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The letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (v. 1)
The letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett - v. 1 Author:Robert Browning Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me for yours ever faithfully, E. Browning. I don't dare—yet I will—ask can you read this? Because I coul... more »d write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as you do now! E. B. B. to B. B. 50 Wimpole Street, February 17, 1845. Dear Mr. Browning,—To begin with the end (which is 4. only characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font. If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I couldn't do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle. Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons. . . Mr. Landor, for instance, who writes as if he had the sky for a copybook and dotted his i'a in proportion. People who do such things should ' wear gauntlets; yes, and have none to wear; or they wouldn't waste their time so. People who write—by profession—shall I say?—never should do it, or what will become of them when most of their strength retires into their head and heart, (as is the case with some of us and may be the case with all) and when they have to write a poem twelve times over, as Mr. Kenyon says I should do if I were virtuous? Not that I do it. Does anybody do it, I wonder? Do you, ever? From what you tell me of the trimming of the light, I imagine not. And besides, one may be laborious as a writer, without copying twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a moment what three times six is, without' doing it' on their fingers; and in the same way one may work one's verses in one's head quite as laboriously as on paper—I maintain it.I consider myself a very patient, ...« less