I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr. Mathews, as I may conscientiously do, even before I have looked into or received the ‘Democratic Review,’ that whatever fault you may find with me, my strongest feeling on reading your article will or must be the sense of your kindness.  Of course I do not expect, nor should I wish, that your personal interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy your critical faculty in regard to me.  Such an expectation, if I had entertained it, would have been scarcely honorable to either of us, and I may assure you that I never did entertain it.  No; be at rest about the article.  It is not likely that I shall think it ‘inadequate.’  And I may as well mention in connection with it that before you spoke of reviewing me I (in my despair of Mr. Horne’s absence, and my impotency to assist your book) had thrown into my desk, to watch for some opportunity of publication, a review of your ‘Poems on Man,’ from my own hand, and that I am still waiting and considering and taking courage before I send it to some current periodical.  There is a difficulty—­there is a feeling of shyness on my part, because, as I told you, I have no personal friend or introduction among the pressmen or the critics, and because the ‘Athenaeum,’ which I should otherwise turn to first, has already treated of your work, and would not, of course, consent to reconsider an expressed opinion.  Well, I shall do it somewhere.  Forgive me the appearance of my impotency under a general aspect.

Ah, you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes of even such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon, who can write sonnets himself.  Poetry is in their eyes just a desperate speculation.  A poet must have tried his public before he tries the publisher—­that is, before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him.  But I will make any effort you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you how things are.  By the way, if I ever told you that Tennyson was ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is well, again, or was when I last heard of him.  I do not know him personally.  Also Harriet Martineau can walk five miles a day with ease, and believes in mesmerism with all her strength.  Mr. Putnam had the goodness to write and open his reading room to me, who am in prison instead in mine.

May God bless you.  Do let me hear from you soon, and believe me ever your friend,

E.B.  BARRETT.

To Mrs. Martin November 16, 1844.

My dearest Mrs. Martin, ...  To-day I perceive in the ‘contents’ of the new ‘Westminster Review’ that my poems are reviewed in it, and I hope that you will both be interested enough in my fortunes to read at the library what may be said of them.  Did George tell you that he imagined (as I also did) the ‘Blackwood’ paper to be by Mr. Phillimore the barrister?  Well, Mr. Phillimore denies it altogether, has in fact quarrelled with Christopher North, and writes no more for him, so that I am quite at a loss now where to carry my gratitude.