rong, perhaps--I do
not pretend to be right. I only tell you (as you ask for them) what my
impressions are.

I need not say that I wish all manner of success to your friend the
artist, and laurels of the weight of gold while of the freshness of
grass--alas! an impossible vegetable!--fabulous as the Halcyon!

_To H.S. Boyd_
Monday, December 24, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I wish I had a note from you to-day--which
optative aorist I am not sure of being either grammatical or
reasonable! Perhaps you have expected to hear from _me_ with more
reason....

I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau's lucid and able
style. She is a very admirable woman--and the most logical intellect
of the age, for a woman. On this account it is that the men throw
stones at her, and that many of her own sex throw dirt; but if I
begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth. A righteous
indignation fastens on me. I had a note from her the other day,
written in a noble spirit, and saying, in reference to the insults
lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first for _publicity_,
and ventured it all for the sake of what she considered the truth--she
was sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva.

Do you remember who Godiva was--or shall I tell you? Think of
it--Godiva of Coventry, and peeping Tom. The worst and basest is, that
in this nineteenth century there are thousands of Toms to one.

I think, however, myself, and with all my admiration for Miss
Martineau, that her statement and her reasonings on it are not free
from vagueness and apparent contradictions. She writes in a state of
enthusiasm, and some of her expressions are naturally coloured by her
mood of mind and nerve.

May this Christmas give you ease and pleasantness, in various ways, my
dearest friend! My Christmas wish for myself is to hear that you are
well. I cannot bear to think of you suffering. Are the nights better?
May God bless you. Shall you not think it a great thing if the poems
go into a second edition within the twelvemonth? I am surprised at
your not being satisfied. Consider what poetry is, and that four
months have not passed since the publication of mine; and that, where
poems have to make their way by force of _themselves_, and not of name
nor of fashion, the first three months cannot present the period
of the quickest sale. That must be for afterwards. Think of me on
Christmas Day, as of one who gratefully