In my own defence, I really believe that my distress arose somewhat less from the mere separation from dear little Flushie than from the consideration of how he was breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel world.  Formerly, when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed he has passed the night in moaning piteously, and often he has refused to eat from a strange hand.  And then he loves me, heart to heart; there was no exaggeration in my verses about him, if there was no poetry.  And when I heard that he cried in the street and then vanished, there was little wonder that I, on my part, should cry in the house.

With great difficulty we hunted the dog-banditti into their caves of the city, and bribed them into giving back their victim.  Money was the least thing to think of in such case; I would have given a thousand pounds if I had had them in my hand.  The audacity of the wretched men was marvellous.  They said that they had been ’about stealing Flush these two years,’ and warned us plainly to take care of him for the future.

The joy of the meeting between Flush and me would be a good subject for a Greek ode—­I recommend it to you.  It might take rank next to the epical parting of Hector and Andromache.  He dashed up the stairs into my room and into my arms, where I hugged him and kissed him, black as he was—­black as if imbued in a distillation of St. Giles’s.  Ah, I can break jests about it now, you see.  Well, to go back to the explanations I promised to give you, I must tell you that Arabel perfectly forgot to say a word to me about ‘Blackwood’ and your wish that I should send the magazine.  It was only after I heard that you had procured it yourself, and after I mentioned this to her, that she remembered her omission all at once.  Therefore I am quite vexed and disappointed, I beg you to believe—­I, who have pleasure in giving you any printed verses of mine that you care to have.  Never mind!  I may print another volume before long, and lay it at your feet.  In the meantime, you endure my ‘Cry of the Children’ better than I had anticipated—­just because I never anticipated your being able to read it to the end, and was over-delicate of placing it in your hands on that very account.  My dearest Mr. Boyd, you are right in your complaint against the rhythm.  The first stanza came into my head in a hurricane, and I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it—­that is the whole mystery of the iniquity.  If you look Mr. Lucas from head to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his person.  The whole crime of the versification belongs to me.  So blame me, and by no means another poet, and I will humbly confess that I deserve to be blamed in some measure.  There is a roughness, my own ear being witness, and I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your castigation, kissing the last as if it were Flush.