Well! one should laugh and be wise. But somehow one doesn't laugh. A letter beginning, 'You are a great teacher of truth,' and ending, 'You are a dishonest wretch,' makes you cold somehow, and ill disposed towards the satisfactions of literary distinction. Yes! and be sure, Isa, that the 'true gods sigh,' and have reason to sigh, for the cost and pain of it; sigh only ... don't haggle over the cost; don't grudge a crazia, but.... sigh, sigh ... while they pay honestly. "On the other hand, there's much light talking and congratulation, excellent returns to the pocket from the poem in the _Cornhill_; pleasant praise from dear Mr. Trollope.... with all drawbacks: a good opinion from Isa worth its gold--and Pan laughs. "But he is a beast up to the waist; yes, Mr. Trollope, a beast. He is not a true god. "And I am neither god nor beast, if you please--only a "BA." * * * * * [Footnote 1: These dots do not indicate any hiatus. They exist in the MS. as here given.] It seems that she certainly imagined me to be the critic; but must have been subsequently undeceived. I will not venture to say a word on the question of the marring or making of a man which results from the creation of a poet; but if my brother had known Mrs. Browning as well as I knew her, he would not have written that he could "hardly believe that she herself believes in the doctrine that her fancy has led her to illustrate." At all events, the divine afflatus had not so marred the absolutely single-minded truthfulness of the woman in her as to make it possible that she should, for the sake of illustrating, however appositely, any fancy however brilliant, put forth a "doctrine" as believing in it, which she did not believe. It may seem that this is a foolish making of a mountain out of a molehill; but she would not have felt it to be so. She had so high a conception of the poet's office and responsibilities that nothing would have induced her to play at believing for literary purposes any position, or fancy, or imagination, which she did not in her heart of hearts accept.