Dearest Mr. Kenyon,—­If your good nature is still not at ease, through doubting about how to make Lizzy happy in a book, you will like to hear perhaps that I have thought of a certain ’Family Robinson Crusoe,’ translated from the German, I think, not a Robinson purified, mind, but a Robinson multiplied and compounded.[131] Children like reading it, I believe.  And then there is a ’Masterman Ready,’ or some name like it, by Captain Marryat, also popular with young readers.  Or ‘Seaward’s Narrative,’ by Miss Porter, would delight her, as it did me, not so many years ago.

I mention these books, but know nothing of their price; and only because you asked me, I do mention them.  The fact is that she is not hard to please as to literature, and will be delighted with anything.

To-day Mr. Poe sent me a volume containing his poems and tales collected, so now I must write and thank him for his dedication.  What is to be said, I wonder, when a man calls you the ’noblest of your sex’?  ‘Sir, you are the most discerning of yours.’  Were you thanked for the garden ticket yesterday?  No, everybody was ungrateful, down to Flush, who drinks day by day out of his new purple cup, and had it properly explained how you gave it to him (I explained that), and yet never came upstairs to express to you his sense of obligation.

Affectionately yours always,
E.B.B.

[Footnote 131:  No doubt The Swiss Family Robinson.]

To John Kenyan Saturday [beginning of April 1845].

My dearest Cousin,—­After all I/ said to you, said the other day, about Apuleius, and about what couldn’t, shouldn’t, and mustn’t be done in the matter, I ended by trying the unlawful art of translating this prose into verse, and, one after another, have done all the subjects of the Poniatowsky gems Miss Thompson sent the list of, except two, which I am doing and shall finish anon.[132] In the meantime it comes into my head that it is just as well for you to look over my doings, and judge whether anything in them is to the purpose, or at all likely to be acceptable.  Especially I am anxious to impress on you that, if I could think for a moment you would hesitate about rejecting the whole in a body, from any consideration for me, I should not merely be vexed but pained.  Am I not your own cousin, to be ordered about as you please?  And so take notice that I will not bear the remotest approach to ceremony in the matter.  What is wrong? what is right? what is too much? those are the only considerations.

Apuleius is florid, which favored the poetical design on his sentences.  Indeed he is more florid than I have always liked to make my verses.  It is not, of course, an absolute translation, but as a running commentary on the text it is sufficiently faithful.

But probably (I say to myself) you do not want so many illustrations, and all too from one hand?