Whereupon I revenge myself, you see, by talking all this nonsense upon paper, and making you the victim.

To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands have been performed to the letter, and that one Greek motto (from ‘Orpheus’) is given to the first part of ‘The Seraphim,’ and another from Chrysostom to the second.

Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see you very soon.  Give my very kind remembrance to Miss Holmes, and believe me,

Your affectionate friend,
E.B.  BARRETT.

I saw Mr. Kenyon yesterday.  He has a book just coming out.[35] I should like you to read it.  If you would, you would thank me for saying so.

[Footnote 35:  Poems, for the most part occasional, by John Kenyon.]

To John Kenyon[36] [1838.]

Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and shall) thank Miss Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees nearer than you seem to do.  We, in this England here, are just social barbarians, to my mind—­that is, we know how to read and write and think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles.  By so much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think.  Life has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap.  And that I can see in the books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some accounts.

Where did you get your Bacchanalian song?  Witty, certainly, but the recollection of the scores a little ghastly for the occasion, perhaps.  You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and I know.

Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau.  I cannot be so selfish as to keep it to myself.  The sense of natural beauty and the good sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him.  Have I said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise? That, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

[Footnote 36:  John Kenyon (1784-1856) was born in Jamaica, the son of a wealthy West Indian landowner, but came to England while quite a boy, and was a conspicuous figure in literary society during the second quarter of the century.  He published some volumes of minor verse, but is best known for his friendships with many literary men and women, and for his boundless generosity and kindliness to all with whom he was brought into contact.  Crabb Robinson described him as a man ‘whose life is spent in making people happy.’  He was a distant cousin of Miss Barrett, and a friend of Robert Browning, who dedicated to him his volume of ‘Dramatic Romances,’ besides writing and sending to him ‘Andrea del Sarto’ as a substitute for a print of the painter’s portrait which he had been unable to find.  The best account of Kenyon is to be found in Mrs. Crosse’s ‘John Kenyon and his Friends’ (in Red-Letter Days of My Life, vol. i.).]