Upon second or third thoughts, isn't it true that you are a little
suspicious of me? suspicious at least of suspiciousness?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, June 23, 1845.]
And if I am 'suspicious of your suspiciousness,' who gives cause,
pray? The matter was long ago settled, I thought, when you first took
exception to what I said about higher and lower, and I consented to
this much--that you should help seeing, if you could, our true
intellectual and moral relation each to the other, so long as you
would allow _me_ to see what _is_ there, fronting me. 'Is my eye evil
because yours is not good?' My own friend, if I wished to 'make you
vain,' if having 'found the Bower' I did really address myself to the
wise business of spoiling its rose-roof,--I think that at least where
there was such a will, there would be also something not unlike a
way,--that I should find a proper hooked stick to tear down flowers
with, and write you other letters than these--quite, quite others, I
feel--though I am far from going to imagine, even for a moment, what
might be the precise prodigy--like the notable Son of Zeus, that _was_
to have been, and done the wonders, only he did not, because &c. &c.
But I have a restless head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well,
you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being
positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are
neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special
naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to
signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more than that ... you
will know exactly why it happens. I will finish and transcribe the
'Flight of the Duchess' since you spoke of that first.