d breeding of ducks as
if you had never done anything else all your life. Then dear Mr.
Kenyon talked of the poems; and hoped, very earnestly I am sure, that
you would finish 'Saul'--which you ought to do, must do--_only not
now_. By the way Mrs. Coleridge had written to him to enquire whether
you had authority for the 'blue lilies,' rather than white. Then he
asked about 'Luria' and 'whether it was obscure'; and I said, not
unless the people, who considered it, began by blindfolding
themselves.

And where do you think Mr. Kenyon talks of going next February--a long
while off to be sure? To Italy of course. Everybody I ever heard of
seems to be going to Italy next winter. He visits his brother at
Vienna, and 'may cross the Alps and get to Pisa'--it is the shadow of
a scheme--nothing certain, so far.

I did not go down-stairs to-day because the wind blew and the
thermometer fell. To-morrow, perhaps I may. And _you_, dearest
dearest, might have put into the letters how you were when you wrote
them. You might--but you did not feel well and would not say so.
Confess that that was the reason. Reason or no reason, mention
yourself to-morrow, and for the rest, do not write a long letter so as
to increase the evil. There was nothing which I can remember as
requiring an answer in what I wrote to you, and though I _will_ have
my letter of course, it shall be as brief as possible, if briefness is
good for you--_now always remember that_. Why if I, who talk against
'Luria,' should work the mischief myself, what should I deserve? I
should be my own jury directly and not recommend to mercy ... not to
mine. Do take care--care for _me_ just so much.

And, except that taking care of your health, what would you do for me
that you have not done? You have given me the best of the possible
gifts of one human soul to another, you have made my life new, and am
I to count these things as small and insufficient? Ah, you _know_, you
_know_ that I cannot, ought not, will not.

May God bless you. He blesses me in letting me be grateful to you as
your Ba.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, March 3, 1846.]

First and most important of all,--dearest, 'angry'--with you, and for
_that_! It is just as if I had spoken contemptuously of that Gallery I
so love and so am grateful to--having been used to go there when a
child, far under the age allowed by the regulations--th