ne subject, which must lie where it fell ...
must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had
forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you ... the
_Hood_ poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see
them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at
once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of
it--and more than think.

For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little
with the last week's turmoil, were impossible--and Mr. Kenyon said to
me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do
anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending
letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If
anything changes, you shall hear from--

E.B.B.

Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in
the case.

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

Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]

But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it
finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in
obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in
my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an
absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at
all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is
involved in that, except as an 'idiosyncrasy' is a mystery. But the
'insurmountable' difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for
me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a
confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were
going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet
remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of
my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of 'faith'; but a plain
fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But
_don't_ let us speak of it.

I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and
repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you--and which are _not_
'ostentatious' though unnecessary words--for, if I were in a position
to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept _such_ a sacrifice
... amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease
and satisfaction ... to an exchange of higher work for lower work ...
and of