day--My mother is much better, I think (she and my
sister are resolute non-contagionists, mind you that!)

God bless you and all you love! dearest, I am your

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Saturday.
[Post-mark, October 14, 1845.]

It was the merest foolishness in me to write about fevers and the rest
as I did to-day, just as if it could do any good, all the wringing of
hands in the world. And there is no typhus _yet_ ... and no danger of
any sort I hope and trust!--and how weak it is that habit of spreading
the cloud which is in you all around you, how weak and selfish ... and
unlike what _you_ would do ... just as you are unlike Mr. Kenyon. And
you _are_ unlike him--and you were right on Thursday when you said
so, and I was wrong in setting up a phrase on the other side ... only
what I said came by an instinct because you seemed to be giving him
all the sunshine to use and carry, which should not be after all. But
you are unlike him and must be ... seeing that the producers must
differ from the 'nati consumere fruges' in the intellectual as in the
material. You create and he enjoys, and the work makes you pale and
the pleasure makes him ruddy, and it is so of a necessity. So differs
the man of genius from the man of letters--and then dear Mr. Kenyon is
not even a man of letters in a full sense ... he is rather a Sybarite
of letters. Do you think he ever knew what mental labour is? I fancy
not. Not more than he has known what mental inspiration is! And not
more than he has known what the strife of the heart is ... with all
his tenderness and sensibility. He seems to me to _evade_ pain, and
where he suffers at all to do so rather negatively than positively ...
if you understand what I mean by that ... rather by a want than by a
blow: the secret of all being that he has a certain latitudinarianism
(not indifferentism) in his life and affections, and has no capacity
for concentration and intensity. Partly by temperament and partly by
philosophy he contrives to keep the sunny side of the street--though
never inclined to forget the blind man at the corner. Ah, dear Mr.
Kenyon: he is magnanimous in toleration, and excellent in
sympathy--and he has the love of beauty and the reverence of
genius--but the faculty of _worship_ he has not: he will not worship
aright either your heroes or your gods ... and while yo