my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR)—­I was sick of the book altogether.  You are generous to me—­but, to say the truth, I might have remembered the most justifying circumstance in my case ... which was, that my own ‘Paracelsus,’ printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure as ‘Ion’ a brilliant success—­for, until just before....  Ah, really I forget!—­but I know that until Forster’s notice in the Examiner appeared, every journal that thought worth while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think, with the Athenaeum which then made haste to say, a few days after its publication, ’that it was not without talent but spoiled by obscurity and only an imitation of—­Shelley’!—­something to this effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their ’Library Table’ notices.  And that first taste was a most flattering sample of what the ‘craft’ had in store for me—­since my publisher and I had fairly to laugh at his ’Book’—­(quite of another kind than the Serjeant’s)—­in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers and the like—­seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my ‘rubbish,’ as their word went:  but Forster’s notice altered a good deal—­which I have to recollect for his good.  Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so utter—­you remember the world’s-wonder ‘Ion’ made,—­that I was determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I really was not—­and so!—­

But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing me good for another than yours?

Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily over it? Why must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else did or could, to do well—­concern yourself with what might be done by any good, kind ministrant only fit for such offices?  Not that I feel, even, more bound to you for them—­they have their weight, I know ... but what weight beside the divine gift of yourself?  Do not, dear, dearest, care for making me known:  you know me!—­and they know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of what you are to me—­if you ... well, but that will follow; if I do greater things one day—­what shall they serve for, what range themselves under of right?—­

Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems—­and, I believe, a newspaper, ‘when time was,’ about the ’Blot in the Scutcheon’—­and also, through Moxon—­(I believe it was Mr. M.)—­a proposition for reprinting—­to which I assented of course—­and there was an end to the matter.

And might I have stayed till five?—­dearest, I will never ask for more than you give—­but I feel every single sand of the gold showers ... spite of what I say above!  I have an invitation for Thursday which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such liberty)—­but now....