h
proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, 'at a
cock-crow from the Grange.'--Ever your own.

Last night, I received a copy of the _New Quarterly_--now here is
popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to
be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously
eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last--and
in _three other_ articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing,
they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one
instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and
_with_ me I don't know how many poetical _cretins_ are praised as
noticeably--and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the
richest style of scavengering--only Carlyle! And I love him enough not
to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into
his.

All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my
Ba.

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

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]

But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read
them--of _you_, I mean of course,--though I quite understand that it
is doing no manner of good to go back so to 'Paracelsus,' heading the
article 'Paracelsus and other poems,' as if the other poems could not
front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. 'Paracelsus'
is a great work and will _live_, but the way to do you good with the
stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would
have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last
living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying 'Look _here_.'
What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the
_Retrospective Review_? And then, no attempt at analytical
criticism--or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in
sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy
things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice:
and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your
great world--the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like
that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a
sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical
sectarianism, in another place--_yours_!

For me, it is all quite kind enough--only I object, on my own part
also, to being reviewed in the 'Seraphim,' when my better boo