u will not read it till
Sunday unless I am more fortunate than usual. On Monday then! And no
word before? No--I shall be sure not to hear to-night. Now do try not
to suffer through 'Luria.' Let Mr. Moxon wait a week rather. There is
time enough.

Ever your

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 23, 1846.]

Oh, my Ba--how you shall hear of this to-morrow--that is all: _I_ hate
writing? See when presently I _only_ write to you daily, hourly if you
let me? Just this _now_--I will be with you to-morrow in any case--I
can go away _at once_, if need be, or stay--if you like you can stop
me by sending a note for me _to Moxon's before_ 10 o'clock--if
anything calls for such a measure.

Now briefly,--I am unwell and entirely irritated with this sad
'Luria'--I thought it a failure at first, I find it infinitely worse
than I thought--it is a pure exercise of _cleverness_, even where most
successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by
another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry
the more to get on, with the printing,--it is to throw out and away
from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected
it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better
hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, _unlike_ the woman at her
spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his _flax_ on the whole far more than
of his singing'--more of his life's sustainment, of dear, dear Ba he
hates writing to, than of these wooden figures--no wonder all is as it
is?

Here is a pure piece of the old Chorley leaven for you, just as it
reappears ever and anon and throws one back on the mistrust all but
abandoned! Chorley _knows_ I have not seen that Powell for nearly
fifteen months--that I never heard of the book till it reached me in a
blank cover--that I never contributed a line or word to it directly or
indirectly--and I should think he _also knows_ that all the sham
learning, notes &c., all that saves the book from the deepest deep of
contempt, was contributed by Heraud (_a regular critic in the
'Athenaeum'_), who received his pay for the same: he knows I never
spoke in my life to 'Jones or Stephens'--that there is no 'coterie' of
which I can, by any extension of the word, form a part--that I am in
this cas