time,
peculiar artist's pleasure--for an instructed eye loves to see where
the brush has dipped twice in a lustrous colour, has lain insistingly
along a favourite outline, dwelt lovingly in a grand shadow; for these
'too muches' for the everybody's picture are so many helps to the
making out the real painter's picture as he had it in his brain. And
all of the Titian's Naples Magdalen must have once been golden in its
degree to justify that heap of hair in her hands--the _only_ gold
effected now!

But about this soon--for night is drawing on and I go out, yet cannot,
quiet at conscience, till I report (to _myself_, for I never said it
to you, I think) that your poetry must be, cannot but be, infinitely
more to me than mine to you--for you _do_ what I always wanted, hoped
to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first time. You speak
out, _you_,--I only make men and women speak--give you truth broken
into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in
me, but I am going to try; so it will be no small comfort to have your
company just now, seeing that when you have your men and women
aforesaid, you are busied with them, whereas it seems bleak,
melancholy work, this talking to the wind (for I have begun)--yet I
don't think I shall let _you_ hear, after all, the savage things about
Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.

See how I go on and on to you, I who, whenever now and then pulled, by
the head and hair, into letter-writing, get sorrowfully on for a line
or two, as the cognate creature urged on by stick and string, and then
come down 'flop' upon the sweet haven of page one, line last, as
serene as the sleep of the virtuous! You will never more, I hope, talk
of 'the honour of my acquaintance,' but I will joyfully wait for the
delight of your friendship, and the spring, and my Chapel-sight after
all!

Ever yours most faithfully,

R. BROWNING.

For Mr. Kenyon--I have a convenient theory about _him_, and his
otherwise quite unaccountable kindness to me; but 'tis quite night
now, and they call me.

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

50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 15, 1845.

Dear Mr. Browning,--The fault was clearly with me and not with you.

When I had an Italian master, years ago, he told me that there was an
unpronounceable English word which absolutely expressed me, and which
he would say in his own