The joke about “the nigger” was a sort of offshoot from Carlyle’s _Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question_, a pronouncement which vastly amused my brother and several others in our set. [Chatham Place, London. 24 September 1853.] My dear Brown, I shall be most glad to accept your invite for Sunday, to Finchley viâ Hampstead, and shall try at once for William, who I am sure will have equal pleasure if not pre-engaged--but these men of society! The Hogarthian sonnets have great excellencies, especially the last; but they also present a few obscurities to which Browning alone might perhaps serve as a sort of introductory horn-book. Speaking of horn reminds me that like Desdemona I am “half asleep,” and must to bed. By the by, that play tends to show how the nigger, without due coercion, takes merely to beating his wife, and perhaps ends by choking her as an outlet for his waste energies. I shall come on Sunday to Hampstead with or without William, at about three or half-past, and will bring the sonnets with me, and then go fully into them with you. Meanwhile and ever I am your D. G. R. LETTER XXI. GABRIELE ROSSETTI TO DANTE ROSSETTI. (Translation.) The _Arpa Evangelica_ was a volume of religious lyrics by my father, then recently published. “My friend Di Negro” was the Marchese Gian Carlo di Negro, a Genoese patrician of good literary standing--known to my father by correspondence, not in person. Frome. 4 October 1853. My dearest Gabriel, For some while past I have been feeling a strong impulse to write to you, my dearly beloved son; and to-day I will obey this imperious inner voice. I am glad that you have undertaken to read the _Arpa Evangelica_.... You should, however, always bear in mind that this book is the outcome of only three months’ work, and was written with the intention of its being amenable to every grade of intelligence. I am extremely pleased at the progress which you are making in your beautiful art, and at some profits which you are earning from it to maintain yourself with decorum in society. Remember, my dearly loved son, that you have only your abilities to rely upon for your welfare. Remember that you were born with a marked propensity, and that, from your earliest years, you made us conceive the brightest hopes that you would become a great painter. And such you will be, I am certain.