Will you tell her this, if you
do see her, and give her my kind regards at the same time? Dear Bell
was so sorry not to have seen you. If she had, you would have thought
her looking _very_ well, notwithstanding the thinness--perhaps, in
some measure, on account of it--and in _eminent_ spirits. I have not
seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she is, down
at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making quite a colony of it,
and everybody, in each several letter, grumbling in an undertone at
the dullness of the place. What would _I_ give to see the waves once
more! But perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a
happiness to them to be _together_, and that, I am sure, they all
feel....

Believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate
E.B.B.

Oh that you would call me Ba![29]

[Footnote 29: Elizabeth Barrett's 'pet name' (see her poem, _Poetical
Works_, ii. 249), given to her as a child by her brother Edward, and
used by her family and friends, and by herself in her letters to them,
throughout her life.]

_To H.S. Boyd_
[74 Gloucester Place:]
Thursday, December 15, 1836 [postmark].

My dear Mr. Boyd,--... Two mornings since, I saw in the paper, under
the head of literary news, that a change of editorship was taking
place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;' and that Theodore Hook was to
preside in the room of Mr. Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise
to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect
both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what
has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of
mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as
if I asked you to read it; begging you to be assured--to write it down
in your critical rubric--that it is the very finest composition you
ever read, _next_ (of course) to the beloved 'De Virginitate' of
Gregory Nazianzen.[30]

Mr. Stratten has just been here. I admire him more than I ever did,
for his admiration of my doves. By the way, I am sure he thought them
the most agreeable of the whole party; for he said, what he never did
before, that he could sit here for an hour! Our love to Annie--and
forgive me for Baskettiring a letter to you. I mean, of course, as to
size, not type.

Yours affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

Is your poem printed yet?

[Footnote 30:Do you mind that deed of Ate
Which you bound me to so fast,--
Reading 'De Virginitate,'