ringing Flush
with her, as soon as the weather settles, and to-day looks so like
it that I have mused this morning on the possibility of breaking
my prison doors and getting into the next room. Only there is a
forbidding north wind, they say.

Don't be vexed with me, dear Mr. Kenyon. You know there are
obstinacies in the world as well as mortalities, and thereto
appertaining. And then you will perceive through all mine, that it is
difficult for me to act against your judgment so far as to put my own
tenacity into print.

Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

[Footnote 74: 'The Dead Pan' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 280).]

It is to the honour of America that it recognised from the first the
genius of Miss Barrett; and for a large part of her life some of the
closest of her personal and literary connections were with Americans.
The same is true in both respects of Robert Browning. As appears from
some letters printed farther on in these volumes, at a time when the
sale of his poems in England was almost infinitesimal, they were known
and highly prized in the United States. Expressions of Mrs. Browning's
sympathy with America and of gratitude for the kindly feelings of
Americans recur frequently in the letters, and it is probable that
there are still extant in the States many letters written to friends
and correspondents there. Only three or four such have been made
available for the present collection; and of these the first follows
here in its place in the chronological sequence. It was written to Mr.
Cornelius Mathews, then editor of 'Graham's Magazine,' who had
invited Miss Barrett to send contributions to his periodical. The warm
expression in it of sympathy with the poetry of Robert Browning, whom
she did not yet know personally, is especially interesting to readers
of this later day, who, like the spectators at a Greek tragedy, watch
the development of a drama of which the _denouement_ is already known
to them.

_To Cornelius Mathews_
50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1843.

My dear Mr. Mathews,--In replying to your kind letter I send some
more verse for Graham's, praying such demi-semi-gods as preside over
contributors to magazines that I may not appear over-loquacious to
my editor. Of course it is not intended to thrust three or four poems
into one number. My pluralities go to you simply to 'bide your
time,' and be used one by one as the opportunity is presented. In the
meanwhile you have received