And in the meantime I shall see you to-morrow perhaps? or if it should rain, on Monday at the same hour.

Ever yours, my dear friend,

E.B.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]

When I see all you have done for me in this ‘Prometheus,’ I feel more than half ashamed both of it and of me for using your time so, and forced to say in my own defence (not to you but myself) that I never thought of meaning to inflict such work on you who might be doing so much better things in the meantime both for me and for others—­because, you see, it is not the mere reading of the MS., but the ‘comparing’ of the text, and the melancholy comparisons between the English and the Greek, ... quite enough to turn you from your [Greek:  philanthropou tropou][1] that I brought upon you; and indeed I did not mean so much, nor so soon!  Yet as you have done it for me—­for me who expected a few jottings down with a pencil and a general opinion; it is of course of the greatest value, besides the pleasure and pride which come of it; and I must say of the translation, (before putting it aside for the nonce), that the circumstance of your paying it so much attention and seeing any good in it, is quite enough reward for the writer and quite enough motive for self-gratulation, if it were all torn to fragments at this moment—­which is a foolish thing to say because it is so obvious, and because you would know it if I said it or not.

And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest of the small family of distrust—­or of hypocrisy ... who knows?  Well! but you are wrong ... wrong ... to think so; and you will let me say one word to show where you are wrong—­not for you to controvert, ... because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your cognizance, and is something which I must know best after all.  And it is, ... that you persist in putting me into a false position, with respect to fixing days and the like, and in making me feel somewhat as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly ’was ‘ware’ (as we say in the ballads) of the walls’ growing alive behind me and extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised bones.  Now my present false position ... which is not the chimney-piece’s, ... is the necessity you provide for me in the shape of my having to name this day, or that day, ... and of your coming because I name it, and of my having to think and remember that you come because I name it.  Through a weakness, perhaps, or morbidness,