me (and
_then_, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your
feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart
and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be
yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It
was the plainness of _that_ which determined me to wait and be patient
and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might
please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could
not have been most rich, too, _then_--in what would seem little only
to _me_, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud
beyond measure--happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see
you simply, speak with you and be spoken to--what am I more than
others? Don't think this mock humility--_it is not_--you take me in
your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this
is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you _might_--if not
now, at some future time--give other than this, the true reason, for
that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early
farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate
_drawing closer_--I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press
close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.

_Wednesday._--You are entirely right about those poems of Horne's--I
spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle
with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of
originality in men--the other way of safe copying precedents being
_so_ safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in
the form ... reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The
Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think--and a common mistake,
too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women,
and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing
for children and miss them and the others too,--with that detestable
irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they
profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower
capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by
half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books
and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid
good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club--keep us from all
that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in
Art as real clay and mud would