(after the ‘Edinburgh’ and right ’Quarterly’), the ‘Westminster Review,’ promises an early paper with passing words of high praise.  What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and Greeks and even Germans.  The custom is so far from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt are all redolent of it, and no one can read our old poets without perceiving the leaning of our Saxon to that species of coalition.  Then I have had letters of great kindness from ‘Spirits of the Age,’ whose praises are so many crowns, and altogether am far from being out of spirits about the prospect of my work.  I am glad, however, that I gave the name of ‘Poems’ to the work instead of admitting the ‘Drama of Exile’ into the title-page and increasing its responsibility; for one person who likes the ‘Drama,’ ten like the other poems.  Both Carlyle and Miss Martineau select as favorite ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ which amuses and surprises me somewhat.  In that poem I had endeavoured to throw conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce) into the fire of poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things.  Well, I shall soon hear what you like best—­and worst.  I wonder if you have been very carnivorous with me!  I tremble a little to think of your hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk.  Still, I am sure I shall have to think most, ever as now, of your kindness; and truth must be sacred to all of us, whether we have to suffer or be glad by it.  As for Mr. Horne, I cannot answer for what he has received or not received.  I had one note from him on silver paper (fear of postage having reduced him to a transparency) from Germany, and that is all, and I did not think him in good spirits in what he said of himself.  I will tell him what you have the goodness to say, and something, too, on my own part.  He has had a hard time of it with his ‘Spirit of the Age;’ the attacks on the book here being bitter in the extreme.  Your ‘Democratic’ does not comfort him for the rest, by the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject.  I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a ‘Living Author Dictionary,’ and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of ’the American poets,’ so I begged him to read your poems on ‘Man’ and prepare an exception to his position.  I wish to write more and must not.

Most faithfully yours,
E.B.B.

Am I the first with the great and good news for America and England that Harriet Martineau is better and likely to be better?  She told me so herself, and attributes the change to the agency of mesmerism.