And now I must explain to you that most of the ‘incorrectnesses’ you speak of may be ‘incorrectnesses,’ but are not negligences.  I have a theory about double rhymes for which—­I shall be attacked by the critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at least analogy.  In fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes than any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems not comic.  Now, of double rhymes in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are aware how few there are, and yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making a rhythm various and vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry.  Therefore I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the public.  And do you tell me, you who object to the use of a different vowel in a double rhyme, why you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from anybody) ‘given’ to ‘heaven,’ when you object to my rhyming ‘remember’ and ‘chamber’?  The analogy surely is all on my side, and I believe that the spirit of the English language is also.

I write all this because you will find many other sins of the sort, besides those in the ‘Cyprus Wine;’ and because I wish you to consider the subject as a point for consideration seriously, and not to blame me as a writer of careless verses.  If I deal too much in licences, it is not because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom’s sake.  It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously; and I stand up for my conscience only.

I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to be candid to the end.

  It is tawny as Rhea’s lion.

I know (although you don’t say so) you object to that line.  Yet consider its structure.  Does not the final ‘y’ of ‘tawny’ suppose an apostrophe and apocope?  Do you not run ‘tawny as’ into two syllables naturally?  I want you to see my principle.

With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes seventeen syllables into his lines.

I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me arrogant in writing freely to you.

Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.

Always your affectionate and grateful
ELIBET.

To H.S.  Boyd Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—­I must thank you for the great great pleasure with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome, as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so ’rudis atque incomposita’ to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by being intolerable.  I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear the dust on the wheel as it goes on.  Well, I wrote to you yesterday, to beg you to be patient and considerate.