Ever most affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

I inclose Mr. Chorley’s note which you left behind you, but which I did not see until just now. You know that I am not ashamed of ‘progress.’  On the contrary, my only hope is in it.  But the question is not there, nor, I think, for the public, except in cases of ripe, established reputations, as I said before.

[Footnote 121:  William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, the first part of whose Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect appeared in 1844.]

To Mr. Westwood (On returning some illustrations of Spenser by Mr. Woods) December 11, 1844.

...  With many thanks, cordial and true, I thank you for the pleasure I have enjoyed in connection with these proofs of genius.  To be honest, it is my own personal opinion (I give it to you for as much as it is worth—­not much!) that many of the subjects of these drawings are unfit for graphic representation.  What we can bear to see in the poet’s vision, and sustained on the wings of his divine music, we shrink from a little when brought face to face with, as drawn out in black and white.  You will understand what I mean.  The horror and terror preponderate in the drawings, and what is sublime in the poet is apt to be extravagant in the artist—­and this, not from a deficiency of power in the latter, but from a treading on ground forbidden except to the poet’s foot.  I may be wrong, perhaps—­I do not pretend to be right.  I only tell you (as you ask for them) what my impressions are.

I need not say that I wish all manner of success to your friend the artist, and laurels of the weight of gold while of the freshness of grass—­alas! an impossible vegetable!—­fabulous as the Halcyon!

To H.S.  Boyd Monday, December 24, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—­I wish I had a note from you to-day—­which optative aorist I am not sure of being either grammatical or reasonable!  Perhaps you have expected to hear from me with more reason....

I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau’s lucid and able style.  She is a very admirable woman—­and the most logical intellect of the age, for a woman.  On this account it is that the men throw stones at her, and that many of her own sex throw dirt; but if I begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth.  A righteous indignation fastens on me.  I had a note from her the other day, written in a noble spirit, and saying, in reference to the insults lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first for publicity, and ventured it all for the sake of what she considered the truth—­she was sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva.

Do you remember who Godiva was—­or shall I tell you?  Think of it—­Godiva of Coventry, and peeping Tom.  The worst and basest is, that in this nineteenth century there are thousands of Toms to one.

I think, however, myself, and with all my admiration for Miss Martineau, that her statement and her reasonings on it are not free from vagueness and apparent contradictions.  She writes in a state of enthusiasm, and some of her expressions are naturally coloured by her mood of mind and nerve.