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 wonderment at the notion—­we turned to the index, in large text-hand, and stopped at ’Miss B.’—­and he indeed read them, or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my short-sighted eye—­all I saw was the faint small characters—­and, do you know ...  I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said was most unfairly exposed to view!—­so I was silent, and lost you (in that)—­then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of vexation it would give you. All I know of the notes, that one is addressed to Talfourd in the third person—­and when I had run through