You left behind your sister's little basket--but I hope you did not
forget to thank her for my carnations.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[no date]
I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours
_ever_, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath
breaks bubbles,--ought you to write thus having restricted me as you
once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a
stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my
head it goes--I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly
the same horror once before. 'I was to see you--and you were to
understand'--_Do_ you? do you understand--my own friend--with that
superiority in years, too! For I confess to that--you need not throw
that in my teeth ... as soon as I read your 'Essay on Mind'--(which of
course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K's positive refusal
to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the 'Vision
of Fame' at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time,
1826--I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in
years--what then? I have got nearer you considerably--(if only
nearer)--since then--and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable
times--such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to
see--written some time ago--which advises nobody who thinks nobly of
the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the
materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it
is born to make and which--(in its determining, as it must, the whole
future course and impulses of that soul)--which must endure for ever,
even though the object that induced the choice should
disappear--owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically
determined and produced, at any operator's pleasure, by a definite
number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent
&c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of
operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel
filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul
than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does _that_, is
for this world's immediate uses; and were this world _all, all_ in us
would be producible and available for use, as it _is_ with the body
now--but with the soul, what is to be developed _afterward_ is the
main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights--so that when you
hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain 'why' ('You' is the
ordinary creature enough of my poem--_he_ might not be so able.)
There, I will write no more. You will never drop _me_ off the golden
hooks, I dare believe--and the rest is with God--whose finger I see
every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask
leave to come 'to-morrow at the Muezzin' as next Wednesday at three?
God bless you--do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it
costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as
truthfuller--this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not
have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of
commission with _Hood_,--blame _them_, tell me about them, and
meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,