pleased me and made me grateful to such an extremity by your most pretty
and graceful illustrative outlines. The death-bed I admire particularly;
the attitudes are very expressive, and the open window helps the
sentiment. What am I to say for your kindness in holding a torch of this
kind (perfumed for the 'nobilities') between the wind and my poems?
Thank you, thank you. And when that's said, I ought to stop short and
beg you, dear Fanny, not to waste yourself in more labour of this kind,
seeing that I am accursed and that nothing is to be done with my books
and me, as far as my public is concerned. Why not get up a book of your
own, a collection of 'outlines' illustrative of everybody's poems, which
would stand well on its own feet and make a circle for itself? Think of
_that_ rather. For my part, there's nothing to be done with me, as I
said; that is, there's nothing to be done with my publishers, who just
do as they like with my books, and don't like to do much good for _me_
with them, whatever they may do for themselves. I am misanthropical in
respect to the booksellers. They manage one as they please, and not at
all to please one. I have no more to say to the fate of my books than
you have--and not much more to pocket. This third edition, for instance,
which should have been out four or five months ago, they are keeping, I
suppose, for the millennium, encouraged probably by the spiritual
manifestations; and _my_ personal manifestations meanwhile have as much
weight with them as facts have with Faraday, or the theory of fair play
with the London 'Athenæum.' I am sick of it all, indeed. I look down on
it all as the epicurean gods do on the world without putting out a
finger to save an empire; perhaps because they can't. Long live the
----, who are kings of us. It's the best thing possible, I conclude, in
this best of possible social economies, though for ourselves
individually it may not be a very good thing; not precisely what we
should choose. Think of the separate book of outlines. Seriously, Robert
and I recommend you to consider it. You might make a book for