In justice to my brother's memory I must say that this was not written to me with any such presumptuous idea as that of offering his criticism to the poetess. But I showed the letter to Isa Blagden, and at her request left it with her. A day or two later, she writes to me: "Dear friend,--I send you back your criticism and Mrs. B.'s rejoinder. She _made_ me show it to her, and she wishes you to see her answer." Miss Blagden's words would seem to imply that she thought the criticism mine. And if she did, Mrs. Browning was doubtless led to suppose so too. Yet I think this could hardly have been the case. Of course my only object in writing all this here is to give the reader the great treat of seeing Mrs. Browning's "rejoinder." It is very highly interesting:-- * * * * * "DEAREST ISA,--Very gentle my critic is; I am glad I got him out of you. But tell dear Mr. Trollope he is wrong nevertheless" [here it certainly seems that she supposed the criticism to be mine]; "and that my 'thought' was really and decidedly _anterior_ [_sic_] to my 'allegory.' Moreover, it is my thought still. I meant to say that the poetic organisation implies certain disadvantages; for instance an exaggerated general susceptibility, ...[1] which may be shut up, kept out of the way in every-day life, and must be (or the man is '_marred_' indeed, made a Rousseau or a Byron of), but which is necessarily, for all that, cultivated in the very cultivation of art itself. There is an inward reflection and refraction of the heats of life ...[1] doubling pains and pleasures, doubling therefore the motives (passions) of life. I have said something of this in A.L. [_Aurora Leigh_]. Also there is a passion for essential truth (as apprehended) and a necessity for speaking it out at all risks, inconvenient to personal peace. Add to this and much else the loss of the sweet unconscious cool privacy among the 'reeds' ...[1] which I for one care so much for--the loss of the privilege of being glad or sorry, ill or well, without a 'notice.' That may have its glory to certain minds. But most people would be glad to 'stir their tea in silence' when they are grave, and even to talk nonsense (much too frivolously) when they are merry, without its running the round of the newspapers in two worlds perhaps. You know I don't _invent_, Isa. In fact, I am sorely tempted to send Mr. Trollope a letter I had this morning, as an illustration of my view, and a reply to his criticism. Only this letter among many begins with too many fair speeches. Still it seems written by somebody in earnest and with a liking for me. Its main object is to complain of the cowardly morality in _Pan_. Then a stroke on the poems before Congress. The writer has heard that I 'had been to Paris, was _fêted_ by the Emperor, and had had my head turned by Imperial flatteries,' in consequence of which I had taken to 'praise and flatter the tyrant, and try to help his selfish ambition.'