N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript
wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in
shape--cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did
my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly
_compartmented_, to have always about him, so that the _next such coin
he picked_ up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place
of safety ... his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the
same. I saw the box--and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.
_Parallel._ R.B. having found an unicorn....
Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for
more--having exhausted my stock.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening
[Post-mark, December 10, 1845.]
It was right of you to write ... (now see what jangling comes of not
using the fit words.... I said 'right,' not to say 'kind') ... right
of you to write to me to-day--and I had begun to be disappointed
already because the post _seemed_ to be past, when suddenly the knock
brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not 'kind' ...
then _kindest_ ... will that do better? Perhaps.
Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again--and
I, I answered at random ... 'at the end of the week--Thursday or
Friday'--which did not prevent another question about 'what we were
consulting about.' He said that he 'must have you,' and had written to
beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring
something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days
with him. Oh, my disingenuousness!--Then he talked again of 'Saul.' A
true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he
says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his
dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it
reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl
and life. Quite ill he took it of me the 'not expecting him to like it
so much' and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt
it), that I 'never understood anybody to have any sensibility except
myself.' Wasn't it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has
caught some sort of evil spirit from your 'Saul' perhaps; though
admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do _you_
remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and
that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a
great lyrical work--now remember. And forget 'Luria' ... if you are
better forgetting. And forget _me_ ... _when_ you are happier
forgetting. I say _that_ too.
So your idea of an unicorn is--one horn broken off. And you a
poet!--one horn broken off--or hid in the blackthorn hedge!--
Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when
they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the
thunder-cloud! I don't remember the _Athenæum_, but can well believe
that it said what you say. The _Athenæum_ admires only what gods, men
and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity--mark it, as a
general rule! The good, they see--the great escapes them. Dare to
breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and
you are 'put down' and instructed how to be like other people. By the
way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write
'peoples,' on pain of writing what is obsolete--and these the teachers
of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of
it? An imitation of Shelley!--when if 'Paracelsus' was anything it was
the expression of a new mind, as all might see--as _I_ saw, let me be
proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by 'Ion.'
Ah, indeed if I could 'rake and hoe' ... or even pick up weeds along
the walk, ... which is the work of the most helpless children, ... if
I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for
'shining' ... shining ... when there is not so much light in me as to
do 'carpet work' by, why let anyone in the world, _except you_, tell
me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied
astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a
dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so.--
And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will
not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having
come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do
not hear from her, and my precautions are 'watched out,' May God bless
you always.