You kindly allow me to write poetry for its own sake, provided I leave undone nothing which I ought to do, in order to pursue that single, absorbing, exquisite gratification.

I am afraid, sir, you think me very foolish.

I know the first letter I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning to end; but I am not altogether the idle dreaming being it would seem to denote.

My father is a clergyman of limited, though competent income, and I am the eldest of his children.

He expended quite as much in my education as he could afford in justice to the rest.