ral sympathy with power;' and if Madame
Dudevant[123] is not the first female genius of any country or
age, I really do not know who is. And then she has certain
noblenesses--granting all the evil and 'perilous stuff'--noblenesses
and royalnesses which make me loyal. Do pardon me for intruding all
this on you, though you cannot justify me--_you_, who are occupied
beyond measure, and _I_, who know it! I have been under the delusion,
too, during this writing, of having something like a friend's claim
to write and be troublesome. I have lived so near your friends that I
keep the odour of them! A mere delusion, alas! my only personal
right in respect to you being one that I am not likely to forget or
waive--the right of being grateful to you.

But so, and looking again at the last words of your letter, I see that
you 'wish,' in the kindest of words, 'to do something more for me.'
I hope some day to take this 'something more' of your kindness out
in the pleasure of personal intercourse; and if, in the meantime, you
should consent to flatter my delusion by letting me hear from you now
and then, if ever you have a moment to waste and inclination to waste
it, why I, on my side, shall always be ready to thank you for the
'something more' of kindness, as bound in the duty of gratitude. In
any case I remain

Truly and faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 122: Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed
considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century. Her
elegies on Captain Cook and Major Andre went through several editions,
as did her _Louisa_, a poetical novel, a class of composition in
which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. Her collected
poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott
(1810).]

[Footnote 123: The real name of George Sand.]

_To Mr. Chorley_
[_The beginning of this letter is lost_]
[1845]

... to the awful consideration of the possibility of my reading
a novel or caring for the story of it (_proh pudor!_), that I am
probably, not to say certainly, the most complete and unscrupulous
romance reader within your knowledge. Never was a child who cared more
for 'a story' than I do; never even did I myself, _as_ a child, care
more for it than I do. My love of fiction began with my breath, and
will end with it; and goes on increasing; and the heights and depths
of the consumption which it has induced you may guess at perhaps,
but it is a s