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.