And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius Keats, who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of juvenile versifiers, was an individual man from the beginning, and spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar murmur of antique echoes.[107] Leigh Hunt calls him ‘the young poet’ very rightly.  Most affectionately and gratefully yours,

E.B.B.

Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?

[Footnote 106:  Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the principal members of the staff of the Athenaeum, especially in literary and musical matters.  Dr. Garnett (in the Dictionary of National Biography) says of him, shortly after his first joining the staff in 1833, that ’his articles largely contributed to maintain the reputation the Athenaeum had already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.’  He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little popular success.]

[Footnote 107:  Compare Aurora Leigh’s asseveration: 

  ‘By Keats’ soul, the man who never stepped
  In gradual progress like another man,
  But, turning grandly on his central self,
  Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
  And died, not young.’

(’Aurora Leigh,’ book i.; Poetical Works, vi. 38.)]

To Mrs. Martin Thursday, August 1844.

Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall; only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the way altogether, by Stormie’s and Henry’s plan of going to Egypt.  Ah, now you are surprised.  Now you think me excusable for being silent two days beyond my time—­yes, and they have gone, it is no vague speculation.  You know, or perhaps you don’t know, that, a little time back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and began to employ it in his favourite ‘Via Lactea’ of speculations.  It has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to Alexandria with coals.  Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with regard to the last, papa has yielded.  And Henry goes too.  This was all arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and although resigned now to their having their way in it, and their pleasure, which is better than their way, still I feel I have entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again till they return....