taged
you--my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now--surely I
might dare say you may if you please get well through God's
goodness--with persevering patience, surely--and this next winter
abroad--which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you
not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the
cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that 'there was a tide
in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.' led on to the
fortune of

Your R.B.

Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4
o'clock--that clock I enquired about--and that, ... no, I shall never
say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that
you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the
East you give a beggar something for a few days running--then you miss
him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and
murmurs--'And, for yesterday?'--Do I stay too long, I _want_ to
know,--too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may
not so soon tire,--knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.

God bless you--

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Saturday.
[Post-mark, July 28, 1845]

You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine--and
particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to
know and want to know ... _how you are_--for you must observe, if you
please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written
after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my
'Prometheus' (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for
me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there
can be gratitude from you to me!--or rather, do not judge--but listen
when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I
wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single
wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look
again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is
the suggestion about the line

Was it singing, was it saying,

which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate
'or.' Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were
right, and that there should be and must be no 'or' to disturb the
listening pause. Now _should_ there? And there was