... ’cold hearted,’ ... ‘arrogant,’ ... yes, ’arrogant, as women always are when men grow humble’ ... there’s a charge against all possible and probable petticoats beyond mine and through it!  Not that either they or mine deserve the charge—­we do not; to the lowest hem of us! for I don’t pass to the other extreme, mind, and adopt besetting sins ’over the way’ and in antithesis.  It’s an undeserved charge, and unprovoked! and in fact, the very flower of self-love self-tormented into ill temper; and shall remain unanswered, for me, ... and should, ... even if I could write mortal epigrams, as your Lamia speaks them.  Only it serves to help my assertion that people in general who know something of me, my dear friend, are not inclined to agree with you in particular, about my having an ‘over-pleasure in pleasing,’ for a besetting sin.  If you had spoken of my sister Henrietta indeed, you would have been right—­so right! but for me, alas, my sins are not half as amiable, nor given to lean to virtue’s side with half such a grace.  And then I have a pretension to speak the truth like a Roman, even in matters of literature, where Mr. Kenyon says falseness is a fashion—­and really and honestly I should not be afraid ...  I should have no reason to be afraid, ... if all the notes and letters written by my hand for years and years about presentation copies of poems and other sorts of books were brought together and ‘conferred,’ as they say of manuscripts, before my face—­I should not shrink and be ashamed.  Not that I always tell the truth as I see it—­but I never do speak falsely with intention and consciousness—­never—­and I do not find that people of letters are sooner offended than others are, by the truth told in gentleness;—­I do not remember to have offended anyone in this relation, and by these means.  Well!—­but from me to you; it is all different, you know—­you must know how different it is.  I can tell you truly what I think of this thing and of that thing in your ’Duchess’—­but I must of a necessity hesitate and fall into misgiving of the adequacy of my truth, so called.  To judge at all of a work of yours, I must look up to it, and far up—­because whatever faculty I have is included in your faculty, and with a great rim all round it besides!  And thus, it is not at all from an over-pleasure in pleasing you, not at all from an inclination to depreciate myself, that I speak and feel as I do and must on some occasions; it is simply the consequence of a true comprehension of you and of me—­and apart from it, I should not be abler, I think, but less able, to assist you in anything.  I do wish you would consider all this reasonably, and understand it as a third person would in a moment, and consent not to spoil the real pleasure I have and am about to have in your poetry, by nailing me up into a false position with your gold-headed nails of chivalry, which won’t hold to the wall