How kind of you and of her to have poor old Mrs. Barker at Colwall!
Do believe me, both of you, with love from all of us,
Very affectionately yours,
BA.
To H.S. Boyd
February 21, 1843.
Thank you, my very dear friend, I am as well as the east wind will suffer me to be; and that, indeed, is not very well, my heart being fuller of all manner of evil than is necessary to its humanity. But the wind is changed, and the frost is gone, and it is not quite out of my fancy yet that I may see you next summer. You and summer are not out of the question yet. Therefore, you see, I cannot be very deep in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom that I have just finished a poem of some five hundred lines in stanzas, called 'The Lost Bower,'[[73]] and about nothing at all in particular.
As to Arabel, she is not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in the frost—when we brambles are brown with their inward death—and she is of them, dear thing. You are not a bramble, though, and I hope that when you talk of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer to your sensation, and not to your health. Remember also, dearest Mr. Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had. Take away the last ten days and a few besides, and call the whole summer rather than winter. Ought we to complain, really? Really, no.
I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the ast, though my hand shakes so that nobody will read it.
You can't abide my 'Cry of the Human,' and four sonnets. They have none of them found favor in your eyes.
In or out of favor,