ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 1: 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. _Prom._ 741).]



_R.B. to E.B.B._

Hatcham, Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]

Dear Miss Barrett,--People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a
matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is
hard to prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance,
used certain words and ways to a mother or a father _could_, even if
by the devil's help he _would_, reproduce or mimic them with any
effect to anybody else that was to be won over--and so, if 'I love
you' were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose,
be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last
night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain
ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the
fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for _that_ we
could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes
the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear
Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I _said_ (to use a mild word)
'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke
of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was
this--that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and
syllables with a masoretic _other_ sound and sense, make my 'dear'