putting off a thing
because I hope to compass some other thing, as here, for had you not
asked for some photographs which I supposed I could soon find time and
inclination to get, I should have thanked you at once; as I do now,
indeed, and with all my heart, but the review article is wavering and
indistinct in my mind now, and though it is inside a drawer of this
table where I write, I cannot bring myself to look at it again,--not
from a motive which is disparaging to you, as I am sure you
understand; the general impression is enough for me, also, if you care
in the least how I feel toward you. The boy has certainly the likeness
to which you refer, and an absolute sameness, almost, in feature as
well as in look, with certain old portraits of hers,--here, older and
younger; there is not a trace of me in him, thank God! I know that
dear, teasing Isa, and how she won't answer your questions, but
sometimes, for compensation, she tells you what you never asked for,
and though I always, or very often, ask about you, yet I think it may
have been in reply to curiosity about the price of Italian stock, that
she lately described to me a photograph of you, yourself, and how you
were: what? even that's over. And moreover, how you were your old self
with additions, which, to be sure, I don't require.

Give my true regard to your mother, and thank her for her goodness in
understanding me. But I write only to have a pleasant chat with you,
in a balcony, looking for fire-flies in the garden, wider between us
than the slanting Pitti facade, now that it's warm and Maylike in
Florence.

Always yours,

ROBERT BROWNING.

[Illustration: KATE FIELD

From a portrait painted by Elihu Vedder, Florence, 1860.]

Mr. Browning had now begun to think of placing his son, who had passed his
sixteenth birthday, in Oxford. In quest of this desire the poet sought the
acquaintance of Dr. Jowett, afterward Master of Balliol College. This
initiated a friendship between Browning and Jowett that lasted all the
poet's life, and that has insured to Balliol many priceless treasures of
association with both Robert and Elizabeth Browning. Up to that time
Jowett had not been an admirer of Browning's poetry. But his keen interest
in the theme then engaging Browning was aroused, and he wrote to a friend:

"I thought I was getting too old to make new