My faults, my faults--Shall I help you? Ah--you see them too well, I
fear. And do you know that _I_ also have something of your feeling
about 'being about to _begin_,' or I should dare to praise you for
having it. But in you, it is different--it is, in you, a virtue. When
Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io,
and declared at last that he was [Greek: mêdepô en prooimiois],[1]
poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the
'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may
well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our
hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you _will_ do
what is greater. It is my faith for you.

And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to
promise and vow' for you,--and whether you have held true to early
tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and
what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!--(if it
isn't proved already).

But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if
I ever write to you again--I mean, if you wish it--it may be in the
other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of
Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,--you
might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet--which I guessed at
once--and of course--

I have no joy in this contract to-day!
It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.

Ever faithfully yours,