and I want to have _another_ tragedy in prospect, I write
best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learned
that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on my
story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw it
up. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrast
with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many
half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough
self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus,
or a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling?
. . .

The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and
'The Return of the Druses'.

This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work;
it is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto
occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's
'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even
imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experience
was still distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he was
nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted
with Mr. Kenyon.

When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by a
pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, asked
leave to address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert?
had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was he
still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say that
Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, and though they had
lost sight of each other in after-life, he had never forgotten his
old playmate, but even alluded to him in a little book which he had
published a few years before.*

* The volume is entitled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833),
and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays,
and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted.

The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered a
schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is his
face,' and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized
that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon
proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in a
letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was one
of the best of human beings,