grateful regard,

E.B.B.

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

Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]

Don't you remember I told you, once on a time that you 'knew nothing
of me'? whereat you demurred--but I meant what I said, and knew it was
so. To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a
Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of
black cold water--and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes,
because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction--and
the ice grows and grows--still this last is true part of me, most
characteristic part, _best_ part perhaps, and I disown
nothing--only,--when you talked of '_knowing_ me'! Still, I am utterly
unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating
anything about _that_ to another person (all my writings are purely
dramatic as I am always anxious to say) that when I make never so
little an attempt, no wonder if I _bungle_ notably--'language,' too is
an organ that never studded this heavy heavy head of mine. Will you
not think me very brutal if I tell you I could almost smile at your
misapprehension of what I meant to write?--Yet I _will_ tell you,
because it will undo the bad effect of my thoughtlessness, and at the
same time exemplify the point I have all along been honestly earnest
to set you right upon ... my real inferiority to you; just that and no
more. I wrote to you, in an unwise moment, on the spur of being again
'thanked,' and, unwisely writing just as if thinking to myself, said
what must have looked absurd enough as seen apart from the horrible
counterbalancing never-to-be-written _rest of me_--by the side of
which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to
its proper and relative place, and become a mere 'thank you' for your
good opinion--which I assure you is far too generous--for I really
believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable
till _you_ see that, too--since I hope for your sympathy and
assistance, and 'frankness is everything in such a case.' I do assure
you, that had you read my note, _only_ having '_known_' so much of me
as is implied in having inspected, for instance, the contents, merely,
of that fatal and often-referred-to 'portfolio' there (_Dii meliora
piis!_), you would see in it, (the note not the portfolio) the
blandest utterance