Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

[Footnote 93:  In the ‘Drama of Exile,’ near the beginning (Poetical Works, i. 7).]

[Footnote 94:  By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.]

To H.S.  Boyd March 22, 1844.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—­I heard that once I wrote three times too long a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is scarcely the way to make up for it.  Forgive me, however, as far as you can, for every sort of fault.  When I once begin to write to you, I do not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you. Hence these faults—­not quite tears—­in spite of my penitence and the quotation.

At last my book is in the press.  My great poem (in the modest comparative sense), my ‘Masque of Exile’ (as I call it at last[95]), consists of some nineteen hundred or two thousand lines, and I call it ‘Masque of Exile’ because it refers to Lucifer’s exile, and to that other mystical exile of the Divine Being which was the means of the return homewards of my Adam and Eve.  After the exultation of boldness of composition, I fell into one of my deepest fits of despondency, and at last, at the end of most painful vacillations, determined not to print it.  Never was a manuscript so near the fire as my ‘Masque’ was.  I had not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody.  In the midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident, and asked about my poem.  I told him that I had given it up, despairing of my republic.  In the kindest way he took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home and read it, and tell me his impression.  ‘You know,’ he said, ’I have a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry, but then I have another prejudice for you, and one may neutralise the other.’  The next day I had a letter from him with the returned manuscript—­a letter which I was absolutely certain, before I opened it, would counsel against the publication.  On the contrary!  His impression is clearly in favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to anything I ever did before—­more sustained, and fuller in power.  So my nerves are braced, and I grow a man again; and the manuscript, as I told you, is in the press.  Moreover, you will be surprised to hear that I think of bringing out two volumes of poems instead of one, by advice of Mr. Moxon, the publisher.  Also, the Americans have commanded an American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little before or simultaneously with the English one, and provided with a separate preface for themselves.

There now!  I have told you all this, knowing your kindness, and that you will care to hear of it.

It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear Annie’s illness, and I do hope, both for your sake and for all our sakes, that we may have better news of her before long.