Autograph letter signed with initials : [London], to Richard Hengist Horne, [1844 February 17?].

Sending him mottos that she is proposing for Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs. Norton, at his request, and explaining her choices; discussing a motto she created for herself and commenting on the difficulties she faced in deciding what it should be; saying "My spiriting about the mottos is done however, . . except one last motto for Elizabeth Barrett. What metal do you think her made of, to put such a solicitation to her? Somebody, once intending to do me the honors of quotation, desired me to select what I considered the 'best passage in my poems,' - to be straightway quoted, - & was a good deal surprised when I declined to do my part towards it - Perhaps y̲o̲u̲ will be surprised when I tell you that I laughed (so nearly a laugh that Flush raised up his head to look at me) at the idea of your commanding me to select a complimentary motto for myself - nay to talk about 'fire-wings' & take a place in the callendar of saints, elect by my own grace. ! Well! - first I thought of having this motto - / 'O front! O face'! / Ben Jonson. / but, upon consideration of your adjuration about being complimentary, - my memory falling down in a fit sympathetically with my modesty, - I resolved to try my fate in the mode of the 'Sortes Virgilianæ', . . which of course you believe in, . . like me, & other sensible persons. So I shut my eyes & opened Beaumont & Fletcher. And behold! this was the passage of destiny for Elizabeth Barrett - / 'Rather admirable, / Than anywise intelligible.' / Imagine my feelings!;" adding, in a postscript, that she had received a letter from a gentleman who heard that she was a cousin of Tennyson "...through a word dropt by Leigh Hunt.!! - - He refers of course to the Feast of the violets."