obscure to me. Is it so really? The
end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ...
just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to
the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more
than ever a new-minted golden coin--the rhythm of it answering to your
own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have
right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not
cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?

May God bless you always--send me the next proof _in any case_.

Your

E.B.B.

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

[Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]

But I _must_ answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to
begin at the beginning) surely not '_startled_' ... only properly
aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not
disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so
treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation
from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the
quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In
this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of
displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of
it too soon--so I spoke--so _you_ have spoken--and so now you get
'excused'? No--wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the
strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for
all, I _will_ not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite
understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a
given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of
mine, none in the least. I love you because I _love_ you; I see you
'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you
all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an
hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense)
in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to
suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once,
think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I
must talk your own language, so I shall say--) hindering any scheme of
mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think
that before I found you, I was going about the wo