Wednesday.—­For ’Pauline’—­when I had named it to you I was on the point of sending for the book to the booksellers—­then suddenly I thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very much would dislike my reading it.  See now!  Many readers have done virtuously, but I, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpassed them all!—­And now, because I may, I ’must read it’:—­and as there are misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday?  Do not send—­bring it.  In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot to give to you yesterday in the confusion.  Perhaps you have not read it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.

Shall I hear from you, I wonder!  Oh my vain thoughts, that will not keep you well!  And, ever since you have known me, you have been worse—­that, you confess!—­and what if it should be the crossing of my bad star? You of the ‘Crown’ and the ‘Lyre,’ to seek influences from the ‘chair of Cassiopeia’!  I hope she will forgive me for using her name so!  I might as well have compared her to a professorship of poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election.  You know, the qualification, there, is,—­not to be a poet.

How vexatious, yesterday!  The stars (talking of them) were out of spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet sun was a sign!  First Mr. Chorley!—­and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who will say tiresome things without any provocation.  Did you walk with him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk down-stairs together?

Write to me!  Remember that it is a month to Monday.  Think of your very own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself!—­

E.B.B.

Say particularly how you are—­now do not omit it.  And will you have Miss Martineau’s books when I can lend them to you?  Just at this moment I dare not, because they are reading them here.

Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his ’Dead Pan’—­which is quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank verse too.  I have no claims against him, I am sure!

But for the man!—­To call him a poet!  A prince and potentate of Commonplaces, such as he is!—­I have seen his name in the Athenaeum attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,—­more than usually fugitive—­but I never heard before that his hand was in the prose department.

R.B. to E.B.B.

                              Wednesday.
                              [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]

Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon?  I well knew and felt the price I was about to pay—­but the thought did occur that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was that of his own arrival—­and that he would not know how very soon, alas, I should be obliged to go—­so ... to save you any least embarrassment in the world, I got—­just that shake of the hand, just that look—­and no more!  And was it all for nothing, all needless after all?  So I said to myself all the way home.