My dear Friend,—­Do not think me depraved in ingratitude for not sooner thanking you for the pleasure, made so much greater by the surprise, which your note of judgment gave me.  The truth is that I have been very unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the painful physical feeling went away to make room for the pleasurable moral one—­and this I fancied it would do every hour, so that I might be able to tell you at ease all that was in my thoughts.  The fancy was a vain one.  The pain grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been here for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it bore all Jupiter’s ambrosial curls; and is to be here again to-day, but with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch as the leeches last night did their duty, and I feel much better—­God be thanked for the relief.  But I am not yet as well as before this attack, and am still confined to my bed—­and so you must rather imagine than read what I thought and felt in reading your wonderful note.  Of course it pleased me very much, very very much—­and, I dare say, would have made me vain by this time, if it had not been for the opportune pain and the sight of Dr. Chambers’s face.

I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman before I read your suggestion.  I knew that her kind feeling for me would interest her in the sight of it.

Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd!  May all my critics be gentle after the pattern of your gentleness!

Believe me, affectionately yours,
E.B.  BARRETT.

To H.S.  Boyd 50 Wimpole Street:  June 17 [1838].

My dear Friend,—­I send you a number of the ‘Atlas’ which you may keep.  It is a favorable criticism, certainly—­but I confess this of my vanity, that it has not altogether pleased me.  You see what it is to be spoilt.

As to the ‘Athenaeum,’ although I am not conscious of the quaintness and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought and feeling) to have studied ‘attitudes,’ yet the critic was quite right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for the liberal praise he has otherwise given me.  Upon the whole, I like his review better than even the ‘Examiner,’ notwithstanding my being perfectly satisfied with that.

Thank you for the question about my health.  I am very tolerably well—­for me:  and am said to look better.  At the same time I am aware of being always on the verge of an increase of illness—­I mean, in a very excitable state—­with a pulse that flies off at a word and is only to be caught by digitalis.  But I am better—­for the present—­while the sun shines.

Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall hold in memory, and use whenever I am not particularly obstinate, in all my SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!

You will smile at that, and so do I.