The ‘flower in the letter’ was from one of my sisters—­from Arabel (though many of these poems are ideal ... will you understand?) and your rose came quite alive and fresh, though in act of dropping its beautiful leaves, because of having to come to me instead of living on in your garden, as it intended.  But I thank you—­for this, and all, my dear friend.

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 19, 1845.]

When I next see you, do not let me go on and on to my confusion about matters I am more or less ignorant of, but always ignorant.  I tell you plainly I only trench on them, and intrench in them, from gaucherie, pure and respectable ...  I should certainly grow instructive on the prospects of hay-crops and pasture-land, if deprived of this resource.  And now here is a week to wait before I shall have any occasion to relapse into Greek literature when I am thinking all the while, ’now I will just ask simply, what flattery there was,’ &c. &c., which, as I had not courage to say then, I keep to myself for shame now.  This I will say, then—­wait and know me better, as you will one long day at the end.

Why I write now, is because you did not promise, as before, to let me know how you are—­this morning is miserably cold again—­Will you tell me, at your own time?

God bless you, my dear friend.

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 20, 1845.]

If on Greek literature or anything else it is your pleasure to cultivate a reputation for ignorance, I will respect your desire—­and indeed the point of the deficiency in question being far above my sight I am not qualified either to deny or assert the existence of it; so you are free to have it all your own way.

About the ‘flattery’ however, there is a difference; and I must deny a little having ever used such a word ... as far as I can recollect, and I have been trying to recollect, ... as that word of flattery.  Perhaps I said something about your having vowed to make me vain by writing this or that of my liking your verses and so on—­and perhaps I said it too lightly ... which happened because when one doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, it is far best, as a general rule, to laugh.  But the serious truth is that it was all nonsense together what I wrote, and that, instead of talking of your making me vain, I should have talked (if it had been done sincerely) of your humbling me—­inasmuch as nothing does humble anybody so much as being lifted up too high.  You know what vaulting Ambition did once for himself? and when it is done for him by another, his fall is still heavier.  And one moral of all this general philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I shall have no help for my dumbness.  So I tell you beforehand—­nothing