l not ask you to read. So don't be very uneasy.

Arabel's and my best love to Annie. And believe me in a great hurry,
for I won't miss this post,

Yours affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

Your lyrics found me dull as prose
Among a file of papers
And analysing London fogs
To nothing but the vapours.

They knew their part; but through the fog
Their flaming lightning raising;
They missed my fancy, and instead,
My choler set a-blazing.

Quoth I, 'I need not care a pin
For charge unjust, unsparing;
Yet oh! for ancient bodkin[26] keen,
To punish this _Pindaring_.

'Yet oh! that I, a female Jove,
These fogs sublime might float on,
Where, eagle-like, my dove might show
A very [Greek: _ugron noton_].[27]

'Then lightning should for lightning flash,
Vexation for vexation,
And shades of St. John's Wood should glow
In awful conflagration.'

I spoke; when lo! my birds of peace,
The vengeance disallowing,
Replied, 'Coo, coo!' But _keep in mind_,
That _cooing_ is not _cowing_.[28]

[Footnote 26: The bodkin seems to be a favourite weapon with ancient
dames whose genius was for killing (note by E.B.B.).]

[Footnote 27: A reference to Pindar, _Pyth_.i. 9.]

[Footnote 28: These verses are inclosed with the foregoing letter, as
a retort to Mr. Boyd's parody.]

_To Mrs. Martin_
74 Gloucester Place: December 7, 1836.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Indeed I have long felt the need of writing
to you (I mean the need to myself), and although so many weeks and
even months have passed away in silence, they have not done so in lack
of affection and thought.

I had wished very much to have been able to tell you in this letter
where we had taken our house, or where we were going to take it. We
remain, however, in our usual state of conscious ignorance, although
there is a good deal of talking and walking about a house in Wimpole
Street--which, between ourselves, I am not very anxious to live in,
on account of the gloominesses of that street, and of that part of the
street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned inside out. I
would rather go on, in my old way, inhabiting castles in the air than
that particular house. Nevertheless, if it _is_ decided upon, I dare
say I shall contrive to be satisfied with it, and sleep and wake very
much as I should in any other. It will certainly be a point gained
to be settled somewhere, and I do so long to sit in my own
armchair--strange a