Yes—­he has been infamously used on the point of the ’New Spirit’—­only he should have been prepared for the infamy—­it was leaping into a gulph, ... not to ‘save the republic,’ but ’pour rire’:  it was not merely putting one’s foot into a hornet’s nest, but taking off a shoe and stocking to do it.  And to think of Dickens being dissatisfied!  To think of Tennyson’s friends grumbling!—­he himself did not, I hope and trust.  For you, you certainly were not adequately treated—­and above all, you were not placed with your peers in that chapter—­but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that there is a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and am sure,—­and that you should be sensible to this, is only what I should know and be sure of you.  Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow, vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached, too justly sometimes, on men of letters.

I go on writing as if I were not going to see you—­soon perhaps.  Remember that the how and the when rest with you—­except that it cannot be before next week at the soonest.  You are to decide.

Always your friend,

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Night.
[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]

My friend is not ‘mistrustful’ of me, no, because she don’t fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for Colburn’s on her sayings and doings up-stairs,—­but spite of that, she does mistrust ... so mistrust my common sense,—­nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet’s sense, if I am put on asserting it!—­all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I won’t, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea—­and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether.  And now will I say a cutting thing and have done.  Have I trusted my friend so,—­or said even to myself, much less to her, she is even as—­’Mr. Simpson’ who desireth the honour of the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his, Simpson’s, especial solace in private—­and who accordingly is led to that personage by a mutual friend—­Simpson blushing as only adorable ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor giving evidence.  Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the rooms are growing hot—­or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if there will be another adjournment of the House to-night—­whereupon Mr. S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his sleeve, and takes to his assurance once more, in something of a huff, and after staying his five minutes out for decency’s sake, noddeth familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel ejaculateth mentally—­’Well, I did expect to see something different from that little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there was some precious trash in that book of his’—­Have I said ’so will Miss Barrett ejaculate?’