... to the awful consideration of the possibility of my reading a novel or caring for the story of it (proh pudor!), that I am probably, not to say certainly, the most complete and unscrupulous romance reader within your knowledge.  Never was a child who cared more for ‘a story’ than I do; never even did I myself, as a child, care more for it than I do.  My love of fiction began with my breath, and will end with it; and goes on increasing; and the heights and depths of the consumption which it has induced you may guess at perhaps, but it is a sublime idea from its vastness, and will gain on you but slowly.  On my tombstone may be written ’Ci-git the greatest novel reader in the world,’ and nobody will forbid the inscription; and I approve of Gray’s notion of paradise more than of his lyrics, when he suggests the reading of romances ever new, [Greek:  eis tous aionas.] Are you shocked at me?  Perhaps so.  And you see I make no excuses, as an invalid might.  Invalid or not, I should have a romance in a drawer, if not behind a pillow, and I might as well be true and say so.  There is the love of literature, which is one thing, and the love of fiction, which is another.  And then, I am not fastidious, as Mrs. Hemans was, in her high purity, and therefore the two loves have a race-course clear.

This is a long preface to coming to speak of the ’Improvisatore.’[124] I had sent for it already to the library, and shall dun them for it twice as much for the sake of what you say.  Only I hope I may care for the story.  I shall try.

And for the rococo, I have more feeling for it, in a sense, than I once had, for, some two years ago, I passed through a long dynasty of French memoirs, which made me feel quite differently about the littlenesses of greatnesses.  I measured them all from the heights of the ’tabouret,’[125] and was a good Duchess, in the ‘non-natural’ meaning, for the moment.  Those memoirs are charming of their kind, and if life were cut in filagree paper would be profitable reading to the soul.  Do you not think so?  And you mean besides, probably, that you care for beauty in detail, which we all should do if our senses were better educated.

So the confession is not a dreadful one, after all, and mine may involve more evil, and would to ninety-nine out of a hundred ’sensible and cultivated people.’  Think what Mrs. Ellis would say to the ’Women of England’ about me in her fifteenth edition, if she knew!

And do you know that dear Miss Mitford spent this day week with me, notwithstanding the rain?

Very truly yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

I have forgotten what I particularly wished to say—­viz. that I never thought of expecting to hear from you.  I understand that when you write it is pure grace, and never to be expected.  You have too much to do, I understand perfectly.

The east wind seems to be blowing all my letters about to-day; the t’s and e’s wave like willows.  Now if crooked e’s mean a ‘greenshade’ (not taken rurally), what awful significance can have the whole crooked alphabet?