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