‘disinter’ anybody or anything you please, but don’t disinter me, unless you mean the ghost of my vexation to vex you ever after.  ‘Blessed be she who spares these stones.’  All the saints know that I have enough to answer for since I came to my mature mind, and that I had difficulty enough in making most of the ‘Seraphim’ volume presentable a little in my new edition, because it was too ostensible before the public to be caught back; but if the sins of my rawest juvenility are to be thrust upon me—­and sins are extant of even twelve or thirteen, or earlier, and I was in print once when I was ten, I think—­what is to become of me?  I shall groan as loud as Christian did.  Dearest Miss Mitford, now forgive this ingratitude which is gratitude all the time.  I love you and thank you; but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and let me love and thank you still more.  When you see my new edition you will see that everything worth a straw I ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in conjuration I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on the stubble that remains—­if anything does remain, indeed.  Now, more than enough of this.  For the rest, I am delighted.  I am even so generous as not to be jealous of Mr. Chorley for prevailing with you when nobody else could.  I had given it up long ago; I never thought you would stir a pen again.  By what charm did he prevail?  Your series of papers will be delightful, I do not doubt; though I never could see anything in some of your heroes, American or Irish.  Longfellow is a poet; I don’t refer to him.  Still, whatever you say will be worth hearing, and the guide through ‘Pompeii’ will be better than many of the ruins.  ’The Pleader’s Guide’ I never heard of before.  Praed has written some sweet and tender things.  Then I shall like to hear you on Beaumont and Fletcher, and Andrew Marvell.

I have seen nothing of Tennyson’s new poem.  Do you know if the echo-song is the most popular of his verses?  It is only another proof to my mind of the no-worth of popularity.  That song would be eminently sweet for a common writer, but Tennyson has done better, surely; his eminences are to be seen above.  As for the laurel, in a sense he is worthier of it than Leigh Hunt; only Tennyson can wait, that is the single difference.

So anxious I am about your house.  Your health seems to me mainly to depend on your moving, and I do urge your moving; if not there, elsewhere.  May God bless you, ever dear friend!

I dare say you will think I have given too much importance to the rococo verses you had the goodness to speak of; but I have a horror of being disinterred, there’s the truth!  Leave the violets to grow over me.  Because that wretched school-exercise of a version of the ‘Prometheus’ had been named by two or three people, wasn’t I at the pains of making a new translation before I left England, so to erase a sort of half-visible and half invisible ‘Blot on the Scutcheon’?  After such an expenditure of lemon-juice, you will not wonder that I should trouble you with all this talk about nothing....