but I will not in any case be _un_kind and
_un_grateful, and do what is displeasing to you. And let us both leave
the subject with the words--because we perceive in it from different
points of view; we stand on the black and white sides of the shield;
and there is no coming to a conclusion.

But you will come really on Tuesday--and again, when you like and can
together--and it will not be more 'inconvenient' to me to be pleased,
I suppose, than it is to people in general--will it, do you think?
Ah--how you misjudge! Why it must obviously and naturally be
delightful to me to receive you here when you like to come, and it
cannot be necessary for me to say so in set words--believe it of

Your friend,

E.B.B.

[Mr. Browning's letter, to which the following is in answer was
destroyed, see page 268 of the present volume.]

[Footnote 1: 'What have I to do with thee?']

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

Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]

I intended to write to you last night and this morning, and could
not,--you do not know what pain you give me in speaking so wildly. And
if I disobey you, my dear friend, in speaking, (I for my part) of your
wild speaking, I do it, not to displease you, but to be in my own
eyes, and before God, a little more worthy, or less unworthy, of a
generosity from which I recoil by instinct and at the first glance,
yet conclusively; and because my silence would be the most disloyal of
all means of expression, in reference to it. Listen to me then in
this. You have said some intemperate things ... fancies,--which you
will not say over again, nor unsay, but _forget at once_, and _for
ever, having said at all_; and which (so) will die out between _you
and me alone_, like a misprint between you and the printer. And this
you will do _for my sake_ who am your friend (and you have none
truer)--and this I ask, because it is a condition necessary to our
future liberty of intercourse. You remember--surely you do--that I am
in the most exceptional of positions; and that, just _because of it_,
I am able to receive you as I did on Tuesday; and that, for me to
listen to 'unconscious exaggerations,' is as unbecoming to the
humilities of my position, as unpropitious (which is of more
consequence) to the prosperities of yours. Now, if there should b