of myself, as God knows.  But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season, the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my thoughts ever since.  I do not know him personally at all.  But as his disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems, and I heard from him as a consequence.  ‘Dear and noble’ he is indeed—­and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music.  You feel it so—­do you not?  And the ‘dear sir’ has let him have the ‘letter of Cromwell,’ I hope; and satisfied ‘the obedient servant.’  The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the upper-handism of the stupidity.  The geese are in the Capitol, and the Romans in the farmyard—­and it seems all quite natural that it should be so, both to geese and Romans!

But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for reasons which I know and for reasons which I don’t know.  You will let me be grateful to you,—­will you not?  You must, if you will or not.  And also—­I would not wait for more leave—­if I could but see your desk—­as I do your death’s heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.

Ever faithfully yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday Morning—­Spring!
[Post-mark, February 26, 1845.]

Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in Spring I shall see you, surely see you—­for when did I once fail to get whatever I had set my heart upon?  As I ask myself sometimes, with a strange fear.

I took up this paper to write a great deal—­now, I don’t think I shall write much—­’I shall see you,’ I say!

That ‘Luria’ you enquire about, shall be my last play—­for it is but a play, woe’s me!  I have one done here, ‘A Soul’s Tragedy,’ as it is properly enough called, but that would not do to end with (end I will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello’s country, and devotes himself to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows—­all in my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan, good true fellow, this one), and Domizia the Lady—­loosen all these on dear foolish (ravishing must his folly be), golden-hearted Luria, all these with their worldly-wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways; and, for me, the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with these as with him,—­so there can no good come of keeping this wild company any longer, and ‘Luria’ and the other sadder ruin of one Chiappino—­these got rid of, I will do as you bid me, and—­say first I have some Romances and Lyrics, all dramatic, to dispatch, and then, I shall stoop of a sudden under and out of this dancing ring of men and women hand in hand, and stand still awhile, should my eyes dazzle, and when that’s over, they will be gone and you will be there, pas vrai?  For,