is that the man in question believes that he can
make the story as stately to the whole world as it is to him, and he
chooses his words to that end. Yet when a work contains expressions
which have one value and significance when read by the people to whom
they were addressed, and an entirely different value and significance
when read by any one else, then the element of the violation of
sanctity does arise. It is not because there is anything in this world
too sacred to tell. It is rather because there are a great many things
in this world too sacred to parody. If Browning could really convey to
the world the inmost core of his affection for his wife, I see no
reason why he should not. But the objection to letters which begin "My
dear Ba," is that they do not convey anything of the sort. As far as
any third person is concerned, Browning might as well have been
expressing the most noble and universal sentiment in the dialect of
the Cherokees. Objection to the publication of such passages as that,
in short, is not the fact that they tell us about the love of the
Brownings, but that they do not tell us about it.

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