of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is
a servant-maid. I see her trundling her mop, and contemplating the
whirling phenomenon through blurred optics; but to term her "a poor
outcast" seems as much as to say that poor Susan was no better than she
should be,--which I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin
Goodfellow supports himself without that _stick_ of a moral which you
have thrown away; but how I can be brought in _felo de omittendo_ for
that ending to the Boy-builders [2] is a mystery. I can't say positively
now, I only know that no line oftener or readier occurs than that
"Light-hearted boys, I will build up a Giant with you." It comes
naturally with a warm holiday and the freshness of the blood. It is a
perfect summer amulet, that I tie round my legs to quicken their motion
when I go out a-maying. (N. B.) I don't often go out a-maying; _must_ is
the tense with me now. Do you take the pun? _Young Romilly_ is divine,
the reasons of his mother's grief being remediless,--I never saw
parental love carried up so high, towering above the other
loves,--Shakspeare had done something for the filial in Cordelia, and,
by implication, for the fatherly too in Lear's resentment; he left it
for you to explore the depths of the maternal heart.

I get stupid and flat, and flattering; what's the use of telling you
what good things you have written, or--I hope I may add--that I know
them to be good? _A propos_, when I first opened upon the just-mentioned
poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, "What
is good for a bootless bene?" [3] To which, with infinite presence of
mind (as the jest-book has it) she answered, "A shoeless pea." It was
the first joke she ever made. Joke the second I make. You distinguish
well, in your old preface, between the verses of Dr. Johnson, of the
"Man in the Strand," and that from "The Babes in the Wood," I was
thinking whether, taking your own glorious lines,--

"And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly,"

which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think have no parallel in any
of the best old ballads, and just altering it to,--

"And from the great respect she felt
For Sir Samuel Romilly,"

would not nave explained the boundaries of prose expression and poetic
feeling nearly as well. Excuse my levity on such an occasion. I never
felt deeply in my life if that poem did not make me, both lately, and
when I read it in MS. No