wanted in the house here, ... and perhaps ... perhaps—­is my favourite—­though my heart smites me while I write that unlawful word.  They are both affectionate and kind to me in all things, and good and lovable in their own beings—­very unlike, for the rest; one, most caring for the Polka, ... and the other for the sermon preached at Paddington Chapel, ... that is Arabel ... so if ever you happen to know her you must try not to say before her how ’much you hate &c.’  Henrietta always ‘managed’ everything in the house even before I was ill, ... because she liked it and I didn’t, and I waived my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.

I have been thinking much of your ‘Sordello’ since you spoke of it—­and even, I had thought much of it before you spoke of it yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your hand, and greatly justify the additional effort.  It is like a noble picture with its face to the wall just now—­or at least, in the shadow.  And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all through:  you have made even the darkness of it!  And such a work as it might become if you chose ... if you put your will to it!  What I meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses than the ‘ten per cent’ you spoke of ... though it does perhaps ... so much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in the connections and associations ... which hang as loosely every here and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists in thinking himself awake.

How do you mean that I am ‘lenient’?  Do you not believe that I tell you what I think, and as I think it?  I may think wrong, to be sure—­but that is not my fault:—­and so there is no use reproaching me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same time:—­is there, now?

And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way.  He is greatly himself always—­which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps.  And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see—­and what he expects from you—­notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to write your next work in prose!  Also Mrs. Carlyle’s letter—­thank you for letting me see it.  I admire that too!  It is as ingenious ’a case’ against poor Keats, as could well be drawn—­but nobody who knew very deeply what poetry is, could, you know, draw any case against him.  A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says—­but then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a ‘store-room’ would ever be like the ‘Eve of St. Agnes,’ unless dreamed by some ‘animosus infans,’ like Keats himself.  Still it is all true ... isn’t it?... what she observes of the want of thought as thought.  He was a seer strictly speaking.  And what noble oppositions—­(to go back to Carlyle’s letters) ... he writes to the things you were speaking