I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind interest, and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have as yet seen; indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise to prove nobody after all--'nous verrons'. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged Robt. Browning. On April 16 he wrote again as follows: Dear Sir, Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time in presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter perused than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat--the Moxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon:--'Artevelde' has not paid expenses by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is 'popular at Cambridge', and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, some 300 only have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again, &c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c. I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, do really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms--I shall know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine. You will 'sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, you must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have of your criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely I am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance bored you sufficiently: but not a particle of your article has been rejected or neglected by your observant humble servant, and very proud shall I be if my new work bear in it the marks of the influence under which it was undertaken--and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. I purposely keep back the subject until you see my conception of its capabilities--otherwise you would be planning a vase fit to give the go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus would cut but a sorry figure beside--hardly up to the ansa. But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive--and likely I hope to do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a _fresh eye_ going over its 4,000 lines--discovering blemishes of all sorts which my one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, obscure passages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is,--yet on the whole I am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to be allowed to read it some morning to you--for every rap o' the knuckles I should get a clap o' the back, I know.