This being settled, you must suffer me to explain (for mere personal reasons, and not for the good of the poem) that no mortal priest (of St. Peter’s or otherwise) is referred to in a particular stanza, but the Saviour Himself.  Who is ‘the High Priest of our profession,’ and the only ‘priest’ recognised in the New Testament.  In the same way the altar candles are altogether spiritual, or they could not be supposed, even by the most amazing poetical exaggeration, to ’light the earth and skies.’  I explain this, only that I may not appear to you to have compromised the principle of the poem, by compromising any truth (such in my eyes) for the sake of a poetical effect.

And now I will not say any more.  I know that you will be inclined to cry, ‘Print it in any case,’ but I will entreat of your kindness, which I have so much right to trust in while entreating, not to say one such word.  Be kind, and let me follow my own way silently.  I have not, indeed, like a spoilt child in a fret, thrown the poem up because I would not alter it, though you have done much to spoil me.  I act advisedly, and have made up my mind as to what is the wisest and best thing to do, and personally the pleasantest to myself, after a good deal of serious reflection.  ‘Pan is dead,’ and so best, for the present at least.

I shall take your advice about the preface in every respect, and thanks for the letter and Taylor’s memoirs.

Miss Mitford talks of coming to town for a day, and of bringing Flush with her, as soon as the weather settles, and to-day looks so like it that I have mused this morning on the possibility of breaking my prison doors and getting into the next room.  Only there is a forbidding north wind, they say.

Don’t be vexed with me, dear Mr. Kenyon.  You know there are obstinacies in the world as well as mortalities, and thereto appertaining.  And then you will perceive through all mine, that it is difficult for me to act against your judgment so far as to put my own tenacity into print.

Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

[Footnote 74:  ‘The Dead Pan’ (Poetical Works, iii. 280).]

It is to the honour of America that it recognised from the first the genius of Miss Barrett; and for a large part of her life some of the closest of her personal and literary connections were with Americans.  The same is true in both respects of Robert Browning.  As appears from some letters printed farther on in these volumes, at a time when the sale of his poems in England was almost infinitesimal, they were known and highly prized in the United States.  Expressions of Mrs. Browning’s sympathy with America and of gratitude for the kindly feelings of Americans recur frequently in the letters, and it is probable that there are still extant in the States many letters written to friends and correspondents there.  Only three or four such have been made available for the present collection; and of these the first follows