on Monday? Do not
send--bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot
to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read
it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.

Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not
keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been
worse--_that_, you confess!--and what if it should be the crossing of
my bad star? _You_ of the 'Crown' and the 'Lyre,' to seek influences
from the 'chair of Cassiopeia'! I hope she will forgive me for using
her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professorship of
poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election.
You know, the qualification, there, is,--_not to be a poet_.

How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of _them_) were out of
spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet
sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley!--and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who
_will_ say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with
him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk
down-stairs together?

Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very
own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself!--

E.B.B.

Say particularly how you are--now do not omit it. And will you have
Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this
moment I _dare_ not, because they are reading them here.

Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'--which is
quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank
verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!

But for the _man_!--To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of
Commonplaces, such as he is!--I have seen his name in the _Athenaeum_
attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,--more
than usually fugitive--but I never heard before that his hand was in
the prose department.

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

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]

Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I _well knew
and felt_ the price I was about to pay--but the thought _did_ occur
that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was
that of his own arrival--and that he would not know how very soon,
alas, I should be _obliged_ to go--so ... to save