The joy of the meeting between Flush and me would be a good subject for a Greek ode--I recommend it to you. It might take rank next to the epical parting of Hector and Andromache. He dashed up the stairs into my room and into my arms, where I hugged him and kissed him, black as he was--black as if imbued in a distillation of St. Giles's. Ah, I can break jests about it _now_, you see. Well, to go back to the explanations I promised to give you, I must tell you that Arabel _perfectly forgot_ to say a word to me about 'Blackwood' and your wish that I should send the magazine. It was only after I heard that you had procured it yourself, and after I mentioned this to her, that she remembered her omission all at once. Therefore I am quite vexed and disappointed, I beg you to believe--_I_, who have pleasure in giving you any printed verses of mine that you care to have. Never mind! I may print another volume before long, and lay it at your feet. In the meantime, you _endure_ my 'Cry of the Children' better than I had anticipated--just because I never anticipated your being able to read it to the end, and was over-delicate of placing it in your hands on that very account. My dearest Mr. Boyd, you are right in your complaint against the rhythm. The first stanza came into my head in a hurricane, and I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it--_that_ is the whole mystery of the iniquity. If you look Mr. Lucas from head to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his person. The whole crime of the versification belongs to _me_. So blame _me_, and by no means another poet, and I will humbly confess that I deserve to be blamed in some _measure_. There is a roughness, my own ear being witness, and I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your castigation, kissing the last as if it were Flush.