stening to the harp the best of all things for
an evil spirit! Pray write me a line to say, 'Oh ... if _that's_ all!'
and remember me for good (which is very compatible with a moment's
stupidity) and let me not for one fault, (and that the only one that
shall be), lose _any pleasure_ ... for your friendship I am sure I
have not lost--God bless you, my dear friend!

R. BROWNING.

And by the way, will it not be better, as co-operating with you more
effectually in your kind promise to forget the 'printer's error' in my
blotted proof, to send me back that same 'proof,' if you have not
inflicted proper and summary justice on it? When Mephistopheles last
came to see us in this world outside here, he counselled sundry of us
'never to write a letter,--and never to burn one'--do you know that?
But I never mind what I am told! Seriously, I am ashamed.... I shall
next ask a servant for my paste in the 'high fantastical' style of my
own 'Luria.'

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Sunday
[May 25, 1845].

I owe you the most humble of apologies dear Mr. Browning, for having
spent so much solemnity on so simple a matter, and I hasten to pay it;
confessing at the same time (as why should I not?) that I am quite as
much ashamed of myself as I ought to be, which is not a little. You
will find it difficult to believe me perhaps when I assure you that I
never made such a mistake (I mean of over-seriousness to indefinite
compliments), no, never in my life before--indeed my sisters have
often jested with me (in matters of which they were cognizant) on my
supernatural indifference to the superlative degree in general, as if
it meant nothing in grammar. I usually know well that 'boots' may be
called for in this world of ours, just as you called for yours; and
that to bring '_Bootes_,' were the vilest of mal-a-pro-pos-ities.
Also, I should have understood 'boots' where you wrote it, in the
letter in question; if it had not been for _the relation of two
things_ in it--and now I perfectly seem to see _how_ I mistook that
relation; ('_seem to see_'; because I have not looked into the letter
again since your last night's commentary, and will not--) inasmuch as
I have observed before in my own mind, that a good deal of what is
called obscurity in you, arises from a habit of very subtle
association; so subtle, that you ar