My dear Mr. Westwood,—­I have certainly and considerably increased the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few days.  But after all I am not dead, not even at heart, so as to be insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon very fair authority, neither is the book dead yet.  It has turned the corner of the felo de se, and if it is to die, it will be by the critics.  The mystery of the long delay, it would not be very easy for me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr. Moxon says:  ’I suppose Miss Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication;’ and I say:  ’I suppose Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.’  There may be a little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day beyond the hour, or when ‘copy’ has put out new buds in my hands as I passed it to the printer’s.  Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the fault of Mr. Moxon’s not being in a hurry, than in the excessive virtue of my patience, or vice of my indolence.  Miss Mitford says, as you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.

To H.S.  Boyd 50 Wimpole Street:  Wednesday, August I, 1844 [postmark].

My very dear Friend,—­Have you expected to hear from me? and are you vexed with me?  I am a little ambitious of the first item—­yet hopeful of an escape from the last.  If you did but know how I am pressed for time, and how I have too much to do every day, you would forgive me for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead of mountain,[98] and I had neglected laying my gratitude at your feet.  Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that my first volume consisted of only 208 pages, and my second of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon uttered a cry of reprehension, and wished to tear me to pieces by his printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus.  Perhaps you might have heard my head moaning all the way to St. John’s Wood!  He wanted to tear away several poems from the end of the second volume, and tie them on to the end of the first!  I could not and would not hear of this, because I had set my mind on having ‘Dead Pan’ to conclude with.  So there was nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called ’Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ which was lying by me, and I did so by writing, i.e. composing, one hundred and forty lines last Saturday![99] I seemed to be in a dream all day!  Long lines too—­with fifteen syllables in each!  I see you shake your head all this way off.  Moreover it is a ‘romance of the age,’ treating of railroads, routes, and all manner of ‘temporalities,’ and in so radical a temper that I expect to be reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round.  By the way, did I tell you of the good news I had from America the third of this month?  The ‘Drama of Exile’ is in the hands of a New York publisher; and having been submitted to various chief critics of the country on its way, was praised loudly and extravagantly.  This was, however, by a private