gree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius _Keats_,
who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of
juvenile versifiers, was an individual _man_ from the beginning, and
spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar
murmur of antique echoes.[107] Leigh Hunt calls him 'the young poet'
very rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,

E.B.B.

Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?

[Footnote 106: Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the
principal members of the staff of the _Athenaeum_, especially in
literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_) says of him, shortly after his first joining the
staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely contributed to maintain the
reputation the _Athenaeum_ had already acquired for impartiality at a
time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and
when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was
notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met
with but little popular success.]

[Footnote 107: Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:

'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
And died, _not_ young.'

('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; _Poetical Works_, vi. 38.)]

_To Mrs. Martin_
Thursday, August 1844.

Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply
to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall;
only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the
way altogether, by Stormie's and Henry's plan of going to Egypt. Ah,
now you are surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent
two days beyond my time--yes, and _they have gone_, it is no vague
speculation. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that, a little time
back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and
began to employ it in his favourite 'Via Lactea' of speculations. It
has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to
Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with
regard to the last, papa has yielded. And Henry goes too. This was all
arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday
to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and
although resigned now to their having their way in it, and th