will understand that I do not object to your having been informed of the thing, only Arabel should have remembered to ask you not to mention again the name of the critic who wrote to me.
May God bless you, my very dear friend. I drink thoughts of you in Cyprus every day.
Your ever affectionate
ELIBET.
There is no review in the 'Examiner' yet, nor any continuation in the 'Athenæum.'1
September 10, 1844.
My dearest Mrs. Martin, -- I will not lose a post in assuring you that I was not silent because of any disappointment from your previous letter. I could only feel the kindness of that letter, and this was certainly the chief and upper- most feeling at the time of reading it, and since. Your preference of 'The Seraphim' one other person besides yourself has acknowledged to me in the same manner, and although I myself -- perhaps from the natural leaning to last works, and perhaps from a wise recognition of the complete failure of the poem called 'The Seraphim' -- do disagree with you, yet I can easily forgive you for such a thought, and believe that you see sufficient grounds for entertaining it. More and more I congratulate myself (at any rate) for the decision I came to at the last moment, and in the face of some persuasions, to call the book 'Poems,' instead of trusting its responsibility to the 'Drama,' by such a title as 'A Drama of Exile, and Poems.' It is plain, as I anticipated, that for one person who is ever so little pleased
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