dwriting.]

With my compass I take up my ciphers, poor scholar;
Who myself shall be taken down soon under the ground ...
Since the world at my learning roars out in its choler,
And the blockheads have fought me all round.

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 10, 1846.]

Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your 'Luria' just as you would
have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a
conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has
moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of
pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has--it is
very fine. For the execution, _that_ too is worthily done--although I
agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here
and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to
lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger--but you will
look to it yourself--and such a conception _must_ come in thunder and
lightning, as a chief god would--_must_ make its own way ... and will
not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable.
Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light
on her face--might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a
magnificent work--a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against
their 'heroes,' and (what is peculiar) an _humane_ exposition ... not
misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the
return, the remorse, saves it--and the 'Too late' of the repentance
and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors
and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward ...
'_That is done._' And now--surely you think well of the work as a
whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it--and of the
_subtilty_ too, for it is subtle--too subtle perhaps for stage
purposes, though as clear, ... as to expression ... as to medium ...
as 'bricks and mortar' ... shall I say?

'A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one.'

There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine _he_ is, your Luria,
when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and
half-disdain of Domizia. Ah--Domizia! would it hurt her to make her
more a woman ... a little ... I wonder!

So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read
_through_ ... since I have read