Do you know who wrote the article in the ’Metropolitan’?  Beseech you, answer me.  I have a suspicion, true, that the critics have been supernaturally kind to me, but the kindness of this ‘Metropolitan’ critic so passes the ordinary limit of kindness, metropolitan or critical, that I cannot but look among my personal friends for the writer of the article.  Coming to personal friends, I reject one on one ground and one on another—­for one the graciousness is too graceful, and for another the grace almost too gracious.  I am puzzled and dizzy with doubt; and—­is it you?  Answer me, will you?  If so, I should owe so much gratitude to you.  Suffer me to pay it!—­permit the pleasure to me of paying it!—­for I know too much of the pleasures of gratitude to be willing to lose one of them.

To John Kenyan March 6, [1845].

Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon—­they are very fine.  The poetry is in them, rather than in Blair.  And now I send them back, and Cunningham and Jerrold, with thanks on thanks; and if you will be kind enough not to insist on my reading the letters to Travis[129] within the ‘hour,’ they shall wait for the ‘Responsibility,’ and the two go to you together.

And as to the tiring, it has not been much, and the happy day was well worth being tired for.  It is better to be tired with pleasure than with frost; and if I have the last fatigue too, why it is March, and it is the hour of my martyrdom always.  But I am not ill—­only uncomfortable.

Ah, the ‘relenting’! it is rather a bad sign, I am afraid; notwithstanding the subtilty of your consolations; but I stroke down my philosophy, to make it shine, like a cat’s back in the dark.  The argument from more deserving poets who prosper less is not very comforting, is it?  I trow not.

But as to the review, be sure—­be very sure that it is not Mr. Browning’s.  How you could think even of Mr. Browning, surprises me.  Now, as for me, I know as well as he does himself that he has had nothing to do with it.

I should rather suspect Mr. Westwood, the author of some fugitive poems, who writes to me sometimes; and the suspicion having occurred to me, I have written to put the question directly.  You shall hear, if I hear in reply.

May God bless you always.  I have heard from dear Miss Mitford.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

[Footnote 129:  By Porson, on the authenticity of I John v. 7.]

To H.S.  Boyd March 29, 1845 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—­As Arabel has written out for you the glorification of ’Peter of York,’[130] I shall use an edge of the same paper to ‘fall on your sense’ with my gratitude about the Cyprus wine.  Indeed, I could almost upbraid you for sending me another bottle.  It is most supererogatory kindness in you to think of such a thing.  And I accept it, nevertheless, with thanks instead of remonstrances, and promise you to drink your health in and the spring in together, and the east wind out, if you do not object to it.  I have been better for several days, but my heart is not yet very orderly—­not being able to recover the veins, I suppose, all in a moment.