oet _a moi_, that can do all
with anybody, only 'sips like a fly,' she says, and so cares not to
compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)--Well, then ...
(oh, I must get quick to the sentence's end, and be brief as an
oracle-explainer!)--the giver is you and the taker is I, and the
letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and
the brown study is--how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this
new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among
men, that have each and all their friend, so they say (... not that I
believe all they say--they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,--I once
was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion
'Dere Smith,--I calls you "_dere_" ... because you are so in your
shop!')--and the great sigh is,--there is no deserving nor being
grateful at all,--and the breaking silence is, and the praise is ...
ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for
you--10 strikes by the clock now--tell me if at 10 this morning you
feel any good from my heart's wishes for you--I would give you all you
want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that
should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at
me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid ...
and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its
owner 'travels' next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port
wine--_Dii meliora piis_, and, among them to

Yours every where, and at all times yours

R. BROWNING.

I have all to say yet--next letter. R.B.

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

Tuesday Night.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1845.]

I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the
other evening, of Mr. Kenyon--how this wind must hurt you! And
yesterday I had occasion to go your way--past, that is, Wimpole
Street, the end of it,--and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave
from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I
came to yours,--much least than less, look up when I did come there.
So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather
loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of
certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the 'Athenaeum'
last night,--one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it--'to