nd a life of travel, writes you some fifteen
tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with
matting over it--as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of
the soil they are said to spring from,--think of 'Saulle,' and his
Greek attempts!

I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he
kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am
sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the
quarter to pray for--But surely the weather was a little better last
week, and you, were you not better? And do you know--but it's all
self-flattery I believe,--still I cannot help fancying the East wind
does my head harm too!

Ever yours faithfully,

R. BROWNING.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]

People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the
darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk
a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once
I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an
argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor _you_ up) for a mere
mystery. Nor that I can '_see what you have got in you_,' from a mere
guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not
because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our
sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the
lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see
_you_ by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and
because I am willing for you to know _me_ from the beginning, with all
my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people
who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you
were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to _Colburn's
Magazine_, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a
perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in
my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the
right--why the end would be that _you_ would take to 'running after
the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ...
then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my
desk...! (_Not_ a 'full stop'!.)

Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never f