I see how the ‘turret’ stands in the new reading, triumphing over the ‘tower,’ and unexceptionable in every respect.  Also I do hold that nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number—­there are lights enough for the critics to scan one another’s dull blank of visage by.  One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the ‘Lost Mistress,’ does still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach it—­but it is my own fault probably ...  I am not sure.  With that one exception I am quite sure that people who shall complain of darkness are blind ...  I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed everywhere.  Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your writings—­but if to utter things ‘hard to understand’ from that cause be an offence, why we may begin with ‘our beloved brother Paul,’ you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid them put away their inspirations.  You must descend to the level of critic A or B, that he may look into your face....  Ah well!—­’Let them rave.’  You will live when all those are under the willows.  In the meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your poetry—­as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the creature, and you than yours.  Yes—­you than yours.... (I did not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the ’bona verba,’ and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as you are better than yours; even when so much yours as your own

E.B.B.

May I see the first act first?  Let me!—­And you walk?

Mr. Horne’s address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.

There is no reason against Saturday so far.  Mr. Kenyon comes to-morrow, Friday, and therefore—!—­and if Saturday should become impracticable, I will write again.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]

When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and fancies it is sure to call out of me.  There is nothing in you that does not draw out all of me.  You possess me, dearest ... and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt.  So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge—­penetration, intuition—­somehow I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it.  But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should