kindly, I feel it to be both duty and pleasure to defer and yield.  Still, you know, we could not, if we were ten years about it, alter down the poems to the terms of all these reviewers.  You would not desire it, if it were possible.  I do not remember that you suggested any change in the verse on Aeschylus.  The critic[115] mistakes my allusion, which was to the fact that in the acting of the Eumenides, when the great tragic poet did actually ‘frown as the gods did,’ women fell down fainting from the benches.  I did not refer to the effect of his human countenance ’during composition.’  But I am very grateful to the reviewer whoever he may be—­very—­and with need.  See how the ‘Sun’ shines in response to ‘Blackwood’ (thank you for sending me that notice), when previously we had had but a wintry rag from the same quarter!  No; if I am not spoilt by your kindness, I am not likely to be so by any of these exoteric praises, however beyond what I expected or deserved.  And then I am like a bird with one wing broken.  Throw it out of the window; and after the first feeling of pleasure in liberty, it falls heavily.  I have had moments of great pleasure in hearing whatever good has been thought of the poems; but the feeling of elation is too strong or rather too long for me....

Can it be true that Mr. Newman has at last joined the Church of Rome?[116] If it is true, it will do much to prove to the most illogical minds the real character of the late movement.  It will prove what the point of sight is, as by the drawing of a straight line.  Miss Mitford told me that he had lately sent a message to a R. Catholic convert from the English Church, to the effect—­’you have done a good deed, but not at a right time.’  It can but be a question of time, indeed, to the whole party; at least to such as are logical—­and honest.... [Unsigned]

[Footnote 115:  In Blackwood.]

[Footnote 116:  Newman did not actually enter the Church of Rome until nearly a year later, in October 1845.]

To John Kenyan 50 Wimpole Street:  November 8, 1844.

Thank you, my dear dear cousin, for the kind thought of sending me Mr. Eagles’s letter, and most for your own note.  You know we both saw that he couldn’t have written the paper in question; we both were poets and prophets by that sign, but I hope he understands that I shall gratefully remember what his intention was.  As to his ‘friend’ who told him that I had ‘imitated Tennyson,’ why I can only say and feel that it is very particularly provoking to hear such things said, and that I wish people would find fault with my ‘metre’ in the place of them.  In the matter of ‘Geraldine’ I shall not be puffed up.  I shall take to mind what you suggest.  Of course, if you find it hard to read, it must be my fault.  And then the fact of there being a story to a poem will give a factitious merit in the eyes of many critics, which