iss Flower, who herself admired
its contents so much as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her
friend, the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was
transmitted to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs.
Bridell-Fox; and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at
his urgent request, that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse
contained in a letter from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much later
that a friend, who had earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitely
heard of its destruction. The fragment, which doubtless shared the same
fate, was, I am told, a direct imitation of Coleridge's 'Fire, Famine,
and Slaughter'.

These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible to
believe them such when we remember that he composed verses long before
he could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact has recently
appeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning have found their way
into the market, and have been bought respectively by Mr. Dykes Campbell
and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them. It was addressed
to Mr. Thomas Powell:

Dear Sir,--I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. They
were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly a hundred
of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, having a
great aversion to the practice of many biographers in recording every
trifling incident that falls in their way. He has not the slightest
suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances are in existence.
I have several of the originals by me. They are all extemporaneous
productions, nor has any one a single alteration. There was one amongst
them 'On Bonaparte'--remarkably beautiful--and had I not seen it in
his own handwriting I never would have believed it to have been the
production of a child. It is destroyed. Pardon my troubling you with
these specimens, and requesting you never to mention it, as Robert
would be very much hurt. I remain, dear sir, Your obedient servant, R.
Browning. Bank: March 11, 1843.

The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been sold
and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which the
writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father's
own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together with
the occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from the
first, have been accidental