If you _do_ read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech you, your
full and free opinion of them.

_To H.S. Boyd_
June 22, 1842.

My very dear Friend,--I thank you gratefully for your two notes, with
their united kindness and candour--the latter still rarer than the
former, if less 'sweet upon the tongue.' Sir William Alexander's
tragedy _(that_ is the right name, I think, Sir William Alexander,
Earl of Stirling) you will not find mentioned among my dramatic
notices, because I was much pressed for room, and had to treat the
whole subject as briefly as possible, striking off, like the Roman,
only the heads of the flowers, and I did not, besides, receive your
injunction until my third paper on the dramatists was finished and in
the press. When you read it you will find some notice of that tragedy
by Marlowe, the first knowledge of which I owe to you, my dear Mr.
Boyd, as how much besides? And then comes the fourth paper, and I
tremble to anticipate the possible--nay, the very probable--scolding I
may have from you, upon my various heresies as to Dryden and Pope and
Queen Anne's versificators. In the meantime you have breathing time,
for Mr. Dilke, although very gracious and courteous to my offence of
extending the two papers he asked for _into four_,[65] yet could find
no room in the 'Athenaeum' last week for me, and only _hopes_ for it
this week. And after this week comes the British Association business,
which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay
is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of
the reader,' whereas _I_ say (at least think) that it will help him
quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for
neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that
you like at least the second article. That is encouragement to me.

Flushie did not seem to think the harp alive when it was taken out of
the window and laid close to him. He examined it particularly, and
is a philosophical dog. But I am sure that at first and while it was
playing he thought so.

In the same way he can't bear me to look into a glass, because he
thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking glass, and he
is jealous of its being so close to _me_. He used to tremble and bark
at it, but now he is _silently_ jealous, and contents himself with
squeezing close, close to me and kissing me expressively.

My very dear friend's ever gratefully affectionate