Get but well, keep but as well, and all is easy now.  This wonderful winter—­the spring—­the summer—­you will take exercise, go up and down stairs, get strong. I pray you, at your feet, to do this, dearest! Then comes Autumn, with the natural expectations, as after rouge one expects noir:  the likelihood of a severe winter after this mild one, which to prevent, you reiterate your demand to go and save your life in Italy, ought you not to do that?  And the matters brought to issue, (with even, if possible, less shadow of ground for a refusal than before, if you are well, plainly well enough to bear the voyage) there I will bid you ’be mine in the obvious way’—­if you shall preserve your belief in me—­and you may in much, in all important to you.  Mr. Kenyon’s praise is undeserved enough, but yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, tenax propositi, able to make out a life for himself and abide in it—­’for,’ he went on, ’you really do live without any of this titillation and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all kinds, they all say they can do without.’  That is more true—­and I intend by God’s help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole energies in reducing to practice the feeling which occupies me, and in the practical operation of which, the other work I had proposed to do will be found included, facilitated—­I shall be able—­but of this there is plenty time to speak hereafter—­I shall, I believe, be able to do this without even allowing the world to very much misinterpret—­against pure lying there is no defence, but all up to that I hope to hinder or render unimportant—­as you shall know in time and place.

I have written myself grave, but write to me, dear, dearest, and I will answer in a lighter mood—­even now I can say how it was yesterday’s hurry happened.  I called on Milnes—­who told me Hanmer had broken a bone in his leg and was laid up, so I called on him too—­on Moxon, by the way, (his brother telling me strangely cheering news, from the grimmest of faces, about my books selling and likely to sell ... your wishes, Ba!)—­then in Bond Street about some business with somebody, then on Mrs. Montagu who was out walking all the time, and home too.  I found a letter from Mr. Kenyon, perfectly kind, asking me to go on Monday to meet friends, and with yours to-day comes another confirming the choice of the day.  How entirely kind he is!

I am very well, much better, indeed—­taking that bath with sensibly good effect, to-night I go to Montagu’s again; for shame, having kept away too long.

And the rest shall answer yours—­dear!  Not ‘much to answer?’ And Beethoven, and Painting and—­what is the rest and shall be answered!  Bless you, now, my darling—­I love you, ever shall love you, ever be your own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, March 4, 1846.]