Upon this principle it is obvious that there should have been a selection among the Letters, but not a selection which should exclude anything merely because it was ardent and noble.  If Browning or Mrs. Browning had not desired any people to know that they were fond of each other, they would not have written and published “One Word More” or “The Sonnets from the Portuguese.”  Nay, they would not have been married in a public church, for every one who is married in a church does make a confession of love of absolutely national publicity, and tacitly, therefore, repudiates any idea that such confessions are too sacred for the world to know.  The ridiculous theory that men should have no noble passions or sentiments in public may have been designed to make private life holy and undefiled, but it has had very little actual effect except to make public life cynical and preposterously unmeaning.  But the words of a poem or the words of the English Marriage Service, which are as fine as many poems, is a language dignified and deliberately intended to be understood by all.  If the bride and bridegroom in church, instead of uttering those words, were to utter a poem compounded of private allusions to the foibles of Aunt Matilda, or of childish secrets which they would tell each other in a lane, it would be a parallel case to the publication of some of the Browning Letters.  Why the serious and universal portions of those Letters could not be published without those which are to us idle and unmeaning it is difficult to understand.  Our wisdom, whether expressed in private or public, belongs to the world, but our folly belongs to those we love.

There is at least one peculiarity in the Browning Letters which tends to make their publication far less open to objection than almost any other collection of love letters which can be imagined.  The ordinary sentimentalist who delights in the most emotional of magazine interviews, will not be able to get much satisfaction out of them, because he and many persons more acute will be quite unable to make head or tail of three consecutive sentences.  In this respect it is the most extraordinary correspondence in the world.  There seem to be only two main rules for this form of letter-writing:  the first is, that if a sentence can begin with a parenthesis it always should; and the second is, that if you have written from a third to half of a sentence you need never in any case write any more.  It would be amusing to watch any one who felt an idle curiosity as to the language and secrets of lovers opening the Browning Letters.  He would probably come upon some such simple and lucid passage as the following:  “I ought to wait, say a week at least, having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs....  But not being Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I did think I might go modestly on ... [Greek:  omoi], let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocated ankles.”