My dearest Cousin,--After all _I_/ said to _you_, said the other day, about Apuleius, and about what couldn't, shouldn't, and mustn't be done in the matter, I ended by trying the unlawful art of translating this prose into verse, and, one after another, have done all the subjects of the Poniatowsky gems Miss Thompson sent the list of, except _two_, which I am doing and shall finish anon.[132] In the meantime it comes into my head that it is just as well for you to look over my doings, and judge whether anything in them is to the purpose, or at all likely to be acceptable. Especially I am anxious to impress on you that, if I could think for a moment _you would hesitate about rejecting the whole in a body_, from any consideration for _me_, I should not merely be vexed but pained. Am I not your own cousin, to be ordered about as you please? And so take notice that I will not _bear_ the remotest approach to ceremony in the matter. What is wrong? what is right? what is too much? those are the only considerations. Apuleius is _florid_, which favored the poetical design on his sentences. Indeed he is more florid than I have always liked to make my verses. It is not, of course, an absolute translation, but as a running commentary on the text it is sufficiently faithful. But probably (I say to myself) you do not want so many illustrations, and all too from one hand? The two I do not send are 'Psyche contemplating Cupid asleep,' and 'Psyche and the Eagle.' And I wait to hear how Polyphemus is to _look_--and also Adonis. The Magazine goes to you with many thanks. The sonnet is full of force and expression, and I like it as well as ever I did--better even! Oh--such happy news to-day! The 'Statira' is at Plymouth, and my brothers quite well, notwithstanding their hundred days on the sea! _It makes me happy_. Yours most affectionately, BA. You shall have your 'Radical' almost immediately. I am ashamed. _In such haste_. [Footnote 132: These versions were not published in Mrs. Browning's lifetime, but were included in the posthumous _Last Poems_ (1862). They now appear in the _Poetical Works_, v. 72-83.] _To H.S. Boyd_ April 3, 1845. My very dear Friend,--I have been intending every day to write to tell you that the Cyprus wine is as nectareous as possible, so fit for the gods, in fact, that I have been forced to leave it off as unfit for _me_; it made me so feverish. But I keep it until the sun shall have made me a little less mortal; and in the meantime recognise thankfully both its high qualities and _your_ kind ones. How delightful it is to have this sense of a summer at hand. _Shall_ I see you this summer, I wonder. That is a question among my dreams.