[1845.]

DEAR MOIR,

God bless you and yours, and good-bye!  I drop these few lines, as in a bottle from a ship water-logged, and on the brink of foundering, being in the last stage of dropsical debility; but though suffering in body, serene in mind.  So without reversing my union-jack, I await my last lurch.  Till which, believe me, dear Moir,

Yours most truly.

To SIR ROBERT PEEL

A farewell letter

Devonshire Lodge, New Finchley Road, [1845].

DEAR SIR,

We are not to meet in the flesh.  Given over by my physicians and by myself, I am only kept alive by frequent instalments of mulled port wine.  In this extremity I feel a comfort, for which I cannot refrain from again thanking you, with all the sincerity of a dying man,—­and, at the same time, bidding you a respectful farewell.

Thank God my mind is composed and my reason undisturbed, but my race as an author is run.  My physical debility finds no tonic virtue in a steel pen, otherwise I would have written one more paper—­a forewarning one—­against an evil, or the danger of it, arising from a literary movement in which I have had some share, a one-sided humanity, opposite to that Catholic Shakespearian sympathy, which felt with King as well as Peasant, and duly estimated the mortal temptations of both stations.  Certain classes at the poles of Society are already too far asunder; it should be the duty of our writers to draw them nearer by kindly attraction, not to aggravate the existing repulsion, and place a wider moral gulf between Rich and Poor, with Hate on the one side and Fear on the other.  But I am too weak for this task, the last I had set myself; it is death that stops my pen, you see, and not the pension.

God bless you, Sir, and prosper all your measures for the benefit of my beloved country.

ROBERT BROWNING

1812-1889

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

1806-1861

To LEIGH HUNT

A joint epistle

Bagni di Lucca, 6 Oct. 1857.

DEAR LEIGH HUNT,

(It is hard to write, but you bade me do so; yet I had better say ‘Master Hunt’, as they used to call Webster or Ford.) A nine months’ silence after such a letter as yours seems too strange even to you perhaps.  So understand that you gave us more delight at once than we could bear, that was the beginning of the waiting to recover spirit and try and do one’s feeling a little less injustice.  But soon followed unexpected sorrows to us and to you, and the expression of even gratitude grew hard again.  Certainly all this while your letter has been laid before our very eyes, and we have waited for a brighter day than ever came till we left Florence