I have written about 'Luria' in another place—you shall have the papers when I have read through the play. How different this living poetry is from the polished rhetoric of 'Ion.' The man and the statue are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing—it is here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of 'taste,' but of sight and feeling.

As to the 'Venice' it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say more?—of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception. Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.

Do not write 'Luria' if your head is uneasy—and you cannot say that it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the necessary exercise ... this, you will do—I entreat you to do it.

May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I say ... as I am yours—

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]

Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did not read either of your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read one word of them—and hear why. When your brother and I took the book between us in wonderment at the notion—we turned to the index, in large text-hand, and stopped at 'Miss B.'—and he indeed read them, or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my short-sighted eye—all I saw was the faint small characters—and, do you know ... I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said was most unfairly exposed to view!—so I was silent, and lost you (in that)—then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of vexation it would give you. All I know of the notes, that one is addressed to Talfourd in the third person—and when I had run through my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR)—I was sick of the book altogether. You are generous to me—but, to say the truth, I might have remembered the most justifying circumstance in my case ... which was, that my own 'Paracelsus,' printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure as 'Ion' a brilliant success—for, until just before.... Ah, really I forget!—but I know that until Forster's notice in the Examiner appeared, every journal that thought worth while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think, with the Athenæum which then made haste to say, a few days after its publication, 'that it was not without talent but spoiled by obscurity and only an imitation of—Shelley'!—something to this effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their 'Library Table' notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of what the 'craft' had in store for me—since my publisher and I had fairly to laugh at his 'Book'—(quite of another kind than the Serjeant's)—in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers and the like—seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went: but Forster's notice altered a good deal—which I have to recollect for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so utter—you remember the world's-wonder 'Ion' made,—that I was determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I really was not—and so!—

But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing me good for another than yours?

Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily over it? Why must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else did or could, to do well—concern yourself with what might be done by any good, kind ministrant only fit for such offices? Not that I feel, even, more bound to you for them—they have their weight, I know ... but what weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: you know me!—and they know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of what you are to me—if you ... well, but that will follow; if I do greater things one day—what shall they serve for, what range themselves under of right?—

Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems—and, I believe, a newspaper, 'when time was,' about the 'Blot in the Scutcheon'—and also, through Moxon—(I believe it was Mr. M.)—a proposition for reprinting—to which I assented of course—and there was an end to the matter.