requent, and will
be found to fill a considerable place in the later pages of this work.

_To Miss Mitford_
50 Wimpole Street: Thursday [June 1838].

We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa and I and all of
us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both
gladdening and surprising--and the one the more for being the other
also. Oh! it was _so_ kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of
occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us!

As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and Mr. Kenyon are
indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism
over it--before it went to you--and so if you did not find as many
obscurities as he did in it, the reason is--_his_ merit and not mine.
But don't believe him--no!--don't believe even Mr. Kenyon--whenever
he says that I am _perversely_ obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not
perversely--that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it
to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it)
I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods.
Because, _indeed_, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this
fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes
upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has
perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me
sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition....

I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was
not permitted to get out of bed, and was haunted with leeches and
blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call
here, and to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was
not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me
her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing
so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of
a _return_; but Mr. Kenyon's opinion turned the balance. I was very
sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her
note expressive of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice
(except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I
was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.

Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much
better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much
strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either.
It is well th