d up for my conscience only.

I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to
be candid to the end.

It is tawny as Rhea's lion.

I know (although you don't say so) you object to that line. Yet
consider its structure. Does not the final 'y' of 'tawny' suppose an
apostrophe and apocope? Do you not run 'tawny as' into two syllables
naturally? I want you to see my principle.

With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes
seventeen syllables into his lines.

I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me
arrogant in writing freely to you.

Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed
with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you
in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.

Always your affectionate and grateful
ELIBET.

_To H.S. Boyd_
Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I must thank you for the great great pleasure
with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome,
as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous
apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so 'rudis atque
incomposita' to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by
being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear
the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I wrote to you yesterday,
to beg you to be patient and considerate.

But you are always given to surprise me with abundant kindness--with
supererogatory kindness. I believe in _that_, certainly.

I am very very glad that you think me stronger and more perspicuous.
For the perspicuity, I have struggled hard....

Your affectionate and grateful
ELZBETH.

_To Mr. Westwood_
50 Wimpole Street: August 22, 1844.

... Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, _I_
angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No _indeed,
indeed_, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the
'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion
that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and
perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over
my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by
being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama'
is worth two or three 'Seraphims'--_my own_ belief, you know, which is
worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and