On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the Education question; in which all my friends the Dissenters did appear to me so painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong at once.
And Southey's letters! I did quite delight in _them_! They are more _personal_ than any I ever saw of his; and have more warm every-day life in them.
The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to _my_ life) never 'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I was bid; and was going to put Gabriel's speech,[93] only--with the pen in my hand to do it--I found that the angel was a little too exclamatory altogether, and that he had cried out, 'O ruined earth!' and 'O miserable angel!' just before, approaching to the habit of a mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise; taking care of your full stop after 'despair.' Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon.
Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a note to Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for his courtesy about Leigh Hunt's poems; and following your counsel in every point. 'Only last night,' you will say! But I have had _such_ a headache--and some very painful vexation in the prospect of my maid's leaving me, who has been with me throughout my illness; so that I am much attached to her, with the best reasons for being so, while the idea of a stranger is scarcely tolerable to me under my actual circumstances.
The 'Palm Leaves'[94] are full of strong thought and good thought--thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare and cold--somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East, surely, surely!
May the change of air be rapid in doing you good--the weather seems to be softening on purpose for you. May God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon; I never can thank you enough. When you return I shall be rustling my 'proofs' about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.
[Footnote 93: In the 'Drama of Exile,' near the beginning (_Poetical Works_, i. 7).]
[Footnote 94: By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.]
My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I heard that once I wrote three times too long a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is scarcely the way to make up for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you can, for every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you. _Hence these_ faults--not quite tears--in spite of my penitence and the quotation.