need not be uneasy—­and I shall owe you that tranquillity, as one gift of many.  For, that I have much to receive from you in all the free gifts of thinking, teaching, master-spirits, ... that, I know!—­it is my own praise that I appreciate you, as none can more.  Your influence and help in poetry will be full of good and gladness to me—­for with many to love me in this house, there is no one to judge me ... now.  Your friendship and sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed leave them with me so long or so little.  Your mistakes in me ... which I cannot mistake (—­and which have humbled me by too much honouring—­) I put away gently, and with grateful tears in my eyes; because all that hail will beat down and spoil crowns, as well as ‘blossoms.’

If I put off next Tuesday to the week after—­I mean your visit,—­shall you care much?  For the relations I named to you, are to be in London next week; and I am to see one of my aunts whom I love, and have not met since my great affliction—­and it will all seem to come over again, and I shall be out of spirits and nerves.  On Tuesday week you can bring a tomahawk and do the criticism, and I shall try to have my courage ready for it—­Oh, you will do me so much good—­and Mr. Kenyon calls me ‘docile’ sometimes I assure you; when he wants to flatter me out of being obstinate—­and in good earnest, I believe I shall do everything you tell me.  The ‘Prometheus’ is done—­but the monodrama is where it was—­and the novel, not at all.  But I think of some half promises half given, about something I read for ’Saul’—­and the ’Flight of the Duchess’—­where is she?

You are not displeased with me? no, that would be hail and lightning together—­I do not write as I might, of some words of yours—­but you know that I am not a stone, even if silent like one.  And if in the unsilence, I have said one word to vex you, pity me for having had to say it—­and for the rest, may God bless you far beyond the reach of vexation from my words or my deeds!

Your friend in grateful regard,

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]

Don’t you remember I told you, once on a time that you ’knew nothing of me’? whereat you demurred—­but I meant what I said, and knew it was so.  To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of black cold water—­and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes, because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction—­and the ice grows and grows—­still this last is true part of me, most characteristic part, best part perhaps, and I disown nothing—­only,—­when you talked of ‘knowing me’!  Still, I am utterly unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating anything about that to another person (all my writings are purely dramatic