s sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as
that vice of vanity goes ... shall I tell you?... I would infinitely
prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude,
and supremacy, apart from me or any one else, ... this, as far as my
vice of vanity goes, ... and because, vainer I am of my poet than of
my poems ... _pour cause_. But since, according to the _Quarterly_
regime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am
glad, pleased, that it should be with myself:--and since I was to be
there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with
_you_,--oh, of course I am pleased!--I am pleased that the 'names
should be read together' as you say, ... and am happily safe from the
apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about 'my leading _you_'
&c. ... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea's
occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I
'find fault' with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an
ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!)
_can_ it be 'to your surprise?' _can_ it? Ought you to say such
things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and
inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The
qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what
you take it to be--we had better not examine it too nearly. You never
will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those
words--and not any in their likeness.

Also ... nothing is _my_ work ... if you please! What an omen you take
in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it--for
everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God's work and
yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope--and indeed I exclaim to
myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems
to me (as I say over and over ... I say it to my own thoughts
oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, ...
the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and
only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.

Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it
was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and
took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before
he went. I answered with my usual 'no,' like a wild Indian--whereupon
he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation ...
'mortification' was