brought to me by the expression of your opinion, when the beloved
friend associated with the poor book was lost to me in this world, gone
where perhaps he no longer sympathises with pleasure or honour of mine,
now--for nearly the first time. _Perhaps._ After such separations the
sense of _distance_ is the thing felt first. And certainly my book at
least is naturally saddened to me, and the success of it wholesomely
spoiled.

Yet your letter, my dearest Mona Nina, arrived in time to give me great,
great pleasure--true pleasure indeed, and most tenderly do I thank you
for it. I have had many of such letters from persons loved less, and
whose opinions had less weight; and you will like to hear that in a
fortnight after publication Chapman had to go to press with the second
edition. In fact, the kind of reception given to the book has much
surprised me, as I was prepared for an outcry of quite another kind, and
extravagances in a quite opposite sense. This has been left, however, to
the 'Press,' the 'Post,' and the 'Tablet,' who calls 'Aurora' 'a
brazen-faced woman,' and brands the story as a romance in the manner of
Frederic Soulie--in reference, of course, to its gross indecency.

I can't leave this subject without noticing (by the way) what you say of
the likeness to the catastrophe of 'Jane Eyre.' I have sent to the
library here for 'Jane Eyre' (but haven't got it yet) in order to
refresh my memory on this point; but, as far as I do recall the facts,
the hero was monstrously disfigured and blinded in a fire the
particulars of which escape me, and the circumstance of his being
hideously scarred is the thing impressed chiefly on the reader's mind;
certainly it remains innermost in mine. Now if you read over again those
pages of my poem, you will find that the only injury received by Romney
in the fire was from a blow and from the emotion produced by the
_circumstances_ of the fire. Not only did he _not_ lose his eyes in the
fire, but he describes the ruin of his house as no blind man could. He
was standing there, a spectator. Afterwards he had a fever, and the
eyes, the visual nerve, perished, showing no external stain--perished as
Milton's did. I believe that a great shock on the nerves might produce
such an effect in certain constitutions, and the reader on referring as
far back as Marian's letter (when she avoided the marriage) may observe
that his eyes had never been strong, that her desire had been to read
his notes