,
would have been less noble yourself not to have done so--only, how I
agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry
roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste--now isn't it? ...
though you do not use that word.

I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have
something to tell you, of him at least.

And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me,
and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not
been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment,
inasmuch as _he knew perfectly that you had just left me_. My sisters
told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off
on Saturday, with a, ... '_So_ I am to meet Mr. Browning?' But he made
no observation afterwards--none: and if he heard what you said at all
(which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on
'Yorick's' part when the 'last chapter' was too much with him.

I have written about 'Luria' in another place--you shall have the
papers when I have read through the play. How different this living
poetry is from the polished rhetoric of 'Ion.' The man and the statue
are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing--it is
here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of '_taste_,' but of
sight and feeling.

As to the 'Venice' it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical
sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say
more?--of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception.
Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and
the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.

Do not write 'Luria' if your head is uneasy--and you cannot say that
it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do
what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be
tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the
necessary exercise ... this, you will do--I entreat you to do it.

May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I
say ... as I am yours--

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]

Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did _not_ read _either_ of
your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read
one word of them--and hear why. When your brother and I took the book
between us in wonderme