Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/24

 In the case of the Browning letters there is happily no question of any breach of confidence. Browning left them with full permission to his son to do as he pleased with them. Whether the publication was judicious or otherwise, it was sufficiently authorised by the person most interested. In the letters themselves, there is an incidental discussion of a similar point. Miss Barrett had sent to Browning a letter in which Miss Martineau had described Wordsworth. Browning remarks in reference to the burning of some other correspondence that you may burn anybody's "real letters,' they 'move and live &hellip; in a self-imposed circle limiting the experience of two persons only.' And he proceeds to argue, with characteristic superabundance of metaphor, that the presence of a third person 'lets in a whole tract of country on the originally enclosed spot,' so that the 'whole significance is lost at once.' 'Clever writing,' on the other hand, such as Miss Martineau's, gives only such an impression as is intelligible to the world at large. An intimate dialogue, if I understand him, altogether loses its character when there is a listener; but Miss Martineau's descriptions give only the observations open to any indifferent bystander. Miss Barrett,