--my own father's doing, or
I would say more.

And when I have said I like 'Pippa' better than anything else I have
done yet, I shall have answered all you bade me. And now may _I_
begin questioning? No,--for it is all a pure delight to me, so that
you do but write. I never was without good, kind, generous friends and
lovers, so they say--so they were and are,--perhaps they came at the
wrong time--I never wanted them--though that makes no difference in my
gratitude I trust,--but I know myself--surely--and always have done
so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a
boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, _his_ marginal note that
'the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in
a sane human being.' So I never deceived myself much, nor called my
feelings for people other than they were. And who has a right to say,
if I have not, that I had, but I said that, supernatural or no. Pray
tell me, too, of your present doings and projects, and never write
yourself 'grateful' to me, who _am_ grateful, very grateful to
you,--for none of your words but I take in earnest--and tell me if
Spring _be not_ coming, come, and I will take to writing the gravest
of letters, because this beginning is for gladness' sake, like
Carlyle's song couplet. My head aches a little to-day too, and, as
poor dear Kirke White said to the moon, from his heap of mathematical
papers,

'I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so--mildly sweet.'

Out on the foolish phrase, but there's hard rhyming without it.

Ever yours faithfully,

ROBERT BROWNING.

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

50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.

Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new
'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets.
To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow--it feels
as cold underfoot--and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the
turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart,
and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. _That_ is
my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the _new style_! A little
later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from
which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at
all. How happy you are, to be able to listen