general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to
affirm. But then--once again, I get these people together and give
them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the
Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats,
one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red
collar,--that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into
vogue, and so on with the rest--and won't you just wish for your
_Spectators_ and _Observers_ and Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Hebdomadal
_Mercuries_ back again! You see the inference--I do sincerely esteem
it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so
well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to
'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite
inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the
_Quarterly_ and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the
world--out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!

Out comes the sun, in comes the _Times_ and eleven strikes (it _does_)
already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that
this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should
'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt--nor will you
henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy
writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me
for yours ever faithfully,

R. BROWNING.

I don't dare--yet I will--ask _can_ you read this? Because I _could_
write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as
you do now!