To H.S.  Boyd October 4, 1844.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—...  As to ‘The Lost Bower,’ I am penitent about having caused you so much disturbance.  I sometimes fancy that a little varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect.  But I do not question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on others.  Many lines in ‘Isobel’s Child’ are very slovenly and weak from a multitude of causes.  I hope you will like ‘The Lost Bower’ better when you try it again than you did at first, though I do not, of course, expect that you will not see much to cry out against.  The subject of the poem was an actual fact of my childhood.

Oh, and I think I told you, when giving you the history of ’Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ that I wrote the thirteen last pages of it in one day.  I ought to have said nineteen pages instead.  But don’t tell anybody; only keep the circumstance in your mind when you need it and see the faults.  Nobody knows of it except you and Mr. Kenyon and my own family for the reason I told you.  I sent off that poem to the press piece-meal, as I never in my life did before with any poem.  And since I wrote to you I have heard of Mr. Eagles, one of the first writers in ‘Blackwood’ and a man of very refined taste, adding another name to the many of those who have preferred it to anything in the two volumes.  He says that he has read it at least six times aloud to various persons, and calls it a ‘beautiful sui generis drama.’  On which Mr. Kenyon observes that I am ’ruined for life, and shall be sure never to take pains with any poem again.’

The American edition (did Arabel tell you?) was to be out in New York a week ago, and was to consist of fifteen hundred copies in two volumes, as in England.

She sends you the verses and asks you to make allowances for the delay in doing so.  I cannot help believing that if you were better read in Wordsworth you would appreciate him better.  Ever since I knew what poetry is, I have believed in him as a great poet, and I do not understand how reasonably there can be a doubt of it.  Will you remember that nearly all the first minds of the age have admitted his power (without going to intrinsic evidence), and then say that he can be a mere Grub Street writer?  It is not that he is only or chiefly admired by the profanum vulgus, that he is a mere popular and fashionable poet, but that men of genius in this and other countries unite in confessing his genius.  And is not this a significant circumstance—­significant, at least?...

Believe me, yourself, your affectionate and grateful
ELIBET B.B.

How kind you are, far too kind, about the Cyprus wine; I thank you very much.

To Mrs. Martin October 5, 1844.