I have read Combe’s ‘Phrenology,’ but not the ‘Constitution of Man.’  The ‘Phrenology’ is very clever, and amusing; but I do not think it logical or satisfactory.  I forget whether ‘slowness of the pulse’ is mentioned in it as a symptom of the poetical aestus.  I am afraid, if it be a symptom, I dare not take my place even in the ’forlorn hope of poets’ in this age so forlorn as to its poetry; for my pulse is in a continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough for a pedestal—­so I must make my honours over to poor papa straightway.  He has been shivering and shuddering through the cold weather; and partaking our influenza in the warmer.  I am very sorry that you should have been a sufferer too.  It seems to have been a universal pestilence, even down in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the whole colony have had their share of ‘groans.’  And one of my doves shook its pretty head and ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in great consternation for the result.  But it is well again—­cooing as usual; and so indeed we all are.  But indeed, I can’t write a sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves—­of the utilitarianisms of this corrupt age—­among some of the chief of which are steel pens!

I am so glad that you liked my ‘Romaunt,’ and so resigned that you did not understand some of my ‘Poet’s Vow,’ and so obliged that you should care to go on reading what I write.  They vouchsafed to publish in the first number of the new series of the ‘New Monthly’ a little poem of mine called ’The Island,’[33] but so incorrectly that I was glad at the additional oblivion of my signature.  If you see it, pray alter the last senseless line of the first page into ’Leaf sounds with water, in your ear,’ and put ‘amreeta’ instead of ‘amneta’ on the second page; and strike out ‘of’ in the line which names Aeschylus!  There are other blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my ‘contentment’ for some time.  I have begged for [proof] sheets in future; and as none have come for the ensuing month, I suppose I shall have nothing in the next number.  They have a lyrical dramatic poem of mine, ‘The Two Seraphim,’ which, whenever it appears, I shall like to have your opinion of.  As to the incomprehensible line in the ’Poet’s Vow’ of which you asked me the meaning, ’One making one in strong compass,’ I meant to express how that oneness of God, ’in whom are all things,’ produces a oneness or sympathy (sympathy being the tendency of many to become one) in all things.  Do you understand? or is the explanation to be explained?  The unity of God preserves a unity in men—­that is, a perpetual sympathy between man and man—­which sympathy we must be subject to, if not in our joys, yet in our griefs.  I believe the subject itself involves the necessity of some mysticism; but I must make no excuses.  I am afraid that my very Seraphim will not be thought to stand in a very clear light, even at heaven’s gate.  But this is much asay about nothing ...