Street. To take
+courage and be cheerful, as you say, is left as an alternative--and
+(the winter may be mild!) to fall into the hands of God rather than of
+man: _and I shall be here for your November, remember_.
+
+And now that you are not well, will you take care? and not come on
+Wednesday unless you are better? and never again bring me _wet
+flowers_, which probably did all the harm on Thursday? I was afraid
+for you then, though I said nothing. May God bless you.
+
+                                  Ever yours I am--your own.
+
+Ninety is not a high pulse ... for a fever of this kind--is it? and
+the heat diminishes, and his spirits are better--and we are all much
+easier ... have been both to-day and yesterday indeed.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Morning,
+                              [Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]
+
+Be sure, my own, dearest love, that this is for the best; will be seen
+for the best in the end. It is hard to bear now--but _you_ have to
+bear it; any other person could not, and you will, I know, knowing
+you--_will_ be well this one winter if you can, and then--since I am
+_not_ selfish in this love to you, my own conscience tells me,--I
+desire, more earnestly than I ever knew what desiring was, to be yours
+and with you and, as far as may be in this life and world, YOU--and
+no hindrance to that, but one, gives me a moment's care or fear; but
+that one is just your little hand, as I could fancy it raised in any
+least interest of yours--and before that, I am, and would ever be,
+still silent. But now--what is to make you raise that hand? I will not
+speak _now_; not seem to take advantage of your present feelings,--we
+will be rational, and all-considering and weighing consequences, and
+foreseeing them--but first I will prove ... if _that_ has to be done,
+why--but I begin speaking, and I should not, I know.
+
+                                            Bless you, love!
+
+                                                 R.B.
+
+To-morrow I see you, without fail. I am rejoiced as you can imagine,
+at your brother's improved state.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Tuesday,
+                              [Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
+
+Will this note reach you at the 'fatal hour' ... or sooner? At any
+rate it is forced to ask you to take Thursday for Wednesday, inasmuch
+as Mr. Kenyon in his exceeding kindness has put off his journey just
+for _me_, he says, because he saw me depressed about the decision, and
+wished to come and see me again to-morrow and talk the spirits up, I
+suppose. It is all so kind and good, that I cannot find a voice to
+grumble about the obligation it brings of writing thus. And then, if
+you suffer from cold and influenza, it will be better for you not to
+come for another day, ... I think _that_, for comfort. Shall I hear
+how you are to-night, I wonder? Dear Occy 'turned the corner,' the
+physician said, yesterday evening, and, although a little fluctuating
+to-day, remains on the whole considerably better. They were just in
+time to keep the fever from turning to typhus.
+
+How fast you print your book, for it is to be out on the first of
+November! Why it comes out suddenly like the sun. Mr. Kenyon asked me
+if I had seen anything you were going to print; and when I mentioned
+the second part of the 'Duchess' and described how your perfect
+rhymes, perfectly new, and all clashing together as by natural
+attraction, had put me at once to shame and admiration, he began to
+praise the first part of the same poem (which I had heard him do
+before, by the way) and extolled it as one of your most striking
+productions.
+
+And so until Thursday! May God bless you--
+
+                          and as the heart goes, ever yours.
+
+I am glad for Tennyson, and glad for Keats. It is well to be able to
+be glad about something--is is it not? about something out of
+ourselves. And (_in_ myself) I shall be most glad, if I have a letter
+to-night. Shall I?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
+
+Thanks, my dearest, for the good news--of the fever's abatement--it is
+good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole: what is it to _me_
+that you write is of _me_ ... I shall never say _that_! Mr. Kenyon is
+all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a
+thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs
+to,--well! On Thursday, then,--to-morrow! Did you not get a note of
+mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon's
+delivery?
+
+Mr. Forster came yesterday and was very profuse of graciosities: he
+may have, or must have meant well, so we will go on again with the
+friendship, as the snail repairs his battered shell.
+
+My poems went duly to press on Monday night--there is not much
+_correctable_ in them,--you make, or you spoil, one of these things;
+that is, _I_ do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in
+lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write
+plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop
+interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I
+am to receive a _proof_ at the end of the week--will you help me and
+over-look it. ('Yes'--she says ... my thanks I do not say!--)
+
+While writing this, the _Times_ catches my eye (it just came in) and
+something from the _Lancet_ is extracted, a long article against
+quackery--and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I
+read--'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of
+some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted.
+We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into
+the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets,
+touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a
+poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style
+worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and
+Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her
+physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand
+God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer
+Hall.'--Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus
+is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!
+
+What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me--could you
+not go out on such days?
+
+I am quite well now--cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle
+arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would--so my travel
+would have been to great purpose!
+
+Bless my dearest--my own!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 16, 1845.]
+
+Your letter which should have reached me in the morning of yesterday,
+I did not receive until nearly midnight--partly through the
+eccentricity of our new postman whose good pleasure it is to make use
+of the letter-box without knocking; and partly from the confusion in
+the house, of illness in different ways ... the very servants being
+ill, ... one of them breaking a blood-vessel--for there is no new case
+of fever; ... and for dear Occy, he grows better slowly day by day.
+And just so late last night, five letters were found in the
+letter-box, and mine ... yours ... among them--which accounts for my
+beginning to answer it only now.
+
+What am I to say but this ... that I know what you are ... and that I
+know also what you are to _me_,--and that I should accept that
+knowledge as more than sufficient recompense for worse vexations than
+these late ones. Therefore let no more be said of them: and no more
+_need_ be said, even if they were not likely to prove their own end
+good, as I believe with you. You may be quite sure that I shall be
+well this winter, if in any way it should be possible, and that I
+_will not_ be beaten down, if the will can do anything. I admire how,
+if all had happened so but a year ago, (yet it could not have happened
+quite _so_!), I should certainly have been beaten down--and how it is
+different now, ... and how it is only gratitude to you, to _say_ that
+it is different now. My cage is not worse but better since you brought
+the green groundsel to it--and to dash oneself against the wires of it
+will not open the door. We shall see ... and God will oversee. And in
+the meantime you will not talk of extravagances; and then nobody need
+hold up the hand--because, as I said and say, I am yours, your
+own--only not to _hurt you_. So now let us talk of the first of
+November and of the poems which are to come out then, and of the poems
+which are to come after then--and of the new avatar of 'Sordello,' for
+instance, which you taught me to look for. And let us both be busy and
+cheerful--and you will come and see me throughout the winter, ... if
+you do not decide rather on going abroad, which may be better ...
+better for your health's sake?--in which case I shall have your
+letters.
+
+And here is another ... just arrived. How I thank you. Think of the
+_Times_! Still it was very well of them to recognise your
+principality. Oh yes--do let me see the proof--I understand too about
+the 'making and spoiling.'
+
+Almost you forced me to smile by thinking it worth while to say that
+you are '_not selfish_.' Did Sir Percival say so to Sir Gawaine across
+the Round Table, in those times of chivalry to which you belong by the
+soul? Certainly you are not selfish! May God bless you.
+
+                                                   Ever your
+
+                                                        E.B.B.
+
+The fever may last, they say, for a week longer, or even a
+fortnight--but it _decreases_. Yet he is hot still, and very weak.
+
+To to-morrow!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]
+
+Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates'
+title. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly
+garment--but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your
+reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And
+yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you
+should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses
+of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a
+solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?
+
+Occy continues to make progress--with a pulse at only eighty-four this
+morning. Are you learned in the pulse that I should talk as if you
+were? _I_, who have had my lessons? He takes scarcely anything yet but
+water, and his head is very hot still--but the progress is quite
+sure, though it may be a lingering case.
+
+Your beautiful flowers!--none the less beautiful for waiting for water
+yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them
+into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other
+thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on
+the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have
+said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run
+faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself
+bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another;--and
+that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world;
+is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against _myself_,
+to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For _me_ ...
+though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a 'third
+person,' ... it would be monstrous to assume it to be necessary to
+vindicate my trust of you--_I trust you implicitly_--and am not too
+proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this
+winter does or undoes--while God does His part for good, as we know. I
+will never fail to you from any human influence whatever--_that_ I
+have promised--but you must let it be different from the other sort of
+promise which it would be a wrong to make. May God bless you--you,
+whose fault it is, to be too generous. You _are_ not like other men,
+as I could see from the beginning--no.
+
+Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.
+
+And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see
+why there should be a 'no' to that. Judge from your own convenience.
+Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too
+frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Cassandra you know,
+and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference
+in fact; but in comfort, much.
+
+                                             Ever your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 18, 1845.]
+
+I must not go on tearing these poor sheets one after the other,--the
+proper phrases _will not_ come,--so let them stay, while you care for
+my best interests in their best, only way, and say for _me_ what I
+would say if I could--dearest,--say it, as I feel it!
+
+I am thankful to hear of the continued improvement of your brother. So
+may it continue with him! Pulses I know very little about--I go by
+your own impressions which are evidently favourable.
+
+I will make a note as you suggest--or, perhaps, keep it for the
+closing number (the next), when it will come fitly in with two or
+three parting words I shall have to say. The Rabbis make Bells and
+Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the gay and the grave,
+the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonizing--such a mixture of
+effects as in the original hour (that is quarter of an hour) of
+confidence and creation. I meant the whole should prove at last. Well,
+it _has_ succeeded beyond my most adventurous wishes in one
+respect--'Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, if--' if there was any
+sweetness in the tongue or flavour in the seeds to _her_. But I shall
+do quite other and better things, or shame on me! The proof has not
+yet come.... I should go, I suppose, and enquire this afternoon--and
+probably I will.
+
+I weigh all the words in your permission to come on Monday ... do not
+think _I_ have not seen _that_ contingency from the first! Let it be
+Tuesday--no sooner! Meanwhile you are never away--never from your
+place here.
+
+                                       God bless my dearest.
+
+                                            Ever yours
+
+                                                 R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+           Monday Morning.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+This arrived on Saturday night--I just correct it in time for this our
+first post--will it do, the new matter? I can take it to-morrow--when
+I am to see you--if you are able to glance through it by then.
+
+The 'Inscription,' how does that read?
+
+There is strange temptation, by the way, in the space they please to
+leave for the presumable 'motto'--'they but remind me of mine own
+conception' ... but one must give no clue, of a silk's breadth, to the
+'_Bower_,' _yet_, One day!
+
+--Which God send you, dearest, and your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 22, 1845.]
+
+Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that
+there may be no misunderstanding between us--and this, before I sleep
+to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of
+receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had
+sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were
+ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my
+sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago.
+I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing
+in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it
+unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too
+often and it was _observed_, difficulties and vexations would follow
+as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk.
+That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one
+visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please--and
+there is no objection to your coming twice a week _now_ and _then_ ...
+if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand?
+I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps--and certainly everybody in the
+house is not equally prudent!--but I did shrink from running any risk
+with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And
+was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it?
+anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or
+old, what it _involves_ may well be unpleasant to you--and that
+(however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new
+increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps,
+by late events and impulses--but it is never too late to come back to
+a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my
+dearest friend, first, _not to answer this_, and next, to weigh and
+consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you
+plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify
+so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the
+excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of
+self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... _you_.... When I
+told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence should' &c.
+&c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you--and now that I
+turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ...
+_there_. I ask you therefore to consider 'that contingency' well--not
+forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa
+has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we
+see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable
+for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ...
+now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I
+leave it to you. In any case _I entreat you not to answer
+this_--neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may
+call perhaps vacillation--only that I stand excused (I do not say
+justified) before my own moral sense. May God bless you. If you go, I
+shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the
+meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I
+ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our
+sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I
+shall understand _that_ by your not going ... or you may say '_no_' in
+a word ... for I require no '_protestations_' indeed--and _you_ may
+trust to _me_ ... it shall be as you choose. _You will consider my
+happiness most by considering your own_ ... and that is my last word.
+
+_Wednesday morning._--I did not say half I thought about the poems
+yesterday--and their various power and beauty will be striking and
+surprising to your most accustomed readers. 'St. Praxed'--'Pictor
+Ignotus'--'The Ride'--'The Duchess'!--Of the new poems I like
+supremely the first and last ... that 'Lost Leader' which strikes so
+broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget--and which is worth
+all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world!--and then, the
+last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments
+... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these
+fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but
+one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The
+end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ...
+just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to
+the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more
+than ever a new-minted golden coin--the rhythm of it answering to your
+own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have
+right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not
+cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?
+
+May God bless you always--send me the next proof _in any case_.
+
+                                                 Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]
+
+But I _must_ answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to
+begin at the beginning) surely not '_startled_' ... only properly
+aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not
+disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so
+treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation
+from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the
+quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In
+this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of
+displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of
+it too soon--so I spoke--so _you_ have spoken--and so now you get
+'excused'? No--wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the
+strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for
+all, I _will_ not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite
+understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a
+given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of
+mine, none in the least. I love you because I _love_ you; I see you
+'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you
+all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an
+hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense)
+in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to
+suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once,
+think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I
+must talk your own language, so I shall say--) hindering any scheme of
+mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think
+that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I
+might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do
+you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me,
+with my life I am hardened in--considering the rational chances; how
+the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or
+by 'success,' 'happiness' &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a
+moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that?
+Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are
+hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?
+
+_I_ know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his
+heart--the person most concerned--_I_, dearest, who cannot play the
+disinterested part of bidding _you_ forget your 'protestation' ...
+what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through
+this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, _sure_ that
+the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,'
+you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my
+life to _any_ imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your
+life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.
+
+For your friends ... whatever can be 'got over,' whatever opposition
+may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I
+spoke lately about the 'selfishness' I dared believe I was free from,
+I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different
+organization to mine--which has vices in plenty, but not those.
+Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an
+apparent angel of light, from the lawyer's parchment; and Doctors'
+Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is
+one which a good many women, and men too, call 'real passion'--under
+the influence of which, I ought to say 'be mine, what ever happens to
+_you_'--but I know better, and you know best--and you know me, for all
+this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness
+and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not--and now
+you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life,
+love my love.
+
+When I am, praying God to bless her ever,
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]
+
+'_And be forgiven_' ... yes! and be thanked besides--if I knew how to
+thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and
+cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you--oh no--that made
+me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely
+noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me
+detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud
+must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite
+enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess
+to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you
+have your way'--you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me
+not to think of you so and so!--as if I could help thinking of you
+_so_, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think
+of you just so. 'Let me be'--Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you
+perhaps in everything except one thing--and _that_, you cannot guess.
+May God bless you--
+
+                                            Ever I am yours.
+
+The proof does not come!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]
+
+I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it;
+and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it
+... must--for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about
+squares being not round, and of _you_ being not 'selfish'! You know it
+is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.
+
+I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my
+understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much
+less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to _me_ who
+never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never
+dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to
+say so again--now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when
+really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own
+infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your
+chivalry touched them with a silver sound--and that, without them, you
+would pass by on the other side:--why twenty times I have thought
+_that_ and been vexed--ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too
+frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent
+promise--no, but first I will say another thing.
+
+First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my
+falling under displeasure through your visits--there is no sort of
+risk of it _for the present_--and if I ran the risk of making you
+uncomfortable about _that_, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do
+was different. I wish you also to understand that _even if you came
+here every day_, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if
+I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:--the caution referred to
+one person alone. In relation to _whom_, however, there will be no
+'getting over'--you might as well think to sweep off a third of the
+stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes--this, for matter of
+fact and certainty--and this, as I said before, the keeping of a
+general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great
+peculiarity _in the individual_ of course. But ... though I have been
+a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake
+... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he
+loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes--yet
+I have reserved for myself _always_ that right over my own affections
+which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves
+principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope--even
+though I _never_ thought (except perhaps when the door of life was
+just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or
+possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without
+and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends,
+I can look any way ... round, and _down_ even--the merest thread of a
+sympathy will draw me sometimes--or even the least look of kind eyes
+over a dyspathy--'Cela se peut facilement.' But for another
+relation--it was all different--and rightly so--and so very
+different--'Cela ne se peut nullement'--as in Malherbe.
+
+And now we must agree to 'let all this be,', and set ourselves to get
+as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at
+Pisa!) as we can--and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not
+going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green
+leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will
+come the tragedies--and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy
+winter after all ... _I_ shall at least; and if Pisa had been better,
+London might be worse: and for _me_ to grow pretentious and fastidious
+and critical about various sorts of _purple_ ... I, who have been used
+to the _brun fonce_ of Mme. de Sevigne, (_fonce_ and _enfonce_
+...)--would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this
+time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.
+
+I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago
+(the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those
+prose papers of mine in the _Athenaeum_, with additional matter on
+American literature, in a volume by itself--to be published at the
+same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo
+Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I
+do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not
+inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must
+give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not
+poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well!--and if I do
+not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave
+... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do?
+All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed
+for an answer by return of packet--and now it is past six ... eight
+weeks; and I must say something.
+
+Am I not 'femme qui parle' to-day? And let me talk on ever so, the
+proof won't come. May God bless you--and me as I am
+
+                                                 Yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+And the silent promise I would have you make is this--that if ever you
+should leave me, it shall be (though you are not 'selfish') for your
+sake--and not for mine: for your good, and not for mine. I ask it--not
+because I am disinterested; but because one class of motives would be
+valid, and the other void--simply for that reason.
+
+Then the _femme qui parle_ (looking back over the parlance) did not
+mean to say on the first page of this letter that she was ever for a
+moment _vexed in her pride_ that she should owe anything to her
+adversities. It was only because adversities are accidents and not
+essentials. If it had been prosperities, it would have been the same
+thing--no, not the same thing!--but far worse.
+
+Occy is up to-day and doing well.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, October 27, 1845.]
+
+How does one make 'silent promises' ... or, rather, how does the maker
+of them communicate that fact to whomsoever it may concern? I know,
+there have been many, very many unutterable vows and promises
+made,--that is, _thought_ down upon--the white slip at the top of my
+notes,--such as of this note; and not trusted to the pen, that always
+comes in for the shame,--but given up, and replaced by the poor forms
+to which a pen is equal; and a glad minute I should account _that_, in
+which you collected and accepted _those_ 'promises'--because they
+would not be all so unworthy of me--much less you! I would receive, in
+virtue of _them_, the ascription of whatever worthiness is supposed to
+lie in deep, truest love, and gratitude--
+
+     Read my silent answer there too!
+
+All your letter is one comfort: we will be happy this winter, and
+after, do not fear. I am most happy, to begin, that your brother is so
+much better: he must be weak and susceptible of cold, remember.
+
+It was on my lip, I do think, _last_ visit, or the last but one, to
+beg you to detach those papers from the _Athenaeum's gachis_. Certainly
+this opportunity is _most_ favourable, for every reason: you cannot
+hesitate, surely. At present those papers are lost--_lost_ for
+practical purposes. Do pray reply without fail to the proposers; no,
+no harm of these really fine fellows, who _could_ do harm (by printing
+incorrect copies, and perhaps eking out the column by suppositious
+matter ... ex-gr. they strengthened and lengthened a book of Dickens',
+in Paris, by adding quant. suff. of Thackeray's 'Yellowplush Papers'
+... as I discovered by a Parisian somebody praising the latter to me
+as Dickens' best work!)--and who _do_ really a good straightforward
+un-American thing. You will encourage 'the day of small
+things'--though this is not small, nor likely to have small results. I
+shall be impatient to hear that you have decided. I like the progress
+of these Americans in taste, their amazing leaps, like grasshoppers up
+to the sun--from ... what is the '_from_,' what depth, do you
+remember, say, ten or twelve years back?--_to_--Carlyle, and Tennyson,
+and you! So children leave off Jack of Cornwall and go on just to
+Homer.
+
+I can't conceive why my proof does not come--I must go to-morrow and
+see. In the other, I have corrected all the points you noted, to their
+evident improvement. Yesterday I took out 'Luria' and read it
+through--the skeleton--I shall hope to finish it soon now. It is for a
+purely imaginary stage,--very simple and straightforward. Would you
+... no, Act by Act, as I was about to propose that you should read it;
+that process would affect the oneness I most wish to preserve.
+
+On Tuesday--at last, I am with you. Till when be with me ever,
+dearest--God bless you ever--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+           Tuesday 9 a.m.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+I got this on coming home last night--have just run through it this
+morning, and send it that time may not be lost. Faults, faults; but I
+don't know how I have got tired of this. The Tragedies will be better,
+at least the second--
+
+At 3 this day! Bless you--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+I write in haste, not to lose time about the proof. You will see on
+the papers here my doubtfulnesses such as they are--but silence
+swallows up the admirations ... and there is no time. 'Theocrite'
+overtakes that wish of mine which ran on so fast--and the 'Duchess'
+grows and grows the more I look--and 'Saul' is noble and must have his
+full royalty some day. Would it not be well, by the way, to print it
+in the meanwhile as a fragment confessed ... sowing asterisks at the
+end. Because as a poem of yours it stands there and wants unity, and
+people can't be expected to understand the difference between
+incompleteness and defect, unless you make a sign. For the new
+poems--they are full of beauty. You throw largesses out on all sides
+without counting the coins: how beautiful that 'Night and Morning' ...
+and the 'Earth's Immortalities' ... and the 'Song' too. And for your
+'Glove,' all women should be grateful,--and Ronsard, honoured, in
+this fresh shower of music on his old grave ... though the chivalry of
+the interpretation, as well as much beside, is so plainly yours, ...
+could only be yours perhaps. And even _you_ are forced to let in a
+third person ... close to the doorway ... before you can do any good.
+What a noble lion you give us too, with the 'flash on his forehead,'
+and 'leagues in the desert already' as we look on him! And then, with
+what a 'curious felicity' you turn the subject 'glove' to another use
+and strike De Lorge's blow back on him with it, in the last paragraph
+of your story! And the versification! And the lady's speech--(to
+return!) so calm, and proud--yet a little bitter!
+
+Am I not to thank you for all the pleasure and pride in these poems?
+while you stand by and try to talk them down, perhaps.
+
+Tell me how your mother is--tell me how you are ... you who never were
+to be told twice about walking. Gone the way of all promises, is that
+promise?
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Wednesday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, October 30, 1845.]
+
+Like your kindness--too, far too generous kindness,--all this trouble
+and correcting,--and it is my proper office now, by this time, to sit
+still and receive, by right _Human_ (as opposed to Divine). When you
+see the pamphlet's self, you will find your own doing,--but where will
+you find the proofs of the best of all helping and counselling and
+inciting, unless in new works which shall justify the
+_unsatisfaction_, if I may not say shame, at these, these written
+before your time, my best love?
+
+Are you doing well to-day? For I feel well, have walked some eight or
+nine miles--and my mother is very much better ... is singularly
+better. You know whether you rejoiced me or no by that information
+about the exercise _you_ had taken yesterday. Think what telling one
+that you grow stronger would mean!
+
+'Vexatious' with you! Ah, prudence is all very right, and one ought,
+no doubt, to say, 'of course, we shall not expect a life exempt from
+the usual proportion of &c. &c.--' but truth is still more right, and
+includes the highest prudence besides, and I do believe that we shall
+be happy; that is, that _you_ will be happy: you see I dare
+confidently expect _the_ end to it all ... so it has always been with
+me in my life of wonders--absolute wonders, with God's hand over
+all.... And this last and best of all would never have begun so, and
+gone on so, to break off abruptly even here, in this world, for the
+little time.
+
+So try, try, dearest, every method, take every measure of hastening
+such a consummation. Why, we shall see Italy together! I could, would,
+_will_ shut myself in four walls of a room with you and never leave
+you and be most of all _then_ 'a lord of infinite space'--but, to
+travel with you to Italy, or Greece. Very vain, I know that, all such
+day dreaming! And ungrateful, too; with the real sufficing happiness
+here of being, and knowing that you know me to be, and suffer me to
+tell you I am yours, ever your own.
+
+                                 God bless you, my dearest--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]
+
+All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and
+went away at seven--and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour
+speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so
+tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and
+herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer
+once every ten minutes at least--and Flush, my usual companion, does
+not exact so much--and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this
+paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good
+fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I
+pushed the conversation up the next--because I was afraid of questions
+such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind
+them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his
+spectacles. So your name was not once spoken--not thought of, I do not
+say--perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her
+suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have
+wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she passed
+gradually from that to this--I am not sure of the contrary. And
+Isidore, they say, reads Beranger, and is supposed to be the most
+literary person at court--and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs
+think.
+
+One must needs write nonsense rather--for I have written it there. The
+sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my
+heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and
+through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what _is_ not
+dreaming is this and this--this reading of these words--this proof of
+this regard--all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot
+guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ...
+since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ...
+and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your
+wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own
+being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by
+an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into
+the sunshine where I was not--feeling nothing of the light which fell
+on them even--making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that
+factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be
+all far on the outside of _me_ ... _myself_ ... not seeming to touch
+it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a
+bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another.
+Morbid it was if you like it--perhaps very morbid--but all these heaps
+of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which,
+because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to
+the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of
+it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could
+it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds
+on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in
+the shadow? It was not for _me_ ... _me_ ... in any way: it was not
+within my reach--I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came
+nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being
+tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when
+he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs.
+Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not
+letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I
+to feel when you tell me what you have told me--and what you 'could
+would and will' do, and _shall not_ do?... but when you tell me?
+
+Only remember that such words make you freer and freer--if you can be
+freer than free--just as every one makes me happier and richer--too
+rich by you, to claim any debt. May God bless you always. When I wrote
+that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran
+down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere
+nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as
+other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse
+you as I did them.
+
+When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.
+
+                                                 Ever yours,
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+I trust that you go on to take exercise--and that your mother is still
+better. Occy's worst symptom now is too great an appetite ... a
+monster-appetite indeed.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday.
+                              [Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]
+
+Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow,
+Wednesday--so towards evening yours will reach you--'parve liber, sine
+me ibis' ... would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know,
+and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you _now_,
+as we are now;--from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed
+every other, greater or smaller--but as one cannot well,--or should
+not,--sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what
+chances--while you are in my thought.
+
+But when I have you ... so it seems ... _in_ my very heart; when you
+are entirely with me--oh, the day--then it will all go better, talk
+and writing too.
+
+Love me, my own love; not as I love you--not for--but I cannot write
+that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the
+luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, November 6, 1845.]
+
+I had your note last night, and am waiting for the book to-day; a true
+living breathing book, let the writer say of it what he will. Also
+when it comes it won't certainly come 'sine te.' Which is my comfort.
+
+And now--not to make any more fuss about a matter of simple
+restitution--may I have my letter back?... I mean the letter which if
+you did not destroy ... did not punish for its sins long and long ago
+... belongs to me--which, if destroyed, I must lose for my sins, ...
+but, if undestroyed, which I may have back; may I not? is it not my
+own? must I not?--that letter I was made to return and now turn to ask
+for again in further expiation. Now do I ask humbly enough? And send
+it at once, if undestroyed--do not wait till Saturday.
+
+I have considered about Mr. Kenyon and it seems best, in the event of
+a question or of a remark equivalent to a question, to confess to the
+visits 'generally once a week' ... because he may hear, one, two,
+three different ways, ... not to say the other reasons and Chaucer's
+charge against 'doubleness.' I fear ... I fear that he (not Chaucer)
+will wonder a little--and he has looked at me with scanning spectacles
+already and talked of its being a mystery to him how you made your way
+here; and _I_, who though I can _bespeak_ self-command, have no sort
+of presence of mind (not so much as one would use to play at Jack
+straws) did not help the case at all. Well--it cannot be helped. Did I
+ever tell you what he said of you once--'_that you deserved to be a
+poet_--being one in your heart and life:' he said _that_ of you to me,
+and I thought it a noble encomium and deserving its application.
+
+For the rest ... yes: you know I do--God knows I do. Whatever I can
+feel is for you--and perhaps it is not less, for not being simmered
+away in too much sunshine as with women accounted happier. _I_ am
+happy besides now--happy enough to die now.
+
+                          May God bless you, dear--dearest--
+
+                             Ever I am yours--
+
+The book does not come--so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead,
+and comes again on _Friday_ he says, and Saturday seems to be clear
+still.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+_Just_ arrived!--(mind, the _silent writing_ overflows the page, and
+laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)--But your note
+arrived earlier--more of that, when I write after this dreadful
+dispatching-business that falls on me--friend A. and B. and C. must
+get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!--
+
+Could you think _that_ that untoward letter lived one _moment_ after
+it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor
+letter,--yet I should have been vexed and offended _then_ to be told I
+_could_ love you better than I did already. 'Live and _learn_!' Live
+and love you--dearest, as loves you
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other
+reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two
+instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they _are_ so,
+by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one
+of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'--see! (Can you give me
+Horne's address--I would send then.)
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Thursday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]
+
+I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by
+my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and
+power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling
+more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this--or
+'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand
+which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading
+everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in
+inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr.
+Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what
+contradiction!) the _British Quarterly_ has been abusing me so at
+large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very
+particular friend indeed,--of someone who positively never reviewed
+before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I
+suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are friends 'with a
+difference.' Not that you are to fancy me pained--oh no!--merely
+surprised. I was prepared for anything almost from the quarter in
+question, but scarcely for being hung 'to the crows' so publicly ...
+though within the bounds of legitimate criticisms, mind. But oh--the
+creatures of your sex are not always magnanimous--_that_ is true. And
+to put _you_ between me and all ... the thought of _you_ ... in a
+great eclipse of the world ... _that_ is happy ... only, too happy for
+such as I am; as my own heart warns me hour by hour.
+
+'Serve _me_ right'--I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety
+of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the
+probability of it: but 'serve _me_ right' quite clearly. And yet--but
+no more 'and yets' about it. 'And yets' fray the silk.
+
+I see how the 'turret' stands in the new reading, triumphing over the
+'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that
+nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for
+attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number--there are lights
+enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by.
+One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does
+still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I
+saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach
+it--but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one
+exception I _am quite_ sure that people who shall complain of darkness
+are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed
+everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible
+by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your
+writings--but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from _that_
+cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,'
+you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid
+them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of
+critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!--'Let them
+rave.' You will live when all _those_ are under the willows. In the
+meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your
+poetry--as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the
+creature, and _you_ than _yours_. Yes--_you_ than _yours_.... (I did
+not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the 'bona
+verba,' and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as _you_ are
+better than _yours_; even when so much yours as your own
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+May I see the first act first? Let me!--And you walk?
+
+Mr. Horne's address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.
+
+There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes
+to-morrow, Friday, and therefore--!--and if Saturday should become
+impracticable, I will write again.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]
+
+When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never
+is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to
+return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and
+fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that
+does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is
+no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of
+mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on,
+patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and
+I will console myself, to the full extent, with your
+knowledge--penetration, intuition--_somehow_ I must believe you can
+get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or
+writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no
+reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the
+less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I
+can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to
+explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I
+feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt
+by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might
+be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to _me_. Dearest,
+I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from
+the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was
+MY star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back
+from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I _do_ feel, with
+you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few
+rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree
+with that power of yours--that you might easily make one so happy and
+yet go on writing 'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'--but--how can I, dearest,
+leave my heart's treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and
+when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the
+traces of you ... _will_ it do--tell me--to trust all that as a light
+effort, an easy matter?
+
+Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to
+crown you--there is queenliness in _that_, too!
+
+Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you
+determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of
+yourself! It is all ME you help, me you do good to ... and I take it
+all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had _every_ love-luxury, I
+now find out ... where is the proper, rationally
+to-be-expected--'_lovers' quarrel_'? _Here_, as you will find! 'Irae;
+amantium'.... I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter
+Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be _reintegratio amoris_--and to get
+back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it ...
+trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The
+consistent inference ... the 'self-denying ordinance'? Why--do you
+doubt? even this,--you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the
+Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid
+to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and
+walking, and working for my sake towards _the time_--informing me,
+moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day--.
+
+May God bless you, my own love.
+
+I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play ... for this serpent's
+reason, in addition to the others ... that--No, I will _tell_ you
+that--I can tell you now more than even lately!
+
+                                               Ever your own
+
+                                                    R.B.
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ROBERT BROWNING
+
+(See Vol. I., p. 270)]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 11, 1845.]
+
+If it were possible that you could do me harm in the way of work, (but
+it isn't) it would be possible, not through writing letters and
+reading manuscripts, but because of a reason to be drawn from your own
+great line
+
+    What man is strong until he stands alone?
+
+What man ... what woman? For have I not felt twenty times the desolate
+advantage of being insulated here and of not minding anybody when I
+made my poems?--of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and
+caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing
+in the pane?--_That_ made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls
+'insolent,'--untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much
+by strength, you see, as by separation. _You_ touch your greater ends
+by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads
+which, in your position would have hampered _me_.
+
+Still ... when all is changed for me now, and different, it is not
+possible, ... for all the changing, nor for all your line and my
+speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being
+within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in
+other ways. We shall see--you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I
+confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of
+Indolence and watching the new sunrise--as why not?--Do I mean to be
+idle always?--no!--and am I not an industrious worker on the average
+of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think
+perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like
+trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York
+people, and the something rather better besides we may hope ... may
+_I_ not hope, if _you_ wish it? Only there is no 'crown' for me, be
+sure, except what grows from this letter and such letters ... this
+sense of being anything to _one_! there is no room for another crown.
+Have I a great head like Goethe's that there should be room? and mine
+is bent down already by the unused weight--and as to bearing it, ...
+'Will it do,--tell me; to treat _that_ as a light effort, an easy
+matter?'
+
+Now let me remember to tell you that the line of yours I have just
+quoted, and which has been present with me since you wrote it, Mr.
+Chorley has quoted too in his new novel of 'Pomfret.' You were right
+in your identifying of servant and waistcoat--and Wilson waited only
+till you had gone on Saturday, to give me a parcel and note; the novel
+itself in fact, which Mr. Chorley had the kindness to send me 'some
+days or weeks,' said the note, 'previous to the publication.' Very
+goodnatured of him certainly: and the book seems to me his best work
+in point of sustainment and vigour, and I am in process of being
+interested in it. Not that he is a _maker_, even for this prose. A
+feeler ... an observer ... a thinker even, in a certain sphere--but a
+maker ... no, as it seems to me--and if I were he, I would rather herd
+with the essayists than the novelists where he is too good to take
+inferior rank and not strong enough to 'go up higher.' Only it would
+be more right in me to be grateful than to talk so--now wouldn't it?
+
+And here is Mr. Kenyon's letter back again--a kind good letter ... a
+letter I have liked to read (so it was kind and good in you to let
+me!)--and he was with me to-day and praising the 'Ride to Ghent,' and
+praising the 'Duchess,' and praising you altogether as I liked to hear
+him. The Ghent-ride was 'very fine'--and the
+
+    Into the midnight they galloped abreast
+
+drew us out into the night as witnesses. And then, the 'Duchess' ...
+the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most
+characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh,
+some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears--but the
+incantation-scene, 'just trenching on the supernatural,' _that_ was
+taken to be 'wonderful,' ... 'showing extraordinary power, ... as
+indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of
+such various faculty!'--Am I not tired of writing your praises as he
+said then? So I shall tell you, instead of any more, that I went down
+to the drawing-room yesterday (because it was warm enough) by an act
+of supererogatory virtue for which you may praise _me_ in turn. What
+weather it is! and how the year seems to have forgotten itself into
+April.
+
+But after all, how have I answered your letter? and how _are_ such
+letters to be answered? Do we answer the sun when he shines? May God
+bless you ... it is my answer--with one word besides ... that I am
+wholly and ever your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+On Thursday as far as I know yet--and you shall hear if there should
+be an obstacle. _Will you walk?_ If you will not, you know, you must
+be forgetting me a little. Will you remember me too in the act of the
+play?--but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not
+overworking the head. And this for no serpent's reason.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Two letters in one--Wednesday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]
+
+I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to
+read perhaps. When you spoke of 'stars' and 'geniuses' in that letter,
+I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter
+which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could
+be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh
+such pure extravagance about 'glorious geniuses'--) I can't help
+telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.
+
+Shall I tell you besides?--The first moment in which I seemed to admit
+to myself in a flash of lightning the _possibility_ of your affection
+for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was _that_ when
+you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for
+me not for a reason, but because you cared for me. Now such a
+'parceque' which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was
+just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the
+particular question we were upon ... just the 'woman's reason'
+suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as
+you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you
+see? If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for
+ever--one of 'earth's immortalities'--_as long as it includes it_.
+
+And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising state
+of things, we may both admit, and proves what it would be as well not
+too curiously to enquire into. But then ... to look at it in a
+brighter aspect, ... I do remember how, years ago, when talking the
+foolishnesses which women will talk when they are by themselves, and
+not forced to be sensible, ... one of my friends thought it 'safest to
+begin with a little aversion,' and another, wisest to begin with a
+great deal of esteem, and how the best attachments were produced so
+and so, ... I took it into my head to say that the best was where
+there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable,
+the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and
+not in the object of it--and that the affection which could (if it
+could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goitre would be more
+admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone
+thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly
+that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I
+meant to act out my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I
+replied quite gravely that I had not virtue enough--and so, people
+laughed as it is fair to laugh when other people are esteemed to talk
+nonsense. And all this came back to me in the south wind of your
+'parceque,' and I tell it as it came ... now.
+
+Which proves, if it proves anything, ... while I have every sort of
+natural pleasure in your praises and like you to like my poetry just
+as I should, and perhaps more than I should; yet _why_ it is all
+behind ... and in its place--and _why_ I have a tendency moreover to
+sift and measure any praise of yours and to separate it from the
+superfluities, far more than with any other person's praise in the
+world.
+
+_Friday evening._--Shall I send this letter or not? I have been 'tra
+'l si e 'l no,' and writing a new beginning on a new sheet even--but
+after all you ought to hear the remote echo of your last letter ...
+far out among the hills, ... as well as the immediate reverberation,
+and so I will send it,--and what I send is not to be answered,
+remember!
+
+I read Luria's first act twice through before I slept last night, and
+feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but
+because shot into the air and suddenly arrested and suspended. It
+('Luria') is all life, and we know (that is, the reader knows) that
+there must be results here and here. How fine that sight of Luria is
+upon the lynx hides--how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse
+you have by the eyes of another--and that laugh when the horse drops
+the forage, what wonderful truth and character you have in
+_that_!--And then, when _he_ is in the scene--: 'Golden-hearted Luria'
+you called him once to me, and his heart shines already ... wide open
+to the morning sun. The construction seems to me very clear
+everywhere--and the rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where
+you invert a little artificially--but that shall be set down on a
+separate strip of paper: and in the meantime I am snatched up into
+'Luria' and feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a
+reader should.
+
+But _you_ are not driven on to any ends? so as to be tired, I mean?
+You will not suffer yourself to be overworked because you are
+'interested' in this work. I am so certain that the sensations in your
+head _demand_ repose; and it must be so injurious to you to be
+perpetually calling, calling these new creations, one after another,
+that you must consent to be called _to_, and not hurry the next act,
+no, nor any act--let the people have time to learn the last number by
+heart. And how glad I am that Mr. Fox should say what he did of it ...
+though it wasn't true, you know ... not exactly. Still, I do hold that
+as far as construction goes, you never put together so much
+unquestionable, smooth glory before, ... not a single entanglement for
+the understanding ... unless 'the snowdrops' make an exception--while
+for the undeniableness of genius it never stood out before your
+readers more plainly than in that same number! Also you have extended
+your sweep of power--the sea-weed is thrown farther (if not higher)
+than it was found before; and one may calculate surely now how a few
+more waves will cover the brown stones and float the sight up away
+through the fissure of the rocks. The rhythm (to touch one of the
+various things) the rhythm of that 'Duchess' does more and more strike
+me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks
+called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult
+rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the
+general measure. Then 'The Ride'--with that touch of natural feeling
+at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the
+poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that
+one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and resolution and
+exalts both, instead of weakening anything, as might have been
+expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And then 'Saul'--and in
+a first place 'St. Praxed'--and for pure description, 'Fortu' and the
+deep 'Pictor Ignotus'--and the noble, serene 'Italy in England,' which
+grows on you the more you know of it--and that delightful 'Glove'--and
+the short lyrics ... for one comes to _'select' everything_ at last,
+and certainly I do like these poems better and better, as your poems
+are made to be liked. But you will be tired to hear it said over and
+over so, ... and I am going to 'Luria,' besides.
+
+When you write will you say exactly how you are? and will you write?
+And I want to explain to you that although I don't make a profession
+of equable spirits, (as a matter of temperament, my spirits were
+always given to rock a little, up and down) yet that I did not mean to
+be so ungrateful and wicked as to complain of low spirits now and to
+you. It would not be true either: and I said 'low' to express a merely
+bodily state. My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and
+fainting ... to give the right composure and point of balance to the
+nervous system. I don't take it for 'my spirits' in the usual sense;
+you must not think such a thing. The medical man who came to see me
+made me take it the other day when he was in the room, before the
+right hour and when I was talking quite cheerfully, just for the need
+he observed in the pulse. 'It was a necessity of my position,' he
+said. Also I do not suffer from it in any way, as people usually do
+who take opium. I am not even subject to an opium-headache. As to the
+low spirits I will not say that mine _have not_ been low enough and
+with cause enough; but _even then_, ... why if you were to ask the
+nearest witnesses, ... say, even my own sisters, ... everybody would
+tell you, I think, that the 'cheerfulness' even _then_, was the
+remarkable thing in me--certainly it has been remarked about me again
+and again. Nobody has known that it was an effort (a habit of effort)
+to throw the light on the outside,--I do abhor so that ignoble
+groaning aloud of the 'groans of Testy and Sensitude'--yet I may say
+that for three years I never was conscious of one movement of pleasure
+in anything. Think if I could mean to complain of 'low spirits' now,
+and to you. Why it would be like complaining of not being able to see
+at noon--which would simply prove that I was very blind. And you, who
+are not blind, cannot make out what is written--so you _need not try_.
+May God bless you long after you have done blessing me!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         E.B.B.
+
+Now I am half tempted to tear this letter in two (and it is long
+enough for three) and to send you only the latter half. But you will
+understand--you will not think that there is a contradiction between
+the first and last ... you _cannot_. One is a truth of me--and the
+other a truth of you--and we two are different, you know.
+
+You are not over-working in 'Luria'? That you _should not_, is a
+truth, too.
+
+I observed that Mr. Kenyon put in '_Junior_' to your address. Ought
+that to be done? or does my fashion of directing find you without
+hesitation?
+
+Mr. Kenyon asked me for Mr. Chorley's book, or you should have it.
+Shall I send it to you presently?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, November 17, 1845.]
+
+At last your letter comes--and the deep joy--(I know and use to
+analyse my own feelings, and be sober in giving distinctive names to
+their varieties; this is _deep_ joy,)--the true love with which I
+take this much of you into my heart, ... _that_ proves what it is I
+wanted so long, and find at last, and am happy for ever. I must have
+more than 'intimated'--I must have spoken plainly out the truth, if I
+do myself the barest justice, and told you long ago that the
+admiration at your works went _away_, quite another way and afar from
+the love of you. If I could fancy some method of what I shall say
+happening without all the obvious stumbling-blocks of falseness, &c.
+which no foolish fancy dares associate with you ... if you COULD tell
+me when I next sit by you--'I will undeceive you,--I am not _the_ Miss
+B.--she is up-stairs and you shall see her--I only wrote those
+letters, and am what you see, that is all now left you' (all the
+misapprehension having arisen from _me_, in some inexplicable way) ...
+I should not begin by _saying_ anything, dear, dearest--but _after
+that_, I should assure you--soon make you believe that I did not much
+wonder at the event, for I have been all my life asking what
+connection there is between the satisfaction at the display of power,
+and the sympathy with--ever-increasing sympathy with--all imaginable
+weakness? Look now: Coleridge writes on and on,--at last he writes a
+note to his 'War-Eclogue,' in which he avers himself to have been
+actuated by a really--on the whole--_benevolent_ feeling to Mr. Pitt
+when he wrote that stanza in which 'Fire' means to 'cling to him
+everlastingly'--where is the long line of admiration now that the end
+snaps? And now--here I refuse to fancy--you KNOW whether, if you never
+write another line, speak another intelligible word, recognize me by a
+look again--whether I shall love you less or _more_ ... MORE; having a
+right to expect more strength with the strange emergency. And it is
+because I know this, build upon this entirely, that as a reasonable
+creature, I am bound to look first to what hangs farthest and most
+loosely from me ... what _might_ go from you to your loss, and so to
+mine, to say the least ... because I want ALL of you, not just so much
+as I could not live without--and because I see the danger of your
+entirely generous disposition and cannot quite, yet, bring myself to
+profit by it in the quiet way you recommend. Always remember, I never
+wrote to you, all the years, on the strength of your poetry, though I
+constantly heard of you through Mr. K. and was near seeing you once,
+and might have easily availed myself of his intervention to commend
+any letter to your notice, so as to reach you out of the foolish crowd
+of rushers-in upon genius ... who come and eat their bread and cheese
+on the high-altar, and talk of reverence without one of its surest
+instincts--never quiet till they cut their initials on the cheek of
+the Medicean Venus to prove they worship her. My admiration, as I
+said, went its natural way in silence--but when on my return to
+England in December, late in the month, Mr. K. sent those Poems to my
+sister, and I read my name there--and when, a day or two after, I met
+him and, beginning to speak my mind on them, and getting on no better
+than I should now, said quite naturally--'if I were to _write_ this,
+now?'--and he assured me with his perfect kindness, you would be even
+'pleased' to hear from me under those circumstances ... nay,--for I
+will tell you all, in this, in everything--when he wrote me a note
+soon after to reassure me on that point ... THEN I _did_ write, on
+_account of my purely personal obligation_, though of course taking
+that occasion to allude to the general and customary delight in your
+works: I did write, on the whole, UNWILLINGLY ... with consciousness
+of having to _speak_ on a subject which I _felt_ thoroughly
+concerning, and could not be satisfied with an imperfect expression
+of. As for expecting THEN what has followed ... I shall only say I was
+scheming how to get done with England and go to my heart in Italy. And
+now, my love--I am round you ... my whole life is wound up and down
+and over you.... I feel you stir everywhere. I am not conscious of
+thinking or feeling but _about_ you, with some reference to you--so I
+will live, so may I die! And you have blessed me _beyond_ the _bond_,
+in more than in giving me yourself to love; inasmuch as you believed
+me from the first ... what you call 'dream-work' _was_ real of its
+kind, did you not think? and now you believe me, _I_ believe and am
+happy, in what I write with my heart full of love for you. Why do you
+tell me of a doubt, as now, and bid me not clear it up, 'not answer
+you?' Have I done wrong in thus answering? Never, never do _me_ direct
+_wrong_ and hide for a moment from me what a word can explain as now.
+You see, you thought, if but for a moment, I loved your intellect--or
+what predominates in your poetry and is most distinct from your
+heart--better, or as well as you--did you not? and I have told you
+every thing,--explained everything ... have I not? And now I will dare
+... yes, dearest, kiss you back to my heart again; my own. There--and
+there!
+
+And since I wrote what is above, I have been reading among other poems
+that sonnet--'Past and Future'--which affects me more than any poem I
+ever read. How can I put your poetry away from you, even in these
+ineffectual attempts to concentrate myself upon, and better apply
+myself to what remains?--poor, poor work it is; for is not that sonnet
+to be loved as a true utterance of yours? I cannot attempt to put down
+the thoughts that rise; may God bless me, as you pray, by letting that
+beloved hand shake the less ... I will only ask, _the less_ ... for
+being laid on mine through this life! And, indeed, you write down, for
+me to calmly read, that I make you happy! Then it is--as with all
+power--God through the weakest instrumentality ... and I am past
+expression proud and grateful--My love,
+
+                                                   I am your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+I must answer your questions: I am better--and will certainly have
+your injunction before my eyes and work quite moderately. Your letters
+come _straight_ to me--my father's go to Town, except on extraordinary
+occasions, so that _all_ come for my first looking-over. I saw Mr. K.
+last night at the Amateur Comedy--and heaps of old acquaintances--and
+came home tired and savage--and _yearned_ literally, for a letter this
+morning, and so it came and I was well again. So, I am not even to
+have your low spirits leaning on mine? It was just because I always
+find you alike, and _ever_ like yourself, that I seemed to discern a
+depth, when you spoke of 'some days' and what they made uneven where
+all is agreeable to _me_. Do not, now, deprive me of a right--a right
+... to find you as you _are_; get no habit of being cheerful with
+me--I have universal sympathy and can show you a SIDE of me, a true
+face, turn as you may. If you _are_ cheerful ... so will I be ... if
+sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while _behind_, and propping up,
+any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary. As for my
+question about the opium ... you do not misunderstand _that_ neither:
+I trust in the eventual consummation of my--shall I not say,
+_our_--hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or
+prospectively, affects me--how it affects me! Will you write again?
+_Wednesday_, remember! Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three
+next days after. I will bring you some letters ... one from Landor.
+Why should I trouble you about 'Pomfret.'
+
+And Luria ... does it so interest you? Better is to come of it. How
+you lift me up!--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 18, 1845.]
+
+How you overcome me as always you do--and where is the answer to
+anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers?
+But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake
+you as far even as you say here and even 'for a moment.' I did not
+write any of that letter in a 'doubt' of you--not a word.... I was
+simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking
+back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I
+should not have looked back)--and so coming to tell you, by a natural
+association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise
+was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your
+reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours. Of course I acknowledge it to
+be yours, ... that high reason of no reason--I acknowledged it to be
+yours (didn't I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me.
+And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told
+them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather
+be cared for in _that_ unreasonable way, than for the best reason in
+the world. But all _that_ was history and philosophy simply--was it
+not?--and not _doubt of you_.
+
+The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ...
+that I never have doubted you--ah, you _know_!--I felt from the
+beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would
+have trusted you to make a path for my soul--_that_, you _know_. I
+felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or
+wrote--and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it
+was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the
+nature of your own feelings. If you could turn over every page of my
+heart like the pages of a book, you would see nothing there offensive
+to the least of your feelings ... not even to the outside fringes of
+your man's vanity ... should you have any vanity like a man; which I
+_do_ doubt. I never wronged you in the least of things--never ... I
+thank God for it. But 'self-deceived,' it was so easy for you to be:
+see how on every side and day by day, men are--and women too--in this
+sort of feelings. 'Self-deceived,' it was so possible for you to be,
+and while I thought it possible, could I help thinking it _best_ for
+you that it should be so--and was it not right in me to persist in
+thinking it possible? It was my reverence for you that made me
+persist! What was _I_ that I should think otherwise? I had been shut
+up here too long face to face with my own spirit, not to know myself,
+and, so, to have lost the common illusions of vanity. All the men I
+had ever known could not make your stature among them. So it was not
+distrust, but reverence rather. I sate by while the angel stirred the
+water, and I called it _Miracle_. Do not blame me now, ... _my_ angel!
+
+Nor say, that I 'do not lean' on you with all the weight of my 'past'
+... because I do! You cannot guess what you are to me--you cannot--it
+is not possible:--and though I have said _that_ before, I must say it
+again ... for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between
+dream and miracle, all of it--as if some dream of my earliest
+brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to
+steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light. _Can_ it be,
+I say to myself, that _you_ feel for me _so_? can it be meant for me?
+this from _you_?
+
+If it is your 'right' that I should be gloomy at will with you, you
+exercise it, I do think--for although I cannot promise to be very
+sorrowful when you come, (how could that be?) yet from different
+motives it seems to me that I have written to you quite superfluities
+about my 'abomination of desolation,'--yes indeed, and blamed myself
+afterwards. And now I must say this besides. When grief came upon
+grief, I never was tempted to ask 'How have I deserved this of God,'
+as sufferers sometimes do: I always felt that there must be cause
+enough ... corruption enough, needing purification ... weakness
+enough, needing strengthening ... _nothing_ of the chastisement could
+come to me without cause and need. But in this different hour, when
+joy follows joy, and God makes me happy, as you say, _through_ you ...
+I cannot repress the ... 'How have I deserved _this_ of Him?'--I know
+I have not--I know I do not.
+
+Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for
+you?--If so, it was well done,--dearest! They leave the ground fallow
+before the wheat.
+
+'Were you wrong in answering?' Surely not ... unless it is wrong to
+show all this goodness ... and too much, it may be for _me_. When the
+plants droop for drought and the copious showers fall suddenly, silver
+upon silver, they die sometimes of the reverse of their adversities.
+But no--_that_, even, shall not be a danger! And if I said 'Do not
+answer,' I did not mean that I would not have a doubt removed--(having
+_no_ doubt!--) but I was simply unwilling to seem to be asking for
+golden words ... going down the aisles with that large silken purse,
+as _queteuse_. Try to understand.
+
+On Wednesday then!--George is invited to meet you on Thursday at Mr.
+Kenyon's.
+
+The _Examiner_ speaks well, upon the whole, and with allowances ...
+oh, that absurdity about metaphysics apart from poetry!--'Can such
+things be' in one of the best reviews of the day? Mr. Kenyon was here
+on Sunday and talking of the poems with real living tears in his eyes
+and on his cheeks. But I will tell you. 'Luria' is to climb to the
+place of a great work, I see. And if I write too long letters, is it
+not because you spoil me, and because (being spoilt) I cannot help
+it?--May God bless you always--
+
+                                                 Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                           Thursday Morning.
+
+Here is the copy of Landor's verses.
+
+You know thoroughly, do you not, why I brought all those good-natured
+letters, desperate praise and all? Not, _not_ out of the least vanity
+in the world--nor to help myself in your sight with such testimony:
+would it seem very extravagant, on the contrary, if I said that
+perhaps I laid them before your eyes in a real fit of compunction at
+not being, in my heart, thankful enough for the evident motive of the
+writers,--and so was determined to give them the 'last honours' if
+not the first, and not make them miss _you_ because, through my fault,
+they had missed _me_? Does this sound too fantastical? Because it is
+strictly true: the most laudatory of all, I _skimmed_ once over with
+my flesh _creeping_--it seemed such a death-struggle, that of good
+nature over--well, it is fresh ingratitude of me, so here it shall
+end.
+
+I am not ungrateful to _you_--but you must wait to know that:--I can
+speak less than nothing with my living lips.
+
+I mean to ask your brother how you are to-night ... so quietly!
+
+God bless you, my dearest, and reward you.
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+Mrs. Shelley--with the 'Ricordi.'
+
+Of course, Landor's praise is altogether a different gift; a gold vase
+from King Hiram; beside he has plenty of conscious rejoicing in his
+own riches, and is not left painfully poor by what he sends away.
+_That_ is the unpleasant point with some others--they spread you a
+board and want to gird up their loins and wait on you there. Landor
+says 'come up higher and let us sit and eat together.' Is it not that?
+
+Now--you are not to turn on me because the first is my proper feeling
+to _you_, ... for poetry is not the thing given or taken between
+us--it is heart and life and _my_self, not _mine_, I give--give? That
+you glorify and change and, in returning then, give _me_!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 21, 1845.]
+
+Thank you! and will you, if your sister made the copy of Landor's
+verses for _me_ as well as for you, thank _her_ from me for another
+kindness, ... not the second nor the third? For my own part, be sure
+that if I did not fall on the right subtle interpretation about the
+letters, at least I did not 'think it vain' of you! vain: when,
+supposing you really to have been over-gratified by such letters, it
+could have proved only an excess of humility!--But ... besides the
+subtlety,--you meant to be kind to _me_, you know,--and I had a
+pleasure and an interest in reading them--only that ... mind. Sir John
+Hanmer's, I was half angry with! Now _is_ he not cold?--and is it not
+easy to see _why_ he is forced to write his own scenes five times over
+and over? He might have mentioned the 'Duchess' I think; and he a
+poet! Mr. Chorley speaks some things very well--but what does he mean
+about 'execution,' _en revanche_? but I liked his letter and his
+candour in the last page of it. Will Mr. Warburton review you? does he
+mean _that_? Now do let me see any other letters you receive. _May_ I?
+Of course Landor's 'dwells apart' from all: and besides the reason you
+give for being gratified by it, it is well that one prophet should
+open his mouth and prophesy and give his witness to the inspiration of
+another. See what he says in the letter.... '_You may stand quite
+alone if you will--and I think you will.' That_ is a noble testimony
+to a _truth_. And he discriminates--he understands and discerns--they
+are not words thrown out into the air. The 'profusion of imagery
+covering the depth of thought' is a true description. And, in the
+verses, he lays his finger just on your characteristics--just on those
+which, when you were only a poet to me, (only a poet: does it sound
+irreverent? almost, I think!) which, when you were only a poet to me,
+I used to study, characteristic by characteristic, and turn myself
+round and round in despair of being ever able to approach, taking them
+to be so essentially and intensely masculine that like effects were
+unattainable, even in a lower degree, by any female hand. Did I not
+tell you so once before? or oftener than once? And must not these
+verses of Landor's be printed somewhere--in the _Examiner_? and again
+in the _Athenaeum_? if in the _Examiner_, certainly again in the
+_Athenaeum_--it would be a matter of course. Oh those verses: how they
+have pleased me! It was an act worthy of him--and of _you_.
+
+George has been properly 'indoctrinated,' and, we must hope, will do
+credit to my instructions. Just now ... just as I was writing ... he
+came in to say good-morning and good-night (he goes to chambers
+earlier than I receive visitors generally), and to ask with a smile,
+if I had 'a message for my friend' ... _that_ was you ... and so he
+was indoctrinated. He is good and true, honest and kind, but a little
+over-grave and reasonable, as I and my sisters complain continually.
+The great Law lime-kiln dries human souls all to one colour--and he is
+an industrious reader among law books and knows a good deal about
+them, I have heard from persons who can judge; but with a sacrifice of
+impulsiveness and liberty of spirit, which _I_ should regret for him
+if he sate on the Woolsack even. Oh--that law! how I do detest it! I
+hate it and think ill of it--I tell George so sometimes--and he is
+good-natured and only thinks to himself (a little audibly now and
+then) that I am a woman and talking nonsense. But the morals of it,
+and the philosophy of it! And the manners of it! in which the whole
+host of barristers looks down on the attorneys and the rest of the
+world!--how long are these things to last!
+
+Theodosia Garrow, I have seen face to face once or twice. She is very
+clever--very accomplished--with talents and tastes of various kinds--a
+musician and linguist, in most modern languages I believe--and a
+writer of fluent graceful melodious verses, ... you cannot say any
+more. At least _I_ cannot--and though I have not seen this last poem
+in the 'Book of Beauty,' I have no more trust ready for it than for
+its predecessors, of which Mr. Landor said as much. It is the personal
+feeling which speaks in him, I fancy--simply the personal
+feeling--and, _that_ being the case, it does not spoil the
+discriminating appreciation on the other page of this letter. I might
+have the modesty to admit besides that I may be wrong and he, right,
+all through. But ... 'more intense than Sappho'!--more intense than
+intensity itself!--to think of _that_!--Also the word 'poetry' has a
+clear meaning to me, and all the fluency and facility and quick
+ear-catching of a tune which one can find in the world, do not answer
+to it--no.
+
+How is the head? will you tell me? I have written all this without a
+word of it, and yet ever since yesterday I have been uneasy, ... I
+cannot help it. You see you are not better but worse. 'Since you were
+in Italy'--Then is it England that disagrees with you? and is it
+change away from England that you want? ... _require_, I mean. If
+so--why what follows and ought to follow? You must not be ill
+indeed--_that_ is the first necessity. Tell me how you are, exactly
+how you are; and remember to walk, and not to work too much--for my
+sake--if you care for me--if it is not too bold of me to say so. I had
+fancied you were looking better rather than otherwise: but those
+sensations in the head are frightful and ought to be stopped by
+whatever means; even by the worst, as they would seem to _me_.
+Well--it was bad news to hear of the increase of pain; for the
+amendment was a 'passing show' I fear, and not caused even by thoughts
+of mine or it would have appeared before; while on the other side (the
+sunny side of the way) I heard on that same yesterday, what made me
+glad as good news, a whole gospel of good news, and from _you_ too who
+profess to say 'less than nothing,' and _that_ was that '_the times
+seemed longer to you_':--do you remember saying it? And it made me
+glad ... happy--perhaps too glad and happy--and surprised: yes,
+surprised!--for if you had told me (but you would not have told me) if
+you had let me guess ... just the contrary, ... '_that the times
+seemed shorter_,' ... why it would have seemed to _me_ as natural as
+nature--oh, believe me it would, and I could not have thought hardly
+of you for it in the most secret or silent of my thoughts. How am I
+to feel towards you, do you imagine, ... who have the world round you
+and yet make me this to you? I never can tell you how, and you never
+can know it without having my heart in you with all its experiences:
+we measure by those weights. May God bless you! and save _me_ from
+being the cause to you of any harm or grief!... I choose it for _my_
+blessing instead of another. What should I be if I could fail
+willingly to you in the least thing? But I _never will_, and you know
+it. I will not move, nor speak, nor breathe, so as willingly and
+consciously to touch, with one shade of wrong, that precious deposit
+of 'heart and life' ... which may yet be recalled.
+
+And, so, may God bless you and your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Remember to say how you are.
+
+I sent 'Pomfret'--and Shelley is returned, and the letters, in the
+same parcel--but my letter goes by the post as you see. Is there
+contrast enough between the two rival female personages of 'Pomfret.'
+_I_ fancy not. Helena should have been more 'demonstrative' than she
+appeared in Italy, to secure the 'new modulation' with Walter. But you
+will not think it a strong book, I am sure, with all the good and pure
+intention of it. The best character ... most life-like ... as
+conventional life goes ... seems to _me_ 'Mr. Rose' ... beyond all
+comparison--and the best point, the noiseless, unaffected manner in
+which the acting out of the 'private judgment' in Pomfret himself is
+made no heroic virtue but simply an integral part of the love of
+truth. As to Grace she is too good to be interesting, I am afraid--and
+people say of her more than she expresses--and as to 'generosity,' she
+could not do otherwise in the last scenes.
+
+But I will not tell you the story after all.
+
+At the beginning of this letter I meant to write just one page; but my
+generosity is like Grace's, and could not help itself. There were the
+letters to write of, and the verses! and then, you know, 'femme qui
+parle' never has done. _Let_ me hear! and I will be as brisk as a
+monument next time for variety.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
+
+How good and kind to send me these books! (The letter I say nothing
+of, according to convention: if I wrote down 'best and kindest' ...
+oh, what poorest words!) I shall tell you all about 'Pomfret,' be
+sure. Chorley talked of it, as we walked homewards together last
+night,--modestly and well, and spoke of having given away two copies
+only ... to his mother one, and the other to--Miss Barrett, and 'she
+seemed interested in the life of it, entered into his purpose in it,'
+and I listened to it all, loving Chorley for his loveability which is
+considerable at other times, and saying to myself what might run
+better in the child's couplet--'Not more than others I deserve, Though
+God has given me more'!--Given me the letter which expresses surprise
+that I shall feel these blanks between the days when I see you longer
+and longer! So am _I_ surprised--that I should have mentioned so
+obvious a matter at all; or leave unmentioned a hundred others its
+correlatives which I cannot conceive you to be ignorant of, you! When
+I spread out my riches before me, and think _what_ the hour and more
+means that you endow one with, I _do_--not to say _could_--I _do_ form
+resolutions, and say to myself--'If next time I am bidden stay away a
+FORTNIGHT, I will not reply by a word beyond the grateful assent.' I
+_do_, God knows, lay up in my heart these priceless treasures,--shall
+I tell you? I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights,
+or fancies, or feelings; in my last travel I put down on a slip of
+paper a few dates, that I might remember in England, on such a day I
+was on Vesuvius, in Pompeii, at Shelley's grave; all that should be
+kept in memory is, with _me_, best left to the brain's own process.
+But I have, from the first, recorded the date and the duration of
+every visit to you; the numbers of minutes you have given me ... and I
+put them together till they make ... nearly two days now;
+four-and-twenty-hour-long-days, that I have been _by you_--and I enter
+the room determining to get up and go sooner ... and I go away into
+the light street repenting that I went so soon by I don't know how
+many minutes--for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an
+earnest desiring to include you in myself, if that might be; to feel
+you in my very heart and hold you there for ever, through all chance
+and earthly changes!
+
+There, I had better leave off; the words!
+
+I was very glad to find myself with your brother yesterday; I like him
+very much and mean to get a friend in him--(to supply the loss of my
+friend ... Miss Barrett--which is gone, the friendship, so gone!) But
+I did not ask after you because I heard Moxon do it. Now of Landor's
+verses: I got a note from Forster yesterday telling me that he, too,
+had received a copy ... so that there is no injunction to be secret.
+So I got a copy for dear Mr. Kenyon, and, lo! what comes! I send the
+note to make you smile! I shall reply that I felt in duty bound to
+apprise you; as I did. You will observe that I go to that too facile
+gate of his on Tuesday, _my day_ ... from your house directly. The
+worst is that I have got entangled with invitations already, and must
+go out again, _hating_ it, to more than one place.
+
+I am _very_ well--quite well; yes, dearest! The pain is quite gone;
+and the inconvenience, hard on its trace. You will write to me again,
+will you not? And be as brief as your heart lets you, to me who hoard
+up your words and get remote and imperfect ideas of what ... shall it
+be written?... anger at you could mean, when I see a line blotted out;
+a _second-thoughted_ finger-tip rapidly put forth upon one of my gold
+pieces!
+
+I rather think if Warburton reviews me it will be in the _Quarterly_,
+which I know he writes for. Hanmer is a very sculpturesque passionless
+high-minded and amiable man ... this coldness, as you see it, is part
+of him. I like his poems, I think, better than you--'the Sonnets,' do
+you know them? Not 'Fra Cipolla.' See what is here, since you will not
+let me have only you to look at--this is Landor's first
+opinion--expressed to Forster--see the date! and last of all, see me
+and know me, beloved! May God bless you!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
+
+Mr. Kenyon came yesterday--and do you know when he took out those
+verses and spoke his preface and I understood what was to follow, I
+had a temptation from my familiar Devil not to say I had read them
+before--I had the temptation strong and clear. For he (Mr. K.) told me
+that your sister let him see them--.
+
+But no--My 'vade retro' prevailed, and I spoke the truth and shamed
+the devil and surprised Mr. Kenyon besides, as I could observe. Not an
+observation did he make till he was just going away half an hour
+afterwards, and then he said rather dryly ... 'And now may I ask how
+long ago it was when you first read these verses?--was it a fortnight
+ago?' It was better, I think, that I should not have made a mystery of
+such a simple thing, ... and yet I felt half vexed with myself and
+with him besides. But the verses,--how he praised them! more than I
+thought of doing ... as verses--though there is beauty and music and
+all that ought to be. Do you see clearly now that the latter lines
+refer to the combination in you,--the qualities over and above those
+held in common with Chaucer? And I have heard this morning from two or
+three of the early readers of the _Chronicle_ (I never care to see it
+till the evening) that the verses are there--so that my wishes have
+fulfilled themselves _there_ at least--strangely, for wishes of mine
+... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of
+dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and
+how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours _then_ ... _written then_,
+I mean ... or written _now_?
+
+Mr. Kenyon told me that you were to dine with him on Tuesday, and I
+took for granted, at first hearing, that you would come on Wednesday
+perhaps to me--and afterwards I saw the possibility of the two ends
+being joined without much difficulty. Still, I was not sure, before
+your letter came, how it might be.
+
+That you really are better is the best news of all--thank you for
+telling me. It will be wise not to go out _too_ much--'aequam servare
+mentem' as Landor quotes, ... in this as in the rest. Perhaps that
+worst pain was a sort of crisis ... the sharp turn of the road about
+to end ... oh, I do trust it may be so.
+
+Mr. K. wrote to Landor to the effect that it was not because he (Mr.
+K.) held you in affection, nor because the verses expressed critically
+the opinion entertained of you by all who could judge, nor because
+they praised a book with which his own name was associated ... but for
+the abstract beauty of those verses ... for _that_ reason he could not
+help naming them to Mr. Landor. All of which was repeated to me
+yesterday.
+
+Also I heard of you from George, who admired you--admired you ... as
+if you were a chancellor in _posse_, a great lawyer in _esse_--and
+then he thought you ... what he never could think a lawyer ...
+'_unassuming_.' And _you_ ... you are so kind! Only _that_ makes me
+think bitterly what I have thought before, but cannot write to-day.
+
+It was good-natured of Mr. Chorley to send me a copy of his book, and
+he sending so few--very! George who admires _you_, does not tolerate
+Mr. Chorley ... (did I tell ever?) declares that the affectation is
+'bad,' and that there is a dash of vulgarity ... which I positively
+refuse to believe, and _should_, I fancy, though face to face with the
+most vainglorious of waistcoats. How can there be vulgarity even of
+manners, with so much mental refinement? I never could believe in
+those combinations of contradictions.
+
+'An obvious matter,' you think! as obvious, as your 'green hill' ...
+which I cannot see. For the rest ... my thought upon your 'great
+_fact_' of the 'two days,' is quite different from yours ... for I
+think directly, 'So little'! so dreadfully little! What shallow earth
+for a deep root! What can be known of me in that time? 'So _there_, is
+the only good, you see, that comes from making calculations on a slip
+of paper! It is not and it cannot come to good.' I would rather look
+at my seventy-five letters--there is room to breathe in them. And this
+is my idea (_ecce_!) of monumental brevity--and _hic jacet_ at last
+
+                                                 Your E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
+
+But a word to-night, my love--for my head aches a little,--I had to
+write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit
+and think of you and get well--but I must not quite lose the word I
+counted on.
+
+So, _that_ way you will take my two days and turn them against me?
+_Oh, you!_ Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather,
+that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, _they_ had
+been planted then--and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns
+enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,--when the very rook,
+say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to
+be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do--I am not going
+to prove what _may_ be, when here it _is_, to my everlasting
+happiness.
+
+--And 'I am kind'--there again! Do I not know what you mean by that?
+Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and
+take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my
+protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you
+admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to
+give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you,
+benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to
+feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ...
+but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do?
+... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you,
+which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's
+end,--should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the
+real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and
+affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness
+does....
+
+Now, I'll tell you what it _does_ deserve, and what it shall get. Give
+me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I
+would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait--for your own sake,
+not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for
+your own sense of justice, and to _say_, so as my heart shall hear,
+that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you--all
+precious that you are--as may be given in a lock of your hair--I will
+live and die with it, and with the memory of you--this _at_ the
+_worst_! If you give me what I beg,--shall I say next Tuesday ... when
+I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think
+you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and
+remember me one day--when the power to deserve more may be greater ...
+never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So
+I can but pray, kissing your hand.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel,
+for the love's sake that it grew from.
+
+The _Chronicle_ was through Moxon, I believe--Landor had sent the
+verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I
+never in my life less cared about people's praise or blame for myself,
+and never more for its influence on _other people_ than now--I would
+stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you--yet not, after
+all, at poor Chorley's expense whom your brother, I am sure,
+unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my
+own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I
+corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother,
+differently trained, looking different ways--and for some of the
+peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good
+reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For 'Vulgarity'--NO!
+But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further
+acquaintance ... and,--woe's me--will find that 'assumption's' pertest
+self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr.
+K.'s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped
+onward far too readily.
+
+Good night, now. Am I not yours--are you not mine? And can that make
+_you_ happy too?
+
+Bless you once more and for ever.
+
+That scrap of Landor's being for no other eye than mine--I made the
+foolish comment, that there was no blotting out--made it some four or
+five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my
+idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go--but there used
+to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew
+characters--the noble languages!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
+
+But what unlawful things have I said about 'kindness'? I did not mean
+any harm--no, indeed! And as to thinking ... as to having ever
+thought, that you could 'imitate' (can this word be 'imitate'?) an
+unfelt feeling or a feeling unsupposed to be felt ... I may solemnly
+assure you that I never, never did so. 'Get up'--'imitate'!! But it
+was the contrary ... _all_ the contrary! From the beginning, now _did_
+I not believe you too much? Did I not believe you even in your
+contradiction of yourself ... in your _yes_ and _no_ on the same
+subject, ... and take the world to be turning round backwards and
+myself to have been shut up here till I grew mad, ... rather than
+disbelieve you either way? Well!--You know it as well as I can tell
+you, and I will not, any more. If I have been 'wrong,' it was not _so_
+... nor indeed _then_ ... it is not _so_, though it is _now_, perhaps.
+
+Therefore ... but wait! I never gave away what you ask me to give
+_you_, to a human being, except my nearest relatives and once or twice
+or thrice to female friends, ... never, though reproached for it; and
+it is just three weeks since I said last to an asker that I was 'too
+great a prude for such a thing'! it was best to anticipate the
+accusation!--And, prude or not, I could not--I never
+could--_something_ would not let me. And now ... what am I to do ...
+'for my own sake and not yours?' Should you have it, or not? Why I
+suppose ... _yes_. I suppose that 'for my own sense of justice and in
+order to show that I was wrong' (which is wrong--you wrote a wrong
+word there ... 'right,' you meant!) 'to show that I was _right_ and am
+no longer so,' ... I suppose you must have it, 'Oh, _You_,' ... who
+have your way in everything! Which does not mean ... Oh, vous, qui
+avez toujours raison--far from it.
+
+Also ... which does not mean that I shall give you what you ask for,
+_to-morrow_,--because I shall not--and one of my conditions is (with
+others to follow) that _not a word be said to-morrow_, you understand.
+Some day I will send it perhaps ... as you _knew_ I should ... ah, as
+you knew I should ... notwithstanding that 'getting up' ... that
+'imitation' ... of humility: as you knew _too_ well I should!
+
+Only I will not teaze you as I might perhaps; and now that your
+headache has begun again--the headache again: the worse than headache!
+See what good my wishes do! And try to understand that if I speak of
+my being 'wrong' now in relation to you ... of my being right before,
+and wrong now, ... I mean wrong for your sake, and not for mine ...
+wrong in letting you come out into the desert here to me, you whose
+place is by the waters of Damascus. But I need not tell you over
+again--you _know_. May God bless you till to-morrow and past it for
+ever. Mr. Kenyon brought me your note yesterday to read about the
+'order in the button-hole'--ah!--or 'oh, _you_,' may I not re-echo? It
+enrages me to think of Mr. Forster; publishing too as he does, at a
+moment, the very sweepings of Landor's desk! Is the motive of the
+reticence to be looked for somewhere among the cinders?--Too bad it
+is. So, till to-morrow! and you shall not be 'kind' any more.
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+But how, 'a _foolish_ comment'? Good and true rather! And I admired
+the _writing_[1] ... worthy of the reeds of Jordan!
+
+[Footnote 1: Mr. Browning's letter is written in an unusually bold
+hand.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Thursday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
+
+How are you? and Miss Bayley's visit yesterday, and Mr. K.'s
+to-day--(He told me he should see you this morning--and _I_ shall pass
+close by, having to be in town and near you,--but only the thought
+will reach you and be with you--) tell me all this, dearest.
+
+How kind Mr. Kenyon was last night and the day before! He neither
+wonders nor is much vexed, I dare believe--and I write now these few
+words to say so--My heart is set on next Thursday, remember ... and
+the prize of Saturday! Oh, dearest, believe for truth's sake, that I
+WOULD most frankly own to any fault, any imperfection in the beginning
+of my love of you; in the pride and security of this present stage it
+has reached--I _would_ gladly learn, by the full lights now, what an
+insufficient glimmer it grew from, ... but there _never has been
+change_, only development and increased knowledge and strengthened
+feeling--I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and
+become yours for ever. God bless you, and make me thankful!
+
+And you _will_ give me _that_? What shall save me from wreck: but
+truly? How must I feel to you!
+
+                                                  Yours R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
+
+Now you must not blame me--you must not. To make a promise is one
+thing, and to keep it, quite another: and the conclusion you see 'as
+from a tower.' Suppose I had an oath in heaven somewhere ... near to
+'coma Berenices,' ... never to give you what you ask for! ... would
+not such an oath be stronger than a mere half promise such as I sent
+you a few hours ago? Admit that it would--and that I am not to blame
+for saying now ... (listen!) that I _never can_ nor _will give you
+this thing_;--only that I will, if you please, exchange it for another
+thing--you understand. _I_ too will avoid being 'assuming'; I will not
+pretend to be generous, no, nor 'kind.' It shall be pure merchandise
+or nothing at all. Therefore determine!--remembering always how our
+'ars poetica,' after Horace, recommends 'dare et petere
+vicissim'--which is making a clatter of pedantry to take advantage of
+the noise ... because perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say this to
+you, and perhaps I _am_! ... yet say it none the less.
+
+And ... less lightly ... if you have right and reason on your side,
+may I not have a little on mine too? And shall I not care, do you
+think?... Think!
+
+Then there is another reason for me, entirely mine. You have come to
+me as a dream comes, as the best dreams come ... dearest--and so there
+is need to me of 'a sign' to know the difference between dream and
+vision--and _that_ is my completest reason, my own reason--you have
+none like it; none. A ticket to know the horn-gate from the ivory, ...
+ought I not to have it? Therefore send it to me before I send you
+anything, and if possible by that Lewisham post which was the most
+frequent bringer of your letters until these last few came, and which
+reaches me at eight in the evening when all the world is at dinner and
+my solitude most certain. Everything is so still then, that I have
+heard the footsteps of a letter of yours ten doors off ... or more,
+perhaps. Now beware of imagining from this which I say, that there is
+a strict police for my correspondence ... (it is not so--) nor that I
+do not like hearing from you at any and every hour: it _is_ so. Only I
+would make the smoothest and sweetest of roads for ... and you
+_understand_, and do not _imagine_ beyond.
+
+_Tuesday evening._--What is written is written, ... all the above: and
+it is forbidden to me to write a word of what I could write down here
+... forbidden for good reasons. So I am silent on _conditions_ ...
+those being ... first ... that you never do such things again ... no,
+you must not and shall not.... I _will not let it be_: and secondly,
+that you try to hear the unspoken words, and understand how your gift
+will remain with me while _I_ remain ... they need not be said--just
+as _it_ need not have been so beautiful, for that. The beauty drops
+'full fathom five' into the deep thought which covers it. So I study
+my Machiavelli to contrive the possibility of wearing it, without
+being put to the question violently by all the curiosity of all my
+brothers;--the questions 'how' ... 'what' ... 'why' ... put round and
+edgeways. They are famous, some of them, for asking questions. I say
+to them--'well: how many more questions?' And now ... for _me_--_have_
+I said a word?--_have_ I not been obedient? And by rights and in
+justice, there should have been a reproach ... if there could!
+Because, friendship or more than friendship, Pisa or no Pisa, it was
+unnecessary altogether from you to me ... but I have done, and you
+shall not be teazed.
+
+_Wednesday._--Only ... I persist in the view of the _other_ question.
+This will not do for the '_sign_,' ... this, which, so far from being
+qualified for disproving a dream, is the beautiful image of a dream in
+itself ... _so_ beautiful: and with the very shut eyelids, and the
+"little folding of the hands to sleep." You see at a glance it will
+not do. And so--
+
+Just as one might be interrupted while telling a fairy-tale, ... in
+the midst of the "and so's" ... just _so_, I have been interrupted by
+the coming in of Miss Bayley, and here she has been sitting for nearly
+two hours, from twelve to two nearly, and I like her, do you know. Not
+only she talks well, which was only a thing to expect, but she seems
+to _feel_ ... to have great sensibility--_and_ her kindness to me ...
+kindness of manner and words and expression, all together ... quite
+touched me.--I did not think of her being so loveable a person. Yet it
+was kind and generous, her proposition about Italy; (did I tell you
+how she made it to me through Mr. Kenyon long ago--when I was a mere
+stranger to her?) the proposition to go there with me herself. It was
+quite a grave, earnest proposal of hers--which was one of the reasons
+why I could not even _wish_ not to see her to-day. Because you see, it
+was a tremendous degree of experimental generosity, to think of going
+to Italy by sea with an invalid stranger, "seule _a_ seule." And she
+was wholly in earnest, wholly. Is there not good in the world after
+all?
+
+Tell me how you are, for I am not at ease about you--You were not well
+even yesterday, I thought. If this goes on ... but it mustn't go
+on--oh, it must not. May God bless us more!
+
+Do not fancy, in the meantime, that you stay here 'too long' for any
+observation that can be made. In the first place there is nobody to
+'observe'--everybody is out till seven, except the one or two who will
+not observe if I tell them not. My sisters are glad when you come,
+because it is a gladness of mine, ... they observe. I have a great
+deal of liberty, to have so many chains; we all have, in this house:
+and though the liberty has melancholy motives, it saves some daily
+torment, and _I_ do not complain of it for one.
+
+May God bless you! Do not forget me. Say how you are. What good can I
+do you with all my thoughts, when you keep unwell? See!--Facts are
+against fancies. As when I would not have the lamp lighted yesterday
+because it seemed to make it later, and you proved directly that it
+would not make it _earlier_, by getting up and going away!
+
+                                        Wholly and ever your
+
+                                             E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                          [Post-mark, November 28, 1845.][1]
+
+Take it, dearest; what I am forced to think you mean--and take _no
+more_ with it--for I gave all to give long ago--I am all yours--and
+now, _mine_; give me _mine_ to be happy with!
+
+You will have received my note of yesterday.--I am glad you are
+satisfied with Miss Bayley, whom I, too, thank ... that is, sympathize
+with, ... (not wonder at, though)--for her intention.... Well, may it
+all be for best--here or at Pisa, you are my blessing and life.
+
+... How all considerate you are, _you_ that are the kind, kind one!
+The post arrangement I will remember--to-day, for instance, will this
+reach you at 8? I shall be with you then, in thought. 'Forget
+you!'--_What_ does that mean, dearest?
+
+And I might have stayed longer and you let me go. What does _that_
+mean, also tell me? Why, I make up my mind to go, always, like a man,
+and praise myself as I get through it--as when one plunges into the
+cold water--ONLY ... ah, _that_ too is no more a merit than any other
+thing I do ... there is the reward, the last and best! Or is it the
+'lure'?
+
+I would not be ashamed of my soul if it might be shown you,--it is
+wholly grateful, conscious of you.
+
+But another time, do not let me wrong myself _so_! Say, 'one minute
+more.'
+
+On Monday?--I am _much_ better--and, having got free from an
+engagement for Saturday, shall stay quietly here and think the post
+never intending to come--for you will not let me wait longer?
+
+Shall I dare write down a grievance of my heart, and not offend you?
+Yes, trusting in the right of my love--you tell me, sweet, here in the
+letter, 'I do not look so well'--and sometimes, I 'look better' ...
+_how do you know_? When I first saw you--_I saw your eyes_--since
+then, _you_, it should appear, see mine--but I only _know_ yours are
+there, and have to use that memory as if one carried dried flowers
+about when fairly inside the garden-enclosure. And while I resolve,
+and hesitate, and resolve again to complain of this--(kissing your
+foot ... not boldly complaining, nor rudely)--while I have this on my
+mind, on my heart, ever since that May morning ... can it be?
+
+--No, nothing _can be_ wrong now--you will never call me 'kind' again,
+in that sense, you promise! Nor think 'bitterly' of my kindness, that
+word!
+
+Shall I _see_ you on Monday?
+
+God bless you my dearest--I see her now--and _here_ and _now_ the eyes
+open, wide _enough_, and I will kiss them--_how_ gratefully!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         R.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: Envelope endorsed by E.B.B. 'hair.']
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, December 1, 1845.]
+
+It comes at eight o'clock--the post says eight ... _I_ say nearer half
+past eight ... it _comes_--and I thank you, thank you, as I can. Do
+you remember the purple lock of a king on which hung the fate of a
+city? _I_ do! And I need not in conscience--because this one here did
+not come to me by treason--'ego et rex meus,' on the contrary, do
+fairly give and take.
+
+I meant at first only to send you what is in the ring ... which, by
+the way, will not fit you I know--(not certainly in the finger which
+it was meant for ...) as it would not Napoleon before you--but can
+easily be altered to the right size.... I meant at first to send you
+only what was in the ring: but your fashion is best so you shall have
+it both ways. Now don't say a word on Monday ... nor at all. As for
+the ring, recollect that I am forced to feel blindfold into the outer
+world, and take what is nearest ... by chance, not choice ... or it
+might have been better--a little better--perhaps. The _best_ of it is
+that it's the colour of your blue flowers. Now you will not say a
+word--I trust to you.
+
+It is enough that you should have said these others, I think. Now _is_
+it just of you? isn't it hard upon me? And if the charge is true,
+whose fault is it, pray? I have been ashamed and vexed with myself
+fifty times for being so like a little girl, ... for seeming to have
+'affectations'; and all in vain: 'it was stronger than I,' as the
+French say. And for _you_ to complain! As if Haroun Alraschid after
+cutting off a head, should complain of the want of an
+obeisance!--Well!--I smile notwithstanding. Nobody can help
+smiling--both for my foolishness which is great, I confess, though
+somewhat exaggerated in your statement--(because if it was quite as
+bad as you say, you know, I never should have _seen you_ ... and _I
+have_!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very
+preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you
+know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No--it has not
+been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with
+both eyes wide open--only that by a supernatural influence they won't
+stay open with _you_ as they are used to do with other people ... so
+now I tell you. And for the rest I promise nothing at all--as how can
+I, when it is quite beyond my control--and you have not improved my
+capabilities ... do you think you have? Why what nonsense we have come
+to--we, who ought to be 'talking Greek!' said Mr. Kenyon.
+
+Yes--he came and talked of you, and told me how you had been speaking
+of ... me; and I have been thinking how I should have been proud of it
+a year ago, and how I could half scold you for it now. Ah yes--and Mr.
+Kenyon told me that you had spoken exaggerations--such
+exaggerations!--Now should there not be some scolding ... some?
+
+But how did you expect Mr. Kenyon to 'wonder' at _you_, or be 'vexed'
+with _you_? That would have been strange surely. You are and always
+have been a chief favourite in that quarter ... appreciated, praised,
+loved, I think.
+
+While I write, a letter from America is put into my hands, and having
+read it through with shame and confusion of face ... not able to help
+a smile though notwithstanding, ... I send it to you to show how you
+have made me behave!--to say nothing of my other offences to the kind
+people at Boston--and to a stray gentleman in Philadelphia who is to
+perform a pilgrimage next year, he says, ... to visit the Holy Land
+and your E.B.B. I was naughty enough to take _that_ letter to be a
+circular ... for the address of various 'Europ_a_ians.' In any case
+... just see how I have behaved! and if it has not been worse than ...
+not opening one's eyes!--Judge. Really and gravely I am ashamed--I
+mean as to Mr. Mathews, who has been an earnest, kind friend to
+me--and I do mean to behave better. I say _that_ to prevent your
+scolding, you know. And think of Mr. Poe, with that great Roman
+justice of his (if not rather American!), dedicating a book to one and
+abusing one in the preface of the same. He wrote a review of me in
+just that spirit--the two extremes of laudation and reprehension,
+folded in on one another. You would have thought that it had been
+written by a friend and foe, each stark mad with love and hate, and
+writing the alternate paragraphs--a most curious production indeed.
+
+And here I shall end. I have been waiting ... waiting for what does
+not come ... the ring ... sent to have the hair put in; but it won't
+come (now) until too late for the post, and you must hear from me
+before Monday ... you ought to have heard to-day. It has not been my
+fault--I have waited. Oh these people--who won't remember that it is
+possible to be out of patience! So I send you my letter now ... and
+what is in the paper now ... and the rest, you shall have after
+Monday. And you _will not say a word_ ... not then ... not at all!--I
+trust you. And may God bless you.
+
+If ever you care less for me--I do not say it in distrust of you ... I
+trust you wholly--but you are a man, and free to care less, ... and if
+ever you _do_ ... why in that case you will destroy, burn, ... do all
+but send back ... enough is said for you to understand.
+
+May God bless you. You are _best_ to me--best ... as I see ... in the
+world--and so, dearest aright to
+
+                                                 Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Finished on Saturday evening. Oh--this thread of silk--And to post!!
+After all you must wait till Tuesday. I have no silk within reach and
+shall miss the post. Do forgive me.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                           Saturday Evening.
+
+This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a
+few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ...
+and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk
+if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks
+meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ...
+fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of
+my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper
+fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after
+unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!)--and now I have
+silk to tie fast with ... to tie a 'nodus' ... 'dignus' of the
+celestial interposition--and a new packet shall be ready to go to you
+directly.
+
+At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me
+this week, was forgotten, (not by _me_) forgotten, and detained, so,
+from the post--a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to
+me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.
+
+For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to
+stay. In the first place you were keeping your father 'in a maze,' as
+you said yourself--and then, even without that, I never know what
+o'clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a
+dream--which I do--time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go
+forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I
+leave it in the drawer--and the clocks all round strike out of
+hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another
+in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.
+
+Till Monday then! I send the 'Ricordi' to take care of the rest ... of
+mine. It is a touching story--and there is an impracticable nobleness
+from end to end in the spirit of it. How _slow_ (to the ear and mind)
+that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet
+Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli's prose can walk and strike
+as well as float and faint.
+
+The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps--
+
+Now you will not say a word. My excuse is that you had nothing to
+remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how
+much too much!
+
+                                      If I could be too much
+
+                                           Your
+
+                                                E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday.
+                              [Post-mark, December 2, 1845.]
+
+I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My
+love--no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to
+the end of it the vibration now struck will extend--I will live and
+die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair--comforting me,
+blessing me.
+
+Let me write to-morrow--when I think on all you have been and are to
+me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper
+words that come seem vainer than ever--To-morrow I will write.
+
+May God bless you, my own, my precious--
+
+                                           I am all your own
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger
+_you_ intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one
+is less liable to observation and comment.
+
+Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say
+anything?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]
+
+See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a
+good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it
+well done, or badly--there are you, leading me up and onward, in his
+review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go
+together--be read together. In itself this is nothing to _you_, dear
+poet--but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has
+pleased me very much--_does_ it not please you?--I thought I was to
+figure in that cold _Quarterly_ all by myself, (for he writes for
+it)--but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has
+no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are
+pleased!
+
+There was no writing yesterday for me--nor will there be much to-day.
+In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what
+you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise--at others, I
+rest on you, and feel _all_ well, all _best_ ... now, for one
+instance, even that phrase of the _possibility_ 'and what is to
+follow,'--even _that_ I cannot except against--I am happy, contented;
+too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just
+sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping
+of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'Yes--I do promise
+you'--yet it is some solace to--No--I will _not_ even couple the
+promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they
+care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts:
+yet I feel so sure of _you_, so safe and confident in you! If any of
+it had been _my_ work, my own ... distrust and foreboding had pursued
+me from the beginning; but all is _yours_--you crust me round with
+gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you
+transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first
+instance, but the choice once made!... So I rest on you, for life, for
+death, beloved--beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct
+miraculous gift of God to me--that is my solemn belief; may I be
+thankful!
+
+I am anxious to hear from you ... when am I not?--but _not_ before the
+American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the
+visitor on Monday--and if &c. _what_ did he remark?--And what is
+right or wrong with Saturday--is it to be mine?
+
+Bless you, dearest--now and for ever--words cannot say how much I am
+your own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
+
+No Mr. Kenyon after all--not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at
+the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter
+from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come--but she
+won't come on Saturday.... I shall 'provide'--she may as well (and
+better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr.
+Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to
+dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up
+suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter
+_our_ arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by,
+remember, and there's a Saturday to follow Monday ... and I should
+understand at a word, or apart from a word.
+
+Just as _you_ understand how to 'take me with guile,' when you tell me
+that anything in me can have any part in making you happy ... you, who
+can say such words and call them 'vain words.' Ah, well! If I only
+knew certainly, ... more certainly than the thing may be known by
+either me or you, ... that nothing in me could have any part in making
+you _un_happy, ... ah, would it not be enough ... _that_ knowledge ...
+to content me, to overjoy me? but _that_ lies too high and out of
+reach, you see, and one can't hope to get at it except by the ladder
+Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate
+of Heaven afterwards.
+
+_Wednesday._--In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and
+am promised another to-day. How ... I was going to say 'kind' and
+pull down the thunders ... how _un_kind ... will _that_ do? ... how
+good you are to me--how dear you must be! Dear--dearest--if I feel
+that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain
+knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman,
+can I help it? no--certainly.
+
+I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand
+you, ... comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and
+combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better
+otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the ... I mean that to
+understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own
+favour ... mine.
+
+Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold,
+you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by
+the roadside [Greek: apedilos] like the startled sea nymph in
+AEschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a
+certain tract of ground--never takes a step there unled! and never (I
+write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of
+your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the
+possibility of your caring _more_ for me ... never! That you should
+_continue_ to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction.
+So, when you spoke of a 'strengthened feeling,' judge how I listened
+with my heart--judge!
+
+'Luria' is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the
+world; that, I foresee.... And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which
+grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its
+own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with
+Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more
+pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be
+chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the
+versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a
+few lines here and there. But I shall write more of 'Luria,'--and
+well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.
+
+May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly.
+Yes,--I thought of the greater safety from 'comment'--it is best in
+every way.
+
+I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to
+me,
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
+
+Why of course I am pleased--I should have been pleased last year, for
+the vanity's sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as
+that vice of vanity goes ... shall I tell you?... I would infinitely
+prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude,
+and supremacy, apart from me or any one else, ... this, as far as my
+vice of vanity goes, ... and because, vainer I am of my poet than of
+my poems ... _pour cause_. But since, according to the _Quarterly_
+regime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am
+glad, pleased, that it should be with myself:--and since I was to be
+there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with
+_you_,--oh, of course I am pleased!--I am pleased that the 'names
+should be read together' as you say, ... and am happily safe from the
+apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about 'my leading _you_'
+&c. ... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea's
+occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I
+'find fault' with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an
+ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!)
+_can_ it be 'to your surprise?' _can_ it? Ought you to say such
+things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and
+inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The
+qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what
+you take it to be--we had better not examine it too nearly. You never
+will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those
+words--and not any in their likeness.
+
+Also ... nothing is _my_ work ... if you please! What an omen you take
+in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it--for
+everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God's work and
+yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope--and indeed I exclaim to
+myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems
+to me (as I say over and over ... I say it to my own thoughts
+oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, ...
+the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and
+only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.
+
+Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it
+was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and
+took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before
+he went. I answered with my usual 'no,' like a wild Indian--whereupon
+he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation ...
+'mortification' was one of the words used, I remember, ... that I grew
+ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or
+six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well!--he never came.
+Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and
+had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and
+quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me
+for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the
+punishment effective, ... for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt
+my danger to be passed--and now of course, I have no scruples.... I
+may be as capricious as I please, ... may I not? Not that I ask you.
+It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with
+Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world
+with those two. Only the miracle is that _you_ should be behind the
+enclosure--within it ... and so!--
+
+_That_ is _my_ side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder, ...
+as _I_ see it!--But there are greater things than these.
+
+Speaking of the portrait of you in the 'Spirit of the Age' ... which
+is not like ... no!--which has not your character, in a line of it ...
+something in just the forehead and eyes and hair, ... but even _that_,
+thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you...!
+speaking of that portrait ... shall I tell you?--Mr. Horne had the
+goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads
+which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed
+after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau's
+... because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some
+kind letters--and for the rest, Wordsworth's, Carlyle's, Tennyson's
+and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of
+shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed
+at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ...
+(there is the nail, under Wordsworth--) and then pulled down
+Tennyson's in a fit of justice,--because I would not have his hung up
+and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the
+drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find
+and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my
+'absurdity' to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being
+obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening
+the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like--and I
+knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, 'Rather
+like!'
+
+By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not
+come: when he told me that he could not see me 'for a week or a
+fortnight,' he meant it, I suppose.
+
+So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America--the
+letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.
+
+It is not so much a look of 'ferocity,' ... as you say, ... in that
+head, as of _expression by intention_. Several people have said of it
+what nobody would say of you ... 'How affected-looking.' Which is too
+strong--but it is not like you, in any way, and there's the truth.
+
+So until Saturday. I read 'Luria' and feel the life in him. But _walk_
+and do not _work_! do you?
+
+                                                 Wholly your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
+
+Well, I did see your brother last night ... and very wisely neither
+spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that 'I hoped
+you were well'--from the sudden feeling that I must say _something_ of
+you--not pretend indifference about you _now_ ... and from the
+impossibility of saying the _full_ of what I might; because other
+people were by--and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied
+the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So,
+you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But
+it all hangs together; speaking of you,--to you,--writing to you--all
+is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to
+say and to write--or is it not the natural consequence? If these
+vehicles of feelings sufficed--_there_ would be the end!--And that my
+feeling for you should end!... For the rest, the headache which kept
+away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is
+unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable
+endeavours, all my power of face went _a qui de droit_--
+
+Did your brother tell you ... yes, I think ... of the portentous book,
+lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on
+the appearance of 'Ion'?--But how under the B's in the Index came
+'Miss Barrett' and, woe's me, 'R.B.'! I don't know when I have had so
+ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly _forgotten_ letter, in the
+as thoroughly disused hand-writing, in the ... I fear ... still as
+completely obsolete feeling--no, not so bad as that--but at first
+there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend--it is
+truly not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold
+them up clean and dry as if they came _so_ from all you now see, which
+is nothing at all ... like the Chinese Air-plant! Do you understand
+this? And surely 'Ion' is a _very_, very beautiful and noble
+conception, and finely executed,--a beautiful work--what has come
+after, has lowered it down by grade after grade ... it don't stand
+apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is _built up_ to by other
+attempts; but the great difference is in myself. Another maker of
+another 'Ion,' finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not
+find _that me_, so to be behaved to, so to be honoured--though he
+should have all the good will! Ten years ago!
+
+And ten years hence!
+
+Always understand that you do _not_ take me as I was at the beginning
+... with a crowd of loves to give to _something_ and so get rid of
+their pain and burden. I have _known_ what that ends in--a handful of
+anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach
+you its nature, as well as whole heaps--and I know what most of the
+pleasures of this world are--so that I _can_ be surer of myself, and
+make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of
+objects of admiration or ambition _yet_ to become acquainted with. You
+say, 'I am a man and may change'--I answer, yes--but, while I hold my
+senses, only change for the _presumable_ better ... not for the
+_experienced worst_.
+
+Here is my Uncle's foot on the stair ... his knock hurried the last
+sentence--here he is by me!--Understand what this would have led to,
+how you would have been _proved logically_ my own, best, extreme want,
+my life's end--YES; dearest! Bless you ever--
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
+
+Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for
+the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered
+how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the
+lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the
+going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together,
+which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose.
+Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be
+unnecessarily 'perplext in the extreme' where to spend the time before
+... _five_, ... shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I
+can easily explain if an observation should be made ... only it will
+not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the
+head of the house, not until seven ... as I told you. George thought
+it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd's yesterday, just to see the
+author of 'Paracelsus' dance the Polka ... should I not tell you?
+
+I am vexed by another thing which he tells _me_--vexed, if amused a
+little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the
+'Autography'--now _isn't_ it absurd? And for neither you nor George to
+have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd
+too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now,
+I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately
+repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when
+I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr.
+Serjeant Talfourd sent then his 'Ion' to _me_, he did it in mere
+good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my
+'Prometheus' at the moment, and of course caring no more for my
+'opinion' than for the rest of me--and it was excessively bad taste in
+me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I
+had been competent to say it. Ah well!--you see how it is, and that I
+am vexed _you_ should have read it, ... as George says you did ... he
+laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by
+crying aloud against the editor of the 'Autography'! Surely such a
+thing was never done before ... even by an author in the last stage of
+a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of
+conventional flatteries, ... lettered in so many volumes, bound in
+green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one's own
+particular private public,--is it not a miracle of vanity ... neither
+more nor less?
+
+I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity
+... _mine_!) to send Landor's verses to America ... yours--so they
+will be in the American papers.... I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking
+to him of your last number of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' and the verses
+came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first
+time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of
+you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure
+disinterestedness, ... purely because your name belonged to my country
+and to her literature, ... and how I have a sort of reward at this
+present, in being able to write what I please without anyone's saying
+'it is a new fancy.' As for the Americans, they have 'a zeal without
+knowledge' for poetry. There is more love for _verse_ among them than
+among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their
+choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is
+said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep
+down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to
+understand _you_ sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the
+critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort
+in these questions is, that there can be _no_ question, except between
+the sooner and the later--a little sooner, and a little later: but
+when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to
+ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his
+waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question ... and I like that--do
+not _you_?
+
+_Monday._--Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a
+finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in
+disavowing our own letters of old on 'Ion'--Mr. Talfourd's collection
+goes to prove too much, I think--and you, a little too much, when you
+draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes--I
+perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards
+a 'presumably better' thing--but I do not so well understand how any
+presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, ... I do not
+indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you
+seen the 'unicorns'?--Which is only a pebble thrown down into your
+smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of
+it. And as to the 'Ion' letters, I am delighted that you have anything
+to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play--there
+is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, ... and
+if he had never written another to show what was _not_ in him, this
+might have been 'predicated' of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a
+noble work--and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your
+letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances,
+would have been less noble yourself not to have done so--only, how I
+agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry
+roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste--now isn't it? ...
+though you do not use that word.
+
+I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have
+something to tell you, of him at least.
+
+And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me,
+and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not
+been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment,
+inasmuch as _he knew perfectly that you had just left me_. My sisters
+told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off
+on Saturday, with a, ... '_So_ I am to meet Mr. Browning?' But he made
+no observation afterwards--none: and if he heard what you said at all
+(which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on
+'Yorick's' part when the 'last chapter' was too much with him.
+
+I have written about 'Luria' in another place--you shall have the
+papers when I have read through the play. How different this living
+poetry is from the polished rhetoric of 'Ion.' The man and the statue
+are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing--it is
+here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of '_taste_,' but of
+sight and feeling.
+
+As to the 'Venice' it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical
+sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say
+more?--of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception.
+Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and
+the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.
+
+Do not write 'Luria' if your head is uneasy--and you cannot say that
+it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do
+what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be
+tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the
+necessary exercise ... this, you will do--I entreat you to do it.
+
+May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I
+say ... as I am yours--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]
+
+Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did _not_ read _either_ of
+your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read
+one word of them--and hear why. When your brother and I took the book
+between us in wonderment at the notion--we turned to the index, in
+large text-hand, and stopped at 'Miss B.'--and _he_ indeed read them,
+or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my
+short-sighted eye--all _I_ saw was the _faint_ small characters--and,
+do you know ... I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor
+a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said
+was most unfairly exposed to view!--so I was silent, and lost you (in
+that)--then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of
+vexation it would give you. _All_ I know of the notes, that _one_ is
+addressed to Talfourd in the third person--and when I had run through
+my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR)--I was sick of the book altogether.
+You are generous to me--but, to say the truth, I might have remembered
+the most justifying circumstance in my case ... which was, that my own
+'Paracelsus,' printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure
+as 'Ion' a brilliant success--for, until just before.... Ah, really I
+forget!--but I know that until Forster's notice in the _Examiner_
+appeared, _every_ journal that thought worth while to allude to the
+poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think,
+with the _Athenaeum_ which _then_ made haste to say, a few days after
+its publication, 'that it was not without talent but spoiled by
+obscurity and only an imitation of--Shelley'!--something to this
+effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their 'Library
+Table' notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of
+what the 'craft' had in store for me--since my publisher and I had
+fairly to laugh at _his_ 'Book'--(quite of another kind than the
+Serjeant's)--in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers
+and the like--seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied
+with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went:
+but Forster's notice altered a good deal--which I have to recollect
+for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so
+_utter_--you remember the world's-wonder 'Ion' made,--that I was
+determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I
+really _was not_--and so!--
+
+But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing
+me good for another than yours?
+
+Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily
+over it? _Why_ must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else
+did or could, to do well--concern yourself with what might be done by
+any good, kind ministrant _only_ fit for such offices? Not that I
+_feel_, even, more bound to you for them--they have their weight, I
+_know_ ... but _what_ weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do
+not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: _you_ know me!--and
+_they_ know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of
+what _you_ are to me--if you ... well, but that _will_ follow; if I do
+greater things one day--what shall they serve for, what range
+themselves under of right?--
+
+Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems--and, I believe, a
+newspaper, 'when time was,' about the 'Blot in the Scutcheon'--and
+also, through Moxon--(I _believe_ it was Mr. M.)--a proposition for
+reprinting--to which I assented of course--and there was an end to the
+matter.
+
+And might I have stayed _till five_?--dearest, I will never ask for
+more than you give--but I feel every single sand of the gold showers
+... spite of what I say above! I _have_ an invitation for Thursday
+which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such
+liberty)--but _now_....
+
+Something I will _say_! 'Polka,' forsooth!--one lady whose _head_
+could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!--But I talked a
+little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that
+he is yours.
+
+So, _Thursday_,--thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go
+out. This week I have done nothing to 'Luria'--is it that my _ring_ is
+gone? There surely _is_ something to forgive in me--for that shameful
+business--or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you _did_
+forgive me.
+
+                         God bless my own, only love--ever--
+
+                              Yours wholly
+
+                                   R.B.
+
+N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript
+wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in
+shape--cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did
+my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly
+_compartmented_, to have always about him, so that the _next such coin
+he picked_ up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place
+of safety ... his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the
+same. I saw the box--and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.
+
+_Parallel._ R.B. having found an unicorn....
+
+Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for
+more--having exhausted my stock.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Evening
+                             [Post-mark, December 10, 1845.]
+
+It was right of you to write ... (now see what jangling comes of not
+using the fit words.... I said 'right,' not to say 'kind') ... right
+of you to write to me to-day--and I had begun to be disappointed
+already because the post _seemed_ to be past, when suddenly the knock
+brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not 'kind' ...
+then _kindest_ ... will that do better? Perhaps.
+
+Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again--and
+I, I answered at random ... 'at the end of the week--Thursday or
+Friday'--which did not prevent another question about 'what we were
+consulting about.' He said that he 'must have you,' and had written to
+beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring
+something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days
+with him. Oh, my disingenuousness!--Then he talked again of 'Saul.' A
+true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he
+says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his
+dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it
+reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl
+and life. Quite ill he took it of me the 'not expecting him to like it
+so much' and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt
+it), that I 'never understood anybody to have any sensibility except
+myself.' Wasn't it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has
+caught some sort of evil spirit from your 'Saul' perhaps; though
+admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do _you_
+remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and
+that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a
+great lyrical work--now remember. And forget 'Luria' ... if you are
+better forgetting. And forget _me_ ... _when_ you are happier
+forgetting. I say _that_ too.
+
+So your idea of an unicorn is--one horn broken off. And you a
+poet!--one horn broken off--or hid in the blackthorn hedge!--
+
+Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when
+they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the
+thunder-cloud! I don't remember the _Athenaeum_, but can well believe
+that it said what you say. The _Athenaeum_ admires only what gods, men
+and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity--mark it, as a
+general rule! The good, they see--the great escapes them. Dare to
+breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and
+you are 'put down' and instructed how to be like other people. By the
+way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write
+'peoples,' on pain of writing what is obsolete--and these the teachers
+of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of
+it? An imitation of Shelley!--when if 'Paracelsus' was anything it was
+the expression of a new mind, as all might see--as _I_ saw, let me be
+proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by 'Ion.'
+
+Ah, indeed if I could 'rake and hoe' ... or even pick up weeds along
+the walk, ... which is the work of the most helpless children, ... if
+I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for
+'shining' ... shining ... when there is not so much light in me as to
+do 'carpet work' by, why let anyone in the world, _except you_, tell
+me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied
+astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a
+dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so.--
+
+And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will
+not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having
+come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do
+not hear from her, and my precautions are 'watched out,' May God bless
+you always.
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+But no--I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except
+in _me_, for not being right in my meaning?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 12, 1845.]
+
+And now, my heart's love, I am waiting to hear from you; my heart is
+_full_ of you. When I try to remember what I said yesterday, _that_
+thought, of what fills my heart--only _that_ makes me bear with the
+memory.... I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words _must_
+have come _from_ thence if not bearing up to you all that is
+there--and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and
+forgive, and _wait_ for the one day which I will never say to myself
+cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel--more of it--or _some_ of
+it--for now nothing is spoken.
+
+My all-beloved--
+
+Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I
+spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly
+_expect_ of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as
+was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name _any_ conditions
+possible for a human will to submit to--there is no imaginable
+condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully
+bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this--but so, also
+do you know _more_ ... and yet 'I may tire of you'--'may forget you'!
+
+I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the
+things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride
+in you--that nothing _but_ that love could balance that pride--and
+that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as
+well; yes, my own--I shall follow your fame,--and, better than fame,
+the good you do--in the world--and, if you please, it shall all be
+mine--as your hand, as your eyes--
+
+I will write and pray it from you into a promise ... and your promises
+I live upon.
+
+May God bless you! your R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Friday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 13, 1845.]
+
+Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a
+day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when
+I cannot help it ... always when I cannot help it--you could not
+blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is
+distrust, it is not of _you_, dearest of all!--but of myself
+rather:--it is not doubt _of_ you, but _for_ you. From the beginning I
+have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits
+fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having
+known me:--it is for _you_ I fear, whenever I fear:--and if you were
+less to me, ... _should_ I fear do you think?--if you were to me only
+what I am to myself for instance, ... if your happiness were only as
+precious as my own in my own eyes, ... should I fear, do you think,
+_then_? Think, and do not blame me.
+
+To tell you to 'forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you,'
+... (was it not _that_, I said?) proved more affection than might go
+in smoother words.... I could prove the truth of _that_ out of my
+heart.
+
+And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine--my fear will not
+cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all
+to me ... all: more than I used to take for all when I looked round
+the world, ... almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams.
+You stand in between me and not merely the living who stood closest,
+but between me and the closer graves, ... and I reproach myself for
+this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different
+thing.
+
+As to unfavourable influences, ... I can speak of them quietly, having
+foreseen them from the first, ... and it is true, I have been thinking
+since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here,
+and _should_, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power
+would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two
+affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties,
+I feel, ... since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all.
+For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil,--ah, you
+do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the
+side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder--and
+I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with--it is
+impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing
+and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved
+enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the
+meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so
+many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors,
+but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure:--and then, the
+one person, by a curious anomaly, _never_ draws an inference of this
+order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand,
+point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours--and so it is,
+at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.
+
+I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with
+your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I
+cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be
+grateful to you.--
+
+But for the paper--no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a
+prepared apology for something wrong. And besides--the apology would
+be nothing but the offence in another form--unless you said it was all
+a mistake--(_will_ you, again?)--that it was all a mistake and you
+were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said _that_, it would
+be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than
+nothing: and would not save me--which you were thinking of, I
+know--would not save me the least of the stripes. For
+'conditions'--now I will tell you what I said once in a jest....
+
+'If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal
+descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of
+good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other'--?
+
+'Why even _then_,' said my sister Arabel, 'it would not _do_.' And she
+was right, and we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of
+the will--and one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor
+Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible
+natures, which hers is indeed; beginning with implicit obedience, and
+ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where
+money is wanted, and where the dependence is total--see! And when
+once, in the case of the one dearest to me; when just at the last he
+was involved in the same grief, and I attempted to make over my
+advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know--_I_ did not
+want the money, and could buy nothing with it so good as his
+happiness,--) why then, my hands were seized and tied--and then and
+there, in the midst of the trouble, came the end of all! I tell you
+all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you
+before? But there is no danger at present--and why ruffle this present
+with disquieting thoughts? Why not leave that future to itself? For
+me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly ... so calmly as
+to surprise myself at intervals--and yet I know the reason of the
+calmness well.
+
+For Mr. Kenyon--dear Mr. Kenyon--he will speak the softest of words,
+if any--only he will think privately that you are foolish and that I
+am ungenerous, but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.
+
+There is another thing, of more consequence than _his_ thoughts, which
+is often in my mind to ask you of--but there will be time for such
+questions--let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be
+ill again you will be reasonable and we both must submit to God's
+necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being
+ill, if I can help it--and in the case of a tolerably mild winter, and
+with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me--and
+then I have sunshine from _you_, which is better than Pisa's.
+
+And what more would you say? Do I not hear and understand! It seems to
+me that I do both, or why all this wonder and gratitude? If the
+devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear, ...
+would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps--but not gift enough.
+
+May God bless you always.
+
+I have put _some_ of the hair into a little locket which was given to
+me when I was a child by my favourite uncle, Papa's only brother, who
+used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, and
+was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am
+richer than my sisters--through him and his mother--and a great grief
+it was and trial, when he died a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by
+his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once
+said to me: 'Do you beware of ever loving!--If you do, you will not do
+it half: it will be for life and death.'
+
+So I put the hair into his locket, which I wear habitually, and which
+never had hair before--the natural use of it being for perfume:--and
+this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a
+prophecy.
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Monday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, December 15, 1845.]
+
+Every word you write goes to my heart and lives there: let us live so,
+and die so, if God will. I trust many years hence to begin telling you
+what I feel now;--that the beam of the light will have _reached_
+you!--meantime it _is_ here. Let me kiss your forehead, my sweetest,
+dearest.
+
+Wednesday I am waiting for--how waiting for!
+
+After all, it seems probable that there was no intentional mischief in
+that jeweller's management of the ring. The divided gold must have
+been exposed to fire--heated thoroughly, perhaps,--and what became of
+the contents then! Well, all is safe now, and I go to work again of
+course. My next act is just done--that is, _being_ done--but, what I
+did not foresee, I cannot bring it, copied, by Wednesday, as my sister
+went this morning on a visit for the week.
+
+On the matters, the others, I will not think, as you bid me,--if I can
+help, at least. But your kind, gentle, good sisters! and the provoking
+sorrow of the _right_ meaning at bottom of the wrong doing--wrong to
+itself and its plain purpose--and meanwhile, the real tragedy and
+sacrifice of a life!
+
+If you should see Mr. Kenyon, and can find if he will be disengaged on
+Wednesday evening, I shall be glad to go in that case.
+
+But I have been writing, as I say, and will leave off this, for the
+better communing with you. Don't imagine I am unwell; I feel quite
+well, but a little tired, and the thought of you waits in such
+readiness! So, may God bless you, beloved!
+
+                                           I am all your own
+
+                                                R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 16, 1845.]
+
+Mr. Kenyon has not come--he does not come so often, I think. Did he
+_know_ from _you_ that you were to see me last Thursday? If he did it
+might be as well, do you not think? to go to him next week. Will it
+not seem frequent, otherwise? But if you did _not_ tell him of
+Thursday distinctly (_I_ did not--remember!), he might take the
+Wednesday's visit to be the substitute for rather than the successor
+of Thursday's: and in that case, why not write a word to him yourself
+to propose dining with him as he suggested? He really wishes to see
+you--of that, I am sure. But you will know what is best to do, and he
+may come here to-morrow perhaps, and ask a whole set of questions
+about you; so my right hand may forget its cunning for any good it
+does. Only don't send messages by _me_, please!
+
+How happy I am with your letter to-night.
+
+When I had sent away my last letter I began to remember, and could not
+help smiling to do so, that I had totally forgotten the great subject
+of my 'fame,' and the oath you administered about it--totally! Now how
+do you read that omen? If I forget myself, who is to remember me, do
+you think?--except _you_?--which brings me where I would stay.
+Yes--'yours' it must be, but _you_, it had better be! But, to leave
+the vain superstitions, let me go on to assure you that I did mean to
+answer that part of your former letter, and do mean to behave well and
+be obedient. Your wish would be enough, even if there could be
+likelihood without it of my doing nothing ever again. Oh, certainly I
+have been idle--it comes of lotus-eating--and, besides, of sitting too
+long in the sun. Yet 'idle' may not be the word! silent I have been,
+through too many thoughts to speak just _that_!--As to writing letters
+and reading manuscripts' filling all my time, why I must lack 'vital
+energy' indeed--you do not mean seriously to fancy such a thing of me!
+For the rest.... Tell me--Is it your opinion that when the apostle
+Paul saw the unspeakable things, being snatched up into the third
+Heavens 'whether in the body or out of the body he could not
+tell,'--is it your opinion that, all the week after, he worked
+particularly hard at the tent-making? For my part, I doubt it.
+
+I would not speak profanely or extravagantly--it is not the best way
+to thank God. But to say only that I was in the desert and that I am
+among the palm-trees, is to say nothing ... because it is easy to
+_understand how_, after walking straight on ... on ... furlong after
+furlong ... dreary day after dreary day, ... one may come to the end
+of the sand and within sight of the fountain:--there is nothing
+miraculous in _that_, you know!
+
+Yet even in that case, to doubt whether it may not all be _mirage_,
+would be the natural first thought, the recurring dream-fear! now
+would it not? And you can reproach me for _my_ thoughts, as if _they_
+were unnatural!
+
+Never mind about the third act--the advantage is that you will not
+tire yourself perhaps the next week. What gladness it is that you
+should really seem better, and how much better _that_ is than even
+'Luria.'
+
+Mrs. Jameson came to-day--but I will tell you.
+
+May God bless you now and always.
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, December 17, 1845.]
+
+Henrietta had a note from Mr. Kenyon to the effect that he was 'coming
+to see _Ba_' to-day if in any way he found it possible. Now he has not
+come--and the inference is that he will come to-morrow--in which case
+you will be convicted of not wishing to be with him perhaps. So ...
+would it not be advisable for you to call at his door for a
+moment--and _before_ you come here? Think of it. You know it would not
+do to vex him--would it?
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, December 19, 1845.]
+
+I ought to have written yesterday: so to-day when I need a letter and
+get none, there is my own fault besides, and the less consolation. A
+letter from you would light up this sad day. Shall I fancy how, if a
+letter lay _there_ where I look, rain might fall and winds blow while
+I listened to you, long after the _words_ had been laid to heart? But
+here you are in your place--with me who am your own--your own--and so
+the rhyme joins on,
+
+    She shall speak to me in places lone
+    With a low and holy tone--
+    Ay: when I have lit my lamp at night
+    She shall be present with my sprite:
+    And I will say, whate'er it be,
+    Every word she telleth me!
+
+Now, is that taken from your book? No--but from _my_ book, which holds
+my verses as I write them; and as I open it, I read that.
+
+And speaking of verse--somebody gave me a few days ago that Mr.
+Lowell's book you once mentioned to me. Anyone who 'admires' _you_
+shall have my sympathy at once--even though he _do_ change the
+laughing wine-_mark_ into a 'stain' in that perfectly beautiful
+triplet--nor am I to be indifferent to his good word for myself
+(though not very happily connected with the criticism on the epithet
+in that 'Yorkshire Tragedy'--which has better things, by the
+way--seeing that 'white boy,' in old language, meant just 'good boy,'
+a general epithet, as Johnson notices in the life of Dryden, whom the
+schoolmaster Busby was used to class with his 'white boys'--this is
+hypercriticism, however). But these American books should not be
+reprinted here--one asks, what and where is the class to which they
+address themselves? for, no doubt, we have our congregations of
+ignoramuses that enjoy the profoundest ignorance imaginable on the
+subjects treated of; but _these_ are evidently not the audience Mr.
+Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting
+to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be
+found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there
+resting--vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a
+knot--which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man
+brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or
+a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all the old stocks go
+on growing again--but here, with us, whoever _wanted_ Chaucer, or
+Chapman, or Ford, got him long ago--what else have Lamb, and
+Coleridge, and Hazlitt and Hunt and so on to the end of their
+generations ... what else been doing this many a year? What one
+passage of all these, cited with the very air of a Columbus, but has
+been known to all who know anything of poetry this many, many a year?
+The others, who don't know anything, are the stocks that have got to
+_shoot_, not climb higher--_compost_, they want in the first place!
+Ford's and Crashaw's rival Nightingales--why they have been
+dissertated on by Wordsworth and Coleridge, then by Lamb and Hazlitt,
+then worked to death by Hunt, who printed them entire and quoted them
+to pieces again, in every periodical he was ever engaged upon; and yet
+after all, here 'Philip'--'must read' (out of a roll of dropping
+papers with yellow ink tracings, so old!) something at which 'John'
+claps his hands and says 'Really--that these ancients should own so
+much wit &c.'! The _passage_ no longer looks its fresh self after this
+veritable passage from hand to hand: as when, in old dances, the belle
+began the figure with her own partner, and by him was transferred to
+the next, and so to the next--_they_ ever _beginning_ with all the old
+alacrity and spirit; but she bearing a still-accumulating weight of
+tokens of gallantry, and none the better for every fresh pushing and
+shoving and pulling and hauling--till, at the bottom of the room--
+
+To which Mr. Lowell might say, that--No, I will say the true thing
+against myself--and it is, that when I turn from what is in my mind,
+and determine to write about anybody's book to avoid writing that I
+love and love and love again my own, dearest love--because of the
+cuckoo-song of it,--_then_, I shall be in no better humour with that
+book than with Mr. Lowell's!
+
+But I _have_ a new thing to say or sing--you never before heard me
+love and bless and send my heart after--'Ba'--did you? Ba ... and
+that is you! I TRIED ... (more than _wanted_) to call you _that_, on
+Wednesday! I have a flower here--rather, a tree, a mimosa, which must
+be turned and turned, the side to the light changing in a little time
+to the _leafy_ side, where all the fans lean and spread ... so I turn
+your name to me, that side I have not last seen: you cannot tell how I
+feel glad that you will not part with the name--Barrett--seeing you
+have two of the same--and must always, moreover, remain my EBB!
+
+Dearest 'E.B.C.'--no, no! and so it will never be!
+
+Have you seen Mr. Kenyon? I did not write ... knowing that such a
+procedure would draw the kind sure letter in return, with the
+invitation &c., as if I had asked for it! I had perhaps better call on
+him some morning very early.
+
+Bless you, my own sweetest. You will write to me, I know in my heart!
+
+                                     Ever may God bless you!
+
+                                          R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+
+Dearest, you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never
+think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it
+either; I simply understand that you _are_ my happiness, and that
+therefore you could not make another happiness for me, such as would
+be worth having--not even _you_! Why, how could you? _That_ was in my
+mind to speak yesterday, but I could not speak it--to write it, is
+easier.
+
+Talking of happiness--shall I tell you? Promise not to be angry and I
+will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered myself
+wholly, I should choose to die this winter--now--before I had
+disappointed you in anything. But because you are better and dearer
+and more to be considered than I, I do _not_ choose it. I _cannot_
+choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of its being a less
+pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps (who can say?), if I
+should prove the burden of your life.
+
+For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with
+others--as with the extravagance yesterday--and seriously--_too_
+seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past--I am
+frightened, I tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know
+myself, what can save me, do you think, from disappointing and
+displeasing you? I ask the question, and find no answer.
+
+It is a poor answer, to say that I can do one thing well ... that I
+have one capacity largely. On points of the general affections, I have
+in thought applied to myself the words of Mme. de Stael, not
+fretfully, I hope, not complainingly, I am sure (I can thank God for
+most affectionate friends!) not complainingly, yet mournfully and in
+profound conviction--those words--'_jamais je n'ai pas ete aimee comme
+j'aime_.' The capacity of loving is the largest of my powers I
+think--I thought so before knowing you--and one form of feeling. And
+although any woman might love you--_every_ woman,--with understanding
+enough to discern you by--(oh, do not fancy that I am unduly
+magnifying mine office) yet I persist in persuading myself that!
+Because I have the capacity, as I said--and besides I owe more to you
+than others could, it seems to me: let me boast of it. To many, you
+might be better than all things while one of all things: to me you are
+instead of all--to many, a crowning happiness--to me, the happiness
+itself. From out of the deep dark pits men see the stars more
+gloriously--and _de profundis amavi_--
+
+It is a very poor answer! Almost as poor an answer as yours could be
+if I were to ask you to teach me to please you always; or rather, how
+not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you--what if all those
+things were in my fate?
+
+And--(to begin!)--_I_ am disappointed to-night. I expected a letter
+which does not come--and I had felt so sure of having a letter
+to-night ... unreasonably sure perhaps, which means doubly sure.
+
+_Friday._--Remember you have had two notes of mine, and that it is
+certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.
+
+Scarcely you had gone on Wednesday when Mr. Kenyon came. It seemed
+best to me, you know, that you should go--I had the presentiment of
+his footsteps--and so near they were, that if you had looked up the
+street in leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told
+him of your having been here and also at his house; whereupon he
+enquired eagerly if you meant to dine with him, seeming disappointed
+by my negative. 'Now I had told him,' he said ... and murmured on to
+himself loud enough for me to hear, that 'it would have been a
+peculiar pleasure &c.' The reason I have not seen him lately is the
+eternal 'business,' just as you thought, and he means to come 'oftener
+now,' so nothing is wrong as I half thought.
+
+As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking what
+sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most
+particularly admire--sulkiness?--the divine gift of sitting aloof in a
+cloud like any god for three weeks together perhaps--pettishness? ...
+which will get you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one
+either? obstinacy?--which is an agreeable form of temper I can assure
+you, and describes itself--or the good open passion which lies on the
+floor and kicks, like one of my cousins?--Certainly I prefer the last,
+and should, I think, prefer it (as an evil), even if it were not the
+born weakness of my own nature--though I humbly confess (to _you_, who
+seem to think differently of these things) that never since I was a
+child have I upset all the chairs and tables and thrown the books
+about the room in a fury--I am afraid I do not even 'kick,' like my
+cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the 'light of other
+days'--not a very full light, I used to be accustomed to think:--but
+_you_,--_you_ think otherwise, _you_ take a fury to be the opposite of
+'indifference,' as if there could be no such thing as self-control!
+Now for my part, I do believe that the worst-tempered persons in the
+world are less so through sensibility than selfishness--they spare
+nobody's heart, on the ground of being themselves pricked by a straw.
+Now see if it isn't so. What, after all, is a good temper but
+generosity in trifles--and what, without it, is the happiness of life?
+We have only to look round us. I _saw_ a woman, once, burst into
+tears, because her husband cut the bread and butter too thick. I saw
+_that_ with my own eyes. Was it _sensibility_, I wonder! They were at
+least real tears and ran down her cheeks. 'You _always_ do it'! she
+said.
+
+Why how you must sympathize with the heroes and heroines of the French
+romances (_do_ you sympathize with them very much?) when at the
+slightest provocation they break up the tables and chairs, (a degree
+beyond the deeds of my childhood!--_I_ only used to upset them) break
+up the tables and chairs and chiffoniers, and dash the china to atoms.
+The men _do_ the furniture, and the women the porcelain: and pray
+observe that they always set about this as a matter of course! When
+they have broken everything in the room, they sink down quite (and
+very naturally) _abattus_. I remember a particular case of a hero of
+Frederic Soulie's, who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a
+chair _unconsciously_, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then
+proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!--the clearest idea this excites in
+_me_, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of
+upholstery. Because--just consider for yourself--how _you_ would
+succeed in breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were
+properly put together--as stools are in England--just yourself,
+without a hammer and a screw! You might work at it _comme quatre_, and
+find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then as a demonstration, a
+child of six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) and
+be whipped accordingly.
+
+How I go on writing!--and you, who do not write at all!--two extremes,
+one set against the other.
+
+But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know is
+just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that
+I am glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I
+never was called Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, and I
+accept the omen. So little it seems my name that if a voice said
+suddenly 'Elizabeth,' I should as soon turn round as my sisters would
+... no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want
+of euphony ... _Ba_ ... now and then it has--and Mr. Boyd makes a
+compromise and calls me _Elibet_, because nothing could induce him to
+desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a _Ba_. So I
+am glad, and accept the omen.
+
+But I give you no credit for not thinking that I may forget you ... I!
+As if you did not see the difference! Why, _I_ could not even forget
+to _write_ to _you_, observe!--
+
+Whenever you write, say how you are. Were you wet on Wednesday?
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+
+I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever 'making you happy'--I
+can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to
+my own truest, only true happiness--yet in every such effort there is
+implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of
+it at all? _You_ it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be:
+YOU--dearest!
+
+But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert
+to _that_ frightful wish. 'Disappoint me?' 'I speak what I know and
+testify what I have seen'--you shall 'mystery' again and again--I do
+not dispute that, but do not _you_ dispute, neither, that mysteries
+are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part
+of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that
+fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and
+esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops
+short of accounting for _that_, whatever else it would account for,
+because I do this, in pure logical justice--_you_ are able to turn and
+wonder (if you _do ... now_) what causes it all! My love, only wait,
+only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little,
+become known to you--after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I
+_would_ say _this_ now--but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my
+sweetest--ever, love, I am your
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+But my letter came last night, did it not?
+
+Another thing--no, _to-morrow_--for time presses, and, in all cases,
+_Tuesday_--remember!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
+
+I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote
+that you had 'forgotten to write,' I did not mean it; not a word! If I
+had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been
+better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before
+writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes
+people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots
+tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.
+
+How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is
+graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he
+knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has
+merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading
+in that direction is an article in the _Retrospective Review_ which
+contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the
+quotations, and, 'a pede Herculem,' from the foot infers the man, or
+rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul
+of the man--it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative
+conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up
+his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious
+proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why
+a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a 'Young Ladies' academy'
+here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better
+information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review!
+And then, Mr. Lowell's naivete in showing his authority,--as if the
+Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible manuscript somewhere
+below the lowest deep of Shakespeare's grave,--is curious beyond the
+rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of
+America. As you say, their books do not suit us:--Mrs. Markham might
+as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If
+they _knew_ more they could not give parsley crowns to their own
+native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs.
+Sigourney has just sent me--just this morning--her 'Scenes in my
+Native Land' and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet
+Hillhouse, of 'sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,' standing in 'the
+temple of Fame' as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he
+is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as
+flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as
+transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if
+not a poet--and certainly this little book we are talking of is
+grateful enough in some ways--you would call it a _pretty book_--would
+you not? Two or three letters I have had from him ... all very
+kind!--and _that_ reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingratitude on
+my own part! When one's conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing
+for it but to throw it away!--
+
+Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how
+you would not let me?
+
+Mr. Mathews said of _him_, having met him once in society, that he was
+the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then
+they seem to be on better terms.
+
+Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B._C._? _your_ meaning, I mean?
+
+My true initials are E.B.M.B.--my long name, as opposed to my short
+one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett!--there's a full length
+to take away one's breath!--Christian name ... Elizabeth
+Barrett:--surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it
+portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it
+closely, ... and of forgetting that I was a _Moulton_, altogether. One
+might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our
+family-name is _Moulton Barrett_, and my brothers reproach me
+sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk
+with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds' Office. As if I
+cared for the _Retrospective Review_! Nevertheless it is true that I
+would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer
+lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from
+generation to generation!--I seem to hear the 'Commination Service.'
+
+May God bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world!--
+
+                                                  Your
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Mr. Dickens's 'Cricket' sings repetitions, and, with considerable
+beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of
+his most successful productions, though quite free from what was
+reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.
+
+You do not say how you are--not a word! And you are wrong in saying
+that you 'ought to have written'--as if 'ought' could be in place
+_so_! You _never 'ought' to write to me you know_! or rather ... if
+you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of
+mysteries on my part!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, December 22, 1845.]
+
+Now, '_ought_' you to be 'sorry you sent that letter,' which made, and
+makes me so happy--so happy--can you bring yourself to turn round and
+tell one you have so blessed with your bounty that there was a
+mistake, and you meant only half that largess? If you are not sensible
+that you _do_ make me most happy by such letters, and do not warm in
+the reflection of your own rays, then I _do_ give up indeed the last
+chance of procuring _you_ happiness. My own 'ought,' which you object
+to, shall be withdrawn--being only a pure bit of selfishness; I felt,
+in missing the letter of yours, next day, that I _might_ have drawn it
+down by one of mine,--if I had begged never so gently, the gold would
+have fallen--_there_ was my omitted duty to myself which you properly
+blame. I should stand silently and wait and be sure of the
+ever-remembering goodness.
+
+Let me count my gold now--and rub off any speck that stays the full
+shining. First--_that thought_ ... I told you; I pray you, pray you,
+sweet--never that again--or what leads never so remotely or indirectly
+to it! On _your own fancied ground_, the fulfilment would be of
+necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am
+yours for ever--if you are not _here_, with me--what then? Say, you
+take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, _that_
+defeats every kind purpose ... as if you cut away all the ground from
+my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room ... why still, I
+_stand_ there--and is it the better that I have no broader space,
+when off _that_ you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge
+of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,--on that, I
+can live my life--but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous
+creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life--to
+extend life and deepen it--as you do, and will do. Oh, _how_ I love
+you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to
+me--how, meaning and willing to _give_, you gave _nobly_! Do you think
+I have not seen in this world how women who _do_ love will manage to
+confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how
+much alloy such pure gold as _your_ love would have rendered
+endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what
+but this makes me confident and happy? _Can_ I take a lesson by your
+fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw
+all the world--the worthier, better men there ... those who would' &c.
+&c. No, I think of the great, dear _gift_ that it was; how I '_won_'
+NOTHING (the hateful word, and _French_ thought)--did nothing by my
+own arts or cleverness in the matter ... so what pretence have the
+_more_ artful or more clever for:--but I cannot write out this
+folly--I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of gratitude--to say
+I would give you my life joyfully is little.... I would, I hope, do
+that for two or three other people--but I am not conscious of any
+imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self
+to you--be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be
+spoken of--let me _live_ it into proof, beloved!
+
+And for 'disappointment and a burden' ... now--let us get quite away
+from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the _cords_
+of love with the world's horny eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then?
+Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep
+passion for society? 'Have they common sympathy in each other's
+pursuits?'--always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew
+me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with God's help to write what
+may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me
+or no? Do you _not_ help me so much that, if you saw the more likely
+peril for poor human nature, you would say, 'He will be jealous of all
+the help coming from me,--none from him to me!'--And _that would_ be a
+consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any
+one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being
+_transcended_ and the _blest_ one.
+
+But--'here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed'--I will speak of
+other things. When we are together one day--the days I believe in--I
+mean to set about that reconsidering 'Sordello'--it has always been
+rather on my mind--but yesterday I was reading the 'Purgatorio' and
+the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me
+with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose
+and fate in my own poem--see; one of the burthened, contorted souls
+tells Virgil and Dante--
+
+    Noi fummo gia tutti per forza morti,
+    E _peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora_:
+    QUIVI--_lume del ciel ne fece accorti
+    Si che, pentendo e perdonando, fora
+    Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
+    Che del disio di se veder n'accora._[1]
+
+Which is just my Sordello's story ... could I '_do_' it off hand, I
+wonder--
+
+    And sinners were we to the extreme hour;
+    _Then_, light from heaven fell, making us aware,
+    So that, repenting us and pardoned, out
+    Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him
+    Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see.
+
+There were many singular incidents attending my work on that
+subject--thus, quite at the end, I found out there _was printed_ and
+not published, a little historical tract by a Count V---- something,
+called 'Sordello'--with the motto 'Post fata resurgam'! I hope he
+prophesied. The main of this--biographical notices--is extracted by
+Muratori, I think. Last year when I set foot in Naples I found after a
+few minutes that at some theatre, that night, the opera was to be 'one
+act of Sordello' and I never looked twice, nor expended a couple of
+carlines on the _libretto_!
+
+I wanted to tell you, in last letter, that when I spoke of people's
+tempers _you_ have no concern with 'people'--I do not glance obliquely
+at _your_ temper--either to discover it, or praise it, or adapt myself
+to it. I speak of the relation one sees in other cases--how one
+opposes passionate foolish people, but hates cold clever people who
+take quite care enough of themselves. I myself am born supremely
+passionate--so I was born with light yellow hair: all changes--that is
+the passion changes its direction and, taking a channel large enough,
+looks calmer, perhaps, than it should--and all my sympathies go with
+quiet strength, of course--but I know what the other kind is. As for
+the breakages of chairs, and the appreciation of Parisian _meubles_;
+manibus, pedibusque descendo in tuam sententiam, Ba, mi ocelle! ('What
+was E.B. C?' why, the first letter after, and _not_, E.B. _B_, my own
+_B_! There was no latent meaning in the C--but I had no inclination to
+go on to D, or E, for instance).
+
+And so, love, Tuesday is to be our day--one day more--and then! And
+meanwhile '_care_' for me! a good word for you--but _my_ care, what is
+that! One day I aspire to _care_, though! I shall not go away at any
+dear Mr. K.'s coming! They call me down-stairs to supper--and my fire
+is out, and you keep me from feeling cold and yet ask if I am well?
+Yes, well--yes, happy--and your own ever--I must bid God bless
+you--dearest!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Purg.' v. 52 7.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Sunday Night.
+                             [Post-mark, December 24, 1845.]
+
+But did I dispute? Surely not. Surely I believe in you and in
+'mysteries.' Surely I prefer the no-reason to ever so much rationalism
+... (rationalism and infidelity go together they say!). All which I
+may do, and be afraid sometimes notwithstanding, and when you
+overpraise me (_not_ over_love_) I must be frightened as I told you.
+
+It is with me as with the theologians. I believe in you and can be
+happy and safe _so_; but when my 'personal merits' come into question
+in any way, even the least, ... why then the position grows untenable:
+it is no more 'of grace.'
+
+Do I tease you as I tease myself sometimes? But do not wrong me in
+turn! Do not keep repeating that 'after long years' I shall know
+you--know you!--as if I did not without the years. If you are forced
+to refer me to those long ears, I must deserve the thistles besides.
+The thistles are the corollary.
+
+For it is obvious--manifest--that I cannot doubt of you, that I may
+doubt of myself, of happiness, of the whole world,--but of
+_you_--_not_: it is obvious that if I could doubt of you and _act so_
+I should be a very idiot, or worse indeed. And _you_ ... you think I
+doubt of you whenever I make an interjection!--now do you not? And is
+it reasonable?--Of _you_, I mean?
+
+_Monday._--For my part, you must admit it to be too possible that you
+may be, as I say, 'disappointed' in me--it _is_ too possible. And if
+it does me good to say so, even now perhaps ... if it is mere weakness
+to say so and simply torments you, why do _you_ be magnanimous and
+forgive _that_ ... let it pass as a weakness and forgive it _so_.
+Often I think painful things which I do not tell you and....
+
+While I write, your letter comes. Kindest of you it was, to write me
+such a letter, when I expected scarcely the shadow of one!--this makes
+up for the other letter which I expected unreasonably and which you
+'_ought not_' to have written, as was proved afterwards. And now why
+should I go on with that sentence? What had I to say of 'painful
+things,' I wonder? all the painful things seem gone ... vanished. I
+forget what I had to say. Only do you still think of this, dearest
+beloved; that I sit here in the dark but for _you_, and that the light
+you bring me (from _my_ fault!--from the nature of _my_ darkness!) is
+not a settled light as when you open the shutters in the morning, but
+a light made by candles which burn some of them longer and some
+shorter, and some brighter and briefer, at once--being 'double-wicks,'
+and that there is an intermission for a moment now and then between
+the dropping of the old light into the socket and the lighting of the
+new. Every letter of yours is a new light which burns so many hours
+... and _then_!--I am morbid, you see--or call it by what name you
+like ... too wise or too foolish. 'If the light of the body is
+darkness, how great is that darkness.' Yet even when I grow too wise,
+I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all. And I am
+never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own
+sake--only for yours:--not for my own sake, since I am content to owe
+all things to you.
+
+And it could be so much to you to lose me!--and you say so,--and
+_then_ think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought! As
+if _that_ were possible! Do you remember what you said once of the
+flowers?--that you 'felt a respect for them when they had passed out
+of your hands.' And must it not be so with my life, which if you
+choose to have it, must be respected too? Much more with my life!
+Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of
+the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now--quite otherwise. I
+did not like it at first to be so much otherwise. And I could not have
+had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old
+motives, but simply to escape the 'risk' I told you of. Should I have
+said to you instead of it ... '_Love me for ever_'? Well then, ... I
+_do_.
+
+As to my 'helping' you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on
+with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as
+deeds. We _have_ sympathy too--we walk one way--oh, I do not forget
+the advantages. Only Mrs. Tomkins's ideas of happiness are below my
+ambition for you.
+
+So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I
+should be more exacting than any other woman--so often I have said it:
+and so different everything is from what I thought it would be!
+Because if I am exacting it is for _you_ and not for _me_--it is
+altogether for _you_--you understand _that_, dearest of all ... it is
+for _you wholly_. It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even,
+the question whether I may be happy so and so--_I_. It is the other
+question which comes always--too often for peace.
+
+People used to say to me, 'You expect too much--you are too romantic.'
+And my answer always was that 'I could not expect too much when I
+expected nothing at all' ... which was the truth--for I never thought
+(and how often I have _said that_!) I never thought that anyone whom
+_I_ could love, would stoop to love _me_ ... the two things seemed
+clearly incompatible to my understanding.
+
+And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking
+twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or _horn_.
+You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion--illusion
+for you,--illusion for me as a consequence. But how natural.
+
+It is true of me--very true--that I have not a high appreciation of
+what passes in the world (and not merely the Tomkins-world!) under the
+name of love; and that a distrust of the thing had grown to be a habit
+of mind with me when I knew you first. It has appeared to me, through
+all the seclusion of my life and the narrow experience it admitted
+of, that in nothing men--and women too--were so apt to mistake their
+own feelings, as in this one thing. Putting _falseness_ quite on one
+side, quite out of sight and consideration, an honest mistaking of
+feeling appears wonderfully common, and no mistake has such frightful
+results--none can. Self-love and generosity, a mistake may come from
+either--from pity, from admiration, from any blind impulse--oh, when I
+look at the histories of my own female friends--to go no step further!
+And if it is true of the _women_, what must the other side be? To see
+the marriages which are made every day! worse than solitudes and more
+desolate! In the case of the two happiest I ever knew, one of the
+husbands said in confidence to a brother of mine--not much in
+confidence or I should not have heard it, but in a sort of smoking
+frankness,--that he had 'ruined his prospects by marrying'; and the
+other said to himself at the very moment of professing an
+extraordinary happiness, ... 'But I should have done as well if I had
+not married _her_.'
+
+Then for the falseness--the first time I ever, in my own experience,
+heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on
+(on some hands!)--it was from a man of whose attentions to another
+woman I was at that _time her confidante_. I was bound so to silence
+for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in
+me--and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror ... a
+terror--for I was very young then, and the world did, at the moment,
+look ghastly!
+
+The falseness and the calculations!--why how can you, who are _just_,
+_blame women_ ... when you must know what the 'system' of man is
+towards them,--and of men not ungenerous otherwise? Why are women to
+be blamed if they act as if they had to do with swindlers?--is it not
+the mere instinct of preservation which makes them do it? These make
+women what they are. And your 'honourable men,' the most loyal of
+them, (for instance) is it not a rule with them (unless when taken
+unaware through a want of self-government) to force a woman (trying
+all means) to force a woman to stand committed in her affections ...
+(they with their feet lifted all the time to trample on her for want
+of delicacy) before _they_ risk the pin-prick to their own personal
+pitiful vanities? Oh--to see how these things are set about by _men_!
+to see how a man carefully holding up on each side the skirts of an
+embroidered vanity to keep it quite safe from the wet, will contrive
+to tell you in so many words that he ... might love you if the sun
+shone! And women are to be blamed! Why there are, to be sure, cold and
+heartless, light and changeable, ungenerous and calculating women in
+the world!--that is sure. But for the most part, they are only what
+they are made ... and far better than the nature of the making ... of
+that I am confident. The loyal make the loyal, the disloyal the
+disloyal. And I give no more discredit to those women you speak of,
+than I myself can take any credit in this thing--I. Because who could
+be disloyal with _you_ ... with whatever corrupt inclination? _you_,
+who are the noblest of all? If you judge me so, ... it is my privilege
+rather than my merit ... as I feel of myself.
+
+_Wednesday._--All but the last few lines of all this was written
+before I saw you yesterday, ever dearest--and since, I have been
+reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both
+in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on
+triumphantly ... to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the
+language is freer--there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm.
+It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the
+interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I
+guess--which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor,
+noble Luria, who will be equal to the leap ... as it is easy to see.
+It is full, altogether, of magnanimities;--noble, and nobly put. I
+will go on with my notes, and those, you shall have at once ... I mean
+together ... presently. And don't hurry and chafe yourself for the
+fourth act--now that you are better! To be ill again--think what that
+would be! Luria will be great now whatever you do--or whatever you do
+_not_. Will he not?
+
+And never, never for a moment (I quite forgot to tell you) did I fancy
+that you were talking at _me_ in the temper-observations--never. It
+was the most unprovoked egotism, all that I told you of my temper; for
+certainly I never suspected you of asking questions so. I was simply
+amused a little by what you said, and thought to myself (if you _will_
+know my thoughts on that serious subject) that you had probably lived
+among very good-tempered persons, to hold such an opinion about the
+innocuousness of ill-temper. It was all I thought, indeed. Now to
+fancy that I was capable of suspecting you of such a manoeuvre! Why
+you would have _asked_ me directly;--if you had wished 'curiously to
+enquire.'
+
+An excellent solemn chiming, the passage from Dante makes with your
+'Sordello,' and the 'Sordello' _deserves_ the labour which it needs,
+to make it appear the great work it is. I think that the principle of
+association is too subtly in movement throughout it--so that _while_
+you are going straight forward you go at the same time round and
+round, until the progress involved in the motion is lost sight of by
+the lookers on. Or did I tell you that before?
+
+You have heard, I suppose, how Dickens's 'Cricket' sells by nineteen
+thousand copies at a time, though he takes Michael Angelo to be 'a
+humbug'--or for 'though' read 'because.' Tell me of Mr. Kenyon's
+dinner and Moxon?
+
+Is not this an infinite letter? I shall hear from you, I hope.... I
+_ask_ you to let me hear soon. I write all sorts of things to you,
+rightly and wrongly perhaps; when wrongly forgive it. I think of you
+always. May God bless you. 'Love me for ever,' as
+
+                                                   Your
+
+                                                        _Ba_
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                           25th Dec. [1845.]
+
+My dear Christmas gift of a letter! I will write back a few lines,
+(all I can, having to go out now)--just that I may forever,--certainly
+during our mortal 'forever'--mix my love for you, and, as you suffer
+me to say, your love for me ... dearest! ... these shall be mixed with
+the other loves of the day and live therein--as I write, and trust,
+and know--forever! While I live I will remember what was my feeling in
+reading, and in writing, and in stopping from either ... as I have
+just done ... to kiss you and bless you with my whole heart.--Yes,
+yes, bless you, my own!
+
+All is right, all of your letter ... admirably right and just in the
+defence of the women I _seemed_ to speak against; and only
+seemed--because that is a way of mine which you must have observed;
+that foolish concentrating of thought and feeling, for a moment, on
+some one little spot of a character or anything else indeed, and in
+the attempt to do justice and develop whatever may seem ordinarily to
+be overlooked in it,--that over vehement _insisting_ on, and giving an
+undue prominence to, the same--which has the effect of taking away
+from the importance of the rest of the related objects which, in
+truth, are not considered at all ... or they would also rise
+proportionally when subjected to the same (that is, correspondingly
+magnified and dilated) light and concentrated feeling. So, you
+remember, the old divine, preaching on 'small sins,' in his zeal to
+expose the tendencies and consequences usually made little account of,
+was led to maintain the said small sins to be 'greater than great
+ones.' _But then_ ... if you look on the world _altogether_, and
+accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater
+... things do not look _quite_ so bad; because the conduct which _is_
+atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, _may_ be
+no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in
+certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly
+less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, exchange (counting
+spiritual gifts as only coin, for our purpose), but surely the
+formalities and policies and decencies all vary with the nature of the
+thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life
+to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl--[he] gets witnesses and
+testimony and so forth--but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges
+are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all
+words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on
+the counter. If instead of diamonds you want--(being a king or
+queen)--provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more
+diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to--high motives
+_supposed_, at all events--whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave
+to black your shoe in the dusty street 'purely for the honour of
+serving your Excellency' you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself
+without a 'grano' or two--(six of which, about, make a farthing)--Now
+do you not see! Where so little is to be got, why offer much more? If
+a man knows that ... but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in
+Benedick's phrase, 'the world must go on.' He who honestly wants his
+wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his
+_help-meat_ (not 'help mete for him')--he shall assuredly find a girl
+of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to
+mortify, who _would_ be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that
+man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead
+of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a 'Every Lady
+Her Own _Market-Woman_, Being a Table of' &c. &c.--_then_, I say he
+is--
+
+Bless you, dearest--the clock strikes--and time is none--but--bless
+you!
+
+                                               Your own R.B.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday 4. p.m.
+                             [Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
+
+I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning--and now I
+have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves. I hoped to
+return from Town earlier. But I can say something--and Monday will
+make amends.
+
+'For ever' and for ever I _do_ love you, dearest--love you with my
+whole heart--in life, in death--
+
+Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon's--who had a little to forgive in my slack
+justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind
+self--and I went, also, to Moxon's--who said something about my
+number's going off 'rather heavily'--so let it!
+
+Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to 'acts' first or
+last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. _Let_ me get done
+with these, and better things will follow.
+
+Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest--I have you ever in my thoughts--And
+on Monday, remember, I am to see you.
+
+                                               Your own R.B.
+
+See what I cut out of a _Cambridge Advertiser_[1] of the 24th--to make
+you laugh!
+
+[Footnote 1: The cutting enclosed is:--'A Few Rhymes for the Present
+Christmas' by J. Purchas, Esq., B.A. It is headed by several
+quotations, the first of which is signed 'Elizabeth B. Barrett:'
+
+    'This age shows to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
+    Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.'
+
+This is followed by extracts from Pindar, 'Lear,' and the Hon. Mrs.
+Norton.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
+
+Yes, indeed, I have 'observed that way' in you, and not once, and not
+twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,--and almost every
+time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the
+reflection that _that_ is the way for making all sorts of mistakes
+dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way!--the
+highway.
+
+For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the
+truth--as partial truth:--I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I
+am not apt to be extravagant in my _esprit de sexe_: the Martineau
+doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember,
+like a woman--most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But
+we are not on that ground now--we are on ground worth holding a brief
+for!--and when women fail _here_ ... it is not so much our fault.
+Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.
+
+It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your 'Luria,' this third
+act, of the worth of a woman's sympathy,--indeed of the exquisite
+double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be
+better, I think, than this:--
+
+    To the motive, the endeavour,--the heart's self--
+    Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
+    The soul of the purpose ere 'tis shaped as act,
+    Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king;
+
+except the characterizing of the 'learned praise,' which comes
+afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to
+you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of
+the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could
+be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal
+only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside!
+You shall tell Mr. Forster so.
+
+And speaking of 'Luria,' which grows on me the more I read, ... how
+fine he is when the doubt breaks on him--I mean, when he begins ...
+'Why then, all is very well.' It is most affecting, I think, all that
+process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which
+at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that
+he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is
+managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....
+
+               ... 'so slight, so slight,
+    And yet it tells you they are dead and gone'--
+
+And then, the direct approach....
+
+    You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
+    What is it in your eyes?--
+
+Do you not feel it to be success, ... '_you_ now?' _I_ do, from my low
+ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the
+manner in which he _stands_, facing it, ... I admire it all
+thoroughly. Braccio's vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too
+_poetically_ subtle for the man--but nobody could have the heart to
+wish a line of it away--_that_ would be too much for critical virtue!
+
+I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were
+so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me
+keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which
+never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!
+
+Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least
+crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to
+listen to,--remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another
+Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say _that_ every
+time, and you will please to remember it--Eccellenza!--
+
+                                         May God bless you--
+
+                                              Your
+
+                                                   E.B.B.
+
+From the _New Monthly Magazine_. 'The admirers of Robert Browning's
+poetry, and they are now very numerous, will be glad to hear of the
+issue by Mr. Moxon of a seventh series of the renowned "Bells" and
+delicious "Pomegranates," under the title of "Dramatic Romances and
+Lyrics."'
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, December 30, 1845.]
+
+When you are gone I find your flowers; and you never spoke of nor
+showed them to me--so instead of yesterday I thank you to-day--thank
+you. Count among the miracles that your flowers live with me--I accept
+_that_ for an omen, dear--dearest! Flowers in general, all other
+flowers, die of despair when they come into the same atmosphere ...
+used to do it so constantly and observably that it made me melancholy
+and I left off for the most part having them here. Now you see how
+they put up with the close room, and condescend to me and the dust--it
+is true and no fancy! To be sure they know that I care for them and
+that I stand up by the table myself to change their water and cut
+their stalk freshly at intervals--_that_ may make a difference
+perhaps. Only the great reason must be that they are yours, and that
+you teach them to bear with me patiently.
+
+Do not pretend even to misunderstand what I meant to say yesterday of
+dear Mr. Kenyon. His blame would fall as my blame of myself has
+fallen: he would say--will say--'it is ungenerous of her to let such a
+risk be run! I thought she would have been more generous.' There, is
+Mr. Kenyon's opinion as I foresee it! Not that it would be spoken, you
+know! he is too kind. And then, he said to me last summer, somewhere
+_a propos_ to the flies or butterflies, that he had 'long ceased to
+wonder at any extreme of foolishness produced by--_love_.' He will of
+course think you very very foolish, but not ungenerously foolish like
+other people.
+
+Never mind. I do not mind indeed. I mean, that, having said to myself
+worse than the worst perhaps of what can be said against me by any who
+regard me at all, and feeling it put to silence by the fact that you
+_do_ feel so and so for me; feeling that fact to be an answer to
+all,--I cannot mind much, in comparison, the railing at second remove.
+There will be a nine days' railing of it and no more: and if on the
+ninth day you should not exactly wish never to have known me, the
+better reason will be demonstrated to stand with us. On this one point
+the wise man cannot judge for the fool his neighbour. If you _do_ love
+me, the inference is that you would be happier with than without
+me--and whether you do, you know better than another: so I think of
+_you_ and not of _them_--always of _you_! When I talked of being
+afraid of dear Mr. Kenyon, I just meant that he makes me nervous with
+his all-scrutinizing spectacles, put on for great occasions, and his
+questions which seem to belong to the spectacles, they go together
+so:--and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the
+spectacles. My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look
+for me) would be the old child's way of getting behind the window
+curtains or under the sofa:--and even _that_ might not be effectual if
+I had recourse to it now. Do you think it would? Two or three times I
+fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something--but if he ever _did_, his
+only reproof was a reduplicated praise of _you_--he praises you always
+and in relation to every sort of subject.
+
+What a _misomonsism_ you fell into yesterday, you who have much great
+work to do which no one else can do except just yourself!--and you,
+too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work,
+with the principle of life in it, _will_ live, let it be trampled ever
+so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation--yes, that
+it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart
+of a rock. All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said ...
+by prompting the foremost rows ... by tradition and translation:--all,
+_except_ poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own
+song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have
+stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the [Greek:
+stoa] like the conversation-teachers. So much I have to say to you,
+till we are in the Siren's island--and _I_, jealous of the Siren!--
+
+    The Siren waits thee singing song for song,
+
+says Mr. Landor. A prophecy which refuses to class you with the 'mute
+fishes,' precisely as I do.
+
+And are you not my 'good'--all my good now--my only good ever? The
+Italians would say it better without saying more.
+
+I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her
+long silence by the supposition,--put lately to an end by scarcely
+credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says--that I was out of
+England; gone to the South from the 20th of September. She calls
+herself the strongest of women, and talks of 'walking fifteen miles
+one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,'--also
+of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued
+alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting
+well by such unlawful means. And she is to write again to tell me of
+Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile--all
+very kind.
+
+So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so 'against the
+principles of universal justice.' Yes, very unjust--very unfair it
+was--only, you make me do just as you like in everything. Now confess
+to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt
+against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim,
+oh 'son of humanity.' Think how much more need of a letter _I_ have
+than you can have; and that if you have a giant's power, ''tis
+tyrannous to use it like a giant.' Who would take tribute from the
+desert? How I grumble. _Do_ let me have a letter directly! remember
+that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait 'as those who
+watch for the morning'--'lux mea!'
+
+May God bless you--and mind to say how you are _exactly_, and don't
+neglect the walking, _pray_ do not.
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+And after all, those women! A great deal of doctrine commends and
+discommends itself by the delivery: and an honest thing may be said so
+foolishly as to disprove its very honesty. Now after all, what did she
+mean by that very silly expression about books, but that she did not
+feel as she considered herself capable of feeling--and that else but
+_that_ was the meaning of the other woman? Perhaps it should have been
+spoken earlier--nay, clearly it should--but surely it was better
+spoken even in the last hour than not at all ... surely it is always
+and under all circumstances, better spoken at whatever cost--I have
+thought so steadily since I could think or feel at all. An entire
+openness to the last moment of possible liberty, at whatever cost and
+consequence, is the most honourable and most merciful way, both for
+men and women! perhaps for men in an especial manner. But I shall send
+this letter away, being in haste to get change for it.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Wednesday, December 31, 1845.
+
+I have been properly punished for so much treachery as went to that
+re-urging the prayer that _you_ would begin writing, when all the time
+(after the first of those words had been spoken which bade _me_ write)
+I was full of purpose to send my own note last evening; one which
+should do its best to thank you: but see, the punishment! At home I
+found a note from Mr. Horne--on the point of setting out for Ireland,
+too unwell to manage to come over to me; anxious, so he said, to see
+me before leaving London, and with only Tuesday or to-day to allow the
+opportunity of it, if I should choose to go and find him out. So I
+considered all things and determined to go--but not till so late did I
+determine on Tuesday, that there was barely time to get to
+Highgate--wherefore no letter reached you to beg pardon ... and now
+this undeserved--beyond the usual undeservedness--this
+last-day-of-the-Year's gift--do you think or not think my gratitude
+weighs on me? When I lay this with the others, and remember what you
+have done for me--I do bless you--so as I cannot but believe must
+reach the all-beloved head all my hopes and fancies and cares fly
+straight to. Dearest, whatever change the new year brings with it, we
+are together--I can give you no more of myself--indeed, you give me
+now (back again if you choose, but changed and renewed by your
+possession) the powers that seemed most properly mine. I could only
+mean that, by the expressions to which you refer--only could mean that
+you were my crown and palm branch, now and for ever, and so, that it
+was a very indifferent matter to me if the world took notice of that
+fact or no. Yes, dearest, that _is_ the meaning of the prophecy, which
+I was stupidly blind not to have read and taken comfort from long ago.
+You ARE the veritable Siren--and you 'wait me,' and will sing 'song
+for song.' And this is my first song, my true song--this love I bear
+you--I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that
+name--love. I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me:
+they are not earnest enough; so far, not true enough--but this is all
+the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your
+feet.
+
+Now let me say it--what you are to remember. That if I had the
+slightest doubt, or fear, I would utter it to you on the
+instant--secure in the incontested stability of the main _fact_, even
+though the heights at the verge in the distance should tremble and
+prove vapour--and there would be a deep consolation in your
+forgiveness--indeed, yes; but I tell you, on solemn consideration, it
+does seem to me that--once take away the broad and general words that
+admit in their nature of any freight they can be charged with,--put
+aside love, and devotion, and trust--and _then_ I seem to have said
+_nothing_ of my feeling to you--nothing whatever.
+
+I will not write more now on this subject. Believe you are my blessing
+and infinite reward beyond possible desert in intention,--my life has
+been crowned by you, as I said!
+
+May God bless you ever--through you I shall be blessed. May I kiss
+your cheek and pray this, my own, all-beloved?
+
+I must add a word or two of other things. I am very well now, quite
+well--am walking and about to walk. Horne, or rather his friends,
+reside in the very lane Keats loved so much--Millfield Lane. Hunt lent
+me once the little copy of the first Poems dedicated to him--and on
+the title-page was recorded in Hunt's delicate characters that 'Keats
+met him with this, the presentation-copy, or whatever was the odious
+name, in M---- Lane--called Poets' Lane by the gods--Keats came
+running, holding it up in his hand.' Coleridge had an affection for
+the place, and Shelley '_knew_' it--and I can testify it is green and
+silent, with pleasant openings on the grounds and ponds, through the
+old trees that line it. But the hills here are far more open and wild
+and hill-like; not with the eternal clump of evergreens and thatched
+summer house--to say nothing of the 'invisible railing' miserably
+visible everywhere.
+
+You very well know _what_ a vision it is you give me--when you speak
+of _standing up by the table_ to care for my flowers--(which I will
+never be ashamed of again, by the way--I will say for the future;
+'here are my best'--in this as in other things.) Now, do you remember,
+that once I bade you not surprise me out of my good behaviour by
+standing to meet me unawares, as visions do, some day--but now--_omne
+ignotum_? No, dearest!
+
+Ought I to say there will be two days more? till Saturday--and if one
+word comes, _one_ line--think! I am wholly yours--yours, beloved!
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                     January 1, 1845 [1846].
+
+How good you are--how best! it is a favourite play of my memory to
+take up the thought of what you were to me (to my mind gazing!) years
+ago, as the poet in an abstraction--then the thoughts of you, a little
+clearer, in concrete personality, as Mr. Kenyon's friend, who had
+dined with him on such a day, or met him at dinner on such another,
+and said some great memorable thing 'on Wednesday last,' and enquired
+kindly about _me_ perhaps on Thursday,--till I was proud! and so, the
+thoughts of you, nearer and nearer (yet still afar!) as the Mr.
+Browning who meant to do me the honour of writing to me, and who did
+write; and who asked me once in a letter (does he remember?) 'not to
+lean out of the window while his foot was on the stair!'--to take up
+all those thoughts, and more than those, one after another, and tie
+them together with all _these_, which cannot be named so easily--which
+cannot be classed in botany and Greek. It is a nosegay of mystical
+flowers, looking strangely and brightly, and keeping their May-dew
+through the Christmases--better than even _your_ flowers! And I am not
+'ashamed' of mine, ... be very sure! no!
+
+For the siren, I never suggested to you any such thing--why you do not
+pretend to have read such a suggestion in my letter certainly. _That_
+would have been most exemplarily modest of me! would it not, O
+Ulysses?
+
+And you meant to write, ... you _meant_! and went to walk in 'Poet's
+lane' instead, (in the 'Aonius of Highgate') which I remember to have
+read of--does not Hunt speak of it in his Memoirs?--and so now there
+is another track of light in the traditions of the place, and people
+may talk of the pomegranate-smell between the hedges. So you really
+have _hills_ at New Cross, and not hills by courtesy? I was at
+Hampstead once--and there was something attractive to me in that
+fragment of heath with its wild smell, thrown down ... like a Sicilian
+rose from Proserpine's lap when the car drove away, ... into all that
+arid civilization, 'laurel-clumps and invisible visible fences,' as
+you say!--and the grand, eternal smoke rising up in the distance, with
+its witness against nature! People grew severely in jest about cockney
+landscape--but is it not true that the trees and grass in the close
+neighbourhood of great cities must of necessity excite deeper emotion
+than the woods and valleys will, a hundred miles off, where human
+creatures ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the 'county families'
+es-_chewing_ all men who are not 'landed proprietors,' and the farmers
+never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do
+you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise
+so, and 'moralize upon into a thousand similes,' as that one greatest,
+purest, noblest thing in the world--the purely English and excellent
+thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would
+rather live in a street than be forced to live it out,--that English
+country-life; for I don't mean life in the country. The social
+exigencies--why, nothing _can_ be so bad--nothing! That is the way by
+which Englishmen grow up to top the world in their peculiar line of
+respectable absurdities.
+
+Think of my talking so as if I could be vexed with any one of them!
+_I!_--On the contrary I wish them all a happy new year to abuse one
+another, or visit each of them his nearest neighbour whom he hates,
+three times a week, because 'the distance is so convenient,' and give
+great dinners in noble rivalship (venison from the Lord Lieutenant
+against turbot from London!), and talk popularity and game-law by
+turns to the tenantry, and beat down tithes to the rector. This
+glorious England of ours; with its peculiar glory of the rural
+districts! And _my_ glory of patriotic virtue, who am so happy in
+spite of it all, and make a pretence of talking--talking--while I
+think the whole time of your letter. I think of your letter--I am no
+more a patriot than _that_!
+
+May God bless you, best and dearest! You say things to me which I am
+not worthy to listen to for a moment, even if I was deaf dust the next
+moment.... I confess it humbly and earnestly as before God.
+
+Yet He knows,--if the entireness of a gift means anything,--that I
+have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul,
+for this year and for other years. Let me be used _for_ you rather
+than _against_ you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of
+feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be
+saved from it!--pray it for _me_ ... for _my_ sake rather than
+_yours_. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to
+me, what to-day you are--and that is all!--!
+
+                                             I am your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Sunday Night.
+                               [Post-mark, January 5, 1846.]
+
+Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you 'think of me'--I wonder
+if you could misunderstand me in that?--As if my words or actions or
+any of my ineffectual outside-self _should_ be thought of, unless to
+be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your
+mind--cared for, rather than thought about--no great harm can happen
+to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pass through you,
+you will care for yourself; _my_self, best self!
+
+Come, let us talk. I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to
+see that fresh beautiful things are there--I suppose 'Delora' will
+stand alone still--but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower
+of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-masses and fern and
+spotty yellow leaves,--all that, I love heartily--and there is good
+sailor-speech in the 'Ben Capstan'--though he does knock a man down
+with a 'crow-bar'--instead of a marling-spike or, even, a
+belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and
+individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder--his not
+reprinting a quaint clever _real_ ballad, published before 'Delora,'
+on the 'Merry Devil of Edmonton'--the first of his works I ever read.
+No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which
+was this line: 'When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,'--good, is
+it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, _is_ that 'Swineshead
+Monk' ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler's touch on the method of
+concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under
+a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c.
+something to that effect. I suspect, _par parenthese_, you have found
+out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'--you once wrote '_your_
+snails'--and certainly snails are old clients of mine--but efts! Horne
+traced a line to me--in the rhymes of a ''prentice-hand' I used to
+look over and correct occasionally--taxed me (last week) with having
+altered the wise line 'Cold as a _lizard_ in a _sunny_ stream' to
+'Cold as a newt hid in a shady brook'--for 'what do _you_ know about
+newts?' he asked of the author--who thereupon confessed. But never try
+and catch a speckled gray lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you
+see his tail hang out of the chink of a wall, his
+winter-house--because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him
+and stay in your fingers--and though you afterwards learn that there
+is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than
+positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)--and
+though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort--_yet_ ... don't
+do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our English
+water-eft is; 'Triton paludis Linnaei'--_e come guizza_ (_that_ you
+can't say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out
+motion along with the straightforwardness!)--I always loved all those
+wild creatures God '_sets up for themselves_' so independently of us,
+so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as
+it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with
+our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a
+leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no
+doubt; or tomb, perhaps--'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's
+olives swart'--(Kiss me, my Siren!)--Well, it seemed awful to watch
+that bee--he seemed so _instantly_ from the teaching of God! AElian
+says that ... a _frog_, does he say?--some animal, having to swim
+across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed,
+which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts
+from shore gallantly ... because when the water-serpent comes swimming
+to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent's jaws, and no
+hopes of a swallow that time--now fancy the two meeting heads, the
+frog's wide eyes and the vexation of the snake!
+
+Now, see! do I deceive you? Never say I began by letting down my
+dignity 'that with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian
+Mount'!--
+
+My best, dear, dear one,--may you be better, less _depressed_, ... I
+can hardly imagine frost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what
+happiness you mean to give me,--what a life; what a death! 'I may
+change'--too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning
+so it continues--I _may_ take up stones and pelt the next I
+see--but--do you much fear that?--Now, _walk_, move, _guizza, anima
+mia dolce_. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from
+mine as we walk? May I let that stay ... dearest, (the _line_ stay,
+not the mouth)?
+
+I am not very well to-day--or, rather, have not been so--_now_, I am
+well and _with you_. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict
+frankness' sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all
+about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless
+you, and leave you in the hands of God--My own love!--
+
+Tell me if I do wrong to send _this_ by a morning post--so as to reach
+you earlier than the evening--when you will ... write to me?
+
+Don't let me forget to say that I shall receive the _Review_
+to-morrow, and will send it directly.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Sunday.
+                               [Post-mark, January 6, 1846.]
+
+When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading
+just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a
+little of it--and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do,
+I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the
+first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty.
+But last night I read the 'Monk of Swineshead Abbey' and the 'Three
+Knights of Camelott' and 'Bedd Gelert' and found them all of different
+stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure
+and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless
+ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines
+for clearness--
+
+    Like to the cloud upon the hill
+    We are a moment seen
+    Or the _shadow of the windmill-sail
+    Across yon sunny slope of green_.
+
+New or not, and I don't remember it elsewhere, it is just and
+beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just
+touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying
+is not faster! Then the 'Three Knights' has beautiful things, with
+more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show--for his
+character is a vague grand massiveness,--like Stonehenge--or at least,
+if 'towers and battlements he sees' they are 'bosomed high' in dusky
+clouds ... it is a 'passion-created imagery' which has no clear
+outline. In this ballad of the 'Knights,' and in the Monk's too, we
+may _look at_ things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and
+mates not with his kind afterwards, 'While, _holding beards_, they
+dance in pairs--and that is all excellent and reminds one of those
+fine sylvan festivals, 'in Orion.' But now tell me if you like
+altogether 'Ben Capstan' and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be
+lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we
+may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect
+what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf
+story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I
+am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about
+fairies:--Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' with its
+subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse ...
+'_machina intersit_' ... Grandmama Grey!--to say nothing of the 'small
+dog' that isn't the 'small boy.' Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger
+canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than
+lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity
+in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and
+earnestly. No one has admired more than I the 'Death of Marlowe,'
+scenes in 'Cosmo,' and 'Orion' in much of it. But now tell me if you
+can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I
+am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who
+combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No
+one, at present in the world.
+
+Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I
+found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter
+of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now
+is only as good as the worst before, and I can't hear from you, until
+Monday ... Monday! Did you think of _that_--you who took the credit of
+acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I
+shall have to wait ... till what o'clock on Monday, tempted in the
+meanwhile to fall into controversy against the 'new moons and sabbath
+days' and the pausing of the post in consequence.
+
+You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the
+physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about
+you--you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the
+crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of
+myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could
+not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters
+seemed nearer to me, long ... long ... and in spite of the postmark,
+than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me
+constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his
+side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to
+think of having to wait so many hours before the 'candid' closing
+letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. 'People say,'
+I used to think, 'that women _always_ know, and certainly I do not
+know, and therefore ... therefore.'--The logic crushed on like
+Juggernaut's car. But in the letters it was different--the dear
+letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to
+stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for
+ever and answer them after a fashion ... that, I felt from the
+beginning. But _you_--!
+
+_Monday._--Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my
+letter! Yet you look askance at me over 'newt and toad,' and praise so
+the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same
+head. And you really like _that_? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the
+night cap and all? and 'shoetye and blue sky?' and is it really wrong
+of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole,
+... not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical,
+and in the grotesque--but here there is a want of life and
+consistency, as it seems to me!--the elf is no elf and speaks no
+elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch, ... this, ... for
+supernatural music. So I fancy at least--but I will try the poem again
+presently. You must be right--unless it should be your over-goodness
+opposed to my over-badness--I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps
+in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as
+Mr. Forster did his last _Examiner_ in, when he gave the all-hail to
+Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no!--not
+such as Mr. Forster's. Your soul does not enter into his secret--There
+can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word--he
+who knows--or ought to know!--And now let us agree and admire the
+bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert's unfilled grave--
+
+    The _long_ beard _fell_ like _snow_ into the grave
+                 With solemn grace
+
+A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for
+the fairies.
+
+I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon--Miss Martineau's
+two volumes--and Mr. Bailey sends his 'Festus,' very kindly, ... and
+'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' from America from a Mrs. or a Miss
+Fuller--how I hate those 'Women of England,' 'Women and their Mission'
+and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such
+expositions of rights and wrongs.
+
+Your letter would be worth them all, if _you_ were less _you_! I mean,
+just this letter, ... all alive as it is with crawling buzzing
+wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures ... as all alive as your
+own pedant's book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs
+too--particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so
+high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my
+nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one
+hand to the other. But for the toad!--why, at the end of the row of
+narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an
+old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a
+great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly.
+That he 'wore a jewel in his head' I doubted nothing at all. You must
+see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And
+on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never
+looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs,
+deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than
+go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the
+profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his
+toad's head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment,
+poisoned as by one of the Medici.
+
+Oh--and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my
+sisters in a rat's nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was,
+the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and
+blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet
+no, not much. My aversion proper ... call it horror rather ... was for
+the silent, cold, clinging, gliding _bat_; and even now, I think, I
+could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as
+it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on
+the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing--the
+wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so
+cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of
+natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night
+those bats come sailing ... without a sound--and go ... you cannot
+guess where!--fade with the night-blackness!
+
+You have not been well--which is my first thought if not my first
+word. Do walk, and do not work; and think ... what I could be thinking
+of, if I did not think of _you_ ... dear--dearest! 'As the doves fly
+to the windows,' so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty,
+as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up
+straight to God ... nothing, no one, used to intercept me--now there
+is _you_--only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore
+any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are
+to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you
+know at all what _I_ am,--and what I should be but for you.
+
+So ... love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the
+lizards! love me as you love the efts--and I will believe in _you_ as
+you believe ... in AElian--Will _that_ do?
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+Say how you are when you write--_and write_.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                            Tuesday Morning.
+
+I this minute receive the Review--a poor business, truly! Is there a
+reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical
+High-place to hold forth?--I have only glanced over the article
+however. Well, one day _I_ am to write of you, dearest, and it must
+come to something rather better than _that_!
+
+I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest.
+I am trusting to hear from you--
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in
+the _New Quarterly_ 'Mr. Browning' figures pleasantly as 'one without
+any sympathy for a human being!'--Then, for newts and efts at all
+events!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                               Tuesday Night.
+                               [Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
+
+But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you
+not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one's
+supposed tether without danger--there is the distance so palpably
+between the most audacious step _there_, and the next ... which is
+nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal
+intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even,
+might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path
+once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come
+into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended _there_, just there
+... and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid
+speaking irrevocable words--and when, as to me, those words are
+intensely _true, doom-words_--think, dearest! Because, as I told you
+once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect
+_respect_ in it, the full _belief_ ... (I shall get presently to poor
+Robert's very avowal of 'owing you all esteem'!). It is on that I
+build, and am secure--for how should I know, of myself, how to serve
+you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own
+interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be
+considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were
+loathing at your heart, and if so many 'noes' made a 'yes,' and 'one
+refusal no rebuff' and all that horrible bestiality which stout
+gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after
+dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, 'The toast be
+dear woman!' Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,--I
+do believe,--_now_, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love,
+and least able to imagine what I should do without it,--I cannot but
+believe, I say, that had you given me once a 'refusal'--clearly
+derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied
+consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly
+but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by
+any step of mine; I should, _believing you_, have never again renewed
+directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count
+how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to
+you ... but from _the outside_, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I
+should have acted thus under _any_ circumstances, how could I but
+redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish--you know,
+and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for
+the cause, though not the manner--but could I do other than keep
+'farther from you' than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in
+that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and
+_then_, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your
+feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart
+and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be
+yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It
+was the plainness of _that_ which determined me to wait and be patient
+and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might
+please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could
+not have been most rich, too, _then_--in what would seem little only
+to _me_, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud
+beyond measure--happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see
+you simply, speak with you and be spoken to--what am I more than
+others? Don't think this mock humility--_it is not_--you take me in
+your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this
+is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you _might_--if not
+now, at some future time--give other than this, the true reason, for
+that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early
+farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate
+_drawing closer_--I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press
+close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.
+
+_Wednesday._--You are entirely right about those poems of Horne's--I
+spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle
+with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of
+originality in men--the other way of safe copying precedents being
+_so_ safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in
+the form ... reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The
+Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think--and a common mistake,
+too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women,
+and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing
+for children and miss them and the others too,--with that detestable
+irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they
+profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower
+capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by
+half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books
+and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid
+good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club--keep us from all
+that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in
+Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the
+foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all
+events--the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour
+which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then,
+what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, _so_! Not
+altogether,--for first it was but the stranger's welcome I gave, the
+right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once
+admitted within the door. And then--when I know what Horne thinks
+of--you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired
+you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune ... I _could_ NOT
+begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends--he has such
+very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and
+_none_, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than
+your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed--truth
+remains the truth--so, at least, I excuse myself ... and quite as much
+for what I say _now_ as for what was said _then_! 'King John' is very
+fine and full of purpose; 'The Noble Heart,' sadly faint and
+uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor
+conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to
+resist--a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced
+to complete another fashioned morality--a segment of a circle of
+larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your
+own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how
+and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with
+quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one
+to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. 'Bear patiently all
+injuries--revenge in no case'--that is plain. 'Take what you conceive
+to be God's part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy
+evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here'--_that_ is plain,
+too,--but, call Otto's act _no_ wrong, or being one, not such as
+should be avenged--and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is
+a 'recreant'--just what needs the slight punishment of instant death
+to the remarker--and ... where is the way? What _is_ clear?
+
+--Not my letter! which goes on and on--'dear letters'--sweetest?
+because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall
+see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own--I have not half said
+what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which
+proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, 'at a
+cock-crow from the Grange.'--Ever your own.
+
+Last night, I received a copy of the _New Quarterly_--now here is
+popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to
+be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously
+eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last--and
+in _three other_ articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing,
+they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one
+instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and
+_with_ me I don't know how many poetical _cretins_ are praised as
+noticeably--and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the
+richest style of scavengering--only Carlyle! And I love him enough not
+to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into
+his.
+
+All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my
+Ba.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Wednesday.
+                               [Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
+
+But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read
+them--of _you_, I mean of course,--though I quite understand that it
+is doing no manner of good to go back so to 'Paracelsus,' heading the
+article 'Paracelsus and other poems,' as if the other poems could not
+front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. 'Paracelsus'
+is a great work and will _live_, but the way to do you good with the
+stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would
+have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last
+living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying 'Look _here_.'
+What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the
+_Retrospective Review_? And then, no attempt at analytical
+criticism--or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in
+sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy
+things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice:
+and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your
+great world--the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like
+that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a
+sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical
+sectarianism, in another place--_yours_!
+
+For me, it is all quite kind enough--only I object, on my own part
+also, to being reviewed in the 'Seraphim,' when my better books are
+nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk
+of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know,--but let
+them be _my_ faults! When I wrote the 'Romaunt of Margret,' I had not
+read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only
+half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and
+sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in
+London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till
+the collected works appeared ... _favente_ Moxon, ... I was ignorant
+of his best _early_ productions; and not even for the rhythmetical
+form of my 'Vision of the Poets,' was I indebted to the 'Two
+Voices,'--three pages of my 'Vision' having been written several years
+ago--at the beginning of my illness--and thrown aside, and taken up
+again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there's no use talking! In a
+solitary review which noticed my 'Essay on Mind,' somebody wrote ...
+'this young lady imitates Darwin'--and I never could _read_ Darwin,
+... was stopped always on the second page of the 'Loves of the Plants'
+when I tried to read him to 'justify myself in having an opinion'--the
+repulsion was too strong. Yet the 'young lady imitated Darwin' of
+course, as the infallible critic said so.
+
+And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the 'many others,'
+whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The 'three
+poets in three distant ages born' may well stare amazed!
+
+After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on
+your review in a passion--because pray mark that the ink has over-run
+some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of
+an inkstand, it would not have been precisely _there_. It is the
+second book spoilt by me within these two days--and my fingers were so
+dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have
+made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty
+enough to befit a poetess--as black 'as bard beseemed'--and he took
+the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.
+
+How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have
+reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very
+very earliest?--and how is it that I did not hear from you last night
+again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you
+_hate_ writing to me?
+
+At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the
+letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the
+ink--I did it 'in a pet,' he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new
+book--certainly I ought--only it is not worth doing justice for--and I
+shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must
+forgive me as magnanimously as you can.
+
+'Omne ignotum pro magnifico'--do you think _so_? I hope not indeed!
+_vo quietando_--and everything else that I ought to do--except of
+course, _that_ thinking of you which is so difficult.
+
+May God bless you. Till to-morrow!
+
+                                            Your own always.
+
+Mr. Kenyon refers to 'Festus'--of which I had said that the fine
+things were worth looking for, in the design manque.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                               Friday Morning.
+                               [Post-mark, January 9, 1846.]
+
+You never think, ever dearest, that I 'repent'--why what a word to
+use! You never could _think_ such a word for a moment! If you were to
+leave me even,--to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do
+it,--I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I
+'repent' ... regret anything ... be sorry for having known you and
+loved you ... no! Which I say simply to prove that, in _no_ extreme
+case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be
+different.
+
+_Not_ out of 'generosity' certainly, but from the veriest selfishness,
+I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the
+future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than
+another woman might have been.
+
+Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions--do I not vex you by
+them, _you_ whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force
+their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world,
+and because your happiness is so precious a thing.
+
+    Cloth of frieze, be not too bold,
+    Though thou'rt matched with cloth of gold!
+
+--_that_, beloved, was written for _me_. And you, if you would make me
+happy, _always_ will look at yourself from my ground and by my light,
+as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that
+if I were _vacillating_, I should not be so weak as to tease you with
+the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased
+swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction
+or wish of retraction,--because I belong to you by gift and ownership,
+and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of
+yours,--it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the
+necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being
+wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which
+is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over
+and over have you replied to them,--as yesterday!--and now, do not
+speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for
+particular application,--only to be _ready_ for application. I love
+you from the deepest of my nature--the whole world is nothing to me
+beside you--and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible.
+'How _dreadful_ is this place.'
+
+To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for
+to-day,--it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word.
+It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves)
+under the same aspect and colour--and it is certainly true that I have
+a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects
+as we have never looked at together. I know _you_ so well (yes, I
+boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also
+the _idola_ of all things as they are in your eyes--so that never,
+scarcely, I am curious,--never anxious, to learn what your opinions
+may be. Now, _have_ I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to
+know _you_.
+
+More than enough! You have 'left undone'--do you say? On the contrary,
+you have done too much,--you _are_ too much. My cup,--which used to
+hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the
+absinthus,--has overflowed all this wine: and _that_ makes me look out
+for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out
+your hand for them.
+
+Say how you are--and do take care and exercise--and write to me,
+dearest!
+
+                                             Ever your own--
+
+                                                  BA.
+
+How right you are about 'Ben Capstan,'--and the illustration by the
+_yellow clay_. That is precisely what I meant,--said with more
+precision than I could say it. Art without an ideal is neither nature
+nor art. The question involves the whole difference between Madame
+Tussaud and Phidias.
+
+I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe's book--and I see that the
+deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever
+produceable by the dedication, is cut down and away--perhaps in this
+particular copy only!
+
+Tuesday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being
+afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you!
+Try to let it be long to you--will you? My consistency is wonderful.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                             Friday Morning.
+
+As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review--indeed it was
+foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?--You
+shall not send it back--but on your table I shall find and take it
+next Tuesday--_c'est convenu_! The other precious volume has not yet
+come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to
+carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!
+
+I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a
+scale for the Review's sake; and just now--there is no denying it, and
+spite of all I have been incredulous about--it does seem that the fact
+_is_ achieved and that I _do_ love you, plainly, surely, more than
+ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why,
+the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?--in the
+heart's heart.
+
+Rest--dearest--bless you--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
+
+Kindest and dearest you are!--that is 'my secret' and for the others,
+I leave them to you!--only it is no secret that I should and must be
+glad to have the words you sent with the book,--which I should have
+seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I
+not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of
+critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the
+dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of
+human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on--it is the stamp
+on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or
+farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said
+than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up
+to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could
+have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said
+rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the
+brain,--which is as true as truth can be. Then, I _shall have
+'Pauline' in a day or two_--yes, I shall and must, and _will_.
+
+The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that
+name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley's, and is one of his very best
+papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about
+his writings in general, with a grace and _savoir faire_ nevertheless,
+and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says
+of 'many-sidedness' seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That,
+he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having
+such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of
+principle--yet 'many-sidedness' is certainly no word for him. The
+effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy
+and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather _bends_ to
+a phase of humanity and literature than contains it--than comprehends
+it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all
+round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things:
+universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the
+contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the
+mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the
+willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now
+toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is
+different altogether ... _as_ different as a willow-tree from a church
+tower.
+
+Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while
+I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me
+to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so
+much, of thinking of only you--which _is_ too much, perhaps. Shall I
+tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to
+any woman what you are to me--the fulness must be in proportion, you
+know, to the vacancy ... and only _I_ know what was behind--the long
+wilderness _without_ the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for
+happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is
+it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve--not
+_you_--but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a
+lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without
+the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And
+you love me _more_, you say?--Shall I thank you or God?
+Both,--indeed--and there is no possible return from me to either of
+you! I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God. How
+shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it
+as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.
+
+Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for
+your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a
+thought of any others--_that_ is all I could ask you with any disquiet
+as to the granting of it--May God bless you!--
+
+                                                    Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+But you have the review _now_--surely?
+
+The _Morning Chronicle_ attributes the authorship of 'Modern Poets'
+(_our_ article) to Lord John Manners--so I hear this morning. I have
+not yet looked at the paper myself. The _Athenaeum_, still abominably
+dumb!--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
+
+This is _no_ letter--love,--I make haste to tell you--to-morrow I will
+write. For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very
+destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an
+old, old friend he is, beside--so--you must understand my defection,
+when only this scrap reaches you to-night! Ah, love,--you are my
+unutterable blessing,--I discover you, more of you, day by day,--hour
+by hour, I do think!--I am entirely yours,--one gratitude, all my soul
+becomes when I see you over me as now--God bless my dear, dearest.
+
+My 'Act Fourth' is done--but too roughly this time! I will tell you--
+
+One kiss more, dearest!
+
+Thanks for the Review.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 12, 1846.]
+
+I have no words for you, my dearest,--I shall never have.
+
+You are mine, I am yours. Now, here is one sign of what I said ...
+that I must love you more than at first ... a little sign, and to be
+looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows
+_can_ only be little, so very little now--and as the fine French
+Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined
+stages by _millionths_, so--! At first I only thought of being _happy_
+in you,--in your happiness: now I most think of you in the dark hours
+that must come--I shall grow old with you, and die with you--as far as
+I can look into the night I see the light with me. And surely with
+that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed
+sense of security to the sunny middle of the day. I am in the full
+sunshine now; and _after_, all seems cared for,--is it too homely an
+illustration if I say the day's visit is not crossed by uncertainties
+as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?--Now Keats
+speaks of 'Beauty, that must _die_--and Joy whose hand is ever at his
+lips, bidding farewell!' And _who_ spoke of--looking up into the eyes
+and asking 'And _how long_ will you love us'?--There is a Beauty that
+will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will
+love for ever!
+
+And _I_--am to love no longer than I can. Well, dear--and when I _can_
+no longer--you will not blame me? You will do only as ever, kindly and
+justly; hardly more. I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my
+fancy to such an experiment, and consider how _that_ is to happen, and
+what measures ought to be taken in the emergency--because in the
+'universality of my sympathies' I certainly number a very lively one
+with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a
+spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis. There is no doubt
+I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more
+fortunate human being. And I hope that because such a calamity does
+not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no
+less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no
+humanity can be altogether exempt--just as God bids us ask for the
+continuance of the 'daily bread'!--'battle, murder and sudden death'
+lie behind doubtless. I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one
+more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we
+bestow in another's case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our
+own, ... that I only contemplate the _possibility_ you make me
+recognize, with pity, and fear ... no anger at all; and imprecations
+of vengeance, _for what_? Observe, I only speak of cases _possible_;
+of sudden impotency of mind; that _is_ possible--there _are_ other
+ways of '_changing_,' 'ceasing to love' &c. which it is safest not to
+think of nor believe in. A man _may_ never leave his writing desk
+without seeing safe in one corner of it the folded slip which directs
+the disposal of his papers in the event of his reason suddenly leaving
+him--or he may never go out into the street without a card in his
+pocket to signify his address to those who may have to pick him up in
+an apoplectic fit--but if he once begins to fear he is growing a glass
+bottle, and, _so_, liable to be smashed,--do you see? And now, love,
+dear heart of my heart, my own, only Ba--see no more--see what I _am_,
+what God in his constant mercy ordinarily grants to those who have, as
+I, received already so much; much, past expression! It is but--if you
+will so please--at worst, forestalling the one or two years, for my
+sake; but you _will_ be as sure of me _one_ day as I can be now of
+myself--and why not _now_ be sure? See, love--a year is gone by--we
+were in one relation when you wrote at the end of a letter 'Do not say
+I do not tire you' (by writing)--'_I am sure I do_.' A year has gone
+by--_Did you tire me then?_ _Now_, you tell me what is told; for my
+sake, sweet, let the few years go by; we are married, and my arms are
+round you, and my face touches yours, and I am asking you, '_Were you
+not_ to me, in that dim beginning of 1846, a joy behind all joys, a
+life added to and transforming mine, the good I choose from all the
+possible gifts of God on this earth, for which I seemed to have lived;
+which accepting, I thankfully step aside and let the rest get what
+they can; what, it is very likely, they esteem more--for why should my
+eye be evil because God's is good; why should I grudge that, giving
+them, I do believe, infinitely less, he gives them a content in the
+inferior good and belief in its worth? I should have wished _that_
+further concession, that illusion as I believe it, for their
+sakes--but I cannot undervalue my own treasure and so scant the only
+tribute of mere gratitude which is in my power to pay. Hear this said
+_now before_ the few years; and believe in it _now for then_, dearest!
+
+
+Must you see 'Pauline'? At least then let me wait a few days; to
+correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the
+history of it; what is necessary you should know before you see it.
+That article I suppose to be by Heraud--about two thirds--and the
+rest, or a little less, by that Mr. Powell--whose unimaginable,
+impudent vulgar stupidity you get some inkling of in the 'Story from
+Boccaccio'--of which the _words_ quoted were _his_, I am sure--as sure
+as that he knows not whether Boccaccio lived before or after
+Shakspeare, whether Florence or Rome be the more northern city,--one
+word of Italian in general, or letter of Boccaccio's in particular.
+When I took pity on him once on a time and helped his verses into a
+sort of grammar and sense, I did not think he was a _buyer_ of other
+men's verses, to be printed as his own; thus he _bought_ two
+modernisations of Chaucer--'Ugolino' and another story from Leigh
+Hunt--and one, 'Sir Thopas' from Horne, and printed them as his own,
+as I learned only last week. He paid me extravagant court and, seeing
+no harm in the mere folly of the man, I was on good terms with him,
+till ten months ago he grossly insulted a friend of mine who had
+written an article for the Review--(which is as good as _his_, he
+being a large proprietor of the delectable property, and influencing
+the voices of his co-mates in council)--well, he insulted my friend,
+who had written that article at my special solicitation, and did all
+he could to avoid paying the price of it--Why?--Because the poor
+creature had actually taken the article to the Editor _as one by his
+friend Serjeant Talfourd contributed for pure love of him, Powell the
+aforesaid_,--cutting, in consequence, no inglorious figure in the eyes
+of Printer and Publisher! Now I was away all this time in Italy or he
+would never have ventured on such a piece of childish impertinence.
+And my friend being a true gentleman, and quite unused to this sort of
+'practice,' in the American sense, held his peace and went without his
+'honorarium.' But on my return, I enquired, and made him make a
+proper application, which Mr. Powell treated with all the insolence in
+the world--because, as the event showed, the having to write a cheque
+for 'the Author of _the_ Article'--that author's name _not_ being
+Talfourd's ... _there_ was certain disgrace! Since then (ten months
+ago) I have never seen him--and he accuses _himself_, observe, of
+'sucking my plots while I drink his tea'--one as much as the other!
+And now why do I tell you this, all of it? Ah,--now you shall hear!
+Because, it has often been in my mind to ask you what _you_ know of
+this Mr. Powell, or ever knew. For he, (being profoundly versed in
+every sort of untruth, as every fresh experience shows me, and the
+rest of his acquaintance) he told me long ago, 'he used to correspond
+with you, and that he quarrelled with you'--which I supposed to mean
+that he began by sending you his books (as with one and everybody) and
+that, in return to your note of acknowledgment, he had chosen to write
+again, and perhaps, again--is it so? Do not write one word in answer
+to me--the name of such a miserable nullity, and husk of a man, ought
+not to have a place in your letters--and _that way_ he would get near
+to me again; near indeed this time!--So _tell_ me, in a word--or do
+not tell me.
+
+How I never say what I sit down to say! How saying the little makes me
+want to say the more! How the least of little things, once taken up as
+a thing to be imparted to you, seems to need explanations and
+commentaries; all is of importance to me--every breath you breathe,
+every little fact (like this) you are to know!
+
+I was out last night--to see the rest of Frank Talfourd's theatricals;
+and met Dickens and his set--so my evenings go away! If I do not bring
+the _Act_ you must forgive me--yet I shall, I think; the roughness
+matters little in this stage. Chorley says very truly that a tragedy
+implies as much power _kept back_ as brought out--very true that is. I
+do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied--as was to be but
+expected--with the effect of this last--the _shelve_ of the hill,
+whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at
+the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away--not come to a
+stop like your horse against a church wall. It is all in long
+speeches--the _action, proper_, is in them--they are no descriptions,
+or amplifications--but here, in a drama of this kind, all the
+_events_, (and interest), take place in the _minds_ of the actors ...
+somewhat like 'Paracelsus' in that respect. You know, or don't know,
+that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I
+thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt,
+spasmodic writing--they will find some fault with this, of course.
+
+How you know Chorley! That is precisely the man, that willow blowing
+now here now there--precisely! I wish he minded the _Athenaeum_, its
+silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I--but he goes on
+painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me,
+I feel confident, that _he_ has no part nor lot in the matter: I have
+_two_ kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday. See
+the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he
+can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt;
+and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to
+prove my belief in that same! For myself--if I have vanity which such
+Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who
+praised Mr. Mackay's own, own 'Dead Pan,' quite his own, the other
+day?--By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the
+gentleman had written a certain 'Song of the Bell' ... 'singularly
+like Schiller's; _considering that Mr. M. had never_ seen it!' I am
+told he writes for the _Athenaeum_, but don't know. Would that sort of
+praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue--which Forster, deep
+in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about--as
+pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever
+spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last? You shall
+see they will not notice--unless a fresh publication alters the
+circumstances--until some seven or eight months--as before; and then
+they _will_ notice, and _praise_, and tell anybody who cares to
+enquire, '_So_ we noticed the work.' So do not you go expecting
+justice or injustice till I tell you. It answers me to be found
+writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game,
+when that game is only 'Thimble-rig' and for prizes of
+gingerbread-nuts--Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke _does_ shift the pea,
+and so did from the beginning--as Charles Lamb's pleasant _sobriquet_
+(Mr. _Bilk_, he would have it) testifies. Still he behaved kindly to
+that poor Frances Brown--let us forget him.
+
+And now, my Audience, my crown-bearer, my path-preparer--I am with you
+again and out of them all--there, _here_, in my arms, is my _proved
+palpable success_! My life, my poetry, gained nothing, oh no!--but
+this found them, and blessed them. On Tuesday I shall see you,
+dearest--am much better; well to-day--are you well--or 'scarcely to be
+called an invalid'? Oh, when I _have_ you, am by you--
+
+Bless you, dearest--And be very sure you have your wish about the
+length of the week--still Tuesday must come! And with it your own,
+happy, grateful
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
+
+Ah Mr. Kenyon!--how he vexed me to-day. To keep away all the ten days
+before, and to come just at the wrong time after all! It was better
+for you, I suppose--believe--to go with him down-stairs--yes, it
+certainly was better: it was disagreeable enough to be very wise! Yet
+I, being addicted to every sort of superstition turning to melancholy,
+did hate so breaking off in the middle of that black thread ... (do
+you remember what we were talking of when they opened the door?) that
+I was on the point of saying 'Stay one moment,' which I should have
+repented afterwards for the best of good reasons. Oh, I _should_ have
+liked to have 'fastened off' that black thread, and taken one stitch
+with a blue or a green one!
+
+You do not remember what we were talking of? what _you_, rather, were
+talking of? And what _I_ remember, at least, because it is exactly the
+most unkind and hard thing you ever said to me--ever dearest, so I
+remember it by that sign! That you should say such a thing to me--!
+think what it was, for indeed I will not write it down here--it would
+be worse than Mr. Powell! Only the foolishness of it (I mean, the
+foolishness of it alone) saves it, smooths it to a degree!--the
+foolishness being the same as if you asked a man where he would walk
+when he lost his head. Why, if you had asked St. Denis _beforehand_,
+he would have thought it a foolish question.
+
+And you!--you, who talk so finely of never, never doubting; of being
+such an example in the way of believing and trusting--it appears,
+after all, that you have an imagination apprehensive (or
+comprehensive) of 'glass bottles' like other sublunary creatures, and
+worse than some of them. For mark, that I never went any farther than
+to the stone-wall hypothesis of your forgetting me!--_I_ always
+stopped there--and never climbed, to the top of it over the
+broken-bottle fortification, to see which way you meant to walk
+afterwards. And you, to ask me so coolly--think what you asked me.
+That you should have the heart to ask such a question!
+
+And the reason--! and it could seem a reasonable matter of doubt to
+you whether I would go to the south for my health's sake!--And I
+answered quite a common 'no' I believe--for you bewildered me for the
+moment--and I have had tears in my eyes two or three times since, just
+through thinking back of it all ... of your asking me such questions.
+Now did I not tell you when I first knew you, that I was leaning out
+of the window? True, _that_ was--I was tired of living ...
+unaffectedly tired. All I cared to live for was to do better some of
+the work which, after all, was out of myself, and which I had to reach
+across to do. But I told you. Then, last year, for duty's sake I would
+have _consented_ to go to Italy! but if you really fancy that I would
+have struggled in the face of all that difficulty--or struggled,
+indeed, anywise, to compass such an object as _that_--except for the
+motive of your caring for it and me--why you know nothing of me after
+all--nothing! And now, take away the motive, and I am where I
+was--leaning out of the window again. To put it in plainer words (as
+you really require information), I should let them do what they liked
+to me till I was dead--only I _wouldn't go to Italy_--if anybody
+proposed Italy out of contradiction. In the meantime I do entreat you
+never to talk of such a thing to me any more.
+
+You know, if you were to leave me by your choice and for your
+happiness, it would be another thing. It would be very lawful to talk
+of _that_.
+
+And observe! I perfectly understand that you did not think of
+_doubting me_--so to speak! But you thought, all the same, that if
+such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.
+
+Well--I am not quarrelling--I am uneasy about your head rather. That
+pain in it--what can it mean? I do beseech you to think of me just so
+much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never
+missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then
+not to walk at all until Friday is _not_ taking exercise, nor the
+thing required. Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of
+evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid. I
+do beseech you, dearest! And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you,
+besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to _him_ for a very little
+time--just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast
+somewhere. Will you consider, and do what is right, _for me_? I do not
+propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at
+which you might reasonably hesitate. And--did you ever try smoking as
+a remedy? If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do
+you good, I have been thinking. Or without the smoking, to breathe
+where tobacco is burnt,--_that_ calms the nervous system in a
+wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from
+an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of
+narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was
+tranquillized in one half hour by a _pinch_ of _tobacco_ being burnt
+in a shovel near me. Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?
+
+_Wednesday._--For '_Pauline_'--when I had named it to you I was on the
+point of sending for the book to the booksellers--then suddenly I
+thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very
+much would dislike my reading it. See now! Many readers have done
+virtuously, but _I_, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpassed them
+all!--And now, because I may, I '_must_ read it':--and as there are
+misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you
+think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday? Do not
+send--bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot
+to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read
+it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.
+
+Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not
+keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been
+worse--_that_, you confess!--and what if it should be the crossing of
+my bad star? _You_ of the 'Crown' and the 'Lyre,' to seek influences
+from the 'chair of Cassiopeia'! I hope she will forgive me for using
+her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professorship of
+poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election.
+You know, the qualification, there, is,--_not to be a poet_.
+
+How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of _them_) were out of
+spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet
+sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley!--and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who
+_will_ say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with
+him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk
+down-stairs together?
+
+Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very
+own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself!--
+
+                                                      E.B.B.
+
+Say particularly how you are--now do not omit it. And will you have
+Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this
+moment I _dare_ not, because they are reading them here.
+
+Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'--which is
+quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank
+verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!
+
+But for the _man_!--To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of
+Commonplaces, such as he is!--I have seen his name in the _Athenaeum_
+attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,--more
+than usually fugitive--but I never heard before that his hand was in
+the prose department.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
+
+Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I _well knew
+and felt_ the price I was about to pay--but the thought _did_ occur
+that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was
+that of his own arrival--and that he would not know how very soon,
+alas, I should be _obliged_ to go--so ... to save you any least
+embarrassment in the world, I got--just that shake of the hand, just
+that look--and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after
+all? So I said to myself all the way home.
+
+When I am away from you--a crowd of things press on me for
+utterance--'I will say them, not write them,' I think:--when I see
+you--all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,--'they can be
+written, at all events'--I think _that_ too. So, feeling so much, I
+say so little!
+
+I have just returned from Town and write for the Post--but _you_ mean
+to write, I trust.
+
+_That_ was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!
+
+How are you?--tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!
+
+                             Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.
+
+                                  I am wholly your
+
+                                       R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Thursday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 15, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, dearer to my heart minute by minute, I had no wish to give
+you pain, God knows. No one can more readily consent to let a few
+years more or less of life go out of account,--be lost--but as I sate
+by you, you so full of the truest life, for this world as for the
+next,--and was struck by the possibility, all that might happen were I
+away, in the case of your continuing to acquiesce--dearest, it _is_
+horrible--could not but speak. If in drawing you, all of you, closer
+to my heart, I hurt you whom I would--_outlive_ ... yes,--cannot speak
+here--forgive me, Ba.
+
+My Ba, you are to consider now for me. Your health, your strength, it
+is all wonderful; that is not my dream, you know--but what all see.
+Now, steadily care for us both--take time, take counsel if you choose;
+but at the end tell me what you will do for your part--thinking of me
+as utterly devoted, soul and body, to you, living wholly in your life,
+seeing good and ill only as you see,--being yours as your hand is,--or
+as your Flush, rather. Then I will, on my side, prepare. When I say
+'take counsel'--I reserve my last right, the man's right of first
+speech. _I_ stipulate, too, and require to say my own speech in my own
+words or by letter--remember! But this living without you is too
+tormenting now. So begin thinking,--as for Spring, as for a New Year,
+as for a new life.
+
+I went no farther than the door with Mr. Kenyon. He must see the
+truth; and--you heard the playful words which had a meaning all the
+same.
+
+No more of this; only, think of it for me, love!
+
+One of these days I shall write a long letter--on the omitted matters,
+unanswered questions, in your past letters. The present joy still
+makes me ungrateful to the previous one; but I remember. We are to
+live together one day, love!
+
+Will you let Mr. Poe's book lie on the table on Monday, if you please,
+that I may read what he _does_ say, with my own eyes? _That_ I meant
+to ask, too!
+
+How too, too kind you are--how you care for so little that affects me!
+I am very much better--I went out yesterday, as you found: to-day I
+shall walk, beside seeing Chorley. And certainly, certainly I would go
+away for a week, if so I might escape being ill (and away from you) a
+fortnight; but I am _not_ ill--and will care, as you bid me, beloved!
+So, you will send, and take all trouble; and all about that crazy
+Review! Now, you should not!--I will consider about your goodness. I
+hardly know if I care to read that kind of book just now.
+
+Will you, and must you have 'Pauline'? If I could pray you to revoke
+that decision! For it is altogether foolish and _not_ boylike--and I
+shall, I confess, hate the notion of running over it--yet commented
+it must be; more than mere correction! I was unluckily
+_precocious_--but I had rather you _saw_ real infantine efforts
+(verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this
+ambiguous, feverish--Why not wait? When you speak of the
+'Bookseller'--I smile, in glorious security--having a whole bale of
+sheets at the house-top. He never knew my name even!--and I withdrew
+these after a very little time.
+
+And now--here is a vexation. May I be with you (for this once) next
+Monday, at _two_ instead of _three_ o'clock? Forster's business with
+the new Paper obliges him, he says, to restrict his choice of days to
+_Monday_ next--and give up _my_ part of Monday I will never for fifty
+Forsters--now, sweet, mind that! Monday is no common day, but leads to
+a _Saturday_--and if, as I ask, I get leave to call at 2--and to stay
+till 3-1/2--though I then lose nearly half an hour--yet all will be
+comparatively well. If there is any difficulty--one word and I
+re-appoint our party, his and mine, for the day the paper breaks
+down--not so long to wait, it strikes me!
+
+Now, bless you, my precious Ba--I am your own--
+
+                                               --Your own R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Thursday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]
+
+Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right
+to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it
+seems to me--now what I am going to say may take its place among the
+paradoxes,--that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only
+long one came last, and I was quite contented that the 'old friend'
+should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of
+the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short
+note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a
+child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a
+crown--and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never
+turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of
+precedents.
+
+Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that 'Mr. Browning would soon
+go away'--in reply to an observation of his, that 'he would not stay
+as I had company'; and altogether it was better,--the lamp made it
+look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being
+tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and
+leave me under such an impression--'mens conscia recti' too!!--
+
+And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But
+I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather
+is as 'miraculous' as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and
+make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do
+what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the
+air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech
+you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill
+to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A
+little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me
+to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!--How the
+world has changed since then! To _me_, I mean.
+
+Did I say _that_ ever ... that 'I knew you must be tired?' And it was
+not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?
+
+_Thursday night._--I have begun on another sheet--I could not write
+here what was in my heart--yet I send you this paper besides to show
+how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a
+female friend of mine and broke the thread--the visible thread, that
+is.
+
+And now, even now, at this safe eight o'clock, I could not be safe
+from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and
+sit by me--and when my letter was come--'why wouldn't I read it? What
+wonderful politeness on my part.' She would not and could not consent
+to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire
+rather.
+
+No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the
+Regent, ... (didn't he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in
+the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put
+down to-night in her 'private diary.' I kept the letter in my hand and
+only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the
+mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch
+a little of what was inside. Not _all_, however, happily for me! Or my
+friend would have seen in my eyes what _they_ did not see.
+
+May God bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the
+verses at six years old--or see the drawings either? I am reasonable,
+you observe! Only, 'Pauline,' I must have _some day_--why not without
+the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a
+little--if you promise _at last_ to let me see the book, which I will
+not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the
+day--some day. Am I not generous? And _I_ was 'precocious' too, and
+used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby
+... only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing
+of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I
+used to write of virtue with a large 'V,' and 'Oh Muse' with a harp,
+and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called 'an
+epic'--and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we
+used to act in the nursery. There was a French 'hexameter' tragedy on
+the subject of Regulus--but I cannot even smile to think of it now,
+there are so many grave memories--which time has made grave--hung
+around it. How I remember sitting in 'my house under the sideboard,'
+in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning
+
+    Que suis je? autrefois un general Remain:
+    Maintenant esclave de Carthage je souffre en vain.
+
+Poor Regulus!--Can't you conceive how fine it must have been
+altogether? And these were my 'maturer works,' you are to understand,
+... and 'the moon was bright at ten o'clock at night' years before. As
+to the gods and goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and
+reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a
+fashion, as some greater philosophers have done--and went out one day
+with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the
+housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my
+favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon
+as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of
+general scepticism, ... and though I went on saying 'the Lord's
+prayer' at nights and mornings, and the 'Bless all my kind friends'
+afterwards, by the childish custom ... yet I ended this liturgy with a
+supplication which I found in 'King's Memoirs' and which took my fancy
+and met my general views exactly.... 'O God, if there be a God, save
+my soul if I have a soul.' Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful
+children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is
+wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as
+well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in
+which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds
+all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say ... 'Don't read
+Gibbon's history--it's not a proper book. Don't read "Tom Jones"--and
+none of the books on _this_ side, mind!' So I was very obedient and
+never touched the books on _that_ side, and only read instead Tom
+Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,'
+and Hume's 'Essays,' and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary
+Wollstonecraft ... books, which I was never suspected of looking
+towards, and which were not 'on _that_ side' certainly, but which did
+as well.
+
+How I am writing!--And what are the questions you did not answer? I
+shall remember them by the answers I suppose--but your letters always
+have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.
+
+But this is the end _indeed_.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+           Thursday Night.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+Ever dearest--how you can write touching things to me; and how my
+whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from
+God and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only,
+it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was 'horrible,' it
+was what you _supposed_, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we
+will not talk of it any more.
+
+_Friday morning._--For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I
+have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and
+I hope we _both_ are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our
+position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess
+perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers,
+and that from the moment of a suspicion entering _one_ mind, we should
+be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by
+letter through the ordinary channel. I mean, that letters of yours,
+addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed--if
+not opened. Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing--on these
+grounds it is advisable. What should I do if I did not see you nor
+hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your
+happiness? What should I do for a month even? And then, I might be
+thrown out of the window or its equivalent--I look back shuddering to
+the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never
+offended as I have offended ... years ago which seem as present as
+to-day. She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that
+consent was obtained--and at a word she gave up all--at a word. In
+fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the
+time--a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday. Yet
+how she was made to suffer. Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because
+she had seemed to feel a little. I told you, I think, that there was
+an obliquity--an eccentricity, or something beyond--on one class of
+subjects. I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now!
+she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose
+up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered
+only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit.
+Arabel thought I was dead.
+
+I have tried to forget it all--but now I must remember--and throughout
+our intercourse _I have remembered_. It is necessary to remember so
+much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I
+would conceal nothing from you. Do _you_ remember, besides, that there
+can be no faltering on my 'part,' and that, if I should remain well,
+which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you
+please to have it done. But there is time for considering!
+
+Only ... as you speak of 'counsel,' I will take courage to tell you
+that my _sisters know_, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being
+often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago--she saw
+that I was affected from some cause--and I told her. We are as safe
+with both of them as possible ... and they thoroughly understand that
+_if there should be any change it would not be your fault_.... I made
+them understand that thoroughly. From themselves I have received
+nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I
+thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness for
+me to fail in it now. My brothers, it is quite necessary not to draw
+into a dangerous responsibility. I have felt that from the beginning,
+and shall continue to feel it--though I hear and can observe that they
+are full of suspicions and conjectures, which are never unkindly
+expressed. I told you once that we held hands the faster in this house
+for the weight over our heads. But the absolute _knowledge_ would be
+dangerous for my brothers: with my sisters it is different, and I
+could not continue to conceal from _them_ what they had under their
+eyes; and then, Henrietta is in a like position. It was not wrong of
+me to let them know it?--no?
+
+Yet of what consequence is all this to the other side of the question?
+What, if _you_ should give pain and disappointment where you owe such
+pure gratitude. But we need not talk of these things now. Only you
+have more to consider than _I_, I imagine, while the future comes on.
+
+Dearest, let me have my way in one thing: let me see you on _Tuesday_
+instead of on Monday--on Tuesday at the old hour. Be reasonable and
+consider. Tuesday is almost as near as the day before it; and on
+Monday, I shall be hurried at first, lest Papa should be still in the
+house, (no harm, but an excuse for nervousness: and I can't quote a
+noble Roman as you can, to the praise of my conscience!) and _you_
+will be hurried at last, lest you should not be in time for Mr.
+Forster. On the other hand, I will not let you be rude to the _Daily
+News_, ... no, nor to the _Examiner_. Come on Tuesday, then, instead
+of Monday, and let us have the usual hours in a peaceable way,--and if
+there is no obstacle,--that is, if Mr. Kenyon or some equivalent
+authority should not take note of your being here on Tuesday, why you
+can come again on the Saturday afterwards--I do not see the
+difficulty. Are we agreed? On Tuesday, at three o'clock. Consider,
+besides, that the Monday arrangement would hurry you in every manner,
+and leave you fagged for the evening--no, I will not hear of it. Not
+on my account, not on yours!
+
+Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two
+lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?
+
+My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for
+your sake:--_that_ resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect
+to you. No 'counsel' could make the difference of a grain of dust in
+the balance. It _is so_, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me,
+it would be better for you I believe--and I should be only where I was
+before. While you do _not_ change, I look to you for my first
+affections and my first duty--and nothing but your bidding me, could
+make me look away.
+
+In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not
+talk to him. No--he does not 'see how it is.' He may have passing
+thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce--even
+an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.
+
+It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world
+were away--even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.
+
+And so, once more--may God bless you!
+
+                                         I am wholly yours--
+
+_Tuesday_, remember! And say that you agree.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]
+
+Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the
+forb--no, _un_forbidden shelf--wherein Voltaire pleases to say that
+'si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer'? I feel, after
+reading these letters,--as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or
+hearing from you,--that if _marriage_ did not exist, I should
+infallibly _invent_ it. I should say, no words, no _feelings_ even,
+do justice to the whole conviction and _religion_ of my soul--and
+though they may be suffered to represent some one minute's phase of
+it, yet, in their very fulness and passion they do injustice to the
+_unrepresented, other minute's_, depth and breadth of love ... which
+let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and
+exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way--let me have the
+plain palpable power of this; the assured time for this ... something
+of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the
+illustration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in
+Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and
+lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story _must_ be
+listened to now, and the 'rights of it,'--dearest, the love unspoken
+now you are to hear 'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of
+our wealth ... at the hour of death, and'--
+
+If I did not _know_ this was so,--nothing would have been said, or
+sought for. Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for,
+and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and,
+seen now, nothing.
+
+I will care for it no more, dearest--I am wedded to you now. I believe
+no human being could love you more--that thought consoles me for my
+own imperfection--for when _that_ does strike me, as so often it will,
+I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask 'What if it were a claim
+then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for
+what were in you--do you like _that_ way!'--And I do _not_, Ba--you,
+even, might not--when people everyday buy improveable ground, and
+eligible sites for building, and don't want every inch filled up,
+covered over, done to their hands! So take me, and make me what you
+can and will--and though never to be _more_ yours, yet more _like_
+you, I may and must be--Yes, indeed--best, only love!
+
+And am I not grateful to your sisters--entirely grateful for that
+crowning comfort; it is 'miraculous,' too, if you please--for _you_
+shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or
+new times--but they do not see me, know me--and must moreover be
+jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of
+wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple--yet instead of
+'rapidly levelling eager eyes'--they are indulgent? Then--shall I wish
+capriciously they were _not_ your sisters, not so near you, that there
+might be a kind of grace in loving them for it'--but what grace can
+there be when ... yes, I will tell you--_no_, I will not--it is
+foolish!--and it is _not_ foolish in me to love the table and chairs
+and vases in your room.
+
+Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a
+word against the arrangement--and Saturday promised, too--but though
+all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet--but this is
+wrong--on Tuesday it shall be, then,--thank you, dearest! you let me
+keep up the old proper form, do you not?--I shall continue to thank,
+and be gratified &c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my
+disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion! And so, now, for
+your kind considerateness thank _you ... that I say_, which, God
+knows, _could_ not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good,
+'you are repaid'--
+
+To-morrow I will write, and answer more. I am pretty well, and will go
+out to-day--to-night. My Act is done, and copied--I will bring it. Do
+you see the _Athenaeum_? By Chorley surely--and kind and satisfactory.
+I did not expect any notice for a long time--all that about the
+'mist,' 'unchanged manner' and the like is politic concession to the
+Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with
+his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain,
+yet he does not. But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand--the long
+extracts answer every purpose--
+
+There is all to say yet--to-morrow!
+
+And ever, ever your own; God bless you!
+
+                                                          R.
+
+Admire the clean paper.... I did not notice that I have been writing in
+a desk where a candle fell! See the bottoms of the other pages!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+
+You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the
+letter--but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few
+words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in _enough_
+of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in
+your assurance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan
+them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word--I fully
+believe in it,--of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt
+to speak. And for 'waiting'; 'not hurrying',--I leave all with you
+henceforth--all you say is most wise, most convincing.
+
+On the saddest part of all,--silence. You understand, and I can
+understand through you. Do you know, that I never _used_ to dream
+unless indisposed, and rarely then--(of late I dream of you, but quite
+of late)--and _those_ nightmare dreams have invariably been of _one_
+sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the
+infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the
+last)--and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of
+experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous
+arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse
+commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate,
+desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a
+madman--and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some
+bloodvessel was to break)--he, once at a dinner party at which I was
+present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his
+awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in
+order)--brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ...
+purely to 'show off' in the eyes of his guests ... (all males,
+law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too,
+left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to 'just say a
+word and return'--and no sooner was his back to the door than the
+biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark 'what a fortunate
+thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife--not one of
+the women who would resist--that is, attempt to resist--and so
+exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!' I said it
+_was_, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women,
+without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give
+him his desert, I thought--'Oh, indeed?' No--_this_ man was not to be
+opposed--wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what
+kind argument would do--and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently
+we went up-stairs--there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at
+the tea-table--and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand
+in his, our friend--disposed to be very good-natured of course. I
+listened _arrectis auribus_, and in a minute he said he did not know
+somebody I mentioned. I told him, _that_ I easily conceived--such a
+person would never condescend to know _him_, &c., and treated him to
+every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text--and at the end
+marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a
+post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in
+unfeigned wonder, 'What _can_ have possessed you, my _dear_ B?'--All
+which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man
+of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog.
+All this is quite irrelevant to _the_ case--indeed, I write to get rid
+of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of
+all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to
+another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves.
+_Trees_ live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law--but
+with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted
+conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why
+declare that 'the Lord _is_ holy, just and good' unless there is
+recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to
+which the subsequent assertion is referable? 'You know what _holiness_
+is, what it is to be good? Then, He _is_ that'--not, '_that_ is
+_so_--because _he_ is that'; though, of course, when once the converse
+is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical
+purposes. All God's urgency, so to speak, is on the _justice_ of his
+judgments, _rightness_ of his rule: yet why? one might ask--if one
+does believe that the rule _is_ his; why ask further?--Because, his is
+a 'reasonable service,' once for all.
+
+Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed
+as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail,
+under any circumstances--(and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul
+could bring the flesh to perform)--in that case, you will not come to
+me with a shadow past hope of chasing.
+
+The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary
+contrast with those here--you allude to them--if I went with this
+letter downstairs and said simply 'I want this taken to the direction
+to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?' my
+father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful
+absurdities about his 'wanting a walk,' 'just having been wishing to
+go out' &c. At night he sits studying my works--illustrating them (I
+will bring you drawings to make you laugh)--and _yesterday_ I picked
+up a crumpled bit of paper ... 'his notion of what a criticism on this
+last number ought to be,--none, that have appeared, satisfying
+him!'--So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as
+much more as must of necessity be.
+
+Once more, understand all this ... for the clock scares me of a
+sudden--I meant to say more--far more.
+
+But may God bless you ever--my own dearest, my Ba--
+
+                                         I am wholly your R.
+
+_(Tuesday)_
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Sunday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+
+Your letter came just after the hope of one had past--the latest
+Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed
+as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly
+came the knock--the postman redivivus--just when it seemed so beyond
+hoping for--it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post
+at nearly eight--suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was
+I not glad, do you think?
+
+And you call the _Athenaeum_ 'kind and satisfactory'? Well--I was angry
+instead. To make us wait so long for an 'article' like _that_, was not
+over-kind certainly, nor was it 'satisfactory' to class your peculiar
+qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar.
+It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you
+mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who
+knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with
+them. For what is said of 'mist' I have no patience because I who know
+when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your
+former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and
+self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and
+medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound
+in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to
+make the general observation stronger. And then 'mist' is an infamous
+word for your kind of obscurity. You never _are_ misty, not even in
+'Sordello'--never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines,
+always--and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and
+thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the
+general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a 'mist,'
+when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me
+angry.
+
+But the suggested virtue of 'self-renunciation' only made me smile,
+because it is simply nonsense ... nonsense which proves itself to be
+nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself--_that_ is the
+new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the
+poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in
+'self-renunciation' in that very relation--or rather, to hint the
+virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What
+atheists these critics are after all--and how the old heathens
+understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may
+take shame to ourselves, looking back.
+
+Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm,
+the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to
+call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked
+down-stairs into the drawing-room--walked, mind! Before, I was carried
+by one of my brothers,--even to the last autumn-day when I went out--I
+never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But
+yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides--it was
+a feat worthy of the day--and I surprised them all as much as if I had
+walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all
+his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said
+that he was '_so_ glad to see me'!
+
+Well!--setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise
+perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us
+otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this
+morning after an uncomfortable feverish night--not very unwell, mind,
+nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence--and I tell you,
+only to show how susceptible I really am still, though 'scarcely an
+invalid,' say the complimenters.
+
+What a way I am from your letter--that letter--or seem to be
+rather--for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing
+distrustedly of other things. So you are 'grateful' to my sisters ...
+_you_! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such
+extravagances as words like these _imply_--and there are far worse
+words than these, in the letter ... such as I need not put my finger
+on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours,
+and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion.
+Observe!--_certainly_ I should not choose to have a '_claim_,' see!
+Only, what I object to, in 'illusions,' 'miracles,' and things of that
+sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the
+sun to stand still, it was not for a year even!--Ungrateful, I am!
+
+And 'pretty well' means 'not well' I am afraid--or I should be gladder
+still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what 'pretty well'
+means, and if your mother is better--or I may have a letter
+to-morrow--dearest! May God bless you!
+
+To-morrow too, at half past three o'clock, how joyful I shall be that
+my 'kind considerateness' decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My
+very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+A hundred letters I have, by this last, ... to set against Napoleon's
+Hundred Days--did you know _that_?
+
+So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from
+the damp--the fog, you see!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Monday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
+
+Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my
+note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into
+which some of the phrases might be construed--you would forgive me,
+indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact
+remains--that it would be the one trial I _know_ I should not be able
+to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'--intolerable--not to be
+written of, even my mind _refuses_ to form a clear conception of them.
+
+My own loved letter is come--and the news; of which the reassuring
+postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not
+to be grateful for that; nor that you _do_ 'eat your dinner'? Indeed
+you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on
+'the stairs'--stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou
+indeed!) all, with their picturesque _accidents_, of landing-places,
+and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half
+open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'--and above
+all, _landing-places_--they are my heart's delight--I would come upon
+you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk
+on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges' Palace
+at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was
+banished for an 'enormous dig (intacco) into the public
+treasure'--another for ... what you are not to know because his
+friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it--underneath
+the 'giants' on their stands, and in the midst of the _cortile_ the
+bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.
+
+So _you_ too wrote French verses?--Mine were of less lofty
+argument--one couplet makes me laugh now for the reason of its false
+quantity--I translated the Ode of Alcaeus; and the last couplet ran
+thus....
+
+    Harmodius, et toi, cher Aristogiton!
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Comme l'astre du jour, brillera votre nom!
+
+The fact was, I could not bear to hurt my French Master's
+feelings--who inveterately maltreated 'ai's and oi's' and in this
+instance, an 'ei.' But 'Pauline' is altogether of a different sort of
+precocity--you shall see it when I can master resolution to transcribe
+the explanation which I know is on the fly-leaf of a copy here. Of
+that work, the _Athenaeum_ said [several words erased] now, what
+outrageous folly! I care, and you care, precisely nothing about its
+sayings and doings--yet here I talk!
+
+Now to you--Ba! When I go through sweetness to sweetness, at 'Ba' I
+stop last of all, and lie and rest. That is the quintessence of them
+all,--they all take colour and flavour from that. So, dear, dear Ba,
+be glad as you can to see me to-morrow. God knows how I embalm every
+such day,--I do not believe that one of the _forty_ is confounded with
+another in my memory. So, _that_ is gained and sure for ever. And of
+letters, this makes my 104th and, like Donne's Bride,
+
+              ... I take,
+    My jewels from their boxes; call
+    My Diamonds, Pearls, and Emeralds, and make
+    Myself a constellation of them all!
+
+Bless you, my own Beloved!
+
+I am much better to-day--having been not so well yesterday--whence the
+note to you, perhaps! I put that to your charity for construction. By
+the way, let the foolish and needless story about my whilome friend be
+of this use, that it records one of the traits in that same generous
+love, of me, I once mentioned, I remember--one of the points in his
+character which, I told you, _would_ account, if you heard them, for
+my parting company with a good deal of warmth of attachment to myself.
+
+What a day! But you do not so much care for rain, I think. My Mother
+is no worse, but still suffering sadly.
+
+                               Ever your own, dearest ever--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
+
+Ever since I ceased to be with you--ever dearest,--have been with your
+'Luria,' if _that_ is ceasing to be with you--which it _is_, I feel at
+last. Yet the new act is powerful and subtle, and very affecting, it
+seems to me, after a grave, suggested pathos; the reasoning is done on
+every hand with admirable directness and adroitness, and poor Luria's
+iron baptism under such a bright crossing of swords, most miserably
+complete. Still ... is he to die _so_? can you mean it? Oh--indeed I
+foresaw _that_--not a guess of mine ever touched such an end--and I
+can scarcely resign myself to it as a necessity, even now ... I mean,
+to the act, as Luria's act, whether it is final or not--the act of
+suicide being so unheroical. But you are a dramatic poet and right
+perhaps, where, as a didactic poet, you would have been wrong, ...
+and, after the first shock, I begin to see that your Luria is the man
+Luria and that his 'sun' lights him so far and not farther than so,
+and to understand the natural reaction of all that generous trust and
+hopefulness, what naturally it would be. Also, it is satisfactory that
+Domizia, having put her woman's part off to the last, should be too
+late with it--it will be a righteous retribution. I had fancied that
+her object was to isolate him, ... to make his military glory and
+national recompense ring hollowly to his ears, and so commend herself,
+drawing back the veil.
+
+Puccio's scornful working out of the low work, is very finely given,
+I think, ... and you have 'a cunning right hand,' to lift up Luria
+higher in the mind of your readers, by the very means used to pull
+down his fortunes--you show what a man he is by the very talk of his
+rivals ... by his 'natural godship' over Puccio. Then Husain is nobly
+characteristic--I like those streaks of Moorish fire in his speeches.
+'Why 'twas all fighting' &c. ... _that_ passage perhaps is over-subtle
+for a Husain--but too nobly right in the abstract to be altered, if it
+is so or not. Domizia talks philosophically besides, and how
+eloquently;--and very noble she is where she proclaims
+
+    The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
+    That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
+    And mingle with his work and claim a share!--
+
+But why not 'spirits' rather than 'sprites,' which has a different
+association by custom? 'Spirits' is quite short enough, it seems to
+me, for a last word--it sounds like a monosyllable that trembles--or
+thrills, rather. And, do you know, I agree with yourself a little when
+you say (as did you _not_ say?) that some of the speeches--Domizia's
+for instance--are too lengthy. I think I should like them to coil up
+their strength, here and there, in a few passages. Luria ... poor
+Luria ... is great and pathetic when he stands alone at last, and 'all
+his waves have gone over him.' Poor Luria!--And now, I wonder where
+Mr. Chorley will look, in this work,--along all the edges of the
+hills,--to find, or prove, his favourite 'mist!' On the glass of his
+own opera-lorgnon, perhaps:--shall we ask him to try _that_?
+
+But first, I want to ask _you_ something--I have had it in my head a
+long time, but it might as well have been in a box--and indeed if it
+had been in the box with your letters, I should have remembered to
+speak of it long ago. So now, at last, tell me--how do you write, O my
+poet? with steel pens, or Bramah pens, or goose-quills or
+crow-quills?--Because I have a penholder which was given to me when I
+was a child, and which I have used both then and since in the
+production of various great epics and immortal 'works,' until in these
+latter years it has seemed to me too heavy, and I have taken into
+service, instead of it, another two-inch-long instrument which makes
+Mr. Kenyon laugh to look at--and so, my fancy has run upon your having
+the heavier holder, which is not very heavy after all, and which will
+make you think of me whether you choose it or not, besides being made
+of a splinter from the ivory gate of old, and therefore not unworthy
+of a true prophet. Will you have it, dearest? Yes--because you can't
+help it. When you come ... on Saturday!--
+
+And for 'Pauline,' ... I am satisfied with the promise to see it some
+day ... when we are in the isle of the sirens, or ready for wandering
+in the Doges' galleries. I seem to understand that you would really
+rather wish me not to see it now ... and as long as I _do_ see it! So
+_that shall_ be!--Am I not good now, and not a teazer? If there is any
+poetical justice in 'the seven worlds,' I shall have a letter
+to-night.
+
+By the way, you owe me two letters by your confession. A hundred and
+four of mine you have, and I, only a hundred and two of yours ...
+which is a 'deficit' scarcely creditable to me, (now is it?) when,
+according to the law and ordinance, a woman's hundred and four letters
+would take two hundred and eight at least, from the other side, to
+justify them. Well--I feel inclined to wring out the legal per centage
+to the uttermost farthing; but fall into a fit of gratitude,
+notwithstanding, thinking of Monday, and how the second letter came
+beyond hope. Always better, you are, than I guess you to be,--and it
+was being _best_, to write, as you did, for me to hear twice on one
+day!--best and dearest!
+
+But the first letter was not what you feared--I know you too well not
+to know how that letter was written and with what intention. _Do
+you_, on the other hand, endeavour to comprehend how there may be an
+eccentricity and obliquity in certain relations and on certain
+subjects, while the general character stands up worthily of esteem and
+regard--even of yours. Mr. Kenyon says broadly that it is
+monomania--neither more nor less. Then the principle of passive filial
+obedience is held--drawn (and quartered) from Scripture. He _sees_ the
+law and the gospel on his side. Only the other day, there was a
+setting forth of the whole doctrine, I hear, down-stairs--'passive
+obedience, and particularly in respect to marriage.' One after the
+other, my brothers all walked out of the room, and there was left for
+sole auditor, Captain Surtees Cook, who had especial reasons for
+sitting it out against his will,--so he sate and asked 'if children
+were to be considered slaves' as meekly as if he were asking for
+information. I could not help smiling when I heard of it. He is just
+_succeeding_ in obtaining what is called an 'adjutancy,' which, with
+the half pay, will put an end to many anxieties.
+
+Dearest--when, in the next dream, you meet me in the 'landing-place,'
+tell me why I am to stand up to be reviewed again. What a fancy,
+_that_ is of yours, for 'full-lengths'--and what bad policy, if a
+fancy, to talk of it so! because you would have had the glory and
+advantage, and privilege, of seeing me on my feet twenty times before
+now, if you had not impressed on me, in some ineffable manner, that to
+stand on my head would scarcely be stranger. Nevertheless you shall
+have it your own way, as you have everything--which makes you so very,
+very, exemplarily submissive, you know!
+
+Mr. Kenyon does not come--puts it off to _Saturday_ perhaps.
+
+The _Daily News_ I have had a glance at. A weak leading article, I
+thought ... and nothing stronger from Ireland:--but enough
+advertisements to promise a long future. What do you think? or have
+you not seen the paper? No broad principles laid down. A mere
+newspaper-support of the 'League.'
+
+May God bless you. Say how you are--and _do_ walk, and 'care' for
+yourself,
+
+                                       and, so, for your own
+
+                                            _Ba_.
+
+Have I expressed to you at all how 'Luria' impresses _me_ more and
+more? You shall see the 'remarks' with the other papers--the details
+of what strikes me.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Thursday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
+
+But you did _not_ get the letter last evening--no, for all my good
+intentions--because somebody came over in the morning and forced me to
+go out ... and, perhaps, I _knew_ what was coming, and had all my
+thoughts _there_, that is, _here_ now, with my own letters from you. I
+think so--for this punishment, I will tell you, came for some sin or
+other last night. I woke--late, or early--and, in one of those lucid
+moments when all things are thoroughly _perceived_,--whether suggested
+by some forgotten passage in the past sleep itself, I don't know--but
+I seem to _apprehend_, comprehend entirely, for the first time, what
+would happen if I lost you--the whole sense of that _closed door_ of
+Catarina's came on me at once, and it was _I_ who said--not as quoting
+or adapting another's words, but spontaneously, unavoidably, '_In that
+door, you will not enter, I have_'.... And, dearest, the
+
+Unwritten it must remain.
+
+What is on the other leaf, no ill-omen, after all,--because I
+strengthened myself against a merely imaginary evil--as I do always;
+and _thus_--I know I never can lose you,--you surely are more mine,
+there is less for the future to give or take away than in the
+ordinary cases, where so much less is known, explained, possessed, as
+with us. Understand for me, my dearest--
+
+And do you think, sweet, that there _is_ any free movement of my soul
+which your penholder is to secure? Well, try,--it will be yours by
+every right of discovery--and I, for my part, will religiously report
+to you the first time I think of you 'which, but for your present I
+should not have done'--or is it not a happy, most happy way of
+ensuring a better fifth act to Luria than the foregoing? See the
+absurdity I write--when it will be more probably the ruin of the
+whole--for was it not observed in the case of a friend of mine once,
+who wrote his own part in a piece for private theatricals, and had
+ends of his own to serve in it,--that he set to work somewhat after
+this fashion: 'Scene 1st. A breakfast chamber--Lord and Lady A. at
+table--Lady A./ No more coffee my dear?--Lord A./ One more cup!
+(_Embracing her_). Lady A./ I was thinking of trying the ponies in the
+Park--are you engaged? Lord A./ Why, there's that bore of a Committee
+at the House till 2. (_Kissing her hand_).' And so forth, to the
+astonishment of the auditory, who did not exactly see the 'sequitur'
+in either instance. Well, dearest, whatever comes of it, the 'aside,'
+the bye-play, the digression, will be the best, and only true business
+of the piece. And though I must smile at your notion of securing
+_that_ by any fresh appliance, mechanical or spiritual, yet I do thank
+you, dearest, thank you from my heart indeed--(and I write with
+Bramahs _always_--not being able to make a pen!)
+
+If you have gone so far with 'Luria,' I fancy myself nearly or
+altogether safe. I must not tell you, but I wished just these feelings
+to be in your mind about Domizia, and the death of Luria: the last act
+throws light back on all, I hope. Observe only, that Luria _would_
+stand, if I have plied him effectually with adverse influences, in
+such a position as to render any other end impossible without the hurt
+to Florence which his religion is, to avoid inflicting--passively
+awaiting, for instance, the sentence and punishment to come at night,
+would as surely inflict it as taking part with her foes. His aim is to
+prevent the harm she will do herself by striking him, so he moves
+aside from the blow. But I know there is very much to improve and
+heighten in this fourth act, as in the others--but the right aspect of
+things seems obtained and the rest of the work is plain and easy.
+
+I am obliged to leave off--the rest to-morrow--and then dear,
+Saturday! I love you utterly, my own best, dearest--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Thursday Night.
+                              [Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
+
+Yes, I understand your 'Luria'--and there is to be more light; and I
+open the window to the east and wait for it--a little less gladly than
+for _you_ on Saturday, dearest. In the meanwhile you have 'lucid
+moments,' and 'strengthen' yourself into the wisdom of learning to
+love me--and, upon consideration, it does not seem to be so hard after
+all ... there is 'less for the future to take away' than you had
+supposed--so _that_ is the way? Ah, 'these lucid moments, in which all
+things are thoroughly _perceived_';--what harm they do me!--And I am
+to 'understand for you,' you say!--Am I?
+
+On the other side, and to make the good omen complete, I remembered,
+after I had sealed my last letter, having made a confusion between the
+ivory and horn gates, the gates of false and true visions, as I am apt
+to do--and my penholder belongs to the ivory gate, ... as you will
+perceive in your lucid moments--poor holder! But, as you forget me on
+Wednesdays, the post testifying, ... the sinecure may not be quite so
+certain as the Thursday's letter says. And _I_ too, in the meanwhile,
+grow wiser, ... having learnt something which you cannot do,--you of
+the 'Bells and Pomegranates': _You cannot make a pen._ Yesterday I
+looked round the world in vain for it.
+
+Mr. Kenyon does not come--_will_ not perhaps until Saturday! Which
+reminds me--Mr. Kenyon told me about a year ago that he had been
+painfully employed that morning in _parting_ two--dearer than
+friends--and he had done it he said, by proving to either, that he or
+she was likely to mar the prospects of the other. 'If I had spoken to
+each, of himself or herself,' he said, 'I _never could have done it_.'
+
+Was not _that_ an ingenious cruelty? The remembrance rose up in me
+like a ghost, and made me ask you once to promise what you promised
+... (you recollect?) because I could not bear to be stabbed with my
+own dagger by the hand of a third person ... _so_! When people have
+lucid moments themselves, you know, it is different.
+
+And _shall_ I indeed have a letter to-morrow? Or, not having the
+penholder yet, will you....
+
+Goodnight. May God bless you--
+
+                                        Ever and wholly your
+
+                                             BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
+
+Now, of all perverse interpretations that ever were and never ought to
+have been, commend me to this of Ba's--after I bade her generosity
+'understand me,' too!--which meant, 'let her pick out of my disjointed
+sentences a general meaning, if she can,--which I very well know their
+imperfect utterance would not give to one unsupplied with the key of
+my whole heart's-mystery'--and Ba, with the key in her hand, to
+pretend and poke feathers and penholders into the key-hole, and
+complain that the wards are wrong! So--when the poor scholar, one has
+read of, uses not very dissimilar language and argument--who being
+threatened with the deprivation of his Virgil learnt the AEneid by
+heart and then said 'Take what you can now'!--_that_ Ba calls
+'feeling the loss would not be so hard after all'!--_I_ do not, at
+least. And if at any future moment I should again be visited--as I
+earnestly desire may never be the case--with a sudden consciousness of
+the entire inutility of all earthly love (since of _my_ love) to hold
+its object back from the decree of God, if such should call it away;
+one of those known facts which, for practical good, we treat as
+supremely common-place, but which, like those of the uncertainty of
+life--the very existence of God, I may say--if they were _not_
+common-place, and could they be thoroughly apprehended (except in the
+chance minutes which make one grow old, not the mere years)--the
+business of the world would cease; but when you find Chaucer's graver
+at his work of 'graving smale seles' by the sun's light, you know that
+the sun's self could not have been _created_ on that day--do you
+'understand' that, Ba? And when I am with you, or here or writing or
+walking--and perfectly happy in the sunshine of you, I very well know
+I am no wiser than is good for me and that there seems no harm in
+feeling it impossible this should change, or fail to go on increasing
+till this world ends and we are safe, I with you, for ever. But
+when--if only _once_, as I told you, recording it for its very
+strangeness, I _do_ feel--in a flash--that words are words, and could
+not alter _that_ decree ... will you tell me how, after all, that
+conviction and the true woe of it are better met than by the as
+thorough conviction that, for one blessing, the extreme woe is
+_impossible_ now--that you _are_, and have been, _mine_, and _me_--one
+with me, never to be parted--so that the complete separation not being
+to be thought of, such an incomplete one as is yet in Fate's power may
+be the less likely to attract her notice? And, dearest, in all
+emergencies, see, I go to you for help; for your gift of better
+comfort than is found in myself. Or ought I, if I could, to add one
+more proof to the Greek proverb 'that the half is greater than the
+whole'--and only love you for myself (it is absurd; but if I _could_
+disentwine you from my soul in that sense), only see my own will, and
+good (not in _your_ will and good, as I now see them and shall ever
+see) ... should you say I _did_ love you then? Perhaps. And it would
+have been better for me, I know--I should not have _written_ this or
+the like--there being no post in the Siren's isle, as you will see.
+
+And the end of the whole matter is--what? Not by any means what my Ba
+expects or ought to expect; that I say with a flounce 'Catch me
+blotting down on paper, again, the first vague impressions in the
+weakest words and being sure I have only to bid her
+"understand"!--when I can get "Blair on Rhetoric," and the additional
+chapter on the proper conduct of a letter'! On the contrary I tell
+you, Ba, my own heart's dearest, I will provoke you tenfold worse;
+will tell you all that comes uppermost, and what frightens me or
+reassures me, in moments lucid or opaque--and when all the pen-stumps
+and holders refuse to open the lock, out will come the key perforce;
+and once put that knowledge--of the entire love and worship of my
+heart and soul--to its proper use, and all will be clear--tell me
+to-morrow that it will be clear when I call you to account and exact
+strict payment for every word and phrase and full-stop and partial
+stop, and no stop at all, in this wicked little note which got so
+treacherously the kisses and the thankfulness--written with no
+penholder that is to belong to me, I hope--but with the feather,
+possibly, which Sycorax wiped the dew from, as Caliban remembered when
+he was angry! All but--(that is, all was wrong but)--to be just ...
+the old, dear, so dear ending which makes my heart beat now as at
+first ... and so, pays for all! Wherefore, all is right again, is it
+not? and you are my own priceless Ba, my very own--and I will have
+you, if you like that style, and want you, and must have you every day
+and all day long--much less see you to-morrow _stand_--
+
+... Now, there breaks down my new spirit--and, shame or no, I must
+pray you, in the old way, _not_ to _receive me standing_--I should not
+remain master of myself I do believe!
+
+You have put out of my head all I intended to write--and now I slowly
+begin to remember the matters they seem strangely unimportant--that
+poor impotency of a Newspaper! No--nothing of that for the present.
+To-morrow my dearest! Ba's first comment--'_To-morrow?_ _To-day_ is
+too soon, it seems--yet it is wise, perhaps, to avoid the satiety &c.
+&c. &c. &c. &c.'
+
+Does she feel how I kissed that comment back on her dear self as fit
+punishment?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
+
+I must begin by invoking my own stupidity! To forget after all the
+penholder! I had put it close beside me too on the table, and never
+once thought of it afterwards from first to last--just as I should do
+if I had a common-place book, the memoranda all turning to
+obliviscenda as by particular contact. So I shall send the holder with
+Miss Martineau's books which you can read or not as you like ... they
+have beauty in passages ... but, trained up against the wall of a set
+design, want room for branching and blossoming, great as her skill is.
+I like her 'Playfellow' stories twice as well. Do you know _them_?
+Written for children, and in such a fine heroic child-spirit as to be
+too young and too old for nobody. Oh, and I send you besides a most
+frightful extract from an American magazine sent to me yesterday ...
+no, the day before ... on the subject of mesmerism--and you are to
+understand, if you please, that the Mr. Edgar Poe who stands committed
+in it, is my dedicator ... whose dedication I forgot, by the way, with
+the rest--so, while I am sending, you shall have his poems with his
+mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to
+E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to
+prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen
+between the great gaps of bathos.... 'Politian' will make you
+laugh--as the 'Raven' made _me_ laugh, though with something in it
+which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P.
+Willis and his peers--it was sent to me from _four_ different quarters
+besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and
+when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power
+of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at
+all--never heard from him nor wrote to him--and in my opinion, there
+is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric
+experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the
+beginning to the end. That '_going out_' of the hectic, struck me very
+much ... and the writhing _away_ of the upper lip. Most
+horrible!--Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for
+the full acting of the story on me ... without absolutely giving full
+credence to it, understand.
+
+Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was
+because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the
+jesting a little--for had I not thought of _that_ before, myself, and
+was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content,
+for my part, even _so_? Surely you remember--and I should not have
+said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that 'there is,
+with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary
+cases.' So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me
+through you, and it is enough to live for or die in--therefore living
+or dying I would thank God, and use that word '_enough_' ... being
+yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us
+should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when
+she knew you, since I could not bear--
+
+Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs
+to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.
+
+Let me tell you instead of my sister's affairs, which are so publicly
+talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in
+respect to them--yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told
+nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may
+say of Henrietta that her only fault is, her virtues being written in
+water--I know not of one other fault. She has too much softness to be
+able to say 'no' in the right place--and thus, without the slightest
+levity ... perfectly blameless in that respect, ... she says half a
+yes or a quarter of a yes, or a yes in some sort of form, too
+often--but I will tell you. Two years ago, three men were loving her,
+as they called it. After a few months, and the proper quantity of
+interpretations, one of them consoled himself by giving nick-names to
+his rivals. Perseverance and Despair he called them, and so, went up
+to the boxes to see out the rest of the play. Despair ran to a crisis,
+was rejected in so many words, but appealed against the judgment and
+had his claim admitted--it was all silence and mildness on each side
+... a tacit gaining of ground,--Despair 'was at least a gentleman,'
+said my brothers. On which Perseverance came on with violent
+re-iterations,--insisted that she loved him without knowing it, or
+_should_--elbowed poor Despair into the open streets, who being a
+gentleman wouldn't elbow again--swore that 'if she married another he
+would wait till she became a widow, trusting to Providence' ... _did_
+wait every morning till the head of the house was out, and sate day by
+day, in spite of the disinclination of my sisters and the rudeness of
+all my brothers, four hours in the drawing-room ... let himself be
+refused once a week and sate all the longer ... allowed everybody in
+the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of
+hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits
+now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of
+remorse for her own instability, that she is 'taken by storm and
+cannot help it.' I give you only the _resume_ of this military
+movement--and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid
+at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person and
+then another, yet I am woman enough rather to be glad that the
+decision is made _so_. He is sincerely attached to her, I believe; and
+the want of refinement and sensibility (for he understood her
+affections to be engaged to another at one time) is covered in a
+measure by the earnestness,--and justified too by the event--everybody
+being quite happy and contented, even to Despair, who has a new horse
+and takes lessons in music.
+
+That's love--is it not? And that's my answer (if you look for it) to
+the question you asked me yesterday.
+
+Yet do not think that I am turning it all to game. I could not do so
+with any real earnest sentiment ... I never could ... and now least,
+and with my own sister whom I love so. One may smile to oneself and
+yet wish another well--and so I smile to _you_--and it is all safe
+with you I know. He is a second or third cousin of ours and has golden
+opinions from all his friends and fellow-officers--and for the rest,
+most of these men are like one another.... I never could see the
+difference between fuller's earth and common clay, among them all.
+
+What do you think he has said since--to _her_ too?--'I always
+persevere about everything. Once I began to write a farce--which they
+told me was as bad as could be. Well!--I persevered!--_I finished
+it_.' Perfectly unconscious, both he and she were of there being
+anything mal a propos in _that_--and no kind of harm was meant,--only
+it expresses the man.
+
+Dearest--it had better be Thursday I think--_our_ day! I was showing
+to-day your father's drawings,--and my brothers, and Arabel besides,
+admired them very much on the right grounds. Say how you are. You did
+not seem to me to answer frankly this time, and I was more than half
+uneasy when you went away. Take exercise, dear, dearest ... think of
+me enough for it,--and do not hurry 'Luria.' May God bless you!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         _Ba._
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
+
+I will not try and write much to-night, dearest, for my head gives a
+little warning--and I have so much to think of!--spite of my penholder
+being kept back from me after all! Now, ought I to have asked for it?
+Or did I not seem grateful enough at the promise? This last would be a
+characteristic reason, seeing that I reproached myself with feeling
+_too_ grateful for the 'special symbol'--the 'essential meaning' of
+which was already in my soul. Well then, I will--I do pray for
+it--next time; and I will keep it for that one yesterday and all its
+memories--and it shall bear witness against me, if, on the Siren's
+isle, I grow forgetful of Wimpole Street. And when is 'next time' to
+be--Wednesday or Thursday? When I look back on the strangely steady
+widening of my horizon--how no least interruption has occurred to
+visits or letters--oh, care _you_, sweet--care for us both!
+
+That remark of your sister's delights me--you remember?--that the
+anger would not be so formidable. I have exactly the fear of
+encountering _that_, which the sense of having to deal with a ghost
+would induce: there's no striking at it with one's partizan. Well, God
+is above all! It is not my fault if it so happens that by returning my
+love you make me exquisitely blessed; I believe--more than hope, I am
+_sure_ I should do all I ever _now_ can do, if you were never to know
+it--that is, my love for you was in the first instance its own
+reward--if one must use such phrases--and if it were possible for
+that ... not _anger_, which is of no good, but that _opposition_--that
+adverse will--to show that your good would be attained by the--
+
+But it would need to be _shown_ to me. You have said thus to me--in
+the very last letter, indeed. But with me, or any _man_, the instincts
+of happiness develop themselves too unmistakably where there is
+anything like a freedom of will. The man whose heart is set on being
+rich or influential after the worldly fashion, may be found far enough
+from the attainment of either riches or influence--but he will be in
+the presumed way to them--pumping at the pump, if he is really anxious
+for water, even though the pump be dry--but not sitting still by the
+dusty roadside.
+
+I believe--first of all, you--but when that is done, and I am allowed
+to call your heart _mine_,--I cannot think you would be happy if
+parted from me--and _that_ belief, coming to add to my own feeling in
+_that_ case. So, this will _be_--I trust in God.
+
+In life, in death, I am your own, _my_ own! My head has got well
+already! It is so slight a thing, that I make such an ado about! Do
+not reply to these bodings--they are gone--they seem absurd! All steps
+secured but the last, and that last the easiest! Yes--far easiest! For
+first you had to be created, only that; and then, in my time; and
+then, not in Timbuctoo but Wimpole Street, and then ... the strange
+hedge round the sleeping Palace keeping the world off--and then ...
+all was to begin, all the difficulty only _begin_:--and now ... see
+where is reached! And I kiss you, and bless you, my dearest, in
+earnest of the end!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Monday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
+
+You have had my letter and heard about the penholder. Your fancy of
+'not seeming grateful enough,' is not wise enough for _you_, dearest;
+when you know that _I_ know your common fault to be the undue
+magnifying of everything that comes from me, and I am always
+complaining of it outwardly and inwardly. That suddenly I should set
+about desiring you to be more grateful,--even for so great a boon as
+an old penholder,--would be a more astounding change than any to be
+sought or seen in a prime minister.
+
+Another mistake you made concerning Henrietta and her opinion--and
+there's no use nor comfort in leaving you in it. Henrietta says that
+the 'anger would not be so formidable after all'! Poor dearest
+Henrietta, who trembles at the least bending of the brows ... who has
+less courage than I, and the same views of the future! What she
+referred to, was simply the infrequency of the visits. 'Why was I
+afraid,' she said--'where was the danger? who would be the
+_informer_?'--Well! I will not say any more. It is just natural that
+you, in your circumstances and associations, should be unable to see
+what I have seen from the beginning--only you will not hereafter
+reproach me, in the most secret of your thoughts, for not having told
+you plainly. If I could have told you with greater plainness I should
+blame myself (and I do not) because it is not an opinion I have, but a
+perception. I see, I know. The result ... the end of all ... perhaps
+now and then I see _that_ too ... in the 'lucid moments' which are not
+the happiest for anybody. Remember, in all cases, that I shall not
+repent of any part of our past intercourse; and that, therefore, when
+the time for decision comes, you will be free to look at the question
+as if you saw it then for the first moment, without being hampered by
+considerations about 'all those yesterdays.'
+
+For _him_ ... he would rather see me dead at his foot than yield the
+point: and he will say so, and mean it, and persist in the meaning.
+
+Do you ever wonder at me ... that I should write such things, and have
+written others so different? _I have thought that in myself very
+often._ Insincerity and injustice may seem the two ends, while I
+occupy the straight betwixt two--and I should not like you to doubt
+how this may be! Sometimes I have begun to show you the truth, and
+torn the paper; I _could_ not. Yet now again I am borne on to tell
+you, ... to save you from some thoughts which you cannot help perhaps.
+
+There has been no insincerity--nor is there injustice. I believe, I am
+certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children. I have
+heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in
+towards him through the stones of the rock ... thrust off ... dropping
+off ... turning in again and clinging! Knowing what is excellent in
+him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly,
+notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable 'system' which made
+him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for
+his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so
+bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt
+acutely--more than you and I could feel them--but the fortitude was
+admirable. Then came the trials of love--then, I was repulsed too
+often, ... made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side ...
+depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is
+possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as past. Yet
+my friends used to say 'You look broken-spirited'--and it was true. In
+the midst, came my illness,--and when I was ill he grew gentler and
+let me draw nearer than ever I had done: and after that great stroke
+... you _know_ ... though _that_ fell in the middle of a storm of
+emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God
+seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful
+to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, '_If it
+had not been for you_'...! And comparing my self-reproach to what I
+imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if _I_ had loved
+selfishly, _he_ had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and
+forgive him for two ... (I knowing that serene generous departed
+spirit, and seeming left to represent it) ... and I did love him
+better than all those left to _me_ to love in the world here. I proved
+a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my
+life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of
+my family away from him. And afterwards for long and long he spoke to
+me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much
+praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself
+capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of
+his voice when he prayed in this room; my best hope, as I have told
+him since, being, to die beneath his eyes. Love is so much to me
+naturally--it is, to all women! and it was so much to _me_ to feel
+sure at last that _he_ loved me--to forget all blame--to pull the
+weeds up from that last illusion of life:--and this, till the
+Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again--farther than
+ever--when George said 'he could not flatter me' and I dared not
+flatter myself. But do _you_ believe that I never wrote what I did not
+feel: I never did. And I ask one kindness more ... do not notice what
+I have written here. Let it pass. We can alter nothing by ever so many
+words. After all, he is the victim. He isolates himself--and now and
+then he feels it ... the cold dead silence all round, which is the
+effect of an incredible system. If he were not stronger than most men,
+he could not bear it as he does. With such high qualities too!--so
+upright and honourable--you would esteem him, you would like him, I
+think. And so ... dearest ... let _that_ be the last word.
+
+I dare say you have asked yourself sometimes, why it was that I never
+managed to draw you into the house here, so that you might make your
+own way. Now _that_ is one of the things impossible to me. I have not
+influence enough for _that_. George can never invite a friend of his
+even. Do you see? The people who do come here, come by particular
+license and association ... Capt. Surtees Cook being one of them.
+Once ... when I was in high favour too ... I asked for Mr. Kenyon to
+be invited to dinner--he an old college friend, and living close by
+and so affectionate to me always--I felt that he must be hurt by the
+neglect, and asked. _It was in vain._ Now, you see--
+
+May God bless you always! I wrote all my spirits away in this letter
+yesterday, and kept it to finish to-day ... being yours every day,
+glad or sad, ever beloved!--
+
+                                                    Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
+
+Why will you give me such unnecessary proofs of your goodness? Why not
+leave the books for me to take away, at all events? No--you must fold
+up, and tie round, and seal over, and be at all the pains in the world
+with those hands I see now. But you only threaten; say you 'shall
+send'--as yet, and nothing having come, I do pray you, if not too
+late, to save me the shame--add to the gratitude you never can now, I
+think ... only _think_, for you are a siren, and I don't know
+certainly to what your magic may not extend. Thus, in not so important
+a matter, I should have said, the day before yesterday, that no letter
+from you could make my heart rise within me, more than of old ...
+unless it should happen to be of twice the ordinary thickness ... and
+_then_ there's a fear at first lest the over-running of my dealt-out
+measure should be just a note of Mr. Kenyon's, for instance! But
+yesterday the very seal began with 'Ba'--Now, always seal with that
+seal my letters, dearest! Do you recollect Donne's pretty lines about
+seals?
+
+    Quondam fessus Amor loquens Amato,
+    Tot et tanta loquens amica, scripsit:
+    Tandem et fessa manus dedit Sigillum.
+
+And in his own English,
+
+    When love, being weary, made an end
+    Of kind expressions to his friend,
+    He writ; when hand could write no more,
+    He gave the seal--and so left o'er.
+
+(By the way, what a mercy that he never noticed the jingle _in posse_
+of ending 'expressions' and beginning 'impressions.')
+
+How your account of the actors in the 'Love's Labour Lost' amused me!
+I rather like, though, the notion of that steady, business-like
+pursuit of love under difficulties; and the _sobbing_ proves something
+surely! Serjt. Talfourd says--is it not he who says it?--'All tears
+are not for sorrow.' I should incline to say, from my own feeling,
+that no tears were. They only express joy in me, or sympathy with
+joy--and so is it with you too, I should think.
+
+Understand that I do _not_ disbelieve in Mesmerism--I only object to
+insufficient evidence being put forward as quite irrefragable. I keep
+an open sense on the subject--ready to be instructed; and should have
+refused such testimony as Miss Martineau's if it had been adduced in
+support of something I firmly believed--'non _tali_ auxilio'--indeed,
+so has truth been harmed, and only so, from the beginning. So, I shall
+read what you bid me, and learn all I can.
+
+I am not quite so well this week--yesterday some friends came early
+and kept me at home--for which I seem to suffer a little; less,
+already, than in the morning--so I will go out and walk away the
+whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment. As for 'Luria' I have
+not looked at it since I saw you--which means, saw you in the body,
+because last night I saw you; as I wonder if you know!
+
+Thursday, and again I am with you--and you will forget nothing ... how
+the farewell is to be returned? Ah, my dearest, sweetest Ba; how
+entirely I love you!
+
+                                    May God bless you ever--
+
+                                         R.
+
+2. p.m. Your parcel arrives ... the penholder; now what shall I say?
+How am I to use so fine a thing even in writing to you? I will give it
+you again in our Isle, and meantime keep it where my other treasures
+are--my letters and my dear ringlet.
+
+Thank you--all I can thank.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Wednesday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 28, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest--I will say, as you desire, nothing on that subject--but
+this strictly for myself: you engaged me to consult my own good in the
+keeping or breaking our engagement; not _your_ good as it might even
+seem to me; much less seem to another. My only good in this
+world--that against which all the world goes for nothing--is to spend
+my life with you, and be yours. You know that when I _claim_ anything,
+it is really yourself in me--you _give_ me a right and bid me use it,
+and I, in fact, am most obeying you when I appear most exacting on my
+own account--so, in that feeling, I dare claim, once for all, and in
+all possible cases (except that dreadful one of your becoming worse
+again ... in which case I wait till life ends with both of us), I
+claim your promise's fulfilment--say, at the summer's end: it cannot
+be for your good that this state of things should continue. We can go
+to Italy for a year or two and be happy as day and night are long. For
+me, I adore you. This is all unnecessary, I feel as I write: but you
+will think of the main fact as _ordained_, granted by God, will you
+not, dearest?--so, not to be put in doubt _ever again_--then, we can
+go quietly thinking of after matters. Till to-morrow, and ever after,
+God bless my heart's own, own Ba. All my soul follows you,
+love--encircles you--and I live in being yours.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
+
+Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am
+not ill, ... _then_ ... _not now_ ... you shall decide, and your
+decision shall be duty and desire to me, both--I will make no
+difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I _have_ decided to let
+it be as you shall choose ... _shall_ choose. That I love you enough
+to give you up 'for your good,' is proof (to myself at least) that I
+love you enough for any other end:--but you thought _too much of me in
+the last letter_. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your
+words--only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.
+
+More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into
+the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I
+see that you love me and that I am bound to you:--and 'what more need
+I see,' you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to
+the blue ridges of the hills, to the _chances_ of your being happy
+with me. Well! I am yours as _you_ see ... and not yours to teaze you.
+You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ...
+and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use 'the
+liberty of leaping out of the window,' unless you are sure of the
+house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window--least of
+all, _I_.
+
+For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say,
+and further from the world, as I think--out of hearing of the great
+storm of gossiping, when 'scirocco is loose.' Even if you liked to
+live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no
+sacrifice for me--and whether in Italy or England, we should have
+sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying
+by a line that 'good free life' of yours which you reasonably
+praise--which, if it had been necessary to modify, _we must have
+parted_, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though,
+that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.
+
+Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had
+been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his
+club (the Athenaeum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of
+something better to say--and he had not heard of it. There were more
+black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of
+his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy
+councillor.
+
+But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson--I forgot to tell you--I
+forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and
+confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does
+not prevent his writing a new poem--he has finished the second book of
+it--and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the
+'University,' the university-members being all females. If George has
+not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I
+don't know what to think--it makes me open my eyes. Now isn't the
+world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so
+many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him,
+for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger,
+understand--but the complaint may _run_ into danger--so the account
+went.
+
+And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May God bless you. Is Monday or
+Tuesday to be _our_ day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take
+courage and say Monday--but Tuesday and Saturday would do as
+well--would they not?
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Shall I have a letter?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
+
+It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further
+remark on _that_ subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I
+suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and
+choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ...
+(that is, in _expression_; the just correspondency of word to fact and
+feeling: for _it_--the love--may be very truly _there_, at the bottom,
+when it is got at, and spoken out)--quite otherwise, I do really have
+to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as
+little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity.
+Dearest, _love_ means _love_, certainly, and adoration carries its
+sense with it--and _so_, you may have received my feeling in that
+shape--but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice
+one or the other profession, you 'fly out'--instead of keeping your
+throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to
+it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a
+moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able,
+see more--'si _minus prope_ stes, te capiet magis.' Meanwhile, silent
+or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that _glove_--not that hand.
+
+I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness
+... hardly disapproves--he knows I could not avoid--escape you--for he
+knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in
+our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) 'what I thought of his
+young relative'--and I considered half a second to this effect--'if he
+asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the
+crown of the Czar--and I answered truly--he would not return; "then of
+course you mean to try and get it to keep."' So I _did_ tell the truth
+in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.
+
+I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected
+book--title, scheme, all of it,--_that_ is astounding;--and fairies?
+If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies--_this_ maketh that
+there ben no fairies'--locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must
+keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world
+passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if _we_ have the making
+of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to
+hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play
+goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir
+[Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is
+slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually
+insisted upon and drawn boldly ... _here_, you have it gone over with
+an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes
+whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of
+mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode,
+'Sic fatur--so said AEneas; lachrymans--_a-crying_' ... our pedagogue
+turned on him furiously--'D'ye think AEneas made such a noise--as _you_
+shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy,
+smiling at itself.
+
+Then _Tuesday_, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer
+afterward. I am singularly well to-day--head quite quiet--and
+yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my
+last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor
+dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever--
+
+                                                          R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Friday Evening.
+                              [Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]
+
+Something, you said yesterday, made me happy--'that your liking for me
+did not come and go'--do you remember? Because there was a letter,
+written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully,
+as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your
+fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold
+water'!--and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my
+thoughts of you too much, until quite of late--while even yesterday I
+was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach
+me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'--it was your own word!
+And the other long word _idiosyncrasy_ seemed long enough to cover it;
+and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man
+of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings
+sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at
+half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black
+beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most
+of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... _where_ did they
+gape? who could tell? Oh--but lately I have not been crossed so, of
+course, with those fabulous terrors--lately that horror of the burning
+mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear!--and
+if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably
+sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him
+that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a
+white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse!--call it the
+'mammoth horse'--the '_real_ mammoth,' this time!
+
+Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems
+so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and
+that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping
+on your purple underneath. _Your_ letter, the letter I answered, was
+in my heart ... _is_ in my heart--and all the yeses in the world would
+not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps,
+I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction--and it comes to the
+same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of
+instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from
+your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should,
+would, _must_, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You
+understand--you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like.
+On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and
+better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the
+whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing
+beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to
+me, I do not feel it any longer--it may be raining still, but I am in
+the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you _could_ be _too dear_ to me
+you would be now--but you could not--I do not believe in those
+supposed excesses of pure affections--God cannot be too great.
+
+Therefore it is a conditional engagement still--all the conditions
+being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall
+I tell you what is 'not to be put in doubt _ever_'?--your goodness,
+_that_ is ... and every tie that binds me to you. 'Ordained, granted
+by God' it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you,
+and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it
+at this present point. Still I _do not_--there seems no necessity yet.
+
+May God bless you, ever dearest:--
+
+                                                Your own BA.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+           Saturday.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+Well I have your letter--and I send you the postscript to my last one,
+written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in
+some parts of it, _so_ far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the
+'flying out'--perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your moments
+of starry centrifugal motion.
+
+So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon's opinion of his 'young
+relative'--(neither young nor his relative--not very much of either!)
+is to the effect that you couldn't possibly 'escape' her--? It looks
+like the sign of the Red Dragon, put _so_ ... and your burning
+mountain is not too awful for the scenery.
+
+Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you
+should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say
+infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean
+a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No--do not say
+such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal
+Czarina who must stand between you and me.... I shall think that it is
+not _I_ whom you look at ... and _pour cause_. 'Flying out,' _that_
+would be!
+
+And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful
+of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not
+come, certainly uncomfortable when he does--yes, _really_ I would
+rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of
+which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me
+ask why he does not come &c. ... questions which never came to my lips
+before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I
+wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except,
+except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his
+too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being
+overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate
+writing letters to any of my old friends--I feel as if it were the
+merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to
+anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very
+fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards
+through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am
+ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ...
+which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ...
+and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of
+understanding, I have a distaste for _them_ ... cannot help it--and
+you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it,
+persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon--with whom we began,
+and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can
+think of another,--do not imagine that, if he _should_ see anything,
+he can 'approve' of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... _he_,
+with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and
+left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know, ... if I
+should be ill _before_ ... why there, is a conclusion!--but if
+_afterward_ ... what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I
+only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both
+suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master
+to run the latter risk. You have overcome ... to your loss
+perhaps--unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my
+prison ... I could not even smile at _that_ if it seemed probable ...
+I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you
+... dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and
+believe--in spite of the _possibility_ which it is impossible to deny.
+And now we leave this subject for the present.
+
+_Sunday._--You are 'singularly well.' You are very seldom quite well,
+I am afraid--yet 'Luria' seems to have done no harm this time, as you
+are singularly well the day _after_ so much writing. Yet do not hurry
+that last act.... I won't have it for a long while yet.
+
+Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine,
+very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you
+understand that I had said there was nothing in him but _manner_ ... I
+thought he said so--and I am confident that he never heard such an
+opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have
+observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called
+_mannerism_, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the
+medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon
+teaches ... 'Le style, c'est _l'homme_.' But if the _whole man_ were
+style, if all Carlyleism were manner--why there would be no man, no
+Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent
+me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world--affected
+parlances--just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic
+the distractions of some great wandering soul--although _that_ is a
+bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not
+his dress, but his physiognomy--or more than _that_ even.
+
+But I do not forgive him for talking here against the 'ideals of
+poets' ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called _reality_, which is
+another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in
+broad blazing lights--but he does not analyse them like a
+philosopher--do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action
+as opposed to speech and singing, what is _that_--when all earnest
+thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions
+surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if
+Shakespeare's actions were not greater than Cromwell's!--
+
+But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.
+
+                                             Wholly and only
+
+                                                  Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Tuesday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]
+
+You ought hardly,--ought you, my Ba?--to refer to _that_ letter or any
+expression in it; I had--and _have_, I trust--your forgiveness for
+what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows.
+That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose
+of what you properly call a _crisis_. I _did_ believe,--taking an
+expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an
+excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day
+previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny
+me admittance again unless I blotted out--not merely softened
+down--the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion,
+I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most
+painfully to my mind--_that_ does not, after all, disagree with what I
+said and you repeat--does it, if you will think? I said my other
+'_likings_' (as you rightly set it down) _used_ to 'come and go,' and
+that my love for you _did not_, and that is true; the first clause as
+the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and
+general,--always have been--and the natural problem has been the
+giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of
+dispersing. I seem to have foretold, _foreknown_ you in other likings
+of mine--now here ... when the liking '_came_' ... and now elsewhere
+... when as surely the liking '_went_': and if they had stayed before
+the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary,
+I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,--for Romeo
+_thinks_ he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands--whereas I saw
+the plain truth without one mistake, and 'looked to like, if looking
+liking moved--and no more deep _did_ I endart mine eye'--about which,
+first I was very sorry, and after rather proud--all which I seem to
+have told you before.--And now, when my whole heart and soul find you,
+and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy
+cannot last, seeing that
+
+--it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone
+now, dearest, ever-dearest?
+
+And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some
+chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to
+_me_--like Charles Lamb's 'letter to an elderly man whose education
+had been neglected'--when he finds himself involuntarily communicating
+truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops
+himself after this fashion--'If you look round the world, my dear
+Sir--for it _is_ round!--so I will make you laugh at me, if you will,
+for _my_ inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment
+with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of
+that--for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the
+most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it--so that increase
+of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness--and
+diminution, diminished illness. And now there _is_ diminution! Dear,
+dear Ba--you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and
+what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and
+what ends it all directly?--just an hour's walk! So with _me_:
+now,--fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is--no, _don't_
+see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But _you_, at the end;
+this is _all_ the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief
+in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless God with my whole heart that
+it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say--so
+superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath
+(I who _do_ love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes
+dearest,)--I _will not_ bid you--that is, pray you--to persevere! You
+have all my life bound to yours--save me from _my 'seven years'_--and
+God reward you!
+
+                                                 Your own R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]
+
+But I did not--dear, dearest--no indeed, I did not mean any harm about
+the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure--and
+so,--did I give you pain? was _that_ my ingenuity? Forgive my
+unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will
+just say that what made me talk about 'the thorn in the flesh' from
+that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into
+it as much of the truth, _your_ truth, as admitted of the ultimate
+purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave
+me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set
+about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that
+it 'did not come and go,'--was it not enough? enough to make me feel
+happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this?
+Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning
+to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you
+have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent,
+most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing
+and at no moment have you--I will not say--failed to _me_, but spoken
+or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever
+been to me except too generous? Ah--if I had been only half as
+generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that
+first meeting--it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not
+courage--I shrank from the thought of it--and then ... besides ... I
+could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,--I concluded
+that I might keep my friend.
+
+Why should any remembrance be painful to _you_? I do not understand.
+Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself!--seeing that
+every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made
+me yours with a deeper trust and love.
+
+And for that letter ... do you fancy that in _my_ memory the sting is
+not gone from it?--and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the
+Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart
+always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear
+letter that was burnt, forgiven by _you_--until you grow angry with me
+instead--just till then.
+
+And that you should care so much about the opium! Then _I_ must care,
+and get to do with less--at least. On the other side of your goodness
+and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike
+you as strange that I who have had no pain--no acute suffering to keep
+down from its angles--should need opium in any shape. But I have had
+restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power
+of sleeping quite--and even in the day, the continual aching sense of
+weakness has been intolerable--besides palpitation--as if one's life,
+instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished
+within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all
+the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium--a
+preparation of it, called morphine, and ether--and ever since I have
+been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,--because the
+tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I
+have--so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that
+the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be
+dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very
+slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be
+done--and you are to understand that I never _increased_ upon the
+prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance--no! Now
+think of my writing all this to you!--
+
+And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters;
+and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.
+
+Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I
+have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I
+shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... _you_:--a
+forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is
+just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!
+
+Your head ... is it ... _how_ is it? tell me. And consider again if it
+could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach _you_ ... in
+what I said about the letter.
+
+May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the _compensation_
+blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and _that_, I can say before
+God.
+
+                                                    Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Friday.
+                              [Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]
+
+If I said you 'gave me pain' in anything, it was in the only way ever
+possible for you, my dearest--by giving _yourself_, in me, pain--being
+unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in
+that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called--in this
+very letter--'generous' &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep
+into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall
+hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of
+gratitude already is beyond expression.
+
+All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. 'Slowly and
+gradually' what may _not_ be done? Then see the bright weather while I
+write--lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf,
+rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge
+sparrows in full song--there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in
+store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps--and then comes what
+shall come--
+
+And Miss Mitford yesterday--and has she fresh fears for you of my evil
+influence and Origenic power of 'raying out darkness' like a swart
+star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing
+people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as
+the like infirmity in others--whether they are unconscious of, or
+indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance
+from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think
+he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by
+his deafness as you profess--but he will be quite aware, to say the
+least of it, when another man can't hear _him_; he will certainly not
+encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who
+fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either
+believe in his heart that it is _not_ so ... that only as much
+attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would
+quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and
+be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to
+confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness
+of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were
+just such another mote--_then_ one might sympathize and feel no such
+inconvenience--but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to
+just its _double_, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce
+see nothing wrong? 'No'--it is supposed--'but something _as_ obscure
+in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no
+nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought
+and the two words that express it without obscurity at all--'bricks
+and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle
+wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in
+him'--I am almost inclined to say that _clear expression_ should be
+his only work and care--for he is born, ordained, such as he is--and
+not born learned in putting what was born in him into words--what ever
+_can_ be clearly spoken, ought to be. But 'bricks and mortar' is very
+easily said--and some of the thoughts in 'Sordello' not so readily
+even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.
+
+I look forward to a real life's work for us both. _I_ shall do
+all,--under your eyes and with your hand in mine,--all I was intended
+to do: may but _you_ as surely go perfecting--by continuing--the work
+begun so wonderfully--'a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven'--
+
+I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend--'to-morrow'
+always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your
+sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did _not_
+tell you that I had almost passed by her--the eyes being still
+elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that--no--I will send the
+old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence--and it is very
+charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest--and
+tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as
+glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you
+ever.
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Saturday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing
+you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner
+with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it--these
+have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some
+reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive
+me--and let me forget it all on Monday? On _Monday_--unless I am told
+otherwise by the early post--And God bless you ever
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                              Saturday.
+                              [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+
+I felt it must be so ... that something must be the matter, ... and I
+had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which
+comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than
+my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now _was_
+it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great
+dinner?--but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest--I have no
+heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like
+... if you are well enough on Monday ... if it should be thought wise
+of you to come to London through the noise ... if ... you understand
+all the _ifs_ ... and among them the greatest if of all, ... for if
+you do love me ... _care_ for me even, you will not do yourself harm
+or run any risk of harm by going out _anywhere too soon_. On Monday,
+in case you are _considered well enough_, and otherwise Tuesday,
+Wednesday--I leave it to you. Still I _will_ ask one thing, whether
+you come on Monday or not. _Let_ me have a single line by the nearest
+post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible--oh
+no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with
+me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to
+save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course
+with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all!--I
+thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when
+Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been
+depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ...
+that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that
+she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I
+had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half
+past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have
+a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward
+skyward ... to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come
+that day ... no!--and I revenged myself by writing a letter to _you_,
+which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for
+letters. Last night, came a real one--dearest! So we could not keep
+our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead, ... on my part. How
+should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you
+on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday,
+nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again--if all
+the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you!--it
+has grown to be enough prayer!--as _you_ are enough (and all, besides)
+for
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]
+
+The clock strikes--_three_; and I am here, not with you--and my
+'fractious' headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now,
+and is leaving me every minute--as if to make me aware, with an
+undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and
+soon will be wondering--and it would be so easy now to dress myself
+and walk or run or ride--do anything that led to you ... but by no
+haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a
+quarter to five--by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear,
+dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am--with myself, with--this
+is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last
+night--yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been
+twice put off before--once solely on my account. And the sun shines,
+and you would shine--
+
+Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still
+I have lost my day.
+
+                                 Bless you, my ever-dearest.
+
+                                      Your R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                              Sunday Morning.
+                              [Post-mark, February 9, 1846.]
+
+My dearest--there are no words,--nor will be to-morrow, nor even in
+the Island--I know that! But I do love you.
+
+My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word--
+
+I am quite well now--my other note will have told you when the change
+began--I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of
+getting better in as little time as possible,--and the stimulus turned
+mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a
+degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you--but I knew
+my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later--and I
+thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually
+prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had
+been laid to heart--to-morrow I shall see you, Ba--my sweetest. But
+there are cold winds blowing to-day--how do you bear them, my Ba?
+'_Care_' you, pray, pray, care for all _I_ care about--and be well, if
+God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss
+you, and will begin a new thinking of you--and end, and begin, going
+round and round in my circle of discovery,--_My_ lotos-blossom!
+because they _loved_ the lotos, were lotos-lovers,--[Greek: lotou t'
+erotes], as Euripides writes in the [Greek: Troades].
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+P.S. See those lines in the _Athenaeum_ on Pulci with Hunt's
+translation--all wrong--'_che non si sente_,' being--'that one does
+not _hear_ him' i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow--and the rest, male,
+pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mi ocelle!
+
+    Where's Luigi Pulci, that one don't the man see?
+    He just now yonder in the copse has '_gone it_' (_n_'ando)
+    Because across his mind there came a fancy;
+    He'll wish to fancify, perhaps, a sonnet!
+
+Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read _this_ which I
+really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful
+persecuted Pietro d'Abano wrote this quatrain on the people's plaguing
+him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him--he helped
+to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and
+passes for a conjuror in his country to this day--when there is a
+storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact
+with the evil one obliged him to drink no _milk_; no natural human
+food! You know Tieck's novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I
+believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty
+years ago.
+
+    Studiando le mie cifre, col compasso
+    Rilevo, che presto saro sotterra--
+    Perche del mio saper si fa gran chiasso,
+    E gl'ignoranti m'hanno mosso guerra.
+
+Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I
+remember, I turned it--word for word--
+
+    Studying my ciphers, with the compass
+    I reckon--who soon shall be below ground,
+    Because of my lore they make great 'rumpus,'
+    And against me war makes each dull rogue round.
+
+Say that you forgive me to-morrow!
+
+[The following is in E.B.B.'s handwriting.]
+
+    With my compass I take up my ciphers, poor scholar;
+    Who myself shall be taken down soon under the ground ...
+    Since the world at my learning roars out in its choler,
+    And the blockheads have fought me all round.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 10, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your 'Luria' just as you would
+have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a
+conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has
+moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of
+pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has--it is
+very fine. For the execution, _that_ too is worthily done--although I
+agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here
+and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to
+lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger--but you will
+look to it yourself--and such a conception _must_ come in thunder and
+lightning, as a chief god would--_must_ make its own way ... and will
+not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable.
+Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light
+on her face--might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a
+magnificent work--a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against
+their 'heroes,' and (what is peculiar) an _humane_ exposition ... not
+misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the
+return, the remorse, saves it--and the 'Too late' of the repentance
+and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors
+and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward ...
+'_That is done._' And now--surely you think well of the work as a
+whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it--and of the
+_subtilty_ too, for it is subtle--too subtle perhaps for stage
+purposes, though as clear, ... as to expression ... as to medium ...
+as 'bricks and mortar' ... shall I say?
+
+    'A people is but the attempt of many
+    To rise to the completer life of one.'
+
+There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine _he_ is, your Luria,
+when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and
+half-disdain of Domizia. Ah--Domizia! would it hurt her to make her
+more a woman ... a little ... I wonder!
+
+So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read
+_through_ ... since I have read the fifth twice over. And remember,
+please, that I am to read, besides, the 'Soul's Tragedy,' and that I
+shall dun you for it presently. Because you told me it was finished,
+otherwise I would not speak a word, feeling that you want rest, and
+that I, who am anxious about you, would be crossing my own purposes
+by driving you into work. It is the overwork, the overwear of mind and
+heart (for the feelings come as much into use as the thoughts in these
+productions), that makes you so pale, dearest, that distracts your
+head, and does all the harm on Saturdays and so many other days
+besides.
+
+To-day--how are you? It _was_ right and just for me to write this
+time, after the two dear notes ... the one on Saturday night which
+made me praise you to myself and think you kinder than kindest, and
+the other on Monday morning which took me unaware--such a note, _that_
+was! Oh it _was_ right and just that I should not teaze you to send me
+another after those two others,--yet I was very near doing it--yet I
+should like infinitely to hear to-day how you
+are--unreasonable!--Well! you will write now--you will answer what I
+am writing, and mention yourself particularly and sincerely--Remember!
+Above all, you will care for your head. I have been thinking since
+yesterday that, coming out of the cold, you might not have refused as
+usual to take something ... hot wine and water, or coffee? Will you
+have coffee with me on Saturday? 'Shunning the salt,' will you have
+the sugar? And do tell me, for I have been thinking, are you careful
+as to diet--and will such sublunary things as coffee and tea and cocoa
+affect your head--_for_ or _against_! Then you do not touch wine--and
+perhaps you ought. Surely something may be found or done to do you
+good. If it had not been for me, you would be travelling in Italy by
+this time and quite well perhaps.
+
+This morning I had a letter from Miss Martineau and really read it to
+the end without thinking it too long, which is extraordinary for me
+just now, and scarcely ordinary in the letter, and indeed it is a
+delightful letter, as letters go, which are not yours! You shall take
+it with you on Saturday to read, and you shall see that it is worth
+reading, and interesting for Wordsworth's sake and her own. Mr.
+Kenyon has it now, because he presses on to have her letters, and I
+should not like to tell him that you had it first from me.... Also
+Saturday will be time enough.
+
+Oh--poor Mr. Horne! shall I tell you some of his offences? That he
+desires to be called at four in the morning, and does not get up till
+eight. That he pours libations on his bare head out of the
+water-glasses at great dinners. That being in the midst of
+sportsmen--rural aristocrats--lords of soil--and all talking learnedly
+of pointers' noses and spaniels' ears; he has exclaimed aloud in a
+mocking paraphrase--'If I were to hold up a horse by the tail.' The
+wit is certainly doubtful!--That being asked to dinner on Tuesday, he
+will go on Wednesday instead.--That he throws himself at full length
+with a gesture approaching to a 'summerset' on satin sofas. That he
+giggles. That he only _thinks_ he can talk. That his ignorance on all
+subjects is astounding. That he never read the old ballads, nor saw
+Percy's collection. That he asked _who_ wrote 'Drink to me only with
+thine eyes.' That after making himself ridiculous in attempting to
+speak at a public meeting, he said to a compassionate friend 'I got
+very well out of _that_.' That, in writing his work on Napoleon, he
+employed a man to study the subject for him. That he cares for
+nobody's poetry or fame except his own, and considers Tennyson chiefly
+illustrious as being his contemporary. That, as to politics, he
+doesn't care '_which_ side.' That he is always talking of 'my shares,'
+'my income,' as if he were a Kilmansegg. Lastly (and understand, this
+is _my_ 'lastly' and not Miss Mitford's, who is far from being out of
+breath so soon) that he has a mania for heiresses--that he has gone
+out at half past five and 'proposed' to Miss M or N with fifty
+thousand pounds, and being rejected (as the lady thought fit to report
+herself) came back to tea and the same evening 'fell in love' with
+Miss O or P ... with forty thousand--went away for a few months, and
+upon his next visit, did as much to a Miss Q or W, on the promise of
+four blood horses--has a prospect now of a Miss R or S--with hounds,
+perhaps.
+
+Too, too bad--isn't it? I would repeat none of it except to you--and
+as to the worst part, the last, why some may be coincidence, and some,
+exaggeration, for I have not the least doubt that every now and then a
+fine poetical compliment was turned into a serious thing by the
+listener, and then the poor poet had critics as well as listeners all
+round him. Also, he rather 'wears his heart on his sleeve,' there is
+no denying--and in other respects he is not much better, perhaps, than
+other men. But for the base traffic of the affair--I do not believe a
+word. He is too generous--has too much real sensibility. I fought his
+battle, poor Orion. 'And so,' she said 'you believe it possible for a
+disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses,
+on the same day?' I doubted the _fact_. And then she showed me a note,
+an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the
+business--while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But
+I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady's confessions, or
+convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having
+tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few
+days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a
+neighbourhood where all were strangers to him,--and never outstaying
+his week! He must have been _foolish_, read it all how we may.
+
+And so am _I_, to write this 'personal talk' to you when you will not
+care for it--yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though
+Wordsworth's tea-kettle outsings it all.
+
+When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and
+his Italian poets, in the _Examiner_. How I liked to be pulled by the
+sleeve to your translations!--How I liked everything!--Pulci, Pietro
+... and you, best!
+
+Yet here's a naivete which I found in your letter! I will write it out
+that you may read it--
+
+'However it' (the headache) 'was no sooner gone in a degree, than a
+worse plague came--_I sate thinking of you_.'
+
+Very satisfactory _that_ is, and very clear.
+
+May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold
+makes me _languid_, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not
+unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.
+
+                                 Your worse ... worst plague
+
+                                      Your own
+
+                                           BA.
+
+I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written 'a long
+letter' _to_ the letter!
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Wednesday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 11, 1846.]
+
+My sweetest 'plague,' _did_ I really write that sentence so, without
+gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it--but you
+know well, well where the real plague lay,--that I thought of you as
+thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had
+kept me from you--and if I did not dwell more particularly on that
+thinking of _yours_, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a
+plague when brought before me _with_ the thought of you,--if I passed
+this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take
+up the care and stop the 'reverie serene' of--ah, the rhyme _lets_ me
+say--'sweetest eyes were ever seen'--were _ever_ seen! And yourself
+confess, in the Saturday's note, to having been 'unhappy for half an
+hour till' &c. &c.--and do not I feel _that_ here, and am not I
+plagued by it?
+
+Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back
+gently (that is backwards) and tell you I 'sate thinking' too, and
+with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the
+window was frozen ('so as to bear sparrows' somebody said) and I knew
+you would feel it--'but you are not unwell'--really? thank God--and
+the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance--you asked me once
+if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you
+say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for
+a book, an old fancy seized me to try the 'sortes' and dip into the
+first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said 'what
+will be the event of my love for Her'--in so many words--and my book
+turned out to be--'Cerutti's Italian Grammar!'--a propitious source of
+information ... the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some
+assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative
+absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible
+pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush ... such
+dreadful possibilities of stumbling on 'conditional moods,' 'imperfect
+tenses,' 'singular numbers,'--I should have been too glad to put up
+with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than
+afforded by such a word as 'Conjunction,' 'possessive pronoun--,'
+secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and
+what did I find? _This_--which I copy from the book now--'_If we love
+in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to
+eternity_'--from 'Promiscuous Exercises,' to be translated into
+Italian, at the end.
+
+And now I reach Horne and his characteristics--of which I can tell you
+with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not
+altogether false--whether it proceed from inability to see what one
+may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne,
+but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of
+those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses,
+meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter
+he had hired once,--how it galloped and could not walk; also he
+propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when
+a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the
+sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in
+that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself--but when thrown there,
+he can talk, with Miss Mitford's leave, admirably,--I never heard
+better stories than Horne's--some Spanish-American incidents of travel
+want printing--or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares
+for nobody's poetry is _false_, he praises more unregardingly of his
+own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,--(do I speak
+clearly?)--less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the
+'line' of the other man he is praising--which 'somewhat' has to be
+guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise
+of the 'craft' than any other I ever met--instance after instance
+starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him
+allude--unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time
+we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by
+somebody's withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article,
+and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which
+does not look like 'boasting of his income'! As for the heiresses--I
+don't believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and
+trafficking. Altogether, what miserable 'set-offs' to the achievement
+of an 'Orion,' a 'Marlowe,' a 'Delora'! Miss Martineau understands him
+better.
+
+Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now--at all
+events, much better, just a little turning in the head--since you
+appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee--thank you, indeed thank you,
+but nothing after the '_oenomel_' and before half past six. _I_ know
+all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not--and can
+tell you--, how truly...!
+
+    The thirst that from the soul doth rise
+      Doth ask a drink divine--
+    But might I of Jove's nectar sup
+      I would not change for thine! _No, no, no!_
+
+
+And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of
+wine, 'that I do not touch it'--not habitually, nor so as to feel the
+loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.
+
+And now, 'Luria', so long as the parts cohere and the whole is
+discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think
+of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia
+is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,--it
+was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so
+narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper 'pro memoria'
+was, under the 'Act V.' '_she loves_'--to which I could not bring it,
+you see! Yet the play requires it still,--something may yet be
+effected, though.... I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa
+with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry--I suppose it is
+no use publishing much before Easter--I will try and remember what my
+whole character _did_ mean--it was, in two words, understood at the
+time by 'panther's-beauty'--on which hint I ought to have spoken! But
+the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire
+on the hearth _nec vult panthera domari_!
+
+For the 'Soul's Tragedy'--_that_ will surprise you, I think. There is
+no trace of you there,--you have not put out the black face of
+_it_--it is all sneering and _disillusion_--and shall not be printed
+but burned if you say the word--now wait and see and then say! I will
+bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.
+
+And now, dearest, I am with you--and the other matters are forgotten
+already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I
+trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 12, 1846.]
+
+Ah, the 'sortes'! Is it a double oracle--'swan and shadow'--do you
+think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? 'I shall
+love thee to eternity'--I _shall_.
+
+And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you 'as my wont
+is,' because I understood simply that 'habitually' you abstained from
+wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your
+health to take it habitually. It _might_, you know--not that I pretend
+to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes
+into one's thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold
+water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare
+to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver _me_
+from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison.
+And your 'quite well' means that dreadful 'turning' still ... still!
+Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor 'try to remember,'
+which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read
+your 'Luria,' the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with
+all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try
+to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in 'coming between,' and
+all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just
+_that_, and then with a white conscience 'I shall love thee to
+eternity!... dearest! You have made a golden work out of your
+'golden-hearted Luria'--as once you called him to me, and I hold it in
+the highest admiration--_should_, if you were precisely nothing to me.
+And still, the fifth act _rises_! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem
+to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do
+not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other
+persons--we do not see the _panther_,--no, certainly we do not--but
+you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a
+time ... and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript
+before, you should not have a page of it--_now_, you are only to rest.
+What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I
+read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows--and as to 'faded
+lines,' you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it.
+Also, no one can say 'This is not clearly written.' The people who are
+at 'words of one syllable' may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth
+together this time ... as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts
+you always must have, in and out of 'Sordello'--and the objectors
+would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that
+ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.
+
+To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific
+confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he
+had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see
+me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took _Saturday_!!'
+So I let him mistake the one week for the other--'Mr. Browning took
+Saturday,' it was true, both ways. Well--and then he went on to tell
+me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell,
+and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire
+besides--now, what do you think, she enquired besides? 'how you and
+... Browning were' said Mr. Kenyon--I write his words. He is coming,
+perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday--Saturday is to have a twofold
+safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think
+of coming if you are ill ... unwell even. I shall not be frightened
+next time, as I told you--I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to
+think! 'It has never happened _so_--there must be a cause--and if it
+is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell _me_ ... it will not
+seem _my_ concern'--_that_ was my thought on Saturday. But another
+time ... only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved,
+and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for
+your suffering ... my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the
+future that you may have the headache--and do you remember it too!
+
+For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. _She
+blots_ with her _eyes_ sometimes. She hates ... and loves, in extreme
+degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of
+mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to
+observe the trust on one side and the _dyspathy_ on the other--using
+the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in
+quite a strange element of society,--he, an artist in his good and his
+evil,--and the people there, 'county families,' smoothly plumed in
+their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of
+using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then,
+meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times
+worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated
+impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses,--all
+these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I
+dare say, and just the things suited to the _genus_ poet, and to
+himself specifically,--were understood by the natives and their 'rural
+deities' to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county,
+and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known
+better--_she_ should. And she _would_ have known better, if she had
+liked him--for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences.
+She is too fervent a friend--she can be. Generous too, she can be
+without an effort; and I have had much affection from her--and accuse
+myself for seeming to have less--but--
+
+May God bless you!--I end in haste after this long lingering.
+
+                                                     Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Not unwell--_I_ am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 13, 1846.]
+
+Two nights ago I read the 'Soul's Tragedy' once more, and though there
+were not a few points which still struck me as successful in design
+and execution, yet on the whole I came to a decided opinion, that it
+will be better to postpone the publication of it for the present. It
+is not a good ending, an auspicious wind-up of this series;
+subject-matter and style are alike unpopular even for the literary
+_grex_ that stands aloof from the purer _plebs_, and uses that
+privilege to display and parade an ignorance which the other is
+altogether unconscious of--so that, if 'Luria' is _clearish_, the
+'Tragedy' would be an unnecessary troubling the waters. Whereas, if I
+printed it first in order, my readers, according to custom, would make
+the (comparatively) little they did not see into, a full excuse for
+shutting their eyes at the rest, and we may as well part friends, so
+as not to meet enemies. But, at bottom, I believe the proper objection
+is to the immediate, _first_ effect of the whole--its moral
+effect--which is dependent on the contrary supposition of its being
+really understood, in the main drift of it. Yet I don't know; for I
+wrote it with the intention of producing the best of all
+effects--perhaps the truth is, that I am tired, rather, and desirous
+of getting done, and 'Luria' will answer my purpose so far. Will not
+the best way be to reserve this unlucky play and in the event of a
+second edition--as Moxon seems to think such an apparition
+possible--might not this be quietly inserted?--in its place, too, for
+it was written two or three years ago. I have lost, of late, interest
+in dramatic writing, as you know, and, perhaps, occasion. And,
+dearest, I mean to take your advice and be quiet awhile and let my
+mind get used to its new medium of sight; seeing all things, as it
+does, through you: and then, let all I have done be the prelude and
+the real work begin. I felt it would be so before, and told you at the
+very beginning--do you remember? And you spoke of Io 'in the proem.'
+How much more should follow now!
+
+And if nothing follows, I have _you_.
+
+I shall see you to-morrow and be happy. To-day--is it the weather or
+what?--something depresses me a little--to-morrow brings the remedy
+for it all. I don't know why I mention such a matter; except that I
+tell you everything without a notion of after-consequence; and because
+your dearest, dearest presence seems under any circumstances as if
+created just to help me _there_; if my spirits rise they fly to you;
+if they fall, they hold by you and cease falling--as now. Bless you,
+Ba--my own best blessing that you are! But a few hours and I am with
+you, beloved!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Saturday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest, though you wanted to make me say one thing displeasing
+to you to-day, I had not courage to say two instead ... which I might
+have done indeed and indeed! For I am capable of thinking both
+thoughts of 'next year,' as you suggested them:--because while you are
+with me I see only _you_, and you being you, I cannot doubt a power of
+yours nor measure the deep loving nature which I feel to be so
+deep--so that there may be ever so many 'mores,' and no 'more' wonder
+of mine!--but afterwards, when the door is shut and there is no 'more'
+light nor speaking until Thursday, why _then_, that I do not see _you_
+but _me_,--_then_ comes the reaction,--the natural lengthening of the
+shadows at sunset,--and _then_, the 'less, less, less' grows to seem
+as natural to my fate, as the 'more' seemed to your nature--I being I!
+
+_Sunday._--Well!--you are to try to forgive it all! And the truth,
+over and under all, is, that I scarcely ever do think of the future,
+scarcely ever further than to your next visit, and almost never
+beyond, except for your sake and in reference to that view of the
+question which I have vexed you with so often, in fearing for your
+happiness. Once it was a habit of mind with me to live altogether in
+what I called the future--but the tops of the trees that looked
+towards Troy were broken off in the great winds, and falling down into
+the river beneath, where now after all this time they grow green
+again, I let them float along the current gently and pleasantly. Can
+it be better I wonder! And if it becomes worse, can I help it? Also
+the future never seemed to belong to me so little--never! It might
+appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself
+sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am--from the sort of
+anxiety which might be well connected with my own position _here_, and
+which is personal to myself. _That_ is all thrown behind--into the
+bushes--long ago it was, and I think I told you of it before.
+Agitation comes from indecision--and _I_ was decided from the first
+hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really.
+Now,--as the Euphuists used to say,--I am 'more thine than my own' ...
+it is a literal truth--and my future belongs to you; if it was mine,
+it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given, and if
+it was given ... beloved....
+
+So you see!
+
+Then I will confess to you that all my life long I have had a rather
+strange sympathy and dyspathy--the sympathy having concerned the genus
+_jilt_ (as vulgarly called) male and female--and the dyspathy--the
+whole class of heroically virtuous persons who make sacrifices of what
+they call 'love' to what they call 'duty.' There are exceptional cases
+of course, but, for the most part, I listen incredulously or else with
+a little contempt to those latter proofs of strength--or weakness, as
+it may be:--people are not usually praised for giving up their
+religion, for unsaying their oaths, for desecrating their 'holy
+things'--while believing them still to be religious and sacramental!
+On the other side I have always and shall always understand how it is
+possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women
+perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the
+mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and
+retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth
+which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most
+courageous for the truth's sake, and instead of blaming them I hold
+them in honour, for me, and always did and shall.
+
+And while I write, you are 'very ill'--very ill!--how it looks,
+written down _so_! When you were gone yesterday and my thoughts had
+tossed about restlessly for ever so long, I was wise enough to ask
+Wilson how _she_ thought you were looking, ... and she 'did not know'
+... she 'had not observed' ... 'only certainly Mr. Browning ran
+up-stairs instead of walking as he did the time before.'
+
+Now promise me dearest, dearest--not to trifle with your health. Not
+to neglect yourself ... not to tire yourself ... and besides to take
+the advice of your medical friend as to diet and general
+treatment:--because there must be a wrong and a right in everything,
+and the right is very important under your circumstances ... if you
+have a tendency to illness. It may be right for you to have wine for
+instance. Did you ever try the putting your feet into hot water at
+night, to prevent the recurrence of the morning headache--for the
+affection of the head comes on early in the morning, does it not? just
+as if the sleeping did you harm. Now I have heard of such a remedy
+doing good--and could it _increase_ the evil?--mustard mixed with the
+water, remember. Everything approaching to _congestion_ is full of
+fear--I tremble to think of it--and I bring no remedy by this teazing
+neither! But you will not be 'wicked' nor 'unkind,' nor provoke the
+evil consciously--you will keep quiet and forswear the going out at
+nights, the excitement and noise of parties, and the worse excitement
+of composition--you promise. If you knew how I keep thinking of you,
+and at intervals grow so frightened! Think _you_, that you are three
+times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest,--because
+you are more than three times the larger planet--and because too, you
+have known other sources of light and happiness ... but I need not say
+this--and I shall hear on Monday, and may trust to you every day ...
+may I not? Yet I would trust my soul to you sooner than your own
+health.
+
+May God bless you, dear, dearest. If the first part of the 'Soul's
+Tragedy' should be written out, I can read _that_ perhaps, without
+drawing you in to think of the second. Still it may be safer to keep
+off altogether for the present--and let it be as you incline. I do not
+speak of 'Luria.'
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+If it were not for Mr. Kenyon, I should say, almost, Wednesday,
+instead of Thursday--I want to see you so much, and to see for myself
+about the looks and spirits, only it would not do if he found you here
+on Wednesday. Let him come to-morrow or on Tuesday, and Wednesday will
+be safe--shall we consider? what do you think?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Sunday Afternoon.
+                             [Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+
+Here is the letter again, dearest: I suppose it gives me the same
+pleasure, in reading, as you--and Mr. K. as me, and anybody else as
+him; if all the correspondence which was claimed again and burnt on
+some principle or other some years ago be at all of the nature of this
+sample, the measure seems questionable. Burn anybody's _real_
+letters, well and good: they move and live--the thoughts, feelings,
+and expressions even,--in a self-imposed circle limiting the
+experience of two persons only--_there_ is the standard, and to _that_
+the appeal--how should a third person know? His presence breaks the
+line, so to speak, and lets in a whole tract of country on the
+originally inclosed spot--so that its trees, which were from side to
+side there, seem left alone and wondering at their sudden unimportance
+in the broad land; while its 'ferns such as I never saw before' and
+which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid
+the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth's
+general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole
+value of such letters--the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed:
+but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom
+it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it
+and shan't have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to
+the ineffable mysteries of those 'upper-rooms,' now that the broom and
+dust pan, stocking-mending and gingerbread-making are invested with
+such unforeseen reverence ... but the carriage-sweep and quarry,
+together with Jane and our baskets, and a pleasant shadow of
+Wordsworth's Sunday hat preceding his own rapid strides in the
+direction of Miss Fenwick's house--surely, 'men's eyes were made to
+see, so let them gaze' at all _this_! And so I, gazing with a clear
+conscience, am very glad to hear so much good of a very good person
+and so well told. She plainly sees the proper use and advantage of a
+country-life; and _that_ knowledge gets to seem a high point of
+attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of--for
+_mine_ he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a '_great_'
+poet before? Put one trait with the other--the theory of rural
+innocence--alternation of 'vulgar trifles' with dissertating with
+style of 'the utmost grandeur that _even you_ can conceive' (speak for
+yourself, Miss M.!)--and that amiable transition from two o'clock's
+grief at the death of one's brother to three o'clock's happiness in
+the 'extraordinary mesmeric discourse' of one's friend. All this, and
+the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of
+'unpunctuality' can ruin, and to which the guardian 'angel' brings as
+crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly--of
+this--what can one say but that--no, best hold one's tongue and read
+the 'Lyrical Ballads' with finger in ear. Did not Shelley say long ago
+'He had no more _imagination_ than a pint-pot'--though in those days
+he used to walk about France and Flanders like a man? _Now_, he is
+'most comfortable in his worldly affairs' and just this comes of it!
+He lives the best twenty years of his life after the way of his own
+heart--and when one presses in to see the result of the rare
+experiment ... what the _one_ alchemist whom fortune has allowed to
+get all his coveted materials and set to work at last in earnest with
+fire and melting-pot--what _he_ produces after all the talk of him and
+the like of him; why, you get _pulvis et cinis_--a man at the mercy of
+the tongs and shovel!
+
+Well! Let us despair at nothing, but, wishing success to the newer
+aspirant, expect better things from Miss M. when the 'knoll,' and
+'paradise,' and their facilities, operate properly; and that she will
+make a truer estimate of the importance and responsibilities of
+'authorship' than she does at present, if I understand rightly the
+sense in which she describes her own life as it means to be; for in
+one sense it is all good and well, and quite natural that she should
+like 'that sort of strenuous handwork' better than book-making; like
+the play better than the labour, as we are apt to do. If she realises
+a very ordinary scheme of literary life, planned under the eye of God
+not 'the public,' and prosecuted under the constant sense of the
+night's coming which ends it good or bad--then, she will be sure to
+'like' the rest and sport--teaching her maids and sewing her gloves
+and making delicate visitors comfortable--so much more rational a
+resource is the worst of them than gin-and-water, for instance. But
+if, as I rather suspect, these latter are to figure as a virtual
+_half_ duty of the whole Man--as of equal importance (on the ground of
+the innocence and utility of such occupations) with the book-making
+aforesaid--always supposing _that_ to be of the right kind--_then_ I
+respect Miss M. just as I should an Archbishop of Canterbury whose
+business was the teaching A.B.C. at an infant-school--he who might set
+on the Tens to instruct the Hundreds how to convince the Thousands of
+the propriety of doing that and many other things. Of course one will
+respect him only the more if when _that_ matter is off his mind he
+relaxes at such a school instead of over a chess-board; as it will
+increase our love for Miss M. to find that making 'my good Jane (from
+Tyne-mouth)'--'happier and--I hope--wiser' is an amusement, or more,
+after the day's progress towards the 'novel for next year' which is to
+inspire thousands, beyond computation, with the ardour of making
+innumerable other Janes and delicate relatives happier and wiser--who
+knows but as many as Burns did, and does, so make happier and wiser?
+Only, _his quarry_ and after-solace was that 'marble bowl often
+replenished with whiskey' on which Dr. Curry discourses mournfully,
+'Oh, be wiser Thou!'--and remember it was only _after_ Lord Bacon had
+written to an end _his_ Book--given us for ever the Art of
+Inventing--whether steam-engine or improved dust-pan--that he took on
+himself to do a little exemplary 'hand work'; got out on that cold St.
+Alban's road to stuff a fowl with snow and so keep it fresh, and got
+into his bed and died of the cold in his hands ('strenuous _hand_
+work'--) before the snow had time to melt. He did not begin in his
+youth by saying--'I have a horror of merely writing 'Novum Organums'
+and shall give half my energies to the stuffing fowls'!
+
+All this it is _my_ amusement, of an indifferent kind, to put down
+solely on the pleasant assurance contained in that postscript, of the
+one way of never quarrelling with Miss M.--'by joining in her plan
+and practice of plain speaking'--could she but 'get people to do it!'
+Well, she gets me for a beginner: the funny thing would be to know
+what Chorley's desperate utterance amounted to! Did you ever hear of
+the plain speaking of some of the continental lottery-projectors? An
+estate on the Rhine, for instance, is to be disposed of, and the
+holder of the lucky ticket will find himself suddenly owner of a
+mediaeval castle with an unlimited number of dependencies--vineyards,
+woods, pastures, and so forth--all only waiting the new master's
+arrival--while inside, all is swept and garnished (not to say,
+varnished)--the tables are spread, the wines on the board, all is
+ready for the reception _but_ ... here 'plain speaking' becomes
+necessary--it prevents quarrels, and, could the projector get people
+to practise it as he does all would be well; so he, at least, will
+speak plainly--you hear what _is_ provided but, he cannot, dares not
+withhold what is _not_--there is then, to speak plainly,--no night
+cap! You _will_ have to bring your own night cap. The projector
+furnishes somewhat, as you hear, but not _all_--and now--the worst is
+heard,--will you quarrel with him? Will my own dear, dearest Ba please
+and help me here, and fancy Chorley's concessions, and tributes, and
+recognitions, and then, at the very end, the 'plain words,' to
+counterbalance all, that have been to overlook and pardon?
+
+Oh, my own Ba, hear _my_ plain speech--and how this is _not_ an
+attempt to frighten you out of your dear wish to '_hear_ from me'--no,
+indeed--but a whim, a caprice,--and now it is out! over, done with!
+And now I am with you again--it is to _you_ I shall write next. Bless
+you, ever--my beloved. I am much better, indeed--and mean to be well.
+And you! But I will write--this goes for nothing--or only _this_, that
+I am your very own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Monday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]
+
+My long letter is with you, dearest, to show how serious my illness
+was 'while you wrote': unless you find that letter too foolish, as I
+do on twice thinking--or at all events a most superfluous bestowment
+of handwork while the heart was elsewhere, and with you--never more
+so! Dear, dear Ba, your adorable goodness sinks into me till it nearly
+pains,--so exquisite and strange is the pleasure: _so_ you care for
+me, and think of me, and write to me!--I shall never die for you, and
+if it could be so, what would death prove? But I can live on, your own
+as now,--utterly your own.
+
+Dear Ba, do you suppose we differ on so plain a point as that of the
+superior wisdom, and generosity, too, of announcing such a change &c.
+at the eleventh hour? There can be no doubt of it,--and now, what of
+it to me?
+
+But I am not going to write to-day--only this--that I am better,
+having not been quite so well last night--so I shut up books (that is,
+of my own) and mean to think about nothing but you, and you, and still
+you, for a whole week--so all will come right, I hope! _May_ I take
+Wednesday? And do you say that,--hint at the possibility of that,
+because you have been reached by my own remorse at feeling that if I
+had kept my appointment _last_ Saturday (but one)--Thursday would have
+been my day this past week, and this very Monday had been gained?
+Shall I not lose a day for ever unless I get Wednesday and
+Saturday?--yet ... care ... dearest--let nothing horrible happen.
+
+If I do not hear to the contrary to-morrow--or on Wednesday early--
+
+But write and bless me dearest, most dear Ba. God bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Monday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 17, 1846.]
+
+_Mechant comme quatre!_ you are, and not deserving to be let see the
+famous letter--is there any grammar in _that_ concatenation, can you
+tell me, now that you are in an arch-critical humour? And remember
+(turning back to the subject) that personally she and I are strangers
+and that therefore what she writes for me is naturally scene-painting
+to be looked at from a distance, done with a masterly hand and most
+amiable intention, but quite a different thing of course from the
+intimate revelations of heart and mind which make a living thing of a
+letter. If she had sent such to me, I should not have sent it to Mr.
+Kenyon, but then, she would not have sent it to me in any case. What
+she _has_ sent me might be a chapter in a book and has the life proper
+to itself, and I shall not let you try it by another standard, even if
+you wished, but you don't--for I am not so _bete_ as not to understand
+how the jest crosses the serious all the way you write. Well--and Mr.
+Kenyon wants the letter the second time, not for himself, but for Mr.
+Crabb Robinson who promises to let me have a new sonnet of
+Wordsworth's in exchange for the loan, and whom I cannot refuse
+because he is an intimate friend of Miss Martineau's and once allowed
+me to read a whole packet of letters from her to him. She does not
+object (as I have read under her hand) to her letters being shown
+about in MS., notwithstanding the anathema against all printers of the
+same (which completes the extravagance of the unreason, I think) and
+people are more anxious to see them from their presumed nearness to
+annihilation. I, for my part, value letters (to talk literature) as
+the most vital part of biography, and for any rational human being to
+put his foot on the traditions of his kind in this particular class,
+does seem to me as wonderful as possible. Who would put away one of
+those multitudinous volumes, even, which stereotype Voltaire's
+wrinkles of wit--even Voltaire? I can read book after book of such
+reading--or could! And if her principle were carried out, there would
+be an end! Death would be deader from henceforth. Also it is a wrong
+selfish principle and unworthy of her whole life and profession,
+because we should all be ready to say that if the secrets of our daily
+lives and inner souls may instruct other surviving souls, let them be
+open to men hereafter, even as they are to God now. Dust to dust, and
+soul-secrets to humanity--there are natural heirs to all these things.
+Not that I do not intimately understand the shrinking back from the
+idea of publicity on any terms--not that I would not myself destroy
+papers of mine which were sacred to _me_ for personal reasons--but
+then I never would call this natural weakness, virtue--nor would I, as
+a teacher of the public, announce it and attempt to justify it as an
+example to other minds and acts, I hope.
+
+How hard you are on the mending of stockings and the rest of it! Why
+not agree with me and like that sort of homeliness and simplicity in
+combination with such large faculty as we must admit _there_? Lord
+Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl
+you mention--which I did not remember: and in fact, all the great work
+done in the world, is done just by the people who know how to
+trifle--do you not think so? When a man makes a principle of 'never
+losing a moment,' he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an
+hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. 'What are you doing' said
+somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford
+as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground--'Only a little
+algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground
+are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for
+meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be
+sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of
+pastime _I_ should choose--who do things quite as trifling without the
+utility--and even your Seigneurie peradventure.... I stop there for
+fear of growing impertinent. The _argumentum ad hominem_ is apt to
+bring down the _argumentum ad baculum_, it is as well to remember in
+time.
+
+For Wordsworth ... you are right in a measure and by a standard--but I
+have heard such really desecrating things of him, of his selfishness,
+his love of money, his worldly _cunning_ (rather than prudence) that I
+felt a relief and gladness in the new chronicle;--and you can
+understand how _that_ was. Miss Mitford's doctrine is that everything
+put into the poetry, is taken out of the man and lost utterly by him.
+Her general doctrine about poets, quite amounts to that--I do not say
+it too strongly. And knowing that such opinions are held by minds not
+feeble, it is very painful (as it would be indeed in any case) to see
+them apparently justified by royal poets like Wordsworth. Ah, but I
+know an answer--I see one in my mind!
+
+So again for the letters. Now ought I not to know about letters, I who
+have had so many ... from chief minds too, as society goes in England
+and America? And _your_ letters began by being first to my intellect,
+before they were first to my heart. All the letters in the world are
+not like yours ... and I would trust them for that verdict with any
+jury in Europe, if they were not so far too dear! Mr. Kenyon wanted to
+make me show him your letters--I did show him the first, and resisted
+gallantly afterwards, which made him say what vexed me at the moment,
+... 'oh--you let me see only _women's_ letters,'--till I observed that
+it was a breach of confidence, except in some cases, ... and that _I_
+should complain very much, if anyone, man or woman, acted so by
+myself. But nobody in the world writes like you--not so _vitally_--and
+I have a right, if you please, to praise my letters, besides the
+reason of it which is as good.
+
+Ah--you made me laugh about Mr. Chorley's free speaking--and, without
+the personal knowledge, I can comprehend how it could be nothing very
+ferocious ... some 'pardonnez moi, vous etes un ange.' The amusing
+part is that by the same post which brought me the Ambleside document,
+I heard from Miss Mitford 'that it was an admirable thing of Chorley
+to have persisted in not allowing Harriet Martineau to quarrel with
+him' ... so that there are laurels on both sides, it appears.
+
+And I am delighted to hear from you to-day just _so_, though I
+reproach you in turn just _so_ ... because you were not 'depressed' in
+writing all this and this and this which has made me laugh--you were
+not, dearest--and you call yourself better, 'much better,' which means
+a very little perhaps, but is a golden word, let me take it as I may.
+May God bless you. Wednesday seems too near (now that this is Monday
+and you are better) to be _our_ day ... perhaps it does,--and Thursday
+_is_ close beside it at the worst.
+
+                                       Dearest I am your own
+
+                                            BA.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+           Monday Evening.
+           [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
+
+Now forgive me, dearest of all, but I must teaze you just a little,
+and entreat you, if only for the love of me, to have medical advice
+and follow it _without further delay_. I like to have recourse to
+these medical people quite as little as you can--but I am persuaded
+that it is necessary--that it is at least _wise_, for you to do so
+now, and, you see, you were 'not quite so well' again last night! So
+will you, for me? Would _I_ not, if you wished it? And on Wednesday,
+yes, on Wednesday, come--that is, if coming on Wednesday should really
+be not bad for you, for you _must_ do what is right and kind, and I
+doubt whether the omnibus-driving and the noises of every sort betwixt
+us, should not keep you away for a little while--I trust you to do
+what is best for both of us.
+
+And it is not best ... it is not good even, to talk about 'dying for
+me' ... oh, I do beseech you never to use such words. You make me feel
+as if I were choking. Also it is nonsense--because nobody puts out a
+candle for the light's sake.
+
+Write _one line_ to me to-morrow--literally so little--just to say how
+you are. I know by the writing here, what _is_. Let me have the one
+line by the eight o'clock post to-morrow, Tuesday.
+
+For the rest it may be my 'goodness' or my badness, but the world
+seems to have sunk away beneath my feet and to have left only you to
+look to and hold by. Am I not to _feel_, then, any trembling of the
+hand? the least trembling?
+
+May God bless both of us--which is a double blessing for me
+notwithstanding my badness.
+
+_I trust you about Wednesday_--and if it should be wise and kind not
+to come quite so soon, we will take it out of other days and lose not
+one of them. And as for anything 'horrible' being likely to happen, do
+not think of that either,--there can be nothing horrible while you are
+not ill. So be well--try to be well--use the means and, well or ill,
+let me have the one line to-morrow ... Tuesday. I send you the foolish
+letter I wrote to-day in answer to your too long one--too long, was it
+not, as you felt? And I, the writer of the foolish one, am
+twice-foolish, and push poor 'Luria' out of sight, and refuse to
+finish my notes on him till the harm he has done shall have passed
+away. In my badness I bring false accusation, perhaps, against poor
+Luria.
+
+So till Wednesday--or as you shall fix otherwise.
+
+                                                    Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                      6-1/2 Tuesday Evening.
+
+My dearest, your note reaches me only _now_, with an excuse from the
+postman. The answer you expect, you shall have the only way possible.
+I must make up a parcel so as to be able to knock and give it. I shall
+be with you to-morrow, God willing--being quite well.
+
+                                            Bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Thursday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 19, 1846.]
+
+My sweetest, best, dearest Ba I _do_ love you less, much less already,
+and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of
+you--I am yours just as much as those flowers; and you may pluck those
+flowers to pieces or put them in your breast; it is not because you so
+bless me now that you may not if you please one day--you will stop me
+here; but it is the truth and I live in it.
+
+I am quite well; indeed, this morning, _noticeably_ well, they tell
+me, and well I mean to keep if I can.
+
+When I got home last evening I found this note--and I have _accepted_,
+that I might say I could also keep an engagement, if so minded, at
+Harley Street--thereby insinuating that other reasons _may_ bring me
+into the neighbourhood than _the_ reason--but I shall either not go
+there, or only for an hour at most. I also found a note headed
+'Strictly private and confidential'--so here it goes from my mouth to
+my heart--pleasantly proposing that I should start in a few days for
+St. Petersburg, as secretary to somebody going there on a 'mission of
+humanity'--_grazie tante_!
+
+Did you hear of my meeting someone at the door whom I take to have
+been one of your brothers?
+
+One thing vexed me in your letter--I will tell you, the praise of
+_my_ letters. Now, one merit they have--in language mystical--that of
+having _no_ merit. If I caught myself trying to write finely,
+graphically &c. &c., nay, if I found myself conscious of having in my
+own opinion, so written, all would be over! yes, over! I should be
+respecting you inordinately, paying a proper tribute to your genius,
+summoning the necessary collectedness,--plenty of all that! But the
+feeling with which I write to you, not knowing that it is
+writing,--with _you_, face and mouth and hair and eyes opposite me,
+touching me, knowing that all _is_ as I say, and helping out the
+imperfect phrases from your own intuition--_that_ would be gone--and
+_what_ in its place? 'Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we write to
+Ambleside.' No, no, love, nor can it ever be so, nor should it ever be
+so if--even if, preserving all that intimate relation, with the
+carelessness, _still_, somehow, was obtained with no effort in the
+world, graphic writing and philosophic and what you please--for I
+_will_ be--_would_ be, better than my works and words with an infinite
+stock beyond what I put into convenient circulation whether in fine
+speeches fit to remember, or fine passages to quote. For the rest, I
+had meant to tell you before now, that you often put me 'in a maze'
+when you particularize letters of mine--'such an one was kind' &c. I
+know, sometimes I seem to give the matter up in despair, I take out
+paper and fall thinking on you, and bless you with my whole heart and
+then begin: 'What a fine day this is?' I distinctly remember having
+done that repeatedly--but the converse is not true by any means, that
+(when the expression may happen to fall more consentaneously to the
+mind's motion) that less is felt, oh no! But the particular thought at
+the time has not been of the _insufficiency_ of expression, as in the
+other instance.
+
+Now I will leave off--to begin elsewhere--for I am always with you,
+beloved, best beloved! Now you will write? And walk much, and sleep
+more? Bless you, dearest--ever--
+
+                                                   Your own,
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+[Post-marks, Mis-sent to Mitcham. February 19 and 20, 1846.]
+
+Best and kindest of all that ever were to be loved in dreams, and
+wondered at and loved out of them, you are indeed! I cannot make you
+feel how I felt that night when I knew that to save me an anxious
+thought you had come so far so late--it was almost too much to feel,
+and _is_ too much to speak. So let it pass. You will never act so
+again, ever dearest--you shall not. If the post sins, why leave the
+sin to the post; and I will remember for the future, will be ready to
+remember, how postmen are fallible and how you live at the end of a
+lane--and not be uneasy about a silence if there should be one
+unaccounted for. For the Tuesday coming, I shall remember that
+too--who could forget it?... I put it in the niche of the wall, one
+golden lamp more of your giving, to throw light purely down to the end
+of my life--I do thank you. And the truth is, I _should_ have been in
+a panic, had there been no letter that evening--I was frightened the
+day before, then reasoned the fears back and waited: and if there had
+been no letter after all--. But you are supernaturally good and kind.
+How can I ever 'return' as people say (as they might say in their
+ledgers) ... any of it all? How indeed can I who have not even a heart
+left of my own, to love you with?
+
+I quite trust to your promise in respect to the medical advice, if
+walking and rest from work do not prevent at once the recurrence of
+those sensations--it was a promise, remember. And you will tell me the
+very truth of how you are--and you will try the music, and not be
+nervous, dearest. Would not _riding_ be good for you--consider. And
+why should you be 'alone' when your sister is in the house? How I keep
+thinking of you all day--you cannot really be alone with so many
+thoughts ... such swarms of thoughts, if you could but see them,
+drones and bees together!
+
+George came in from Westminster Hall after we parted yesterday and
+said that he had talked with the junior counsel of the wretched
+plaintiffs in the Ferrers case, and that the belief was in the mother
+being implicated, although not from the beginning. It was believed too
+that the miserable girl had herself taken step after step into the
+mire, involved herself gradually, the first guilt being an
+extravagance in personal expenses, which she lied and lied to account
+for in the face of her family. 'Such a respectable family,' said
+George, 'the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone
+indignant upon being so disgraced by her!' But for the respectability
+in the best sense, I do not quite see. That all those people should
+acquiesce in the indecency (according to every standard of English
+manners in any class of society) of thrusting the personal expenses of
+a member of their family on Lord Ferrers, she still bearing their
+name--and in those peculiar circumstances of her supposed position
+too--where is the respectability? And they are furious with her, which
+is not to be wondered at after all. Her counsel had an interview with
+her previous to the trial, to satisfy themselves of her good faith,
+and she was quite resolute and earnest, persisting in every statement.
+On the coming out of the anonymous letters, Fitzroy Kelly said to the
+juniors that if anyone could suggest a means of explanation, he would
+be eager to carry forward the case, ... but for him he saw no way of
+escaping from the fact of the guilt of their client. Not a voice could
+speak for her. So George was told. There is no ground for a
+prosecution for a conspiracy, he says, but she is open to the charge
+for _forgery_, of course, and to the dreadful consequences, though it
+is not considered at all likely that Lord Ferrers could wish to
+disturb her beyond the ruin she has brought on her own life.
+
+Think of Miss Mitford's growing quite cold about Mr. Chorley who has
+spent two days with her lately, and of her saying in a letter to me
+this morning that he is very much changed and grown to be 'a
+presumptuous coxcomb.' He has displeased her in some way--that is
+clear. What changes there are in the world.
+
+Should I ever change to _you_, do you think, ... even if you came to
+'love me less'--not that I meant to reproach you with that
+possibility. May God bless you, dear dearest. It is another miracle
+(beside the many) that I get nearer to the mountains yet still they
+seem more blue. Is not _that_ strange?
+
+                                             Ever and wholly
+
+                                                  Your BA.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
+
+And I offended you by praising your letters--or rather _mine_, if you
+please--as if I had not the right! Still, you shall not, shall not
+fancy that I meant to praise them in the way you seem to think--by
+calling them 'graphic,' 'philosophic,'--why, did I ever use such
+words? I agree with you that if I could play critic upon your letters,
+it would be an end!--but no, no ... I did not, for a moment. In what I
+said I went back to my first impressions--and they were _vital_
+letters, I said--which was the resume of my thoughts upon the early
+ones you sent me, because I felt your letters to be _you_ from the
+very first, and I began, from the beginning, to read every one several
+times over. Nobody, I felt, nobody of all these writers, did write as
+you did. Well!--and had I not a right to say _that_ now at last, and
+was it not natural to say just _that_, when I was talking of other
+people's letters and how it had grown almost impossible for me to read
+them; and do I deserve to be scolded? No indeed.
+
+And if I had the misfortune to think now, when you say it is a fine
+day, that _that_ is said in more music than it could be said in by
+another--where is the sin against _you_, I should like to ask. It is
+yourself who is the critic, I think, after all. But over all the
+brine, I hold my letters--just as Camoens did his poem. They are _best
+to me_--and they are _best_. I knew what _they_ were, before I knew
+what _you_ were--all of you. And I like to think that I never fancied
+anyone on a level with you, even in a letter.
+
+What makes you take them to be so bad, I suppose, is just feeling in
+them how near we are. _You say that!_--not I.
+
+Bad or good, you _are_ better--yes, 'better than the works and
+words'!--though it was very shameful of you to insinuate that I talked
+of fine speeches and passages and graphical and philosophical
+sentences, as if I had proposed a publication of 'Elegant Extracts'
+from your letters. See what blasphemy one falls into through a
+beginning of light speech! It is wiser to talk of St. Petersburg; for
+all Voltaire's ... '_ne disons pas de mal de Nicolas_.'
+
+Wiser--because you will not go. If you were going ... well!--but there
+is no danger--it would not do you good to go, I am so happy this time
+as to be able to think--and your 'mission of humanity' lies
+nearer--'strictly private and confidential'? but not in Harley
+Street--so if you go _there_, dearest, keep to the 'one hour' and do
+not suffer yourself to be tired and stunned in those hot rooms and
+made unwell again--it is plain that you cannot bear that sort of
+excitement. For Mr. Kenyon's note, ... it was a great temptation to
+make a day of Friday--but I resist both for Monday's sake and for
+yours, because it seems to me safer not to hurry you from one house to
+another till you are tired completely. I shall think of you so much
+the nearer for Mr. Kenyon's note--which is something gained. In the
+meanwhile you are better, which is everything, or seems so. Ever
+dearest, do you remember what it is to me that you should be better,
+and keep from being worse again--I mean, of course, _try_ to keep from
+being worse--be wise ... and do not stay long in those hot Harley
+Street rooms. Ah--now you will think that I am afraid of the
+unicorns!--
+
+Through your being ill the other day I forgot, and afterwards went on
+forgetting, to speak of and to return the ballad--which is delightful;
+I have an unspeakable delight in those suggestive ballads, which seem
+to make you touch with the end of your finger the full warm life of
+other times ... so near they bring you, yet so suddenly all passes in
+them. Certainly there is a likeness to your Duchess--it is a curious
+crossing. And does it not strike you that a verse or two must be
+wanting in the ballad--there is a gap, I fancy.
+
+Tell Mr. Kenyon (if he enquires) that you come here on Monday instead
+of Saturday--and if you can help it, do not mention Wednesday--it will
+be as well, not. You met Alfred at the door--he came up to me
+afterwards and observed that 'at last he had seen you!' 'Virgilium
+tantum vidi!'
+
+As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter,
+and which you 'stop' yourself in saying ... _I_ need not stop you in
+it....
+
+And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night. May God bless
+you, dearest, dearest.
+
+I must be your own while He blesses _me_.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Friday Afternoon.
+                             [Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]
+
+Here is my Ba's dearest _first_ letter come four hours after the
+second, with '_Mis-sent to Mitcham_' written on its face as a
+reason,--one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I _do_ have
+it at last--what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the
+first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!
+
+Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all
+you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are
+the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White--I go for
+_him_) if even that--for to-morrow night I must go out again, I
+fear--to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.'s
+_soiree_ at Lord Northampton's. And then comes Monday--and to-night
+any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch.
+(N.B.--should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant
+Extracts'--mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when
+walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we
+found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a
+ditch--'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the
+king'--he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).
+
+As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly
+things. One remembers Regan's 'Oh Heaven--so you will rail at _me_,
+when you are in the mood.' But what a want of self-respect such
+judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect
+is: 'So I believed yesterday, and _so_ now--and yet am neither hasty,
+nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent'--what then?
+
+--But I will say more of my mind--(not of that)--to-morrow, for time
+presses a little--so bless you my ever ever dearest--I love you
+wholly.
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Friday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 21, 1846.]
+
+As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in
+the evening, I never heard till just now and _from Papa himself_, that
+'George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.' How
+surprised you will be. It must have been a sudden thought of Mr.
+Kenyon's.
+
+And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you
+then a letter all but ... insolent ... which, do you know, I feel half
+ashamed to look back upon this morning--particularly what I wrote
+about 'missions of humanity'--now was it not insolent of me to write
+so? If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between
+the lilies, instead of the post office:--but I can't--so if you
+wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it
+was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes
+... first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of
+yours, and secondly because you were 'noticeably' better you said, or
+'noticeably well' rather, to mind my quotations. So I wrote what I
+wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give it
+to Henrietta who goes out before eight in the morning and often takes
+charge of my letters, and it was too late, at the earliest this
+morning, to feel a little ashamed. Miss Thomson told me that she had
+determined to change the type of the few pages of her letterpress
+which had been touched, and that therefore Mr. Burges's revisions of
+my translations should be revised back again. She appears to be a very
+acute person, full of quick perceptions--naturally quick, and
+carefully trained--a little over anxious perhaps about mental lights,
+and opening her eyes still more than she sees, which is a common fault
+of clever people, if one must call it a fault. I like her, and she is
+kind and cordial. Will she ask you to help her book with a translation
+or two, I wonder. Perhaps--if the courage should come. Dearest, how I
+shall think of you this evening, and how near you will seem, not to be
+here. I had a letter from Mr. Mathews the other day, and smiled to
+read in it just what I had expected, that he immediately sent Landor's
+verses on you to a _few editors_, friends of his, in order to their
+communication to the public. He received my apology for myself with
+the utmost graciousness. A kind good man he is.
+
+After all, do you know, I am a little vexed that I should have even
+_seemed_ to do wrong in my speech about the letters. It must have been
+wrong, if it seemed so to you, I fancy now. Only I really did no more
+mean to try your letters ... mine ... such as they are to me now, by
+the common critical measure, than the shepherds praised the pure tenor
+of the angels who sang 'Peace upon earth' to them. It was enough that
+they knew it for angels' singing. So do _you_ forgive me, beloved, and
+put away from you the thought that I have let in between us any
+miserable stuff 'de metier,' which I hate as you hate. And I will not
+say any more about it, not to run into more imprudences of mischief.
+
+On the other hand I warn you against saying again what you began to
+say yesterday and stopped. Do not try it again. What may be quite good
+sense from me, is from _you_ very much the reverse, and pray observe
+that difference. Or did you think that I was making my own road clear
+in the the thing I said about--'jilts'? No, you did not. Yet I am
+ready to repeat of myself as of others, that if I ceased to love you,
+I certainly would act out the whole consequence--but _that_ is an
+impossible 'if' to my nature, supposing the conditions of it otherwise
+to be probable. I never loved anyone much and ceased to love that
+person. Ask every friend of mine, if I am given to change even in
+friendship! _And to you...!_ Ah, but you never think of such a thing
+seriously--and you are conscious that you did not say it very sagely.
+You and I are in different positions. Now let me tell you an apologue
+in exchange for your Wednesday's stories which I liked so, and mine
+perhaps may make you 'a little wiser'--who knows?
+
+It befell that there stood in hall a bold baron, and out he spake to
+one of his serfs ... 'Come thou; and take this baton of my baronie,
+and give me instead thereof that sprig of hawthorn thou holdest in
+thine hand.' Now the hawthorn-bough was no larger a thing than might
+be carried by a wood-pigeon to the nest, when she flieth low, and the
+baronial baton was covered with fine gold, and the serf, turning it
+in his hands, marvelled greatly.
+
+And he answered and said, 'Let not my lord be in haste, nor jest with
+his servant. Is it verily his will that I should keep his golden
+baton? Let him speak again--lest it repent him of his gift.'
+
+And the baron spake again that it was his will. 'And I'--he said once
+again--'shall it be lawful for me to keep this sprig of hawthorn, and
+will it not repent thee of thy gift?'
+
+Then all the servants who stood in hall, laughed, and the serf's hands
+trembled till they dropped the baton into the rushes, knowing that his
+lord did but jest....
+
+Which mine did not. Only, _de te fabula narratur_ up to a point.
+
+And I have your letter. 'What did I expect?' Why I expected just
+_that_, a letter in turn. Also I am graciously pleased (yes, and very
+much pleased!) to '_let_ you write to-morrow.' How you spoil me with
+goodness, which makes one 'insolent' as I was saying, now and then.
+
+The worst is, that I write 'too kind' letters--I!--and what does that
+criticism mean, pray? It reminds me, at least, of ... now I will tell
+you what it reminds me of.
+
+A few days ago Henrietta said to me that she was quite uncomfortable.
+She had written to somebody a not kind enough letter, she thought, and
+it might be taken ill. 'Are _you_ ever uncomfortable, Ba, after you
+have sent letters to the post?' she asked me.
+
+'Yes,' I said, 'sometimes, but from a reason just the very reverse of
+your reason, _my_ letters, when they get into the post, seem too
+kind,--rather.' And my sisters laughed ... laughed.
+
+But if _you_ think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see,
+to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time _dis
+faventibus_, though it will be difficult.
+
+Mr. Kenyon's dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. _You_ are
+invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and '_no one else_.'
+George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and '_no one
+else_'--just those words. The '_absolu_' (do you remember Balzac's
+beautiful story?) is just _you_ and 'no one else,' the other elements
+being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.
+
+Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not 'too _wise_' in any case,
+which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being
+'well,' ever and ever dearest. Keep so for _me_. May God bless you
+hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+For Miss Mitford ...
+
+    But people are not angels quite ...
+
+and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her
+way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She
+is affectionate to _me_ beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I
+were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low
+enough for _me_. I always feel _that_. She would advertise me directly
+for a wretch proper.
+
+Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me
+just now to hold the sparrows!--in respect to a great crowd of people,
+and she is among them--for reasons--for reasons.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Saturday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 23, 1846.]
+
+So all was altered, my love--and, instead of Miss T. and the other
+friend, I had your brother and Procter--to my great pleasure. After, I
+went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning
+in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after
+dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is--(Here your letter
+reaches me--let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing
+you, dearest beyond all dearness--My own heart's Ba!)--oh, as I am
+used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied
+elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue
+utter 'Miss Barrett ... that is, Mrs. Jameson says' ... or 'does ...
+or does not.' I forget which! And if anybody noticed the _gaucherie_
+it must have been just your brother!
+
+Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can
+put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it
+as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday--there is, I see,
+and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be
+scientifically appreciated, _proved there_--but over and above, is it
+in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper--here does
+the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day
+I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta--wherein he avers
+that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal
+properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,--and
+that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of
+elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a
+decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may
+discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were--ah, what were
+they? Curious thinking won't do for me and the wise head which is
+mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand
+that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one
+person--which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.--to make me
+supremely happy, and that you have your wish--you _do_ bless me! More
+and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new
+comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life,
+_will this last_, let _me_ begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live
+this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put
+in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not
+deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I
+do feel, as I say--it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.
+
+With which conviction--renewed conviction time by time, of your
+extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,--will it seem
+characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening
+me, all the same, with threats of writing _less_ kindly? That must not
+be, love, for _your_ sake now--if you had not thrown open those
+windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord
+on whom the King leaned 'how such things might be'--but, once their
+influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut
+up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of
+blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever--so let all be as it is, pray,
+_pray_!
+
+No--not _all_. No more, ever, of that strange
+suspicion--'insolent'--oh, what a word!--nor suppose I shall
+particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to _that_, of all
+other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect
+the existence of such a quality _there_ as elsewhere: how _can_ such a
+thing, _could_ such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, _do_
+you know me better! _Do_ feel that I know you, I am bold to believe,
+and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be
+sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon's touch, for my entire good,
+that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or
+spoken--I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to
+the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other
+peoples' words, people in the world. But _your_ words! And about the
+'mission'; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have
+begun, as I did--as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected
+then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear.
+The 'humanity' however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen
+to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants
+_somebody_, and urgently, I can well believe.
+
+As for your apologue, it is naught--as you felt, and so broke off--for
+the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which
+once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and
+be glorious with leaves and musical with birds' nests, and a fairy
+safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish
+baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it _were_, and
+spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men
+pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering
+tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his
+heart and was happy--in spite of his disastrous chase the night
+before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a
+respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had
+doubtless cost to rear her--'insolence!'
+
+I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing
+was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday.
+So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I
+love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone,
+out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and
+with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you
+brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling!
+Doing the 'honour due' to the flowers, makes your presence a little
+longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time,
+and then drops, till the next letter.
+
+If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could
+_not_ have answered it so that you should have my answer on
+Sunday--no, I should still have had to write first.
+
+Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only
+to the hearing second. I would rather write than not--I! But to be
+written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of
+liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed)
+you cannot pretend to think that _yours_ are not more to _me_, most to
+_me_! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look
+another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have
+said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all
+the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I
+and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of
+life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all
+the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and
+black, as if for playing at fox and goose ... only there is no fox,
+and I will not agree to be goose for one ... _that_ is _you_ perhaps,
+for being 'too easily' satisfied.
+
+So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any
+rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a 'religious hermit' who wrote
+'poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove'; and religious
+hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say,
+through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St.
+Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your
+Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then,
+how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter,
+fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you ... think
+how it is the one light, seen without distractions.
+
+_I_ was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather
+before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of
+you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to
+reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such
+an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and
+forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book,
+because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the
+original of Mr. Ward's 'Tremaine,' because nothing would do for _her_,
+she insisted, except just _that_ excess of so-called refinement, with
+the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (_loue qui peut_,
+Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could
+not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say
+the wise:--and _this_ being otherwise with _me_ is miraculous
+compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant,
+overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much,
+as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the
+degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a
+level to meet on. One's ideal must be above one, as a matter of
+course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one's eyes
+(soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine ... shall I tell
+you? ... even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the
+complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you,
+if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair
+quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out
+fully and make you smile half.
+
+Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love _you_ when you came to
+see me--no indeed ... any more than I did your caring on your side. My
+ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should
+forget I was a woman (being weary and _blasee_ of the empty written
+gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps
+from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence),
+that you should forget _that_ and let us be friends, and consent to
+teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and
+give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper
+and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to
+write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used
+to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other
+letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you _influenced_ me, in a
+way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words
+you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the
+same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house
+by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I
+mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes ... and to prove
+how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has
+occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning ...
+'it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset
+me--I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some
+degree--but it haunts me ... it is a persecution.' On which he smiled
+and said that 'it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.'
+When the letter came....
+
+Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in
+this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it,
+and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you
+chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that
+you read _them_ as you read the newspaper--examined them, and fastened
+them down writhing under your long entomological pins--ah, do you
+remember the entomology of it all?
+
+But the power was used upon _me_--and I never doubted that you had
+mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional
+weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you
+admitted yesterday ... yes, I saw _that_ very early ... that you had
+come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should
+find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount
+of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more
+determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine.
+Well--and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I
+be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that
+the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe
+that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself,
+_then_, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe
+your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world
+(except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to
+me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy
+that I am _vain_ of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If
+it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I
+may say _before_ God and you, that of all the events of my life,
+inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your
+love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it _is_, and I tell you. Your
+love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of
+it kneelers.
+
+Why all this should be written, I do not know--but you set me thinking
+yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and
+for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts
+went, that way.
+
+Say how you are, beloved--and do not brood over that 'Soul's Tragedy,'
+which I wish I had here with 'Luria,' because, so, you should not see
+it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well--and remember
+how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do
+you want to hear me say
+
+     I cannot love you less...?
+
+_That_ is a doubtful phrase. And
+
+     I cannot love you more
+
+is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love
+you, but it does not sound right, even _so_, does it? I know what it
+ought to be, and will put it into the 'seal' and the 'paper' with the
+ineffable other things.
+
+Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear
+it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the
+Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your
+
+                                                         BA?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Tuesday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
+
+Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought
+not to go, but must--because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons
+and such like without bringing in your dear name (not _dearest_ name,
+my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though
+possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet _may_ speak, and
+to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good
+news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium--how I do
+thank you, my dearest--and desire to thank God through whose goodness
+it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at
+length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever
+effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and
+think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a
+letter.
+
+              Dearest, dearest--my perfect blessing you are!
+
+                   May God continue his care for us. R.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Wednesday Morning.
+                             [Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]
+
+Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that 'I made you do as I
+would.' I am quite sure, you make me _speak_ as you would, and not at
+all as I mean--and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything
+half so untrue as that 'I came with the intention of loving whomever I
+should find'--No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of
+caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or
+so change it as to almost alter, but turn a 'no' into a 'yes' can no
+echo (except the Irish one), and I said 'no' to such a charge, and
+still say 'no.' I _did_ have a presentiment--and though it is hardly
+possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true
+colours given to it by the event, yet I _can_ put them aside, if I
+please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (_not_
+that the effect I expected to be produced would be _less_ than in
+anticipation, certainly I did not hope _that_, but that it would range
+itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and
+friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I _could_
+love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to
+divert me from my intended way of life, I made--went on making
+arrangements to return to Italy. You know--did I not tell you--I
+wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so
+much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist.
+I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily
+bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory
+than to mine, the true one--but that was instinct,
+Providence--anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you!
+yourself have noticed the difference between the _letters_ and the
+_writer_; the greater 'distance of the latter from you,' why was that?
+Why, if not because the conduct _began_ with _him_, with one who had
+now seen you--was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the
+feeling, of the letters--else, they, if _near_, should have enabled
+him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of
+familiarity, to become _nearer_--but it was not so! The letters began
+by loving you after their way--but what a world-wide difference
+between _that_ love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and
+feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so
+harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from
+what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels
+meant for ordinary service than Lord N's! But I _don't_ know that
+handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if
+you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came
+and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it
+was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more
+unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of
+truths that here, ('how begot? how nourished?')--here is the whole
+wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it,
+because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At
+the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think
+that it would be _so_ difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes
+to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to 'justify my
+presentiment?' Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could
+account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of
+your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps!
+So let us go on--taking a lesson out of the world's book in a
+different sense. You shall think I love you for--(tell me, you must,
+what for) while in my secret heart I know what my 'mission of
+humanity' means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures
+me. Enough--Wait, one word about the 'too kind letters'--could not the
+same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his
+thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his
+next gift by merely _ten_? It _is_ all too kind--but I shall feel the
+diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however,
+not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all--dearest
+letter of all--till the next! I looked yesterday over the 'Tragedy,'
+and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next
+time, and 'Luria' take away, if you let me, so all will be off my
+mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don't think I am going to
+take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the 'Tragedy' I
+should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring
+as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works
+fetter it, if left behind.
+
+Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing--if _you_, in any
+respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me,
+beyond words--beyond dreams--if, because I find you, your own works
+_stop_--'then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.' Oh, no, no,
+dearest, _so_ would the help cease to be help--the joy to be joy, Ba
+herself to be _quite_ Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear
+love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and
+promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I
+will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the
+world, proud of you--and _vain_, too, very likely, which is all the
+sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my
+heart on your fulfilling your mission--my heart is on it! Bless you,
+my Ba--
+
+                                                   Your R.B.
+
+I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)--and I
+walk, especially near the elms and stile--and mean to walk, and be
+very well--and you, dearest?
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
+
+I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that
+they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to
+something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off
+the chrystals--they _are_ so brittle, then? do you know _that_ by an
+'instinct.' But I agree that it is best not to talk--I 'gave it up' as
+a riddle long ago. Let there be 'analysis' even, and it will not be
+solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and
+the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some
+snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have
+_his_ thoughts too, and _he_ would think that if you had been
+reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or
+by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person
+thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I
+hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks 'damnable
+iterations' and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now
+perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little
+further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and
+miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it
+was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for
+anything--your having no reason for it is the only way of your not
+seeming unreasonable. Also _for my own sake_. I like it to be so--I
+cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the
+baron's hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead
+since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it
+last--take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the
+tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and
+length towards and around it. But what then? What does _that prove_?
+... as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of
+such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental
+illustrations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not
+draw the sea.
+
+Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You
+are better than the imaginations of my heart, and _they_, as far as
+they relate to you (not further) are _not_ desperately wicked, I
+think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are
+doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle
+too, like the rest, now isn't it? When the knock came last night, I
+knew it was your letter, and not another's. Just another little leaf
+of my Koran! How I thank you ... thank you! If I write too kind
+letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not
+for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me,
+which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And _that_
+is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very
+often--as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly
+out of the ninety-sixth volume of the 'Code of Conventions,' only you
+are not like another, nor have you been to me like another--you began
+with most improvident and (will you let me say?) _unmasculine_
+generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the
+fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.
+
+But ... but ... you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the
+matter of the 'Tragedy' and 'Luria'--you promised to rest--and _you
+rest for three days_. Is it _so_ that people get well? or keep well?
+Indeed I do not think I shall let you have 'Luria.' Ah--be careful, I
+do beseech you--be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works
+will profit by it themselves. And _you_! And I ... if you are ill!--
+
+For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much
+as you please ... though I hear about the shower bath with a little
+suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and
+why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn't
+made you rather unwell since the new trial!--tell me, dear, dearest.
+
+As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy,
+just that I might not reproach _you_ for the over-business. Confess
+that _that_ was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are
+quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground
+murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write
+so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away
+my license to be loved ... I am not to be Ba to you any longer ... you
+say! And is _this_ right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell
+off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you. Only you did not
+mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it,
+if you please, and unthink it near the elms.
+
+As for the writing, I will write ... I have written ... I am writing.
+You do not fancy that I have given up writing?--No. Only I have
+certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have
+done, which is not my fault--nor yours directly--and I feel an
+indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul
+shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the
+right inclination. Well--it will come. But all in blots and fragments
+there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.
+
+And if there were not ... if there were none ... I hold that I should
+be Ba, and also _your_ Ba ... which is 'insolence' ... will you say?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             Thursday.
+                             [Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
+
+As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the
+beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me--'the late
+Robert Hall--when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate
+of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of
+cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't
+kiss Mind"! May _you_ not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that
+mere intellectual endowments--though incontestably of the loftiest
+character--mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's--cannot be
+_kissed_--nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities,
+those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot,
+if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us
+died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person!
+and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street,
+suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise
+an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it
+augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be
+_wholly, exclusively_ based on such perishable attractions as the
+sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to
+know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent
+with this--some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some--' Would he not
+say that? But I can't do his platitudes justice because here is our
+post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect
+joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing--dearest,
+dearest Ba--let me say more to-morrow--only this now, that you--ah,
+what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you--till to-morrow
+when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, _lengthen_ it!)
+
+                                              Ever your own.
+
+'Hawthorn'[1]--to show how Spring gets on!
+
+[Footnote 1: Sprig of Hawthorn enclosed with letter.]
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                             Thursday Evening.
+                             [Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
+
+If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours,
+ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices
+without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in
+your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of
+nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with
+him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:--he is quite a
+third person _singular_ for the nonsense he talks!
+
+So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The
+sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was
+warm enough to go down-stairs--and I put on my cloak as if I were
+going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took
+Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant
+to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's
+ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning
+visitors--and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me,
+besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees
+Cook--_plus_ his regimentals--fresh from the royal presence at St.
+James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of
+cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be
+unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after
+another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told
+her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the
+regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me
+by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and '_There_ is
+Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I
+had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too!
+who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have
+encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next
+moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was
+standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely
+have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that
+room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I
+couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had
+drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a
+minute or two--and the corollary of this interesting history is, that
+being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking
+'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves
+my gigantic strength--now doesn't it?
+
+For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish
+as any third person in the world. What do you think?
+
+And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me
+to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth
+proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed,
+it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the
+kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.
+
+I wanted to hear her speak of you, and was afraid. I _could not_ name
+you. Yet I _did_ want to hear the last 'Bell' praised.
+
+She goes to Ireland for two months soon, but prints a book first, a
+collection of essays. I have not seen Mr. Kenyon, with whom she dined
+yesterday. The Macreadys were to be there, and he told me a week ago
+that he very nearly committed himself in a 'social mistake' by
+inviting you to meet them.
+
+Ah my hawthorn spray! Do you know, I caught myself pitying it for
+being gathered, with that green promise of leaves on it! There is room
+too on it for the feet of a bird! Still I shall keep it longer than it
+would have stayed in the hedge, _that_ is certain!
+
+The first you ever gave me was a yellow rose sent in a letter, and
+shall I tell you what _that_ means--the yellow rose? '_Infidelity_,'
+says the dictionary of flowers. You see what an omen, ... to begin
+with!
+
+Also you see that I am not tired with the great avatar to-day--the
+'fell swoop' rather--mine, into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Jameson's
+on _me_.
+
+And I shall hear to-morrow again, really? I '_let_' you. And you are
+best, kindest, dearest, every day. Did I ever tell you that you made
+me do what you choose? I fancied that I only _thought_ so. May God
+bless you. I am your own.
+
+Shall I have the 'Soul's Tragedy' on Saturday?--any of it? But _do not
+work_--I beseech you to take care.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                             [Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
+
+To be sure my 'first person' was nonsensical, and, in that respect
+made speak properly, I hope, only he was cut short in the middle of
+his performance by the exigencies of the post. So, never mind what
+such persons say, my sweetest, because they know nothing at all--_quod
+erat demonstrandum_. But you, love, you speak roses, and
+hawthorn-blossoms when you tell me of the cloak put on, and the
+descent, and the entry, and staying and delaying. I will have had a
+hand in all that; I know what I wished all the morning, and now this
+much came true! But you should have seen the regimentals, if I could
+have so contrived it, for I confess to a Chinese love for bright
+red--the very names 'vermilion' 'scarlet' warm me, yet in this cold
+climate nobody wears red to comfort one's eye save soldiers and fox
+hunters, and old women fresh from a Parish Christmas Distribution of
+cloaks. To dress in floating loose crimson silk, I almost understand
+being a Cardinal! Do you know anything of Nat Lee's Tragedies? In one
+of them a man angry with a Cardinal cries--
+
+    Stand back, and let me mow this poppy down,
+    This rank red weed that spoils the Churches' corn.
+
+Is not that good? and presently, when the same worthy is poisoned
+(that is the Cardinal)--they bid him--'now, Cardinal, lie down and
+roar!'
+
+    Think of thy scarlet sins!
+
+Of the justice of all which, you will judge with no Mrs. Jameson for
+guide when we see the Sistina together, I trust! By the way, yesterday
+I went to Dulwich to see some pictures, by old Teniers, Murillo,
+Gainsborough, Raphael!--then twenty names about, and last but one, as
+if just thought of, 'Correggio.' The whole collection, including 'a
+_divine_ picture by Murillo,' and Titian's Daughter (hitherto supposed
+to be in the Louvre)--the whole I would, I think, have cheerfully
+given a pound or two for the privilege of not possessing--so execrable
+as sign-paintings even! 'Are there worse poets in their way than
+painters?' Yet the melancholy business is here--that the bad poet goes
+out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order
+to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do
+afterwards--but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning
+even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other
+good do his acquisitions go? This short minute of life our one chance,
+an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and
+ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up
+and conies out after a dozen years with 'Titian's Daughter' and,
+there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!
+
+I have tried--my trial is made too!
+
+To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to
+see you so well--did she not wonder? Ah, to-morrow! There is a lesson
+from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being
+corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip,
+dearest? See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the
+chrystals, you say! But the writing is but for a time--'a time and
+times and half a time!'--would I knew when the prophetic weeks end!
+Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization
+of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush's ears!)
+meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise
+diplomacy and say carelessly 'I should be glad to know what Miss B. is
+like--' No, that I must not do, something tells me, 'for reasons, for
+reasons'--
+
+I do not know--you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my
+'divine Murillo' of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the
+pages, but--in fact my wise head does ache a little--it is
+inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone,
+and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird's foot, which
+would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching
+begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite
+naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved
+aching now, so I _do_ care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba
+to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another,
+even your sister, if--if--
+
+But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes,
+till to-morrow--Bless you, my own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Sunday.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+
+You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a
+word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek
+a 'security'! do you know it was not right of you to use such an
+expression--indeed no. You were angry with me for just one minute, or
+you would not have used it--and why? Now what did I say that was wrong
+or unkind even by construction? If I did say anything, it was three
+times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart
+and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could _you_.
+But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under
+the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then _I_,
+remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to
+scorn, said something to that effect, you _know_. I once was in
+company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his
+constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became
+his wife at last ... and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at
+him on that ground as a sort of monster. And can you guess what the
+constancy meant? Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and
+she repulsed him. 'And in the meantime, _how many_?' I had the
+impertinence to ask a female friend who told me the tale. 'Why,' she
+answered with the utmost simplicity, 'I understand that Miss A. and
+Miss B. and Mrs. C. would not listen to him, but he took Miss D.'s
+rejection most to heart.' That was the head and front of his
+'constancy' to Miss E., who had been loved, she boasted, for seven
+years ... that is, once at the beginning and once at the end. It was
+just a coincidence of the 'premier pas' and the 'pis aller.'
+
+Beloved, I could not mean this for you; you are not made of such
+stuff, as we both know.
+
+And for myself, it was my compromise with my own scruples, that you
+should not be 'chained' to me, not in the merest metaphor, that you
+should not seem to be bound, in honour or otherwise, so that if you
+stayed with me it should be your free choice to stay, not the
+_consequence_ of a choice so many months before. That was my
+compromise with my scruples, and not my doubt of your affection--and
+least of all, was it an intention of trifling with you sooner or later
+that made me wish to suspend all _decisions_ as long as possible. I
+have decided (for me) to let it be as you shall please--now I told you
+that before. Either we will live on as we are, until an obstacle
+arises,--for indeed I do not look for a 'security' where you suppose,
+and the very appearance of it _there_, is what most rebuts me--or I
+will be yours in the obvious way, to go out of England the next
+half-hour if possible. As to the steps to be taken (or not taken)
+before the last step, we must think of those. The worst is that the
+only question is about a _form_. Virtually the evil is the same all
+round, whatever we do. Dearest, it was plain to see yesterday evening
+when he came into this room for a moment at seven o'clock, before
+going to his own to dress for dinner ... plain to see, that he was not
+altogether pleased at finding you here in the morning. There was no
+pretext for objecting gravely--but it was plain that he was not
+pleased. Do not let this make you uncomfortable, he will forget all
+about it, and I was not _scolded_, do you understand. It was more
+manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance:--and it
+was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game
+we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve _there_.
+
+And to-day I went down-stairs (to prove how my promises stand) though
+I could find at least ten good excuses for remaining in my own room,
+for our cousin, Sam Barrett, who brought the interruption yesterday
+and put me out of humour (it wasn't the fault of the dear little
+cousin, Lizzie ... my 'portrait' ... who was '_so_ sorry,' she said,
+dear child, to have missed Papa somewhere on the stairs!) the cousin
+who should have been in Brittany yesterday instead of here, sate in
+the drawing-room all this morning, and had visitors there, and so I
+had excellent excuses for never moving from my chair. Yet, the field
+being clear at _half-past two_! I went for half an hour, just--just
+for _you_. Did you think of me, I wonder? It was to meet your thoughts
+that I went, dear dearest.
+
+How clever these sketches are. The expression produced by such
+apparently inadequate means is quite striking; and I have been making
+my brothers admire them, and they 'wonder you don't think of employing
+them in an illustrated edition of your works.' Which might be, really!
+Ah, you did not ask for 'Luria'! Not that I should have let you have
+it!--I think I should not indeed. Dearest, you take care of the head
+... and don't make that tragedy of the soul one for mine, by letting
+it make you ill. Beware too of the shower-bath--it plainly does not
+answer for you at this season. And walk, and think of me for _your_
+good, if such a combination should be possible.
+
+And _I_ think of _you_ ... if I do not of Italy. Yet I forget to speak
+to you of the Dulwich Gallery. I never saw those pictures, but am
+astonished that the whole world should be wrong in praising them.
+'Divine' is a bad word for Murillo in any case--because he is
+intensely human in his most supernatural subjects. His beautiful
+Trinity in the National Gallery, which I saw the last time I went out
+to look at pictures, has no deity in it--and I seem to see it now. And
+do you remember the visitation of the angels to Abraham (the Duke of
+Sutherland's picture--is it not?) where the mystic visitors look like
+shepherds who had not even dreamt of God? But I always understood that
+that Dulwich Gallery was famous for great works--you surprise me! And
+for painters ... their badness is more ostentatious than that of
+poets--they stare idiocy out of the walls, and set the eyes of
+sensitive men on edge. For the rest, however, I very much doubt
+whether they wear their lives more to rags, than writers who mistake
+their vocation in poetry do. There is a mechanism in poetry as in the
+other art--and, to men not native to the way of it, it runs hard and
+heavily. The 'cudgelling of the brain' is as good labour as the
+grinding of the colours, ... do you not think?
+
+If ever I am in the Sistine Chapel, it will not be with Mrs.
+Jameson--no. If ever I should be there, what teaching I shall want,
+_I_ who have seen so few pictures, and love them only as children do,
+with an unlearned love, just for the sake of the thoughts they bring.
+Wonderfully ignorant I am, to have had eyes and ears so long! There is
+music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much, ...
+yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the
+masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the
+private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my
+life--judge by _that_! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and
+divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a
+composer like Beethoven _must_ stand above the divinest painter in
+soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, of all artists. And this
+I felt in my guess, long before I knew you. But observe how, if I had
+died in this illness, I should have left a sealed world behind me!
+_you_, unknown too--unguessed at, _you_, ... in many respects,
+wonderfully unguessed at! Lately I have learnt to despise my own
+instincts. And apart from those--and _you_, ... it was right for me to
+be melancholy, in the consciousness of passing blindfolded under all
+the world-stars, and of going out into another side of the creation,
+with a blank for the experience of this ... the last revelation,
+unread! How the thought of it used to depress me sometimes!
+
+Talking of music, I had a proposition the other day from certain of
+Mr. Russell's (the singer's) friends, about his setting to music my
+'Cry of the Children.' His programme exhibits all the horrors of the
+world, I see! Lifeboats ... madhouses ... gamblers' wives ... all done
+to the right sort of moaning. His audiences must go home delightfully
+miserable, I should fancy. He has set the 'Song of the Shirt' ... and
+my 'Cry of the Children' will be acceptable, it is supposed, as a
+climax of agony. Do you know this Mr. Russell, and what sort of music
+he suits to his melancholy? But to turn my 'Cry' to a 'Song,' a
+burden, it is said, is required--he can't sing it without a burden!
+and behold what has been sent 'for my approval'.... I shall copy it
+_verbatim_ for you....
+
+    And the threads twirl, twirl, twirl,
+        Before each boy and girl;
+    And the wheels, big and little, still whirl, whirl, whirl.
+
+... accompaniment _agitato_, imitating the roar of the machinery!
+
+This is not endurable ... ought not to be ... should it now? Do tell
+me.
+
+May God bless you, very dearest! Let me hear how you are--and think
+how I am
+
+                                                Your own....
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 [Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, I have been kept in town and just return in time to say why
+you have _no_ note ... to-morrow I will write ... so much there is to
+say on the subject of this letter I find.
+
+                                    Bless you, all beloved--
+
+                                         R.B.
+
+Oh, do not sleep another night on that horrible error I have led you
+into! The 'Dulwich Gallery'!--!!!--oh, no. Only some pictures to be
+sold at the Greyhound Inn, Dulwich--'the genuine property of a
+gentleman deceased.'
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Sunday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
+
+One or two words, if no more, I must write to dearest Ba, the night
+would go down in double blackness if I had neither written nor been
+written to! So here is another piece of 'kindness' on my part, such as
+I have received praise for of late! My own sweetest, there is just
+this good in such praise, that by it one comes to something pleasantly
+definite amid the hazy uncertainties of mere wishes and
+possibilities--while my whole heart does, _does_ so yearn, love, to do
+something to prove its devotion for you; and, now and then, amuses
+itself with foolish imaginings of real substantial services to which
+it should be found equal if fortune so granted; suddenly you interpose
+with thanks, in such terms as would all too much reward the highest of
+even those services which are never to be; and for what?--for a note,
+a going to Town, a ----! Well, there are definite beginnings
+certainly, if you will recognise them--I mean, that since you _do_
+accept, far from 'despising this day of small things,' then I may
+take heart, and be sure that even though none of the great
+achievements should fall to my happy chance, still the barrenest,
+flattest life will--_must_ of needs produce in its season better
+fruits than these poor ones--I keep it, value it, now, that it may
+produce such.
+
+Also I determine never again to 'analyse,' nor let you analyse if the
+sweet mouth can be anyway stopped: the love shall be one and
+indivisible--and the Loves we used to know from
+
+    One another huddled lie ...
+    Close beside Her tenderly--
+
+(which is surely the next line). Now am I not anxious to know what
+your father said? And if anybody else said or wondered ... how should
+I know? Of all fighting--the warfare with shadows--what a work is
+_there_. But tell me,--and, with you for me--
+
+Bless me dearest ever, as the face above mine blesses me--
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+Sir Moses set off this morning, I hear--somebody yesterday called the
+telescope an 'optical delusion,' anticipating many more of the kind!
+So much for this 'wandering Jew.'
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Monday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]
+
+Upon the whole, I think, I am glad when you are kept in town and
+prevented from writing what you call 'much' to me. Because in the
+first place, the little from _you_, is always much to _me_--and then,
+besides, _the letter comes_, and with it the promise of another! Two
+letters have I had from you to-day, ever dearest! How I thank
+you!--yes, _indeed_! It was like yourself to write yesterday ... to
+remember what a great gap there would have been otherwise, as it
+looked on this side--here. The worst of Saturday is (when you come on
+it) that Sunday follows--Saturday night bringing no letter. Well, it
+was very good of you, best of you!
+
+For the 'analyzing' I give it up willingly, only that I must say what
+altogether I forgot to say in my last letter, that it was not _I_, if
+you please, who spoke of the chrystals breaking away! And you, to
+quote me with that certainty! "The chrystals are broken off," _you
+say_.' _I_ say!! When it was in your letter, and not at all in mine!!
+
+The truth is that I was stupid, rather, about the Dulwich
+collection--it was my fault. I caught up the idea of the gallery out
+of a heap of other thoughts, and really might have known better if I
+had given myself a chance, by considering.
+
+Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and has taken out a licence, it seems to me,
+for praising you, for he praised and praised. Somebody has told him
+(who had spent several days with you in a house with a large library)
+that he came away 'quite astounded by the versatility of your
+learning'--and that, to complete the circle, you discoursed as
+scientifically on the training of greyhounds and breeding of ducks as
+if you had never done anything else all your life. Then dear Mr.
+Kenyon talked of the poems; and hoped, very earnestly I am sure, that
+you would finish 'Saul'--which you ought to do, must do--_only not
+now_. By the way Mrs. Coleridge had written to him to enquire whether
+you had authority for the 'blue lilies,' rather than white. Then he
+asked about 'Luria' and 'whether it was obscure'; and I said, not
+unless the people, who considered it, began by blindfolding
+themselves.
+
+And where do you think Mr. Kenyon talks of going next February--a long
+while off to be sure? To Italy of course. Everybody I ever heard of
+seems to be going to Italy next winter. He visits his brother at
+Vienna, and 'may cross the Alps and get to Pisa'--it is the shadow of
+a scheme--nothing certain, so far.
+
+I did not go down-stairs to-day because the wind blew and the
+thermometer fell. To-morrow, perhaps I may. And _you_, dearest
+dearest, might have put into the letters how you were when you wrote
+them. You might--but you did not feel well and would not say so.
+Confess that that was the reason. Reason or no reason, mention
+yourself to-morrow, and for the rest, do not write a long letter so as
+to increase the evil. There was nothing which I can remember as
+requiring an answer in what I wrote to you, and though I _will_ have
+my letter of course, it shall be as brief as possible, if briefness is
+good for you--_now always remember that_. Why if I, who talk against
+'Luria,' should work the mischief myself, what should I deserve? I
+should be my own jury directly and not recommend to mercy ... not to
+mine. Do take care--care for _me_ just so much.
+
+And, except that taking care of your health, what would you do for me
+that you have not done? You have given me the best of the possible
+gifts of one human soul to another, you have made my life new, and am
+I to count these things as small and insufficient? Ah, you _know_, you
+_know_ that I cannot, ought not, will not.
+
+May God bless you. He blesses me in letting me be grateful to you as
+your Ba.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]
+
+First and most important of all,--dearest, 'angry'--with you, and for
+_that_! It is just as if I had spoken contemptuously of that Gallery I
+so love and so am grateful to--having been used to go there when a
+child, far under the age allowed by the regulations--those two Guidos,
+the wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob's vision, such a Watteau, the
+triumphant three Murillo pictures, a Giorgione music-lesson group,
+all the Poussins with the 'Armida' and 'Jupiter's nursing'--and--no
+end to 'ands'--I have sate before one, some _one_ of those pictures I
+had predetermined to see, a good hour and then gone away ... it used
+to be a green half-hour's walk over the fields. So much for one error,
+now for the second like unto it; what I meant by charging you with
+_seeing_, (not, _not_ '_looking_ for')--_seeing_ undue 'security' in
+_that_, in the form,--I meant to say 'you talk about me being 'free'
+now, free till _then_, and I am rather jealous of the potency
+attributed to the _form_, with all its solemnity, because it _is_ a
+form, and no more--yet you frankly agree with me that _that_ form
+complied with, there is no redemption; yours I am _then_ sure enough,
+to repent at leisure &c. &c.' So I meant to ask, 'then, all _now_
+said, all short of that particular form of saying it, all goes for
+comparatively nothing'? Here it is written down--you 'wish to
+_suspend_ all decisions as long as possible'--_that_ form effects the
+decision, then,--till then, 'where am I'? Which is just what Lord
+Chesterfield cautions people against asking when they tell stories.
+Love, Ba, my own heart's dearest, if all is _not_ decided
+_now_--why--hear a story, a propos of storytelling, and deduce what is
+deducible. A very old Unitarian minister met a still older evangelical
+brother--John Clayton (from whose son's mouth I heard what you shall
+hear)--the two fell to argument about the true faith to be held--after
+words enough, 'Well,' said the Unitarian, as winding up the
+controversy with an amicable smile--'at least let us hope we are both
+engaged in the _pursuit_ of Truth!'--'_Pursuit_ do you say?' cried the
+other, 'here am I with my years eighty and odd--if I haven't _found_
+Truth by this time where is my chance, pray?' My own Ba, if I have not
+already _decided_, alas for me and the solemn words that are to help!
+Though in another point of view there would be some luxurious feeling,
+beyond the ordinary, in knowing one was kept safe to one's heart's
+good by yet another wall than the hitherto recognised ones. Is there
+any parallel in the notion I once heard a man deliver himself of in
+the street--a labourer talking with his friends about '_wishes_'--and
+this one wished, if he might get his wish, 'to have a nine gallon cask
+of strong ale set running that minute and his own mouth to be _tied_
+under it'--the exquisiteness of the delight was to be in the security
+upon security,--the being 'tied.' Now, Ba says I shall not be
+'chained' if she can help!
+
+But now--here all the jesting goes. You tell me what was observed in
+the 'moment's' visit; by you, and (after, I suppose) by your sisters.
+First, I _will_ always see with your eyes _there_--next, what I see I
+will _never_ speak, if it pain you; but just this much truth I ought
+to say, I think. I always give myself to you for the worst I am,--full
+of faults as you will find, if you have not found them. But I _will_
+not affect to be so bad, so wicked, as I count wickedness, as to call
+that conduct other than intolerable--_there_, in my conviction of
+_that_, is your real 'security' and mine for the future as the
+present. That a father choosing to give out of his whole day some five
+minutes to a daughter, supposed to be prevented from participating in
+what he, probably, in common with the whole world of sensible men, as
+distinguished from poets and dreamers, consider _every_ pleasure of
+life, by a complete foregoing of society--that he, after the Pisa
+business and the enforced continuance, and as he must believe,
+permanence of this state in which any other human being would go
+mad--I do dare say, for the justification of God, who gave the mind to
+be _used_ in this world,--where it saves us, we are taught, or
+destroys us,--and not to be sunk quietly, overlooked, and forgotten;
+that, under these circumstances, finding ... what, you say, unless he
+thinks he _does_ find, he would close the door of his house instantly;
+a mere sympathizing man, of the same literary tastes, who comes
+good-naturedly, on a proper and unexceptionable introduction, to chat
+with and amuse a little that invalid daughter, once a month, so far as
+is known, for an hour perhaps,--that such a father should show
+himself '_not pleased_ plainly,' at such a circumstance ... my Ba, it
+is SHOCKING! See, I go _wholly_ on the supposition that the real
+relation is not imagined to exist between us. I so completely could
+understand a repugnance to trust you to me were the truth known, that,
+I will confess, I have several times been afraid the very reverse of
+this occurrence would befall; that your father would have at some time
+or other thought himself obliged, by the usual feeling of people in
+such cases, to see me for a few minutes and express some commonplace
+thanks after the customary mode (just as Capt. Domett sent a heap of
+unnecessary thanks to me not long ago for sending now a letter now a
+book to his son in New Zealand--keeping up the spirits of poor dear
+Alfred now he is cut off from the world at large)--and if _this_ had
+been done, I shall not deny that my heart would have accused
+me--unreasonably I _know_ but still, suppression, and reserve, and
+apprehension--the whole of _that is_ horrible always! But this way of
+looking on the endeavour of anybody, however humble, to just preserve
+your life, remedy in some degree the first, if it _was_ the first,
+unjustifiable measure,--this being 'displeased'--is exactly what I did
+_not_ calculate upon. Observe, that in this _only_ instance I am able
+to do as I shall be done by; to take up the arms furnished by the
+world, the usages of society--this is monstrous on the _world's_
+showing! I say this now that I may never need recur to it--that you
+may understand why I keep _such_ entire silence henceforth.
+
+Get but well, keep but _as_ well, and all is easy now. This wonderful
+winter--the spring--the summer--you will take exercise, go up and down
+stairs, get strong. _I pray you, at your feet, to do this, dearest!_
+Then comes Autumn, with the natural expectations, as after _rouge_ one
+expects _noir_: the _likelihood_ of a _severe_ winter after this mild
+one, which to prevent, you reiterate your demand to go and save your
+life in Italy, ought you not to do that? And the matters brought to
+issue, (with even, if possible, less shadow of ground for a refusal
+than before, if you are _well_, plainly well enough to bear the
+voyage) _there_ I _will_ bid you 'be mine in the obvious way'--if you
+shall preserve your belief in me--and you _may_ in much, in all
+important to you. Mr. Kenyon's praise is undeserved enough, but
+yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, _tenax
+propositi_, able to make out a life for himself and abide in
+it--'for,' he went on, 'you really do live without any of this
+_titillation_ and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all
+kinds, they all say they can do without.' That is _more_ true--and I
+_intend_ by God's help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole
+energies in reducing to practice the feeling which occupies me, and in
+the practical operation of which, the other work I had proposed to do
+will be found included, facilitated--I shall be able--but of this
+there is plenty time to speak hereafter--I shall, I believe, be able
+to do this without even allowing the world to _very much_
+misinterpret--against pure lying there is no defence, but all up to
+that I hope to hinder or render unimportant--as you shall know in time
+and place.
+
+I have written myself grave, but write to _me_, dear, dearest, and I
+will answer in a lighter mood--even now I can say how it was
+yesterday's hurry happened. I called on Milnes--who told me Hanmer had
+broken a bone in his leg and was laid up, so I called on him too--on
+Moxon, by the way, (his brother telling me strangely cheering news,
+from the grimmest of faces, about my books selling and likely to sell
+... your wishes, Ba!)--then in Bond Street about some business with
+somebody, then on Mrs. Montagu who was out walking all the time, and
+home too. I found a letter from Mr. Kenyon, perfectly kind, asking me
+to go on Monday to meet friends, and with yours to-day comes another
+confirming the choice of the day. How entirely kind he is!
+
+I am very well, much better, indeed--taking that bath with sensibly
+good effect, to-night I go to Montagu's again; for shame, having kept
+away too long.
+
+And the rest shall answer _yours_--dear! Not 'much to answer?' And
+Beethoven, and Painting and--what _is_ the rest and shall be answered!
+Bless you, now, my darling--I love you, ever shall love you, ever be
+your own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Tuesday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]
+
+Yes, but, dearest, you mistake me, or you mistake yourself. I am sure
+I do not over-care for forms--it is not my way to do it--and in this
+case ... no. Still you must see that here is a fact as well as a form,
+and involving a frightful quantity of social inconvenience (to use the
+mildest word) if too hastily entered on. I deny altogether looking
+for, or 'seeing' any 'security' in it for myself--it is a mere form
+for the heart and the happiness: illusions may pass after as before.
+Still the truth is that if they were to pass with you now, you stand
+free to act according to the wide-awakeness of your eyes, and to
+reform your choice ... see! whereas afterward you could not carry out
+such a reformation while I was alive, even if I helped you. All I
+could do for you would be to walk away. And you pretend not to see
+this broad distinction?--ah. For me I have seen just this and no more,
+and have felt averse to forestall, to seem to forestall even by an
+hour, or a word, that stringency of the legal obligation from which
+there _is_ in a certain sense no redemption. Tie up your drinker under
+the pour of his nine gallons, and in two minutes he will moan and
+writhe (as you perfectly know) like a Brinvilliers under the
+water-torture. That he _asked_ to be tied up, was unwise on his own
+principle of loving ale. And _you_ sha'n't be 'chained' up, if you
+were to ask twenty times: if you have found truth or not in the
+water-well.
+
+You do not see aright what I meant to tell you on another subject. If
+he was displeased, (and it was expressed by a shadow a mere negation
+of pleasure) it was not with you as a visitor and my friend. You must
+not fancy such a thing. It was a sort of instinctive indisposition
+towards seeing you here--unexplained to himself, I have no doubt--of
+course unexplained, or he would have desired me to receive you never
+again, _that_ would have been done at once and unscrupulously. But
+without defining his own feeling, he rather disliked seeing you
+here--it just touched one of his vibratory wires, brushed by and
+touched it--oh, we understand in this house. He is not a nice
+observer, but, at intervals very wide, he is subject to
+lightnings--call them fancies, sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
+Certainly it was not in the character of a 'sympathising friend' that
+you made him a very little cross on Monday. And yet you never were nor
+will be in danger of being _thanked_, he would not think of it. For
+the reserve, the apprehension--dreadful those things are, and
+desecrating to one's own nature--but we did not make this position, we
+only endure it. The root of the evil is the miserable misconception of
+the limits and character of parental rights--it is a mistake of the
+intellect rather than of the heart. Then, after using one's children
+as one's chattels for a time, the children drop lower and lower toward
+the level of the chattels, and the duties of human sympathy to them
+become difficult in proportion. And (it seems strange to say it, yet
+it is true) _love_, he does not conceive of at all. He has feeling, he
+can be moved deeply, he is capable of affection in a peculiar way, but
+_that_, he does not understand, any more than he understands Chaldee,
+respecting it less of course.
+
+And you fancy that I could propose Italy again? after saying too that
+I never would? Oh no, no--yet there is time to think of this, a
+superfluity of time, ... 'time, times and half a time' and to make
+one's head swim with leaning over a precipice is not wise. The roar
+of the world comes up too, as you hear and as I heard from the
+beginning. There will be no lack of 'lying,' be sure--'pure lying'
+too--and nothing you can do, dearest dearest, shall hinder my being
+torn to pieces by most of the particularly affectionate friends I have
+in the world. Which I do not think of much, any more than of Italy.
+You will be mad, and I shall be bad ... and _that_ will be the effect
+of being poets! 'Till when, where are you?'--why in the very deepest
+of my soul--wherever in it is the fountain head of loving! beloved,
+_there_ you are!
+
+Some day I shall ask you 'in form,'--as I care so much for forms, it
+seems,--what your 'faults' are, these immense multitudinous faults of
+yours, which I hear such talk of, and never, never, can get to see.
+Will you give me a catalogue raisonnee of your faults? I should like
+it, I think. In the meantime they seem to be faults of obscurity, that
+is, invisible faults, like those in the poetry which do not keep it
+from selling as I am _so, so_ glad to understand. I am glad too that
+Mr. Milnes knows you a little.
+
+Now I must end, there is no more time to-night. God bless you, very
+dearest! Keep better ... try to be well--as _I_ do for you since you
+ask me. Did I ever think that _you_ would think it worth while to ask
+me _that_? What a dream! reaching out into the morning! To-day however
+I did not go down-stairs, because it was colder and the wind blew its
+way into the passages:--if I can to-morrow without risk, I will, ...
+be sure ... be sure. Till Thursday then!--till eternity!
+
+'Till when, where am I,' but with you? and what, but yours
+
+                                                     Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+I have been writing 'autographs' (save my _mark_) for the North and
+the South to-day ... the Fens, and Golden Square. Somebody asked for
+a verse, ... from either 'Catarina' or 'Flush' ... 'those poems' &c.
+&c.! Such a concatenation of criticisms. So I preferred Flush of
+course--i.e. gave him the preferment.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Wednesday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]
+
+Ah, sweetest, don't mind people and their lies any more than I shall;
+if the toad _does_ 'take it into his toad's head to spit at you'--you
+will not 'drop dead,' I warrant. All the same, if one may make a
+circuit through a flower-bed and see the less of his toad-habits and
+general ugliness, so much the better--no words can express my entire
+indifference (far below _contempt_) for what can be said or done. But
+one thing, only one, I choose to hinder being said, if I can--the
+others I would not if I could--why prevent the toad's puffing himself
+out thrice his black bigness if it amuses him among those wet stones?
+We shall be in the sun.
+
+I dare say I am unjust--hasty certainly, in the other matter--but all
+faults are such inasmuch as they are 'mistakes of the
+intellect'--toads may spit or leave it alone,--but if I ever see it
+right, exercising my intellect, to treat any human beings like my
+'chattels'--I shall pay for that mistake one day or another, I am
+convinced--and I very much fear that you would soon discover what one
+fault of mine is, if you were to hear anyone assert such a right in my
+presence.
+
+Well, I shall see you to-morrow--had I better come a little later, I
+wonder?--half-past three, for instance, staying, as last time, till
+... ah, it is ill policy to count my treasure aloud! Or shall I come
+at the usual time to-morrow? If I do _not_ hear, at the usual
+time!--because, I think you would--am sure you would have considered
+and suggested it, were it necessary.
+
+Bless you, dearest--ever your own.
+
+I said nothing about that Mr. Russell and his proposition--by all
+means, yes--let him do more good with that noble, pathetic 'lay'--and
+do not mind the 'burthen,' if he is peremptory--so that he duly
+specify '_by the singer_'--with _that_ precaution nothing but good can
+come of his using it.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Thursday.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest I lose no time in writing, you see, so as to be written
+to at the soonest--and there is another reason which makes me hasten
+to write ... it is not all mercantile calculation. I want you to
+understand me.
+
+Now listen! I seem to understand myself: it seems to me that every
+word I ever said to you on one subject, is plainly referable to a
+class of feelings of which you could not complain ... could not. But
+this is _my_ impression; and yours is different:--you do not
+understand, you do not see by my light, and perhaps it is natural that
+you should not, as we stand on different steps of the argument. Still
+I, who said what I did, _for you_, and from an absorbing consideration
+of what was best _for you_, cannot consent, even out of anxiety for
+your futurity, to torment you now, to vex you by a form of speech
+which you persist in translating into a want of trust in you ... (_I_,
+want trust in you!!) into a need of more evidence about you from
+others ... (_could_ you say so?) and even into an indisposition on my
+part to fulfil my engagement--no, dearest dearest, it is not right of
+you. And therefore, as you have these thoughts reasonably or
+unreasonably, I shall punish you for them at once, and 'chain' you ...
+(as you wish to be chained), chain you, rivet you--do you feel how the
+little fine chain twists round and round you? do you hear the stroke
+of the riveting? and you may _feel that_ too. Now, it is done--now,
+you are chained--_Bia_ has finished the work--I, _Ba_! (observe the
+anagram!) and not a word do you say, of Prometheus, though you have
+the conscience of it all, I dare say. Well! you must be pleased, ...
+as it was 'the weight of too much liberty' which offended you: and now
+you believe, perhaps, that I trust you, love you, and look to you over
+the heads of the whole living world, without any one head needing to
+stoop; you _must_, if you please, because you belong to me now and
+shall believe as I choose. There's a ukase for you! Cry out ... repent
+... and I will loose the links, and let you go again--_shall_ it be
+'_My dear Miss Barrett_?'
+
+Seriously, you shall not think of me such things as you half said, if
+not whole said, to-day. If all men were to speak evil of you, my heart
+would speak of you the more good--_that_ would be the one result with
+_me_. Do I not know you, soul to soul? should I believe that any of
+them could know you as I know you? Then for the rest, I am not afraid
+of 'toads' now, not being a child any longer. I am not inclined to
+mind, if _you_ do not mind, what may be said about us by the
+benevolent world, nor will other reasons of a graver kind affect me
+otherwise than by the necessary pain. Therefore the whole rests with
+you--unless illness should intervene--and you will be kind and good
+(will you not?) and not think hard thoughts of me ever again--no. It
+wasn't the sense of being less than you had a right to pretend to,
+which made me speak what you disliked--for it is _I_ who am
+'unworthy,' and not another--not certainly that other!
+
+I meant to write more to-night of subjects farther off us, but my
+sisters have come up-stairs and I must close my letter quickly.
+Beloved, take care of your head! Ah, do not write poems, nor read, nor
+neglect the walking, nor take that shower-bath. _Will_ you, instead,
+try the warm bathing? Surely the experiment is worth making for a
+little while. Dearest beloved, do it for your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Friday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]
+
+I am altogether your own, dearest--the words were only words and the
+playful feelings were play--while the _fact_ has always been so
+irresistibly obvious as to make them _break_ on and off it,
+fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a
+great solid rock. _Now_ you call the rock, a rock, but you must have
+known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those
+light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do
+what they could. It _is_ a rock; and may be quite barren of good to
+you,--not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a
+mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real
+rock, that is all.
+
+It is always _I_ who 'torment' _you_--instead of taking the present
+and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares. I certainly
+am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much
+less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own,
+dearest beloved, _that_ is as different in kind as in degree from any
+other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of
+realization. Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us--oh,
+be well, my Ba!
+
+Let me speak of that letter--I am ashamed at having mentioned those
+circumstances, and should not have done so, but for their
+insignificance--for I knew that if you ever _did_ hear of them, all
+any body _would_ say would not amount to enough to be repeated to me
+and so get explained at once. Now that the purpose is gained, it seems
+little worth gaining. You bade me not send the letter: I will not.
+
+As for 'what people say'--ah--Here lies a book, Bartoli's 'Simboli'
+and this morning I dipped into his Chapter XIX. His 'Symbol' is
+'Socrate fatto ritrar su' Boccali' and the theme of his dissertating,
+'L'indegnita del mettere in disprezzo i piu degni filosofi
+dell'antichita.' He sets out by enlarging on the horror of it--then
+describes the character of Socrates, then tells the story of the
+representation of the 'Clouds,'and thus gets to his 'symbol'--'le
+pazzie fatte spacciare a Socrate in quella commedia ... il misero in
+tanto scherno e derisione del pubblico, che perfino i vasai
+dipingevano il suo ritratto sopra gli orci, i fiaschi, i boccali, e
+ogni vasellamento da piu vile servigio. Cosi quel sommo filosofo ...
+fu condotto a far di se par le case d'Atene una continua commedia, con
+solamente vederlo comparir cosi scontraffatto e ridicolo, come i vasai
+sel formavano d'invenzione'--
+
+There you have what a very clever man can say in choice Tuscan on a
+passage in AElian which he takes care not to quote nor allude to, but
+which is the sole authority for the fact. AElian, speaking of Socrates'
+magnanimity, says that on the first representation, a good many
+foreigners being present who were at a loss to know 'who could be this
+Socrates'--the sage himself stood up that he might be pointed out to
+them by the auditory at large ... 'which' says AElian--'was no
+difficulty for them, to whom his features were most familiar,--_the
+very potters being in the habit of decorating their vessels with his
+likeness_'--no doubt out of a pleasant and affectionate admiration.
+Yet see how 'people' can turn this out of its sense,--'say' their say
+on the simplest, plainest word or deed, and change it to its opposite!
+'God's great gift of speech abused' indeed!
+
+But what shall we hear of it _there_, my Siren?
+
+On Monday--is it not? _Who_ was it looked into the room just at our
+leave-taking?
+
+Bless you, my ever dearest,--remember to walk, to go down-stairs--and
+be sure that I will endeavour to get well for my part. To-day I am
+very well--with this letter!
+
+                                                   Your own.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                 Friday Evening.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]
+
+Always _you_, is it, who torments me? always _you_? Well! I agree to
+bear the torments as Socrates his persecution by the potters:--and by
+the way he liked those potters, as Plato shows, and was fain to go to
+them for his illustrations ... as I to you for all my light. Also,
+while we are on the subject, I will tell you another fault of your
+Bartoli ... his 'choice Tuscan' filled one of my pages, in the place
+of my English better than Tuscan.
+
+For the letter you mentioned, I meant to have said in mine yesterday,
+that I was grateful to you for telling me of it--_that_ was one of the
+prodigalities of your goodness to me ... not thrown away, in one
+sense, however superfluous. Do you ever think how I must feel when you
+overcome me with all this generous tenderness, only beloved! I cannot
+say it.
+
+Because it is colder to-day I have not been down-stairs but let
+to-morrow be warm enough--_facilis descensus_. There's something
+infernal to me really, in the going down, and now too that our cousin
+is here! Think of his beginning to attack Henrietta the other day....
+'_So_ Mr. C. has retired and left the field to Surtees Cook. Oh ...
+you needn't deny ... it's the news of all the world except your
+father. And as to _him_, I don't blame you--he never will consent to
+the marriage of son or daughter. Only you should consider, you know,
+because he won't leave you a shilling, &c. &c....' You hear the sort
+of man. And then in a minute after ... 'And what is this about Ba?'
+'About Ba' said my sisters, 'why who has been persuading you of such
+nonsense?' 'Oh, my authority is very good,--perfectly unnecessary for
+you to tell any stories, Arabel,--a literary friendship, is it?' ...
+and so on ... after that fashion! This comes from my brothers of
+course, but we need not be afraid of its passing _beyond_, I think,
+though I was a good deal vexed when I heard first of it last night and
+have been in cousinly anxiety ever since to get our Orestes safe away
+from those Furies his creditors, into Brittany again. He is an
+intimate friend of my brothers besides the relationship, and they talk
+to him as to each other, only they oughtn't to have talked _that_, and
+without knowledge too.
+
+I forgot to tell you that Mr. Kenyon was in an immoderate joy the day
+I saw him last, about Mr. Poe's 'Raven' as seen in the _Athenaeum_
+extracts, and came to ask what I knew of the poet and his poetry, and
+took away the book. It's the rhythm which has taken him with 'glamour'
+I fancy. Now you will stay on Monday till the last moment, and go to
+him for dinner at six.
+
+Who 'looked in at the door?' Nobody. But Arabel a little way opened
+it, and hearing your voice, went back. There was no harm--_is_ no fear
+of harm. Nobody in the house would find his or her pleasure in running
+the risk of giving me pain. I mean my brothers and sisters would not.
+
+Are you trying the music to charm the brain to stillness? Tell me. And
+keep from that 'Soul's Tragedy' which did so much harm--oh, that I had
+bound you by some Stygian oath not to touch it.
+
+So my rock ... may the birds drop into your crevices the seeds of all
+the flowers of the world--only it is not for _those_, that I cling to
+you as the single rock in the salt sea.
+
+                                              Ever I am
+
+                                                   Your own.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                 Saturday Morning.
+                                 [Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]
+
+You call me 'kind'; and by this time I have no heart to call you such
+names--I told you, did I not once? that 'Ba' had got to convey
+infinitely more of you to my sense than 'dearest,' 'sweetest,' all or
+any epithets that break down with their load of honey like bees--to
+say you are 'kind,' you that so entirely and unintermittingly bless
+me,--it will never do now, 'Ba.' All the same, one way there is to
+make even 'Ba' dearer,--'_my_ Ba,' I say to myself!
+
+About my _fears_--whether of opening doors or entering people--one
+thing is observable and prevents the possibility of any
+misconception--I desire, have been in the habit of desiring, to
+_increase_ them, far from diminishing--they relate, of course,
+entirely to _you_--and only through _you_ affect me the least in the
+world. Put your well-being out of the question, so far as I can
+understand it to be involved,--and the pleasure and pride I should
+immediately choose would be that the whole world knew our position.
+What pleasure, what pride! But I endeavour to remember on all
+occasions--and perhaps succeed in too few--that it is very easy for me
+to go away and leave you who cannot go. I only allude to this because
+some people are 'naturally nervous' and all that--and I am quite of
+another kind.
+
+Last evening I went out--having been kept at home in the afternoon to
+see somebody ... went walking for hours. I am quite well to-day and,
+now your letter comes, my Ba, most happy. And, as the sun shines, you
+are perhaps making the perilous descent now, while I write--oh, to
+meet you on the stairs! And I shall really see you on Monday, dearest?
+So soon, it ought to feel, considering the dreary weeks that now get
+to go between our days! For music, I made myself melancholy just now
+with some 'Concertos for the Harpsichord by Mr. Handel'--brought home
+by my father the day before yesterday;--what were light, modern things
+once! Now I read not very long ago a French memoir of 'Claude le
+Jeune' called in his time the Prince of Musicians,--no,
+'_Phoenix_'--the unapproachable wonder to all time--that is, twenty
+years after his death about--and to this pamphlet was prefixed as
+motto this startling axiom--'In Music, the Beau Ideal changes every
+thirty years'--well, is not that _true_? The _Idea_, mind,
+changes--the general standard ... so that it is no answer that a
+single air, such as many one knows, may strike as freshly as
+ever--they were _not_ according to the Ideal of their own time--just
+now, they drop into the ready ear,--next hundred years, who will be
+the Rossini? who is no longer the Rossini even I remember--his early
+overtures are as purely Rococo as Cimarosa's or more. The sounds
+remain, keep their character perhaps--the scale's proportioned notes
+affect the same, that is,--the major third, or minor seventh--but the
+arrangement of these, the sequence the law--for them, if it _should_
+change every thirty years! To Corelli nothing seemed so conclusive in
+Heaven or earth as this
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+I don't believe there is one of his sonatas wherein that formula does
+not do duty. In these things of Handel that seems replaced by
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+--that was the only true consummation! Then,--to go over the hundred
+years,--came Rossini's unanswerable coda:
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+which serves as base to the infinity of songs, gone, gone--_so_ gone
+by! From all of which Ba draws _this_ 'conclusion' that these may be
+worse things than Bartoli's Tuscan to cover a page with!--yet, yet the
+pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his
+letters to his mother as 'mother of the famous composer'--and Henry
+Lawes, and Dowland's Lute, ah me!
+
+Well, my conclusion is the best, the everlasting, here and I trust
+elsewhere--I am your own, my Ba, ever your
+
+                                                          R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
+
+Now I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very
+indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your 'Soul's Tragedy'
+last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a
+mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It
+is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the
+first act of 'Luria' did, though I do not mean to compare such
+dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness 'Luria' is
+unapproachable--will prove so, it seems to me. But this 'Tragedy'
+shows more heat from the first, and then, the words beat down more
+closely ... well! I am struck by it all as you see. If you keep it up
+to this passion, if you justify this high key-note, it is a great
+work, and worthy of a place next 'Luria.' Also do observe how
+excellently balanced the two will be, and how the tongue of this next
+silver Bell will swing from side to side. And _you_ to frighten me
+about it. Yes, and the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the
+worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be
+something inferior--for _you_--and the adviseableness of its
+publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is,
+that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it
+be possible that the same
+
+     'Robert Browning'
+
+who (I heard the other day) said once that he could 'wait three
+hundred years,' should not feel the life of centuries in this work
+too--can it be? Why all the pulses of the life of it are beating in
+even _my_ ears!
+
+Tell me, beloved, how you are--I shall hear it to-night--shall I not?
+To think of your being unwell, and forced to go here and go there to
+visit people to whom your being unwell falls in at best among the
+secondary evils!--makes me discontented--which is one shade more to
+the uneasiness I feel. Will you take care, and not give away your life
+to these people? Because I have a better claim than they ... and shall
+put it in, if provoked ... _shall_. Then you will not use the
+shower-bath again--you promise? I dare say Mr. Kenyon observed
+yesterday how unwell you were looking--tell me if he didn't! Now do
+not work, dearest! Do not think of Chiappino, leave him behind ... he
+has a good strong life of his own, and can wait for you. Oh--but let
+me remember to say of him, that he and the other personages appear to
+me to articulate with perfect distinctness and clearness ... you need
+not be afraid of having been obscure in this first part. It is all as
+lucid as noon.
+
+Shall I go down-stairs to-day? 'No' say the privy-councillors,
+'because it is cold,' but I _shall_ go peradventure, because the sun
+brightens and brightens, and the wind has gone round to the west.
+
+George had come home yesterday before you left me, but the stars were
+favourable to us and kept him out of this room. Now he is at
+Worcester--went this morning, on those never ending 'rounds,' poor
+fellow, which weary him I am sure.
+
+And why should music and the philosophy of it make you 'melancholy,'
+ever dearest, more than the other arts, which each has the seal of the
+age, modifying itself after a fashion and _to_ one? Because it changes
+more, perhaps. Yet all the Arts are mediators between the soul and the
+Infinite, ... shifting always like a mist, between the Breath on this
+side, and the Light on that side ... shifted and coloured; mediators,
+messengers, projected from the Soul, to go and feel, for Her, _out
+there_!
+
+You don't call me 'kind' I confess--but then you call me 'too kind'
+which is nearly as bad, you must allow on your part. Only you were not
+in earnest when you said _that_, as it appeared afterward. _Were_ you,
+yesterday, in pretending to think that I owed you nothing ... _I_?
+
+May God bless you. He knows that to give myself to you, is not to pay
+you. Such debts are not so paid.
+
+                                               Yet I am your
+
+                                                    BA.
+
+_People's Journal_ for March 7th.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
+
+Dear, dear Ba, if you were here I should not much _speak_ to you, not
+at first--nor, indeed, at last,--but as it is, sitting alone, only
+words can be spoken, or (worse) written, and, oh how different to look
+into the eyes and imagine what _might_ be said, what ought to be said,
+though it never can be--and to sit and say and write, and only imagine
+who looks above me, looks down, understanding and pardoning all! My
+love, my Ba, the fault you found once with some expressions of mine
+about the amount of imperishable pleasures already hoarded in my mind,
+the indestructible memories of you; that fault, which I refused to
+acquiesce under the imputation of, at first, you remember--well,
+_what_ a fault it was, by this better light! If all stopped here and
+now; horrible! complete oblivion were the thing to be prayed for,
+rather! As it is, _now_, I must go on, must live the life out, and die
+yours. And you are doing your utmost to advance the event of
+events,--the exercise, and consequently (is it not?) necessarily
+improved sleep, and the projects for the fine days, the walking ... a
+pure bliss to think of! Well, now--I think I shall show seamanship of
+a sort, and 'try another tack'--do not be over bold, my sweetest; the
+cold _is_ considerable,--taken into account the previous mildness. One
+ill-advised (I, the _adviser_, I should remember!) too early, or too
+late descent to the drawing-room, and all might be ruined,--thrown
+back so far ... seeing that our flight is to be prayed for 'not in the
+winter'--and one would be called on to wait, wait--in this world where
+nothing waits, rests, as can be counted on. Now think of this, too,
+dearest, and never mind the slowness, for the sureness' sake! How
+perfectly happy I am as you stand by me, as yesterday you stood, as
+you seem to stand now!
+
+I will write to-morrow more: I came home last night with a head rather
+worse; which in the event was the better, for I took a little medicine
+and all is very much improved to-day. I shall go out presently, and
+return very early and take as much care as is proper--for I thought of
+Ba, and the sublimities of Duty, and that gave myself airs of
+importance, in short, as I looked at my mother's inevitable arrow-root
+this morning. So now I am well; so now, is dearest Ba well? I shall
+hear to-night ... which will have its due effect, that circumstance,
+in quickening my retreat from Forster's Rooms. All was very pleasant
+last evening--and your letter &c. went _a qui de droit_, and Mr. W.
+_Junior_ had to smile good-naturedly when Mr. Burges began laying down
+this general law, that the sons of all men of genius were poor
+creatures--and Chorley and I exchanged glances after the fashion of
+two Augurs meeting at some street-corner in Cicero's time, as he says.
+And Mr. Kenyon was kind, kinder, kindest, as ever, 'and thus ends a
+wooing'!--no, a dinner--my wooing ends never, never; and so prepare
+to be asked to give, and give, and give till all is given in Heaven!
+And all I give _you_ is just my heart's blessing; God bless you, my
+dearest, dearest Ba!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]
+
+You find my letter I trust, for it was written this morning in time;
+and if these two lines should not be flattery ... oh, rank flattery!
+... why happy letter is it, to help to bring you home ten minutes
+earlier, when you never ought to have left home--no, indeed! I knew
+how it would be yesterday, and how you would be worse and not better.
+You are not fit to go out, dear dearest, to sit in the glare of lights
+and talk and listen, and have the knives and forks to rattle all the
+while and remind you of the chains of necessity. Oh--should I bear it,
+do you think? I was thinking, when you went away--_after_ you had
+quite gone. You would laugh to see me at my dinner--Flush and
+me--Flush placing in me such an heroic confidence, that, after he has
+cast one discriminating glance on the plate, and, in the case of
+'chicken,' wagged his tail with an emphasis, ... he goes off to the
+sofa, shuts his eyes and allows a full quarter of an hour to pass
+before he returns to take his share. Did you ever hear of a dog before
+who did not persecute one with beseeching eyes at mealtimes? And
+remember, this is not the effect of _discipline_. Also if another than
+myself happens to take coffee or break bread in the room here, he
+teazes straightway with eyes and paws, ... teazes like a common dog
+and is put out of the door before he can be quieted by scolding. But
+with _me_ he is sublime! Moreover he has been a very useful dog in his
+time (in the point of capacity), causing to disappear supererogatory
+dinners and impossible breakfasts which, to do him justice, is a feat
+accomplished without an objection on his side, always.
+
+So, when you write me such a letter, I write back to you about Flush.
+Dearest beloved, but I have read the letter and felt it in my heart,
+through and through! and it is as wise to talk of Flush foolishly, as
+to fancy that I _could say how_ it is felt ... this letter! Only when
+you spoke last of breaking off with such and such recollections, it
+was the melancholy of the breaking off which I protested against, was
+it not? and _not_ the insufficiency of the recollections. There might
+have been something besides in jest. Ah, but _you_ remember, if you
+please, that _I_ was the first to wish (wishing for my own part, if I
+could wish exclusively) to break off in the middle the silken thread,
+and you told me, not--you forbade me--do you remember? For, as
+happiness goes, the recollections were enough, ... _are_ enough for
+_me_! I mean that I should acknowledge them to be full compensation
+for the bitter gift of life, _such as it was_, to me! if that
+subject-matter were broken off here! 'Bona verba' let me speak
+nevertheless. You mean, you say, to run all risks with me, and I don't
+mean to draw back from my particular risk of ... what am I to do to
+you hereafter to make you vexed with me? What is there in marriage to
+make all these people on every side of us, (who all began, I suppose,
+by talking of love,) look askance at one another from under the silken
+mask ... and virtually hate one another through the tyranny of the
+stronger and the hypocrisy of the weaker party. It never could be so
+with _us_--_I know that_. But you grow awful to me sometimes with the
+very excess of your goodness and tenderness, and still, I think to
+myself, if you do not keep lifting me up quite off the ground by the
+strong faculty of love in you, I shall not help falling short of the
+hope you have placed in me--it must be 'supernatural' of you, to the
+end! or I fall short and disappoint you. Consider this, beloved. Now
+if I could put my soul out of my body, just to stand up before you
+and make it clear.
+
+I did go to the drawing-room to-day ... would ... should ... did. The
+sun came out, the wind changed ... where was the obstacle? I spent a
+quarter of an hour in a fearful solitude, listening for knocks at the
+door, as a ghost-fearer might at midnight, and 'came home' none the
+worse in any way. Be sure that I shall 'take care' better than you do,
+and there, is the worst of it all--for _you_ let people make you ill,
+and do it yourself upon occasion.
+
+You know from my letter how I found you out in the matter of the
+'Soul's Tragedy.' Oh! so bad ... so weak, so unworthy of your name! If
+some other people were half a quarter as much the contrary!
+
+And so, good-night, dear dearest. In spite of my fine speeches about
+'recollections,' I should be unhappy enough to please you, with _only
+those_ ... without you beside! I could not take myself back from being
+
+                                                  Your own--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]
+
+Dear, dear Ba, but indeed I _did_ return home earlier by two or three
+good hours than the night before--and to find _no_ letter,--none of
+yours! _That_ was reserved for this morning early, and then a rest
+came, a silence, over the thoughts of you--and now again, comes this
+last note! Oh, my love--why--what is it you think to do, or become
+'afterward,' that you may fail in and so disappoint me? It is not very
+unfit that you should thus punish yourself, and that, sinning by your
+own ambition of growing something beyond my Ba even, you should 'fear'
+as you say! For, sweet, why wish, why think to alter ever by a line,
+change by a shade, turn better if that were possible, and so only rise
+the higher above me, get further from instead of nearer to my heart?
+What I expect, what I build my future on, am quite, quite prepared to
+'risk' everything for,--is that one belief that you _will not alter_,
+will just remain as you are--meaning by '_you_,' the love in you, the
+qualities I have _known_ (for you will stop me, if I do not stop
+myself) what I have evidence of in every letter, in every word, every
+look. Keeping these, if it be God's will that the body passes,--what
+is that? Write no new letters, speak no new words, look no new
+looks,--only tell me, years hence that the present is alive, that what
+was once, still is--and I am, must needs be, blessed as ever! You
+speak of my feeling as if it were a pure speculation--as if because I
+_see somewhat_ in you I make a calculation that there must be more to
+see somewhere or other--where bdellium is found, the onyx-stone may be
+looked for in the mystic land of the four rivers! And perhaps ... ah,
+poor human nature!--perhaps I _do_ think at times on what _may_ be to
+find! But what is that to you? I _offer_ for the _bdellium_--the other
+may be found or not found ... what I see glitter on the ground, _that_
+will suffice to make me rich as--rich as--
+
+So bless you my own Ba! I would not wait for paper, and you must
+forgive half-sheets, instead of a whole celestial quire to my love and
+praise. Are you so well? So adventurous? Thank you from my heart of
+hearts. And I am quite well to-day (and have received a note from
+Procter _just_ this _minute_ putting off his dinner on account of the
+death of his wife's sister's husband abroad). Observe _this_ sheet I
+take as I find--I mean, that the tear tells of no improper speech
+repented of--what English, what sense, what a soul's tragedy! but
+then, what real, realest love and more than love for my ever dearest
+Ba possesses her own--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]
+
+When my Orpheus writes '[Greek: Peri lithon]' he makes a great mistake
+about onyxes--there is more true onyx in this letter of his that I
+have just read, than he will ever find in the desert land he goes to.
+And for what 'glitters on the ground,' it reminds me of the yellow
+metal sparks found in the Malvern Hills, and how we used to laugh
+years ago at one of our geological acquaintances, who looked
+mole-hills up that mountain-range in the scorn of his eyes, saying ...
+'Nothing but mica!!' Is anybody to be rich through 'mica', I wonder?
+through 'Nothing but mica?' 'As rich as--as rich as' ... _Walter the
+Pennyless_?
+
+Dearest, best you are nevertheless, and it is a sorry jest which I can
+break upon your poverty, with that golden heart of yours so
+apprehended of mine! Why if I am 'ambitious'--is it not because you
+love me as if I were worthier of your love, and that, _so_, I get
+frightened of the opening of your eyelids to the _un_worthiness? 'A
+little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to
+sleep'--_there_, is my 'ambition for afterward.' Oh--you do not
+understand how with an unspeakable wonder, an astonishment which keeps
+me from drawing breath, I look to this Dream, and 'see your face as
+the face of an angel,' and fear for the vanishing, ... because dreams
+and angels _do_ pass away in this world. But _you_, _I_ understand
+_you_, and all your goodness past expression, past belief of mine, if
+I had not known you ... just _you_. If it will satisfy you that I
+should know you, love you, love you--why then indeed--because I never
+bowed down to any of the false gods I know the gold from the mica, ...
+I! 'My own beloved'--you should have my soul to stand on if it could
+make you stand higher. Yet you shall not call me 'ambitious.'
+
+To-day I went down-stairs again, and wished to know whether you were
+walking in your proportion--and your letter does call you 'better,'
+whether you walked enough or not, and it bears the Deptford post-mark.
+On Saturday I shall see how you are looking. So pale you were last
+time! I know Mr. Kenyon must have observed it, (dear Mr. Kenyon ...
+for being 'kinder and kindest') and that one of the 'augurs'
+marvelled at the other! By the way I forgot yesterday to tell you how
+Mr. Burges's 'apt remark' did amuse me. And Mr. Kenyon who said much
+the same words to me last week in relation to this very Wordsworth
+junior, writhed, I am sure, and wished the ingenious observer with the
+lost plays of AEschylus--oh, I seem to see Mr. Kenyon's face! He was to
+have come to tell me how you all behaved at dinner that day, but he
+keeps away ... you have given him too much to think of perhaps.
+
+I heard from Miss Mitford to-day that Mr. Chorley's hope is at an end
+in respect to the theatre, and (I must tell you) she praises him
+warmly for his philosophy and fortitude under the disappointment. How
+much philosophy does it take,--please to instruct me,--in order to the
+decent bearing of such disasters? Can I fancy one, shorter than you by
+a whole head of the soul, condescending to '_bear_' such things? No,
+indeed.
+
+Be good and kind, and do not work at the 'Tragedy' ... do not.
+
+So you and I have written out all the paper in London! At least, I
+send and send in vain to have more envelopes 'after my kind,' and the
+last answer is, that a 'fresh supply will arrive in eight days from
+Paris, and that in the meanwhile they are quite _out_ in the article.'
+An awful sign of the times, is this famine of envelopes ... not to
+speak of the scarcity of little sheets:--and the augurs look to it all
+of course.
+
+For _my_ part I think more of Chiappino--Chiappino holds me fast.
+
+But I must let _you_ go--it is too late. This dearest letter, which
+you sent me! I thank you for it with ever so much dumbness. May God
+bless you and keep you, and make you happy for me.
+
+                                                    Your BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]
+
+How I get to understand this much of Law--that prior possession is
+nine points of it! Just because your infinite adroitness got first
+hold of the point of view whence our connection looks like 'a dream'
+... I find myself shut out of my very own, unable to say what is
+oftenest in my thought; whereas the dear, miraculous dream _you_ were,
+and are, my Ba! Only, _vanish_--_that_ you will never! My own, and for
+ever!
+
+Yesterday I read the poor, inconceivably inadequate notice in the
+_People's Journal_. How curiously wrong, too, in the personal guesses!
+Sad work truly. For my old friend Mrs. Adams--no, I must be silent:
+the lyrics seem doggerel in its utter purity. And so the people are to
+be instructed in the new age of gold! I _heard_ two days ago precisely
+what I told you--that there was a quarrel, &c. which this service was
+to smooth over, no doubt. Chorley told me, in a hasty word only, that
+all was over, Mr. Webster would not have anything to do with his play.
+The said W. is one of the poorest of poor creatures, and as Chorley
+was certainly forewarned, forearmed I will hope him to have been
+likewise--still it is very disappointing--he was apparently nearer
+than most aspirants to the prize,--having the best will of the
+actresses on whose shoulder the burthen was to lie. I hope they have
+been quite honest with him--knowing as I do the easy process of
+transferring all sorts of burthens, in that theatrical world, from
+responsible to irresponsible members of it, actors to manager, manager
+to actors, as the case requires. And it is a 'hope deferred' with
+Chorley; not for the second or third time. I am very glad that he
+cares no more than you tell me.
+
+Still you go down-stairs, and still return safely, and every step
+leads us nearer to _my_ 'hope.' How unremittingly you bless me--a
+visit promises a letter, a letter brings such news, crowns me with
+such words, and speaks of another visit--and so the golden links
+extend. Dearest words, dearest letters--as I add each to my heap, I
+say--I _do_ say--'I was _poor_, it now seems, a minute ago, when I had
+not _this_!' Bless you, dear, dear Ba. On Saturday I shall be with
+you, I trust--may God bless you! Ever your own
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Sunday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+
+Ever dearest I am going to say one word first of all lest I should
+forget it afterward, of the two or three words which you said
+yesterday and so passingly that you probably forget to-day having said
+them at all. We were speaking of Mr. Chorley and his house, and you
+said that you did not care for such and such things for yourself, but
+that for others--now you remember the rest. And I just want to say
+what it would have been simpler to have said at the time--only not so
+easy--(I _couldn't_ say it at the time) that you are not if you please
+to fancy that because I am a woman I have not the pretension to do
+with as little in any way as you yourself ... no, it is not _that_ I
+mean to say.... I mean that you are not, if you please, to fancy that,
+because I am a woman, I look to be cared for in those outside things,
+or should have the slightest pleasure in any of them. So never wish
+nor regret in your thoughts to be able or not to be able to care this
+and this for _me_; for while you are thinking so, our thoughts go
+different ways, which is wrong. Mr. Fox did me a great deal too much
+honour in calling me 'a religious hermit'; he was 'curiously' in
+fault, as you saw. It is not my vocation to sit on a stone in a
+cave--I was always too fond of lolling upon sofas or in chairs nearly
+as large,--and this, which I sit in, was given to me when I was a
+child by my uncle, the uncle I spoke of to you once, and has been
+lolled in nearly ever since ... when I was well enough. Well--_that_
+is a sort of luxury, of course--but it is more idle than expensive, as
+a habit, and I do believe that it is the 'head and foot of my
+offending' in that matter. Yes--'confiteor tibi' besides, that I do
+hate white dimity curtains, which is highly improper for a religious
+hermit of course, but excusable in _me_ who would accept brown serge
+as a substitute with ever so much indifference. It is the white light
+which comes in the dimity which is so hateful to me. To 'go mad in
+white dimity' seems perfectly natural, and consequential even. Set
+aside these foibles, and one thing is as good as another with me, and
+the more simplicity in the way of living, the better. If I saw Mr.
+Chorley's satin sofas and gilded ceilings I should call them very
+pretty I dare say, but never covet the possession of the like--it
+would never enter my mind to do so. Then Papa has not kept a carriage
+since I have been grown up (they grumble about it here in the house,
+but when people have once had great reverses they get nervous about
+spending money) so I shall not miss the Clarence and greys ... and I
+do entreat you _not_ to put those two ideas together again of _me_ and
+the finery which has nothing to do with me. I have talked a great deal
+too much of all this, you will think, but I want you, once for all, to
+apply it broadly to the whole of the future both in the general view
+and the details, so that we need not return to the subject. Judge for
+me as for yourself--_what is good for you is good for me_. Otherwise I
+shall be humiliated, you know; just as far as I know your thoughts.
+
+Mr. Kenyon has been here to-day--and I have been down-stairs--two
+great events! He was in brilliant spirits and sate talking ever so
+long, and named you as he always does. Something he asked, and then
+said suddenly ... 'But I don't see why I should ask _you_, when I
+ought to know him better than you can.' On which I was wise enough to
+change colour, as I felt, to the roots of my hair. There is the
+effect of a bad conscience! and it has happened to me before, with Mr.
+Kenyon, three times--once particularly, when I could have cried with
+vexation (to complete the effects!), he looked at me with such
+infinite surprise in a dead pause of any speaking. _That_ was in the
+summer; and all to be said for it now, is, that it couldn't be helped:
+couldn't!
+
+Mr. Kenyon asked of 'Saul.' (By the way, you never answered about the
+blue lilies.) He asked of 'Saul' and whether it would be finished in
+the new number. He hangs on the music of your David. Did you read in
+the _Athenaeum_ how Jules Janin--no, how the critic on Jules Janin (was
+it the critic? was it Jules Janin? the glorious confusion is gaining
+on me I think) has magnificently confounded places and persons in
+Robert Southey's urn by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord
+Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after
+moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to
+our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme.
+Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in
+fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable
+purity enough, too. It does certainly appear wonderful that we should
+not sufficiently stand abreast here in Europe, to justify and
+necessitate the establishment of an European review--journal
+rather--(the 'Foreign Review,' so called, touching only the summits of
+the hills) a journal which might be on a level with the intelligent
+readers of all the countries of Europe, and take all the rising
+reputations of each, with the national light on them as they rise,
+into observation and judgment. If nobody can do this, it is a pity I
+think to do so much less--both in France and England--to snatch up a
+French book from over the Channel as ever and anon they do in the
+_Athenaeum_, and say something prodigiously absurd of it, till people
+cry out 'oh oh' as in the House of Commons.
+
+Oh--oh--and how wise I am to-day, as if I were a critic myself!
+Yesterday I was foolish instead--for I couldn't get out of my head all
+the evening how you said that you would come 'to see a candle held up
+at the window.' Well! but I do not mean to love you any more just
+now--so I tell you plainly. Certainly I will not. I love you already
+too much perhaps. I feel like the turning Dervishes turning in the sun
+when you say such words to me--and I _never shall_ love you any
+'less,' because it is too much to be made less of.
+
+And you write to-morrow? and will tell me how you are? honestly will
+tell me? May God bless you, most dear!
+
+                                  I am yours--'Tota tua est'
+
+                                       BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Sunday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+
+How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent?
+Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard--the
+speaker had _tried_ words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not
+reflect that he did not even try--so with me now, that loving you, Ba,
+with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide
+wondering gratitude and veneration, I press close to you to say so, in
+this imperfect way, my dear dearest beloved! Why do you not help me,
+rather than take my words, my proper word, from me and call them
+yours, when yours they are not? You said lately love of you 'made you
+humble'--just as if to hinder _me_ from saying that earnest
+truth!--entirely true it is, as I feel ever more convincingly. You do
+not choose to understand it should be so, nor do I much care, for the
+one thing you must believe, must resolve to believe in its length and
+breadth, is that I do love you and live only in the love of you.
+
+I will rest on the confidence that you do so believe! You _know_ by
+this that it is no shadowy image of you and _not_ you, which having
+attached myself to in the first instance, I afterward compelled my
+fancy to see reproduced, so to speak, with tolerable exactness to the
+original idea, in you, the dearest real _you_ I am blessed with--you
+_know_ what the eyes are to me, and the lips and the hair. And I, for
+my part, know _now_, while fresh from seeing you, certainly _know_,
+whatever I may have said a short time since, that _you_ will go on to
+the end, that the arm round me will not let me go,--over such a blind
+abyss--I refuse to think, to fancy, _towards_ what it would be to
+loose you now! So I give my life, my soul into your hand--the giving
+is a mere form too, it is yours, ever yours from the first--but ever
+as I see you, sit with you, and come away to think over it all, I find
+more that seems mine to give; you give me more life and it goes back
+to you.
+
+I shall hear from you to-morrow--then, I will go out early and get
+done with some calls, in the joy and consciousness of what waits me,
+and when I return I will write a few words. Are these letters, these
+merest attempts at getting to talk with you through the distance--yet
+always with the consolation of feeling that you will know all,
+interpret all and forgive it and put it right--can such things be
+cared for, expected, as you say? Then, Ba, my life _must_ be better
+... with the closeness to help, and the 'finding out the way' for
+which love was always noted. If you begin making in fancy a lover to
+your mind, I am lost at once--but the one quality of _affection_ for
+you, which would sooner or later have to be placed on his list of
+component graces; _that_ I will dare start supply--the entire love you
+could dream of _is_ here. You think you see some of the other
+adornments, and only too many; and you will see plainer one day, but
+with that I do not concern myself--you shall admire the true
+heroes--but me you shall love for the love's sake. Let me kiss you,
+you, my dearest, dearest--God bless you ever--
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
+
+Indeed I would, dearest Ba, go with entire gladness and pride to see a
+light that came from your room--why should that surprise you? Well,
+you will _know_ one day.
+
+We understand each other too about the sofas and gilding--oh, I know
+you, my own sweetest! For me, if I had set those matters to heart, I
+should have turned into the obvious way of getting them--not _out_ of
+it, as I did resolutely from the beginning. All I meant was, to
+express a very natural feeling--if one could give you diamonds for
+flowers, and if you liked diamonds,--then, indeed! As it is, wherever
+we are found shall be, if you please, 'For the love's sake found
+therein--sweetest _house_ was ever seen!'
+
+Mr. Kenyon must be merciful. Lilies are of all colours in
+Palestine--one sort is particularized as _white_ with a dark blue spot
+and streak--the water lily, lotos, which I think I meant, is _blue_
+altogether.
+
+I have walked this morning to town and back--I feel much better,
+'honestly'! The head better--the spirits rising--as how should they
+not, when _you_ think all will go well in the end, when you write to
+me that you go down-stairs and are stronger--and when the rest is
+written?
+
+Not more now, dearest, for time is pressing, but you will answer
+this,--the love that is not here,--not the idle words, and I will
+reply to-morrow. Thursday is so far away yet!
+
+Bless you, my very own, only dearest!
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Monday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 17, 1846.]
+
+Dearest, you are dearest always! Talk of Sirens, ... there must be
+some masculine ones 'rari nantes,' I fancy, (though we may not find
+them in unquestionable authorities like your AElian!) to justify this
+voice I hear. Ah, how you speak, with that pretension, too, to
+dumbness! What should people be made of, in order to bear such words,
+do you think? Will all the wax from all the altar-candles in the
+Sistine Chapel, keep the piercing danger from their ears? Being tied
+up a good deal tighter than Ulysses did not save _me_. Dearest
+dearest: I laugh, you see, as usual, not to cry! But deep down, deeper
+than the Sirens go, deep underneath the tides, _there_, I bless and
+love you with the voice that makes no sound.
+
+Other human creatures (how often I do think it to myself!) have their
+good things scattered over their lives, sown here and sown there, down
+the slopes, and by the waysides. But with me ... I have mine all
+poured down on one spot in the midst of the sands!--if you knew what I
+feel at moments, and at half-hours, when I give myself up to the
+feeling freely and take no thought of red eyes. A woman once was
+killed with gifts, crushed with the weight of golden bracelets thrown
+at her: and, knowing myself, I have wondered more than a little, how
+it was that I could _bear_ this strange and unused gladness, without
+sinking as the emotion rose. Only I was incredulous at first, and the
+day broke slowly ... and the gifts fell like the rain ... softly; and
+God gives strength, by His providence, for sustaining blessings as
+well as stripes. Dearest--
+
+For the rest I understand you perfectly--perfectly. It was simply to
+your _thoughts_, that I replied ... and that you need not say to
+yourself any more, as you did once to me when you brought me flowers,
+that you wished they were diamonds. It was simply to prevent the
+accident of such a _thought_, that I spoke out mine. You would not
+wish accidentally that you had a double-barrelled gun to give me, or a
+cardinal's hat, or a snuff box, and I meant to say that you _might as
+well_--as diamonds and satin sofas a la Chorley. Thoughts are
+something, and _your_ thoughts are something more. To be sure they
+are!
+
+You are better you say, which makes me happy of course. And you will
+not make the 'better' worse again by doing wrong things--_that_ is my
+petition. It was the excess of goodness to write those two letters for
+me in one day, and I thank you, thank you. Beloved, when you write,
+_let_ it be, if you choose, ever so few lines. Do not suffer me (for
+my own sake) to tire you, because two lines or three bring _you_ to me
+... remember ... just as a longer letter would.
+
+But where, pray, did I say, and when, that 'everything would end
+well?' Was _that_ in the dream, when we two met on the stairs? I did
+not really say so I think. And 'well' is how you understand it. If you
+jump out of the window you succeed in getting to the ground, somehow,
+dead or alive ... but whether _that_ means 'ending well,' depends on
+your way of considering matters. I am seriously of opinion
+nevertheless, that if 'the arm,' you talk of, _drops_, it will not be
+for weariness nor even for weakness, but because it is cut off at the
+shoulder. _I_ will not fail to you,--may God so deal with me, so bless
+me, so leave me, as I live only for you and _shall_. Do you doubt
+_that_, my only beloved! Ah, you know well--_too well_, people would
+say ... but I do not think it 'too well' myself, ... knowing _you_.
+
+                                                    Your
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Here is a gossip which Mr. Kenyon brought me on Sunday--disbelieving
+it himself, he asseverated, though Lady Chantrey said it 'with
+authority,'--that Mr. Harness had offered his hand heart and
+ecclesiastical dignities to Miss Burdett Coutts. It is Lady Chantrey's
+and Mr. Kenyon's _secret_, remember.
+
+And ... will you tell me? How can a man spend four or five successive
+months on the sea, most cheaply--at the least pecuniary expense, I
+mean? Because Miss Mitford's friend Mr. Buckingham is ordered by his
+medical adviser to complete his cure by these means; and he is not
+rich. Could he go with sufficient comfort by a merchant's vessel to
+the Mediterranean ... and might he drift about among the Greek
+islands?
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                                    Tuesday.
+
+'Out of window' would be well, as I see the leap, if it ended (_so far
+as I am concerned_) in the worst way imaginable--I would I 'run the
+risk' (Ba's other word) rationally, deliberately,--knowing what the
+ordinary law of chances in this world justifies in such a case; and if
+the result after all _was_ unfortunate, it would be far easier to
+undergo the extremest penalty with so little to reproach myself
+for,--than to put aside the adventure,--waive the wondrous probability
+of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an
+adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an
+eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager
+sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen
+times running--which wager I wisely refused to accept because it was
+not written in the stars that such a sequence might never be. I had
+rather, rather a thousand-fold lose my paltry stake, and be the one
+recorded victim to such an unexampled unluckiness that half a dozen
+mad comets, suns gone wrong, and lunatic moons must have come
+laboriously into conjunction for my special sake to bring it to pass,
+which were no slight honour, properly considered!--And this is _my_
+way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and
+happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don't
+sparkle--underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance,
+chance! there is _no_ chance here! I _have_ gained enough for my life,
+I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change
+altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last
+minute on what I can remember of this past year--I _could_ do that.
+_Now_, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself--all would be
+different, sadly different--But saying what you do say, promising 'the
+strength of arm'--do not wonder that I call it an assurance of all
+being 'well'! All is _best_, as you promise--dear, darling Ba!--and I
+say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, _as you say_,
+promise as you promise--only meaning a worship of you that is solely
+fit for me, fit by position--are not you my 'mistress?' Come, some
+good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the
+Bower's disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the
+house at Loretto, to the Siren's isle where we shall find it preserved
+in a beauty 'very rare and absolute')--is it not right you should be
+my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I
+am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet?
+and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you _wholly_, my Ba! May God
+bless you--
+
+                                              Ever your own,
+
+                                                   R.
+
+It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-ship bound for
+some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another
+and perhaps a third--Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on.
+The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort _enormous_
+for an invalid--the one advantage is the solitariness of the _one_
+passenger among all those rough new creatures. _I_ like it much, and
+soon get deep into their friendship, but another has other ways of
+viewing matters. No one article provided by the ship in the way of
+provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and
+the horrors of dirt and men's ministry are portentous, yet by a little
+arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own
+powers of endurance, and counsel nobody to gain my experience. On the
+other hand, were all to do again, I had rather have seen Venice _so_,
+with the five or six weeks' absolute rest of the mind's eyes, than any
+other imaginable way,--except Balloon-travelling.
+
+Do you think they meant Landor's 'Count Julian'--the 'subject of his
+tragedy' sure enough,--and that _he_ was the friend of Southey? So it
+struck me--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
+
+Ah well--we shall see. Only remember that it is not my fault if I
+throw the double sixes, and if you, on [_some sun-shiny_ day, (a day
+too late to help yourself) stand face to face with a milkwhite
+unicorn.][1] Ah--do not be angry. It is ungrateful of me to write
+so--I put a line through it to prove I have a conscience after all. I
+know that you love me, and I know it so well that I was reproaching
+myself severely not long ago, for seeming to love your love more than
+you. Let me tell you how I proved _that_, or seemed. For ever so long,
+you remember, I have been talking finely about giving you up for your
+good and so on. Which was sincere as far as the words went--but oh,
+the hypocrisy of our souls!--of mine, for instance! 'I would give you
+up for your good'--_but_ when I pressed upon myself the question
+whether (if I had the power) I would consent to make you willing to be
+given up, by throwing away your love into the river, in a ring like
+Charlemagne's, ... why I found directly that I would throw myself
+there sooner. I could not do it in fact--I shrank from the test. A
+very pitiful virtue of generosity, is your Ba's! Still, it is not
+possible, I think, that she should '_love your love more than you_.'
+There must be a mistake in the calculation somewhere--a figure dropt.
+It would be too bad for her!
+
+Your account of your merchantmen, though with Venice in the distance,
+will scarcely be attractive to a confirmed invalid, I fear--and yet
+the steamers will be found expensive beyond his means. The
+sugar-vessels, which I hear most about, give out an insufferable smell
+and steam--let us talk of it a little on Thursday. On Monday I forgot.
+
+For Landor's 'Julian,' oh no, I cannot fancy it to be probable that
+those Parisians should know anything of Landor, even by a mistake. Do
+you not suppose that the play is founded (confounded) on Shelley's
+poem, as the French use materials ... by distraction, into confusion?
+The 'urn by the Adriatic' (which all the French know how to turn
+upside down) fixes the reference to Shelley--does it not?
+
+Not a word of the head--what does _that_ mean, I wonder. I have not
+been down-stairs to-day--the wind is too cold--but you have walked?
+... there was no excuse for you. God bless you, ever dearest. It is my
+last word till Thursday's first. A fine queen you have, by the way!--a
+queen Log, whom you had better leave in the bushes! Witness our
+hand....
+
+                                                 BA--REGINA.
+
+[Footnote 1: The words in brackets are struck out.]
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
+
+Indeed, dearest, you shall not have _last word_ as you think,--all the
+'risk' shall not be mine, neither; how can I, in the event, throw
+ambs-ace (is not that the old word?) and not peril _your_ stakes too,
+when once we have common stock and are partners? When I see the
+unicorn and grieve proportionately, do you mean to say you are not
+going to grieve too, for my sake? And if so--why, _you_ clearly run
+exactly the same risk,--_must_,--unless you mean to rejoice in my
+sorrow! So your chance is my chance; my success your success, you say,
+and my failure, your failure, will you not say? You see, you see, Ba,
+my own--own! What do you think frightened me in your letter for a
+second or two? You write 'Let us talk on Thursday ... Monday I
+forgot'--which I read,--'no, not on Thursday--I had forgotten! It is
+to be _Monday_ when we meet next'!--whereat
+
+              ... as a goose
+    In death contracts his talons close,
+
+as Hudibras sings--I clutched the letter convulsively--till relief
+came.
+
+So till to-morrow--my all-beloved! Bless you. I am rather hazy in the
+head as Archer Gurney will find in due season--(he comes, I told
+you)--but all the morning I have been going for once and for ever
+through the 'Tragedy,' and it is _done_--(done _for_). Perhaps I may
+bring it to-morrow--if my sister can copy all; I cut out a huge kind
+of sermon from the middle and reserve it for a better time--still it
+is very long; so long! So, if I ask, may I have 'Luria' back to
+morrow? So shall printing begin, and headache end--and 'no more for
+the present from your loving'
+
+                                                        R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Friday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 20, 1846.]
+
+I shall be late with my letter this morning because my sisters have
+been here talking, talking ... and I did not like to say exactly 'Go
+away that I may write.' Mr. Kenyon shortened our time yesterday too by
+a whole half-hour or three quarters--the stars are against us. He is
+coming on Sunday, however, he says, and if so, Monday will be safe and
+clear--and not a word was said after you went, about you: he was in a
+good joyous humour, as you saw, and the letter he brought was, oh! so
+complimentary to me--I will tell you. The writer doesn't see anything
+'in Browning and Turner,' she confesses--'_may_ perhaps with time and
+study,' but for the present sees nothing,--only has wide-open eyes of
+admiration for E.B.B. ... now isn't it satisfactory to _me_? Do you
+understand the full satisfaction of just that sort of thing ... to be
+praised by somebody who sees nothing in Shakespeare?--to be found on
+the level of somebody so flat? Better the bad-word of the Britannia,
+ten times over! And best, to take no thought of bad or good words! ...
+except such as I shall have to-night, perhaps! Shall I?
+
+Will you be pleased to understand in the meanwhile a little about the
+'risks' I am supposed to run, and not hold to such a godlike
+simplicity ('gods and bulls,' dearest!) as you made show of yesterday?
+If we two went to the gaming-table, and you gave me a purse of gold to
+play with, should I have a right to talk proudly of 'my stakes?' and
+would any reasonable person say of both of us playing together as
+partners, that we ran 'equal risks'? I trow not--and so do _you_ ...
+when you have not predetermined to be stupid, and mix up the rouge and
+noir into 'one red' of glorious confusion. What had I to lose on the
+point of happiness when you knew me first?--and if now I lose (as I
+certainly may according to your calculation) the happiness you have
+given me, why still I am your debtor for _the gift_ ... now see! Yet
+to bring you down into my ashes ... _that_ has been so intolerable a
+possibility to me from the first. Well, perhaps I run _more_ risk than
+you, under that one aspect. Certainly I never should forgive myself
+again if you were unhappy. 'What had _I_ to do,' I should think, 'with
+touching your life?' And if ever I am to think so, I would rather that
+I never had known you, seen your face, heard your voice--which is the
+uttermost sacrifice and abnegation. I could not say or sacrifice any
+more--not even for _you_! _You_, for _you_ ... is all I can!
+
+Since you left me I have been making up my mind to your having the
+headache worse than ever, through the agreement with Moxon. I do, do
+beseech you to spare yourself, and let 'Luria' go as he is, and above
+all things not to care for my infinite foolishnesses as you see them
+in those notes. Remember that if you are ill, it is not so easy to
+say, 'Now I will be well again.' Ever dearest, care for me in
+yourself--say how you are.... I am not unwell to-day, but feel flagged
+and weak rather with the cold ... and look at your flowers for courage
+and an assurance that the summer is within hearing. May God bless you
+... blessing _us_, beloved!
+
+                                                    Your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+Mr. Poe has sent me his poems and tales--so now I must write to thank
+him for his dedication. Just now I have the book. As to Mr.
+Buckingham, he will go, Constantinople and back, before we talk of
+him.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Saturday Morning.
+                                [Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]
+
+Dearest,--it just strikes me that I _might_ by some chance be kept in
+town this morning--(having to go to Milnes' breakfast there)--so as
+not to find the note I venture to expect, in time for an answer by our
+last post to-night. But I will try--this only is a precaution against
+the possibility. Dear, dear Ba! I cannot thank you, know not how to
+thank you for the notes! I adopt every one, of course, not as Ba's
+notes but as Miss Barrett's, not as Miss Barrett's but as anybody's,
+everybody's--such incontestable improvements they suggest. When shall
+I tell you more ... on Monday or Tuesday? _That_ I _must_
+know--because you appointed Monday, 'if nothing happened--' and Mr. K.
+happened--can you let me hear by our early post to-morrow--as on
+Monday I am to be with Moxon early, you know--and no letters arrive
+before 11-1/2 or 12. I was not very well yesterday, but to-day am much
+better--and you,--I say how _I_ am precisely to have a double right to
+know _all_ about you, dearest, in this snow and cold! How do you bear
+it? And Mr. K. spoke of '_that_ being your worst day.' Oh, dear
+dearest Ba, remember how I live in you--on the hopes, with the memory
+of you. Bless you ever!
+
+                                                          R.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                [Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]
+
+I do not understand how my letters limp so instead of flying as they
+ought with the feathers I give them, and how you did not receive last
+night, nor even early this morning, what left me at two o'clock
+yesterday. But I understand _now_ the not hearing from you--you were
+not well. Not well, not well ... _that_ is always 'happening' at
+least. And Mr. Moxon, who is to have his first sheet, whether you are
+well or ill! It is wrong ... yes, very wrong--and if one point of
+wrongness is touched, we shall not easily get right again--as I think
+mournfully, feeling confident (call me Cassandra, but I cannot jest
+about it) feeling certain that it will end (the means being so
+persisted in) by some serious illness--serious sorrow,--on yours and
+my part.
+
+As to Monday, Mr. Kenyon said he would come again on Sunday--in which
+case, Monday will be clear. If he should not come on Sunday, he will
+or may on Monday,--yet--oh, in every case, perhaps you can come on
+Monday--there will be no time to let you know of Mr. Kenyon--and
+_probably_ we shall be safe, and your being in town seems to fix the
+day. For myself I am well enough, and the wind has changed, which will
+make me better--this cold weather oppresses and weakens me, but it is
+close to April and can't last and won't last--it is warmer already.
+Beware of the notes! They are not Ba's--except for the insolence, nor
+EBB's--because of the carelessness. If I had known, moreover, that you
+were going to Moxon's on Monday, they should have gone to the fire
+rather than provoked you into superfluous work for the short interval.
+Just so much are they despised of both EBB and Ba.
+
+I am glad I did not hear from you yesterday because you were not
+well, and you _must never_ write when you are not well. But if you had
+been quite well, should I have heard?--_I doubt it_. You meant me to
+hear from you only once, from Thursday to Monday. Is it not the truth
+now that you hate writing to me?
+
+The _Athenaeum_ takes up the 'Tales from Boccaccio' as if they were
+worth it, and imputes in an underground way the authorship to the
+members of the 'coterie' so called--do you observe _that_? There is an
+implication that persons named in the poem wrote the poem themselves.
+And upon _whom_ does the critic mean to fix the song of 'Constancy'
+... the song which is 'not to puzzle anybody' who knows the tunes of
+the song-writers! The perfection of commonplace it seems to me. It
+might have been written by the 'poet Bunn.' Don't you think so?
+
+While I write this you are in town, but you will not read it till
+Sunday unless I am more fortunate than usual. On Monday then! And no
+word before? No--I shall be sure not to hear to-night. Now do try not
+to suffer through 'Luria.' Let Mr. Moxon wait a week rather. There is
+time enough.
+
+                                                   Ever your
+
+                                                        BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Sunday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 23, 1846.]
+
+Oh, my Ba--how you shall hear of this to-morrow--that is all: _I_ hate
+writing? See when presently I _only_ write to you daily, hourly if you
+let me? Just this _now_--I will be with you to-morrow in any case--I
+can go away _at once_, if need be, or stay--if you like you can stop
+me by sending a note for me _to Moxon's before_ 10 o'clock--if
+anything calls for such a measure.
+
+Now briefly,--I am unwell and entirely irritated with this sad
+'Luria'--I thought it a failure at first, I find it infinitely worse
+than I thought--it is a pure exercise of _cleverness_, even where most
+successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by
+another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry
+the more to get on, with the printing,--it is to throw out and away
+from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected
+it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better
+hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, _unlike_ the woman at her
+spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his _flax_ on the whole far more than
+of his singing'--more of his life's sustainment, of dear, dear Ba he
+hates writing to, than of these wooden figures--no wonder all is as it
+is?
+
+Here is a pure piece of the old Chorley leaven for you, just as it
+reappears ever and anon and throws one back on the mistrust all but
+abandoned! Chorley _knows_ I have not seen that Powell for nearly
+fifteen months--that I never heard of the book till it reached me in a
+blank cover--that I never contributed a line or word to it directly or
+indirectly--and I should think he _also knows_ that all the sham
+learning, notes &c., all that saves the book from the deepest deep of
+contempt, was contributed by Heraud (_a regular critic in the
+'Athenaeum'_), who received his pay for the same: he knows I never
+spoke in my life to 'Jones or Stephens'--that there is no 'coterie' of
+which I can, by any extension of the word, form a part--that I am in
+this case at the mercy of a wretched creature who to get into my
+favour again (to speak the plain truth) put in the gross, disgusting
+flattery in the notes--yet Chorley, knowing this, none so well, and
+what the writer's end is--(to have it supposed I, and the others
+named--Talfourd, for instance--ARE his friends and helpers)--he
+condescends to _further_ it by such a notice, written with that
+observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid
+Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie--_so_ clever but _so_
+wicked'!--a kind of _D'Orsay's_ praise--while to the rest of his
+readers, a few depreciatory epithets--slight sneers convey his real
+sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an
+article of him once a quarter and would _expect_ notice. I think I
+hear Chorley--'You know, I _cannot_ praise such a book--it _is_ too
+bad'--as if, as if--oh, it makes one sicker than having written
+'Luria,' there's one comfort! I shall call on Chorley and ask for
+_his_ account of the matter. Meantime nobody will read his foolish
+notice without believing as he and Powell desire! Bless you, my own
+Ba--to-morrow makes amends to R.B.
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday.
+                                [Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
+
+How ungrateful I was to your flowers yesterday, never looking at them
+nor praising them till they were put away, and yourself gone away--and
+_that_ was _your_ fault, be it remembered, because you began to tell
+me of the good news from Moxon's, and, in the joy of it, I missed the
+flowers ... for the nonce, you know. Afterward they had their due, and
+all the more that you were not there. My first business when you are
+out of the room and the house, and the street perhaps, is to arrange
+the flowers and to gather out of them all the thoughts you leave
+between the leaves and at the end of the stalks. And shall I tell you
+what happened, not yesterday, but the Thursday before? no, it was the
+Friday morning, when I found, or rather Wilson found and held up from
+my chair, a bunch of dead blue violets. Quite dead they seemed! You
+had dropped them and I had sate on them, and where we murdered them
+they had lain, poor things, all the night through. And Wilson thought
+it the vainest of labours when she saw me set about reviving them,
+cutting the stalks afresh, and dipping them head and ears into
+water--but then she did not know how you, and I, and ours, live under
+a miraculous dispensation, and could only simply be astonished when
+they took to blowing again as if they never had wanted the dew of the
+garden, ... yes, and when at last they outlived all the prosperity of
+the contemporary white violets which flourished in water from the
+beginning, and were free from the disadvantage of having been sate
+upon. Now you shall thank me for this letter, it is at once so amusing
+and instructive. After all, too, it teaches you what the great events
+of my life are, not that the resuscitation of your violets would not
+really be a great event to me, even if I led the life of a pirate,
+between fire and sea, otherwise. But take _you_ away ... out of my
+life!--and what remains? The only greenness I used to have (before you
+brought your flowers) was as the grass growing in deserted streets,
+... which brings a proof, in every increase, of the extending
+desolation.
+
+Dearest, I persist in thinking that you ought not to be too disdainful
+to explain your meaning in the Pomegranates. Surely you might say in a
+word or two that, your title having been doubted about (to your
+surprise, you _might_ say!), you refer the doubters to the Jewish
+priest's robe, and the Rabbinical gloss ... for I suppose it is a
+gloss on the robe ... do you not think so? Consider that Mr. Kenyon
+and I may fairly represent the average intelligence of your
+readers,--and that _he_ was altogether in the clouds as to your
+meaning ... had not the most distant notion of it,--while I, taking
+hold of the priest's garment, missed the Rabbins and the distinctive
+significance, as completely as he did. Then for Vasari, it is not the
+handbook of the whole world, however it may be Mrs. Jameson's. Now why
+should you be too proud to teach such persons as only desire to be
+taught? I persist--I shall teaze you.
+
+This morning my brothers have been saying ... 'Ah you had Mr. Browning
+with you yesterday, I see by the flowers,' ... just as if they said 'I
+see queen Mab has been with you.' Then Stormie took the opportunity of
+swearing to me by all his gods that your name was mentioned lately in
+the House of Commons--_is_ that true? or untrue? He forgot to tell me
+at the time, he says,--and you were named with others and in relation
+to copyright matters. _Is_ it true?
+
+Mr. Hornblower Gill is the author of a Hymn to Passion week, and wrote
+to me as the 'glorifier of pain!' to remind me that the best glory of
+a soul is shown in the joy of it, and that all chief poets except
+Dante have seen, felt, and written it so. Thus and therefore was
+matured his purpose of writing an 'ode to joy,' as I told you. The man
+seems to have very good thoughts, ... but he writes like a colder
+Cowley still ... no impulse, no heat for fusing ... no inspiration, in
+fact. Though I have scarcely done more than glance at his 'Passion
+week,' and have little right to give an opinion.
+
+If you have killed Luria as you helped to kill my violets, what shall
+I say, do you fancy? Well--we shall see! Do not kill yourself,
+beloved, in any case! The [Greek: iostephanoi Mousai] had better die
+themselves first! Ah--what am I writing? What nonsense? I mean, in
+deep earnest, the deepest, that you should take care and exercise, and
+not be vexed for Luria's sake--Luria will have his triumph presently!
+May God bless you--prays your own
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+
+
+_R.B. to E.B.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Afternoon.
+                                [Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
+
+My own dearest, if you _do_--(for I confess to nothing of the kind),
+but if you _should_ detect an unwillingness to write at certain times,
+what would that prove,--I mean, what that one need shrink from
+avowing? If I never had you before me except when writing letters to
+you--then! Why, we do not even _talk_ much now! witness Mr. Buckingham
+and his voyage that ought to have been discussed!--Oh, how coldly I
+should write,--how the bleak-looking paper would seem unpropitious to
+carry my feeling--if all had to begin and try to find words _this_
+way!
+
+Now, this morning I have been out--to town and back--and for all the
+walking my head aches--and I have the conviction that presently when I
+resign myself to think of you wholly, with only the pretext,--the
+make-believe of occupation, in the shape of some book to turn over the
+leaves of,--I shall see you and soon be well; so soon! You must know,
+there is a chair (one of the kind called gond_o_la-chairs by
+upholsterers--with an emphasized o)--which occupies the precise place,
+stands just in the same relation to this chair I sit on now, that
+yours stands in and occupies--to the left of the fire: and, how often,
+how _always_ I turn in the dusk and _see_ the dearest real Ba with me.
+
+How entirely kind to take that trouble, give those sittings for me! Do
+you think the kindness has missed its due effect? _No, no_, I am
+glad,--(_knowing what I_ now _know_,--what you meant _should be_, and
+did all in your power to prevent) that I have _not_ received the
+picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi--te!'
+But I have set my heart on _seeing_ it--will you remember next time,
+next Saturday?
+
+I will leave off now. To-morrow, dearest, only dearest Ba, I will
+write a longer letter--the clock stops it this afternoon--it is later
+than I thought, and our poor crazy post! This morning, hoping against
+hope, I ran to meet our postman coming meditatively up the lane--with
+_a_ letter, indeed!--but Ba's will come to-night--and I will be happy,
+already _am_ happy, expecting it. Bless you, my own love,
+
+                                                 Ever your--
+
+
+
+_E.B.B. to R.B._
+
+                                Tuesday Evening.
+                                [Post-mark, March 25, 1846.]
+
+Ah; if I '_do_' ... if I '_should_' ... if I _shall_ ... if I _will_
+... if I _must_ ... what can all the 'ifs' prove, but a most
+hypothetical state of the conscience? And in brief, I beg you to
+stand convinced of one thing, that whenever the 'certain time' comes
+for to 'hate writing to me' confessedly, 'avowedly,' (oh what words!)
+_I shall not like it at all_--not for all the explanations ... and the
+sights in gondola chairs, which the person seen is none the better
+for! The [Greek: eidolon] sits by the fire--the real Ba is cold at
+heart through wanting her letter. And that's the doctrine to be
+preached now, ... is it? I 'shrink,' shrink from it. That's your
+word!--and mine! Dearest, I began by half a jest and end by
+half-gravity, which is the fault of your doctrine and not of me I
+think. Yet it is ungrateful to be grave, when practically you are good
+and just about the letters, and generous too sometimes, and I could
+not bear the idea of obliging you to write to me, even once ...
+when.... Now do not fancy that I do not understand. I understand
+perfectly, on the contrary. Only do _you_ try not to dislike writing
+when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... _that_, I ask
+of you, dear dearest--and forgive me for all this over-writing and
+teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It
+is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to
+receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so,
+revolt from thinking it lawful for you to dislike.... Well! the
+Goddess of Dulness herself couldn't have written _this_ better,
+anyway, nor more characteristically.
+
+I will tell you how it is. You have spoilt me just as I have spoilt
+Flush. Flush looks at me sometimes with reproachful eyes 'a fendre le
+coeur,' because I refuse to give him my fur cuffs to tear to pieces.
+And as for myself, I confess to being more than half jealous of the
+[Greek: eidolon] in the gondola chair, who isn't the real Ba after
+all, and yet is set up there to do away with the necessity 'at certain
+times' of writing to her. Which is worse than Flush. For Flush, though
+he began by shivering with rage and barking and howling and gnashing
+his teeth at the brown dog in the glass, has learnt by experience what
+that image means, ... and now contemplates it, serene in natural
+philosophy. Most excellent sense, all this is!--and dauntlessly
+'delivered!'
+
+Your head aches, dearest. Mr. Moxon will have done his worst, however,
+presently, and then you will be a little better I do hope and
+trust--and the proofs, in the meanwhile, will do somewhat less harm
+than the manuscript. You will take heart again about 'Luria' ... which
+I agree with you, is more diffuse ... that is, less close, than any of
+your works, not diffuse in any bad sense, but round, copious, and
+another proof of that wonderful variety of faculty which is so
+striking in you, and which signalizes itself both in the thought and
+in the medium of the thought. You will appreciate 'Luria' in time--or
+others will do it for you. It is a noble work under every aspect. Dear
+'Luria'! Do you remember how you told me of 'Luria' last year, in one
+of your early letters? Little I thought that ever, ever, I should feel
+so, while 'Luria' went to be printed! A long trail of thoughts, like
+the rack in the sky, follows his going. Can it be the same 'Luria,' I
+think, that 'golden-hearted Luria,' whom you talked of to me, when you
+complained of keeping 'wild company,' in the old dear letter? And I
+have learnt since, that '_golden-hearted_' is not a word for him only,
+or for him most. May God bless you, best and dearest! I am your own to
+live and to die--
+
+                                                         BA.
+
+_Say how you are._ I shall be down-stairs to-morrow if it keeps warm.
+
+Miss Thomson wants me to translate the Hector and Andromache scene
+from the 'Iliad' for her book; and I am going to try it.
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+_Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, New-street Square, London_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Robert Browning and
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846, Edited by
+Robert B. Browning
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF BROWNING ***
+
+***** This file should be named 16182.txt or 16182.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/1/8/16182/
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/16182.zip b/16182.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a03bd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16182.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19af50d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #16182 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16182)