to the spectacles, they go together so:—­and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the spectacles.  My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look for me) would be the old child’s way of getting behind the window curtains or under the sofa:—­and even that might not be effectual if I had recourse to it now.  Do you think it would?  Two or three times I fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something—­but if he ever did, his only reproof was a reduplicated praise of you—­he praises you always and in relation to every sort of subject.

What a misomonsism you fell into yesterday, you who have much great work to do which no one else can do except just yourself!—­and you, too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work, with the principle of life in it, will live, let it be trampled ever so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation—­yes, that it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart of a rock.  All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said ... by prompting the foremost rows ... by tradition and translation:—­all, except poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the [Greek:  stoa] like the conversation-teachers.  So much I have to say to you, till we are in the Siren’s island—­and I, jealous of the Siren!—­

    The Siren waits thee singing song for song,

says Mr. Landor.  A prophecy which refuses to class you with the ’mute fishes,’ precisely as I do.

And are you not my ’good’—­all my good now—­my only good ever?  The Italians would say it better without saying more.

I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her long silence by the supposition,—­put lately to an end by scarcely credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says—­that I was out of England; gone to the South from the 20th of September.  She calls herself the strongest of women, and talks of ’walking fifteen miles one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,’—­also of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting well by such unlawful means.  And she is to write again to tell me of Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile—­all very kind.

So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so ’against the principles of universal justice.’  Yes, very unjust—­very unfair it was—­only, you make me do just as you like in everything.  Now confess to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim, oh ‘son of humanity.’  Think how much more need of a letter I have than you can have; and that if you have a giant’s power, ’’tis tyrannous to use it like a giant.’  Who would take tribute from the desert?  How I grumble. Do let me have a letter directly! remember that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait ’as those who watch for the morning’—­’lux mea!’