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 extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence' which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness' which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems gradually going and going—and really it would not be very strange (without that) if I who was born a hero worshipper and have so continued, and who always recognised your genius, should find it impossible to bring out critical doxies on the workings of it. Well—I shall do what I can—as far as impressions go, you understand—and you must promise not to attach too much importance to anything said. So that is a covenant, my dear friend!—

And I am really gaining strength—and I will not complain of the weather. As long as the thermometer keeps above sixty I am content for one; and the roses are not quite dead yet, which they would have been in the heat. And last and not least—may I ask if you were told that the pain in the head was not important (or was) in the causes, ... and was likely to be well soon? or was not? I am at the end.

E.B.B.

Upon second or third thoughts, isn't it true that you are a little suspicious of me? suspicious at least of suspiciousness?

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, June 23, 1845.]

And if I am 'suspicious of your suspiciousness,' who gives cause, pray? The matter was long ago settled, I thought, when you first took exception to what I said about higher and lower, and I consented to this much—that you should help seeing, if you could, our true intellectual and moral relation each to the other, so long as you would allow me to see what is there, fronting me. 'Is my eye evil because yours is not good?' My own friend, if I wished to 'make you vain,' if having 'found the Bower' I did really address myself to the wise business of spoiling its rose-roof,—I think that at least where there was such a will, there would be also something not unlike a way,—that I should find a proper hooked stick to tear down flowers with, and write you other letters than these—quite, quite others, I feel—though I am far from going to imagine, even for a moment, what might be the precise prodigy—like the notable Son of Zeus, that was to have been, and done the wonders, only he did not, because &c. &c.

But I have a restless head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well, you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more than that ... you will know exactly why it happens. I will finish and transcribe the 'Flight of the Duchess' since you spoke of that first.

I am truly happy to hear that your health improves still.

For me, going out does me good—reading, writing, and, what is odd,—infinitely most of all, sleeping do me the harm,—never any very great harm. And all the while I am yours