s only a seeming goodnature!
Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!--appear mild and
smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and
the _soul has it_, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase!
You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or
tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really,
really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by
it--and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.

This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. _What
do you mean about your manuscripts ... about 'Saul' and the
portfolio?_ for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses--and
your 'Bos' comes to [Greek: bous epi glosse].[1] I get half bribed to
silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible
that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I
reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am
afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being
flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I
should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ...
however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask
impudently of them now? Is that plain?

It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if _you_ would like to 'write
something together' with me, _I_ should like it still better. I should
like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the
less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical
Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting
into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? _you_ would
not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations
deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes--but I dare not do it, ... I
mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a
Mediaeval-Gothic-architectural manuscript.

The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with
whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to
'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of
one of Miss Mitford's annual editorships; and ever since, he has had
the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to
write at all, in my dreary Devonshire days, I was his debtor for
various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my
opinion he is a truehearted and gene