But I don’t mean to fall into another scrape to-day by writing too much.  May God bless you, my very dear friend!

I am ever your affectionate
E.B.B.

[Footnote 95:  There was, however, a still later last, when it became the ‘Drama of Exile.’]

To H.S.  Boyd April I, 1844.

My very dear Friend,—­Your kind letter I was delighted to receive.  You mistake a good deal the capacities in judgment of ’the man.’[96] The ‘man’ is highly refined in his tastes, and leaning to the classical (I was going to say to your classical, only suddenly I thought of Ossian) a good deal more than I do.  He has written satires in the manner of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and deservedly.  If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of his judgments, it would have been because of his confessed indisposition towards subjects religious and ways mystical, and his occasional insufficient indulgence for rhymes and rhythms which he calls ‘Barrettian.’  But these things render his favourable inclination towards my ‘Drama of Exile’ still more encouraging (as you will see) to my hopes for it.

Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to think of what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems in their two-volume development, may finally be.  I am afraid of you.  You will tell me the truth as it appears to you—­upon that I may rely; and I should not wish you to suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the unpleasantness it may occasion to me.  My own faith is that I have made progress since ‘The Seraphim,’ only it is too possible (as I confess to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.

You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture, with Octavius—­Occy, as we call him.  He is very much obliged to you, and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o’clock.  Friday is mentioned because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry’s.  Otherwise he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon.  May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.  I am ever

Your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 96:  John Kenyon:  see the last letter.]

To Mr. Westwood April 16, 1844.

...  Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that article leans somewhere—­I, who am reproached with trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with insufficient reason.