through this summer.  Now you will not answer this?—­you will only understand it and me—­and that I am not servile but sincere, but earnest, but meaning what I say—­and when I say I am afraid, you will believe that I am afraid; and when I say I have misgivings, you will believe that I have misgivings—­you will trust me so far, and give me liberty to breathe and feel naturally ... according to my own nature.  Probably, or certainly rather, I have one advantage over you, ... one, of which women are not fond of boasting—­that of being older by years—­for the ’Essay on Mind,’ which was the first poem published by me (and rather more printed than published after all), the work of my earliest youth, half childhood, half womanhood, was published in 1826 I see.  And if I told Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but because Coleridge’s daughter was right in calling it a mere ’girl’s exercise’; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life.  Bad books are never like their writers, you know—­and those under-age books are generally bad.  Also I have found it hard work to get into expression, though I began rhyming from my very infancy, much as you did (and this, with no sympathy near to me—­I have had to do without sympathy in the full sense—­), and even in my ‘Seraphim’ days, my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth,—­from leading so conventual recluse a life, perhaps—­and all my better poems were written last year, the very best thing to come, if there should be any life or courage to come; I scarcely know.  Sometimes—­it is the real truth—­I have haste to be done with it all.  It is the real truth; however to say so may be an ungrateful return for your kind and generous words, ... which I do feel gratefully, let me otherwise feel as I will, ... or must.  But then you know you are liable to such prodigious mistakes about besetting sins and even besetting virtues—­to such a set of small delusions, that are sure to break one by one, like other bubbles, as you draw in your breath, ... as I see by the law of my own star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star Wormwood, ... on the opposite side of the heavens from the constellations of ‘the Lyre and the Crown.’  In the meantime, it is difficult to thank you, or not to thank you, for all your kindnesses—­[Greek:  algos de sigan].  Only Mrs. Jameson told me of Lady Byron’s saying ’that she knows she is burnt every day in effigy by half the world, but that the effigy is so unlike herself as to be inoffensive to her,’ and just so, or rather just in the converse of so, is it with me and your kindnesses.  They are meant for quite another than I, and are too far to be so near.  The comfort is ... in seeing you throw all those ducats out of the window, (and