more or less kept by me continually, stopped quite some six weeks ago, and I have thus more reasonable hopes of being really and essentially better than I could have with such a symptom loitering behind accidental improvements.  Weak enough, and with a sort of pulse which is not excellent, I certainly remain; but still, if I escape any decided attack this winter—­and I am in garrison now—­there are expectations of further good for next summer, and I may recover some moderate degree of health and strength again, and be able to do good instead of receiving it only.

I write under the eyes of Wordsworth.  Not Wordsworth’s living eyes, although the actual living poet had the infinite kindness to ask Mr. Kenyon twice last summer when he was in London, if he might not come to see me.  Mr. Kenyon said ’No’—­I couldn’t have said ‘No’ to Wordsworth, though I had never gone to sleep again afterwards.  But this Wordsworth who looks on me now is Wordsworth in a picture.  Mr. Haydon the artist, with the utmost kindness, has sent me the portrait he was painting of the great poet—­an unfinished portrait—­and I am to keep it until he wants to finish it.  Such a head! such majesty! and the poet stands musing upon Helvellyn!  And all that—­poet, Helvellyn, and all—­is in my room![69]

Give my kind love to Mr. Martin—­our kind love, indeed, to both of you—­and believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,

Your ever affectionate BA.

Is there any hope for us of you before the winter ends?  Do consider.

To H.S.  Boyd Monday, October 31, 1842.

My very dear Friend,—­I have put off from day to day sending you these volumes, and in the meantime I have had a letter from the great poet!  Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to Mr. Haydon, and that Mr. Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth?  The result was that Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me.  King John’s barons were never better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.[70]

But I won’t tell you any more about it until you have read the poems which I send you.  Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet written on Westminster Bridge, vol. iii. page 78.  Then take from the sixth volume, page 152, the passage beginning ‘Within the soul’ down to page 153 at ‘despair,’ and again at page 155 beginning with

  I have seen
  A curious child, &c.

down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph.  If you admit these passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me further by reading, out of the second volume, the two poems called ‘Laodamia’ and ‘Tintern Abbey’ at page 172 and page 161.  I will not ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the ‘Power of Sound’ in the same volume.  Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet, with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach.  Do be candid.  Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,