This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction,
of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends;
foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred
Domett. The magazine was called the 'Trifler', and published in monthly
numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money
on the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one
letter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled
'Some strictures on a late article in the 'Trifler'.' This boyish
production sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses
of some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'A
Dissertation on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine,
treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing
that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his
sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is,
perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative
and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of
debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his
life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have
preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be
forgiven for quoting some passages from it.


For to be man is to be a debtor:--hinting but slightly at the grand and
primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard
for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with
nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists
have concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an
uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as
represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge
most commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,*