For the ‘analyzing’ I give it up willingly, only that I must say what altogether I forgot to say in my last letter, that it was not I, if you please, who spoke of the chrystals breaking away!  And you, to quote me with that certainty!  “The chrystals are broken off,” you say.’ I say!!  When it was in your letter, and not at all in mine!!

The truth is that I was stupid, rather, about the Dulwich collection—­it was my fault.  I caught up the idea of the gallery out of a heap of other thoughts, and really might have known better if I had given myself a chance, by considering.

Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and has taken out a licence, it seems to me, for praising you, for he praised and praised.  Somebody has told him (who had spent several days with you in a house with a large library) that he came away ’quite astounded by the versatility of your learning’—­and that, to complete the circle, you discoursed as scientifically on the training of greyhounds and breeding of ducks as if you had never done anything else all your life.  Then dear Mr. Kenyon talked of the poems; and hoped, very earnestly I am sure, that you would finish ’Saul’—­which you ought to do, must do—­only not now.  By the way Mrs. Coleridge had written to him to enquire whether you had authority for the ‘blue lilies,’ rather than white.  Then he asked about ‘Luria’ and ‘whether it was obscure’; and I said, not unless the people, who considered it, began by blindfolding themselves.

And where do you think Mr. Kenyon talks of going next February—­a long while off to be sure?  To Italy of course.  Everybody I ever heard of seems to be going to Italy next winter.  He visits his brother at Vienna, and ’may cross the Alps and get to Pisa’—­it is the shadow of a scheme—­nothing certain, so far.

I did not go down-stairs to-day because the wind blew and the thermometer fell.  To-morrow, perhaps I may.  And you, dearest dearest, might have put into the letters how you were when you wrote them.  You might—­but you did not feel well and would not say so.  Confess that that was the reason.  Reason or no reason, mention yourself to-morrow, and for the rest, do not write a long letter so as to increase the evil.  There was nothing which I can remember as requiring an answer in what I wrote to you, and though I will have my letter of course, it shall be as brief as possible, if briefness is good for you—­now always remember that.  Why if I, who talk against ‘Luria,’ should work the mischief myself, what should I deserve?  I should be my own jury directly and not recommend to mercy ... not to mine.  Do take care—­care for me just so much.

And, except that taking care of your health, what would you do for me that you have not done?  You have given me the best of the possible gifts of one human soul to another, you have made my life new, and am I to count these things as small and insufficient?  Ah, you know, you know that I cannot, ought not, will not.