he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he _has_ taken!) and very
like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . .

Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M----to help
you! I am going to begin the finishing 'Sordello'--and to begin thinking
a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms on
'Strafford') and I want to have _another_ tragedy in prospect, I write
best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learned
that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on my
story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw it
up. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrast
with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many
half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough
self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus,
or a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling?
. . .


The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and
'The Return of the Druses'.

This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work;
it is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto
occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's
'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even
imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experience
was still distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he was
nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted
with Mr. Kenyon.