ul to anybody
who had ever learnt the alphabet'--to which I answered humbly that 'I
knew it was'--but if I had been impertinent, I _might_ have added that
wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it? Don't you
think so in a measure? _non obstantibus_ Bradbury and Evans? There's a
profane question--and ungrateful too ... after the Duchess--I except
the Duchess and her peers--and be sure she will be the world's Duchess
and received as one of your most striking poems. Full of various power
the poem is.... I cannot say how deeply it has impressed me--but
though I want the conclusion, I don't _wish_ for it; and in this, am
reasonable for once! You will not write and make yourself ill--will
you? or read 'Sybil' at unlawful hours even? Are you better at all?
What a letter! and how very foolishly to-day

I am yours,

E.B.B.

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

Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]

Very well--I shall say no more on the subject--though it was not any
piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your
over-kindness exactly--I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind,
and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you
must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest
obligation. I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom
your well-being is of deeper interest than to me. Well, if that be
so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of
proving serviceable to you; nor _set yourself against_ any little
irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the
beginning; and you may say, if you like, 'how I shall delight those
friends, if I can make this newest one grateful'--and, as from the
known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be
one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips
and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen
'Duchesses': why ought I not to say this when it is so true? Besides,
people profess as much to their merest friends--for I have been
looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of
Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die
too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so on. I wonder
whether they hav