MANUSCRIPT: Hooker. Ink. Unpublished.

This letter closely followed the note which precedes it. The allusion to brocade that stands alone was probably suggested by a sentence in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (chapter 12), recently published (1860), which ED was perhaps now reading: "Mrs. Glegg . . . had inherited from her grandmother . . . a brocaded gown that would stand up empty, like a suit of armour . . " (see also letter no. 368). Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (1517-1547), the first English writer of blank verse, was accused of high treason, tried before a packed jury, and beheaded.