stolical,
With many other falsehoods diabolical.

I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part of little
consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake made in cold blood
and under corrupt influences from Lake-mists, why I was determined to
make the matter clear to you. And as to the _influences_, if I were
guilty of this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would
not be guilty _in_ me. I think of him now, exactly as I thought of him
during the first years of my friendship for you, only with _an equal_
admiration. He was a great poet to me always, and always, while I have
a soul for poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice,
but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius. There is
scarcely anything newer in my estimation of Wordsworth than in the
colour of my eyes!

Perhaps I was wrong in saying '_a pun._' But I thought I apprehended a
double sense in your application of the term 'Apostolical succession'
to Oxford's 'breeding' and 'hatching,' words which imply succession in
a way unecclesiastical.

After all which quarrelling, I am delighted to have to talk of your
coming nearer to me--within reach--almost within my reach. Now if I am
able to go in a carriage at all this summer, it will be hard but that
I manage to get across the park and serenade you in Greek under your
window.

Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_To H.S. Boyd_
May 18, 1843.

My very dear Friend,--Yes, you have surprised me!

I always have thought of you, and I always think and say, that you are
truthful and candid in a supreme degree, and therefore it is not your
candour about Wordsworth which surprises me.

He had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace Darling when it
first appeared; and with a curious mixture of feelings (for I was much
gratified by his attention in sending it) I yet read it with _so_ much
pain from the nature of the subject, that my judgment was scarcely
free to consider the poetry--I could scarcely determine to myself what
I _thought_ of it from feeling too much.

_But_ I do confess to you, my dear friend, that I suspect--through the
mist of my sensations--the poem in question to be very inferior to his
former poems; I confess that the impression left on my mind is, of
its decided inferiority, and I have heard that the poet's friends and
critics (all except _one_) are mourning over its appearance; sighing
inwardly, 'Wordsworth is old.'

One thin