Horne about his good points.  Phrenologists look gravely at that great scull, by the way, and hope, in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end.  He looks quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind.  I have no little insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration.  How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same—­portraits obliged to face each other for ever,—­prints put together in portfolios.  My Polidoro’s perfect Andromeda along with ’Boors Carousing,’ by Ostade,—­where I found her,—­my own father’s doing, or I would say more.

And when I have said I like ‘Pippa’ better than anything else I have done yet, I shall have answered all you bade me.  And now may I begin questioning?  No,—­for it is all a pure delight to me, so that you do but write.  I never was without good, kind, generous friends and lovers, so they say—­so they were and are,—­perhaps they came at the wrong time—­I never wanted them—­though that makes no difference in my gratitude I trust,—­but I know myself—­surely—­and always have done so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, his marginal note that ’the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in a sane human being.’  So I never deceived myself much, nor called my feelings for people other than they were.  And who has a right to say, if I have not, that I had, but I said that, supernatural or no.  Pray tell me, too, of your present doings and projects, and never write yourself ‘grateful’ to me, who am grateful, very grateful to you,—­for none of your words but I take in earnest—­and tell me if Spring be not coming, come, and I will take to writing the gravest of letters, because this beginning is for gladness’ sake, like Carlyle’s song couplet.  My head aches a little to-day too, and, as poor dear Kirke White said to the moon, from his heap of mathematical papers,

’I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so—­mildly sweet.’

Out on the foolish phrase, but there’s hard rhyming without it.

Ever yours faithfully,

ROBERT BROWNING.

E.B.B. to R.B.

50 Wimpole Street:  Feb. 27, 1845.

Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new ‘style’ (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets.  To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow—­it feels as cold underfoot—­and I have grown sceptical about ’the voice of the turtle,’ the east winds blow so loud.  April is a Parthian with a dart, and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. That is my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the new style!  A little later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at all.  How