omb; and I was buried, that was the whole. It was a little thing even
for myself a short time ago, and really it would be a pneumatological
curiosity if I could describe and let you see how perfectly for years
together, after what broke my heart at Torquay, I lived on the outside
of my own life, blindly and darkly from day to day, as completely dead
to hope of any kind as if I had my face against a grave, never feeling
a personal instinct, taking trains of thought to carry out as an
occupation absolutely indifferent to the _me_ which is in every human
being. Nobody quite understood this of me, because I am not morally
a coward, and have a hatred of all the forms of audible groaning. But
God knows what is within, and how utterly I had abdicated myself and
thought it not worth while to put out my finger to touch my share of
life. Even my poetry, which suddenly grew an interest, was a thing on
the outside of me, a thing to be done, and then done! What people said
of it did not touch _me_. A thoroughly morbid and desolate state it
was, which I look back now to with the sort of horror with which one
would look to one's graveclothes, if one had been clothed in them by
mistake during a trance.

[Footnote 147: The date at the head of the letter is October 2,
but that is certainly a slip of the pen, since at that date, as the
following letter to Miss Mitford shows, they had not reached Pisa.
See also the reference to 'six weeks of marriage' on p. 295. The Pisa
postmark appears to be October 20 (or later), and the English postmark
is November 5.]

And now I will tell you. It is nearly two years ago since I have known
Mr. Browning. Mr. Kenyon wished to bring him to see me five years ago,
as one of the lions of London who roared the gentlest and was best
worth my knowing; but I refused then, in my blind dislike to seeing
strangers. Immediately, however, after the publication of my last
volumes, he wrote to me, and we had a correspondence which ended in my
agreeing to receive him as I never had received any other man. I
did not know why, but it was utterly impossible for me to refuse to
receive him, though I consented against my will. He writes the most
exquisite letters possible, and has a way of putting things which I
have not, a way of putting aside--so he came. He came, and with
our personal acquaintance began his attachment for me, a sort of
_infatuation_ call it, which resisted the various denials which were
my plain duty at