be forced to advertise
in the 'Times', and obtain an injunction. But what I suffer in feeling
the hands of these blackguards (for I forgot to say another man has been
making similar applications to friends) what I undergo with their paws
in my very bowels, you can guess, and God knows! No friend, of course,
would ever give up the letters--if anybody ever is forced to do that
which _she_ would have writhed under--if it ever _were_ necessary, why, _I_
should be forced to do it, and, with any good to her memory and fame,
my own pain in the attempt would be turned into joy--I should _do_ it at
whatever cost: but it is not only unnecessary but absurdly useless--and,
indeed, it shall not be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along
with his breath.

'I am going to reprint the Greek Christian Poets and another
essay--nothing that ought to be published shall be kept back,--and this
she certainly intended to correct, augment, and re-produce--but _I_ open
the doubled-up paper! Warn anyone you may think needs the warning of the
utter distress in which I should be placed were this scoundrel, or
any other of the sort, to baffle me and bring out the letters--I can't
prevent fools from uttering their folly upon her life, as they do on
every other subject, but the law protects property,--as these letters
are. Only last week, or so, the Bishop of Exeter stopped the publication
of an announced "Life"--containing extracts from his correspondence--and
so I shall do. . . .'

Mr. Browning only resented the exactions of modern biography in the
same degree as most other right-minded persons; but there was, to
his thinking, something specially ungenerous in dragging to light any
immature or unconsidered utterance which the writer's later judgment
would have disclaimed. Early work was always for him included in this
category; and here it was possible to disagree with him; since the
promise of genius has a legitimate interest from which no distance
from its subsequent fulfilment can detract. But there could be no
disagreement as to the rights and decencies involved in the present
case; and, as we hear no more of the letters to Mr. . . ., we may
perhaps assume that their intending publisher was acting in ignorance,
but did not wish to act in defiance, of Mr. Browning's feeling in the
matter.

In the course of this year, 1863, Mr. Browning brought out, through
Chapman and Hall, the still well-known and well-loved three-volume
edition of h