I will answer your note now—­the questions.  I did go—­(it may amuse you to write on)—­to Moxon’s.  First let me tell you that when I called there the Saturday before, his brother (in his absence) informed me, replying to the question when it came naturally in turn with a round of like enquiries, that your poems continued to sell ’singularly well’—­they would ‘end in bringing a clear profit,’ he said.  I thought to catch him, and asked if they had done so ...  ’Oh; not at the beginning ... it takes more time—­he answered.  On Thursday I saw Moxon—­he spoke rather encouragingly of my own prospects.  I send him a sheetful to-morrow, I believe, and we are ‘out’ on the 1st of next month.  Tennyson, by the way, has got his pension, L200 per annum—­by the other way, Moxon has bought the MSS. of Keats in the possession of Taylor the publisher, and is going to bring out a complete edition; which is pleasant to hear.

After settling with Moxon I went to Mrs. Carlyle’s—­who told me characteristic quaintnesses of Carlyle’s father and mother over the tea she gave me.  And all yesterday, you are to know, I was in a permanent mortal fright—­for my uncle came in the morning to intreat me to go to Paris in the evening about some urgent business of his,—­a five-minutes matter with his brother there,—­and the affair being really urgent and material to his and the brother’s interest, and no substitute being to be thought of, I was forced to promise to go—­in case a letter, which would arrive in Town at noon, should not prove satisfactory.  So I calculated times, and found I could be at Paris to-morrow, and back again, certainly by Wednesday—­and so not lose you on that day—­oh, the fear I had!—­but I was sure then and now, that the 17th would not see you depart.  But night came, and the last Dover train left, and I drew breath freely—­this morning I find the letter was all right—­so may it be with all worse apprehensions!  What you fear, precisely that, never happens, as Napoleon observed and thereon grew bold.  I had stipulated for an hour’s notice, if go I must—­and that was to be wholly spent in writing to you—­for in quiet consternation my mother cared for my carpet bag.

And so, I shall hear from you to-morrow ... that is, you will write then, telling me all about your brother.  As for what you say, with the kindest intentions, ‘of fever-contagion’ and keeping away on Wednesday on that account, it is indeed ’out of the question,’—­for a first reason (which dispenses with any second) because I disbelieve altogether in contagion from fevers, and especially from typhus fevers—­as do much better-informed men than myself—­I speak quite advisedly.  If there should be only that reason, therefore, you will not deprive me of the happiness of seeing you next Wednesday.

I am not well—­have a cold, influenza or some unpleasant thing, but am better than yesterday—­My mother is much better, I think (she and my sister are resolute non-contagionists, mind you that!)