And Miss Mitford yesterday—­and has she fresh fears for you of my evil influence and Origenic power of ‘raying out darkness’ like a swart star?  Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as the like infirmity in others—­whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours’ is redoubled.  A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess—­but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can’t hear him; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears.  And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart that it is not so ... that only as much attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it:  but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility?  By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam?  If that beam were just such another mote—­then one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience—­but, because I have written a ‘Sordello,’ do I turn to just its double, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce see nothing wrong?  ’No’—­it is supposed—­’but something as obscure in its way.’  Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all—­’bricks and mortar.’  Of course an artist’s whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, ’the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him’—­I am almost inclined to say that clear expression should be his only work and care—­for he is born, ordained, such as he is—­and not born learned in putting what was born in him into words—­what ever can be clearly spoken, ought to be.  But ‘bricks and mortar’ is very easily said—­and some of the thoughts in ‘Sordello’ not so readily even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.

I look forward to a real life’s work for us both. I shall do all,—­under your eyes and with your hand in mine,—­all I was intended to do:  may but you as surely go perfecting—­by continuing—­the work begun so wonderfully—­’a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven’—­

I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend—­’to-morrow’ always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath.  Did your sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time?  She did not tell you that I had almost passed by her—­the eyes being still elsewhere and occupied.  Now let me write out that—­no—­I will send the old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence—­and it is very charming beside, is it not?  Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest—­and tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you.  God bless you ever.