continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough for a pedestal--so
I must make my honours over to poor papa straightway. He has been
shivering and shuddering through the cold weather; and partaking our
influenza in the warmer. I am very sorry that you should have been a
sufferer too. It seems to have been a universal pestilence, even down
in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the whole colony have had their
share of 'groans.' And one of my doves shook its pretty head and
ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and
nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in
great consternation for the result. But it is well again--cooing as
usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write a
sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves--of the
utilitarianisms of this corrupt age--among some of the chief of which
are steel pens!

I am so glad that you liked my 'Romaunt,' and so resigned that you did
not understand some of my 'Poet's Vow,' and so obliged that you should
care to go on reading what I write. They vouchsafed to publish in the
first number of the new series of the 'New Monthly' a little poem of
mine called 'The Island,'[33] but so incorrectly that I was glad at
the additional oblivion of my signature. If you see it, pray alter the
last senseless line of the first page into 'Leaf sounds with water, in
your ear,' and put 'amreeta' instead of 'amneta' on the second page;
and strike out '_of_' in the line which names Aeschylus! There are
other blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my
'contentment' for some time. I have begged for [proof] sheets in
future; and as none have come for the ensuing month, I suppose I shall
have nothing in the next number. They have a lyrical dramatic poem of
mine, 'The Two Seraphim,' which, whenever it appears, I shall like to
have your opinion of. As to the incomprehensible line in the 'Poet's