the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the
medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon
teaches ... 'Le style, c'est _l'homme_.' But if the _whole man_ were
style, if all Carlyleism were manner--why there would be no man, no
Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent
me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world--affected
parlances--just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic
the distractions of some great wandering soul--although _that_ is a
bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not
his dress, but his physiognomy--or more than _that_ even.

But I do not forgive him for talking here against the 'ideals of
poets' ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called _reality_, which is
another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in
broad blazing lights--but he does not analyse them like a
philosopher--do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action
as opposed to speech and singing, what is _that_--when all earnest
thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions
surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if
Shakespeare's actions were not greater than Cromwell's!--

But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.

Wholly and only

Your BA.

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

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]

You ought hardly,--ought you, my Ba?--to refer to _that_ letter or any
expression in it; I had--and _have_, I trust--your forgiveness for
what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows.
That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose
of what you properly call a _crisis_. I _did_ believe,--taking an
expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an
excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day
previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny
me admittance again unless I blotted out--not merely softened
down--the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion,
I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most
painfully to my mind--_that_ does not, after all, disagree with what I
said and you repeat--does it, if you will think? I said my other
'_liking