f wine, but we
live here the most secluded, quiet life possible--reading and writing,
and talking of all things in heaven and earth, and a little besides;
and sometimes even laughing as if we had twenty people to laugh with
us, or rather _hadn't_. We know not a creature, I am happy to say,
except an Italian professor (of the university here) who called on us
the other evening and praised aloud the scholars of England. 'English
Latin was best,' he said, 'and English Greek foremost.' Do you clap
your hands?

The new pope is more liberal than popes in general, and people write
odes to him in consequence.

Robert is going to bring out a new edition of his collected poems,
and you are not to read any more, if you please, till this is done.
I heard of Carlyle's saying the other day 'that he hoped more from
Robert Browning, for the people of England, than from any living
English writer,' which pleased me, of course. I am just sending off
an anti-slavery poem for America,[155] too ferocious, perhaps, for the
Americans to publish: but they asked for a poem and shall have it.

If I ask for a letter, shall I have it, I wonder? Remember me and
love me a little, and pray for me, dearest friend, and believe how
gratefully and ever affectionately

I am your

ELIBET,

though Robert always calls me _Ba_, and thinks it the prettiest name
in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love
but of deaf love.

[Footnote 155: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' _(Poetical
Works_, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called _The
Liberty Bell_, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery Bazaar
of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a small
pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.]

It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year 1847, that Mr.
Browning first became acquainted with his wife's 'Sonnets from
the Portuguese.' Written during the course of their courtship and
engagement, they were not shown even to him until some months after
their marriage. The story of it was told by Mr. Browning in later
life to Mr. Edmund Gosse, with leave to make it known to the world in
general; and from Mr. Gosse's publication it is here quoted in his own
words.[156]

[Footnote 156: '_Critical Kit-Kats_,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).]

'Their custom was, Mr. Browning said, to write alone, and not to show
each other what they had written. This was a rule which he sometimes
br