ly that the feeling of discomfort and
trouble at the heart (physically) _will_ come with the fall of the
thermometer, and the voice will go!...

And then I have another question to enunciate--will the oracle answer?

Do you know _who wrote the article in the 'Metropolitan'_? Beseech
you, answer me. I have a suspicion, true, that the critics have been
supernaturally kind to me, but the kindness of this 'Metropolitan'
critic so passes the ordinary limit of kindness, metropolitan or
critical, that I cannot but look among my personal friends for the
writer of the article. Coming to personal friends, I reject one on one
ground and one on another--for one the graciousness is too graceful,
and for another the grace almost too gracious. I am puzzled and dizzy
with doubt; and--is it you? Answer me, will you? If so, I should owe
so much gratitude to you. Suffer me to pay it!--permit the pleasure to
me of paying it!--for I know too much of the pleasures of gratitude to
be willing to lose one of them.

_To John Kenyan_
March 6, [1845].

Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon--they are very fine. The poetry is in
_them_, rather than in Blair. And now I send them back, and Cunningham
and Jerrold, with thanks on thanks; and if you will be kind enough not
to insist on my reading the letters to Travis[129] within the 'hour,'
they shall wait for the 'Responsibility,' and the two go to you
together.

And as to the tiring, it has not been much, and the happy day was well
worth being tired _for_. It is better to be tired with pleasure than
with frost; and if I have the last fatigue too, why it is March,
and it is the hour of my martyrdom always. But I am not ill--only
uncomfortable.

Ah, the 'relenting'! it is rather a bad sign, I am afraid;
notwithstanding the subtilty of your consolations; but I stroke down
my philosophy, to make it shine, like a cat's back in the dark.
The argument from more deserving poets who prosper less is not very
comforting, is it? I trow not.

But as to the review, be sure--be very sure that it is not Mr.
Browning's. How you could _think_ even of Mr. Browning, surprises me.
Now, as for me, I know as well _as he does himself_ that he has had
nothing to do with it.

I should rather suspect Mr. Westwood, the author of some fugitive
poems, who writes to me sometimes; and the suspicion having occurred
to me, I have written to put the question directly. You shall hear, if
I hear in reply.

May God bless you alway