life's ungoverned will.) May God bless him!--. . . Robert has made his
third bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are
finished--it's only matter of education. When the power of execution is
achieved, he will try at something original. Then reading hurts him; as
long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time--he
can do it now better than at the beginning. The consequence of which
is that an active occupation is salvation to him. . . . Nobody exactly
understands him except me, who am in the inside of him and hear him
breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloud
with me and can't stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems done this
winter very much, and here was a bright room with three windows
consecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and did
nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours
together--there has been little poetry done since last winter, when
he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling
combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and
the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been
happy. So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture--I
couldn't in fact at all. He has material for a volume, and will work at
it this summer, he says.

'His power is much in advance of "Strafford", which is his poorest work
of art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of the
pen.

'At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, and
for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public--no other word.
He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which I
acknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I
wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady
of rank, an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, the other
day, the American minister, whether "Robert was not an American." The
minister answered--"is it possible that _you_ ask me this? Why, there is
not so poor a village in the United States, where they would not tell
you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were sorry
he was not an American." Very pretty of the American minister, was it
not?--and literally true, besides. . . . Ah, dear Sarianna--I don't
complain for myself of an unappreciating public. I _have no reason_. But,
just for _that_ reason, I complain more about Rober