May God bless you my dearest friend.

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]

What can I say, or hope to say to you when I see what you do for me?

This—­for myself, (nothing for you!)—­this, that I think the great, great good I get by your kindness strikes me less than that kindness.

All is right, too—­

Come, I WILL have my fault-finding at last!  So you can decypher my utterest hieroglyphic?  Now droop the eyes while I triumph:  the plains cower, cower beneath the mountains their masters—­and the Priests stomp over the clay ridges, (a palpable plagiarism from two lines of a legend that delighted my infancy, and now instruct my maturer years in pretty nearly all they boast of the semi-mythologic era referred to—­’In London town, when reigned King Lud, His lords went stomping thro’ the mud’—­would all historic records were half as picturesque!)

But you know, yes, you know you are too indulgent by far—­and treat these roughnesses as if they were advanced to many a stage!  Meantime the pure gain is mine, and better, the kind generous spirit is mine, (mine to profit by)—­and best—­best—­best, the dearest friend is mine,

So be happy

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, August 13, 1845.]

Yes, I admit that it was stupid to read that word so wrong.  I thought there was a mistake somewhere, but that it was yours, who had written one word, meaning to write another.  ‘Cower’ puts it all right of course.  But is there an English word of a significance different from ‘stamp,’ in ‘stomp?’ Does not the old word King Lud’s men stomped withal, claim identity with our ‘stamping.’  The a and o used to ‘change about,’ you know, in the old English writers—­see Chaucer for it.  Still the ‘stomp’ with the peculiar significance, is better of course than the ‘stamp’ even with a rhyme ready for it, and I dare say you are justified in daring to put this old wine into the new bottle; and we will drink to the health of the poem in it.  It is ’Italy in England’—­isn’t it?  But I understand and understood perfectly, through it all, that it is unfinished, and in a rough state round the edges.  I could not help seeing that, even if I were still blinder than when I read ‘Lower’ for ‘Cower.’

But do not, I ask of you, speak of my ‘kindness’ ... my kindness!—­mine!  It is ‘wasteful and ridiculous excess’ and mis-application to use such words of me.  And therefore, talking of ‘compacts’ and the ‘fas’ and ‘nefas’ of them, I entreat you to know for the future that whatever I write of your poetry, if it isn’t to be called ‘impertinence,’ isn’t to be called ‘kindness,’ any more, ... a fortiori, as people say when they are sure of an argument.  Now, will you try to understand?

And talking still of compacts, how and where did I break any compact?  I do not see.