something
immediate to say to you. Your letter is delightful, yet it is not
for _that_ that I rush so upon answering it. Nor even is it for the
excellent news of your consenting, for dear Mr. Chorley's sake, to
give us some more of your 'papers,'[203] though 'blessed be the hour,
and month, and year' when he set about editing the 'Ladies' Companion'
and persuading you to do such a thing. No, what I want to say is
strictly personal to me. You are the kindest, warmest-hearted, most
affectionate of critics, and precisely as such it is that you have
thrown me into a paroxysm of terror. My dearest friend, _for the
love of me_--I don't argue the point with you--but I beseech you
humbly,--kissing the hem of your garment, and by all sacred and tender
recollections of sympathy between you and me, _don't_ breathe a word
about any juvenile performance of mine--_don't_, if you have any love
left for me. Dear friend, 'disinter' anybody or anything you please,
but don't disinter _me_, unless you mean the ghost of my vexation to
vex you ever after. 'Blessed be she who spares these stones.' All the
saints know that I have enough to answer for since I came to my
mature mind, and that I had difficulty enough in making most of the
'Seraphim' volume presentable a little in my new edition, because it
was too ostensible before the public to be caught back; but if the
sins of my rawest juvenility are to be thrust upon me--and sins are
extant of even twelve or thirteen, or earlier, and I was in print once
when I was ten, I think--what is to become of me? I shall groan
as loud as Christian did. Dearest Miss Mitford, now forgive this
ingratitude which is gratitude all the time. I love you and thank you;
but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and let me love and thank you
still more. When you see my new edition you will see that everything
worth a straw I ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in
conjuration I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on the
stubble that remains--if anything does remain, indeed. Now, more than
enough of this. For the rest, I am delighted. I am even so generous as
not to be jealous of Mr. Chorley for prevailing with you when nobody
else could. I had given it up long ago; I never thought you would stir
a pen again. By what charm did he prevail? Your series of papers will
be delightful, I do not doubt; though I never could see anything in
some of your heroes, American or Irish. Longfellow is a poet; I don'