All remember Mrs.
Browning's pretty poem on her "Pet Name":--
"I have a name, a little name,
Uncadenced for the ear,
Unhonored by ancestral claim,
Unsanctified by prayer and psalm
The solemn font anear.
* * * * *
"My brother gave that name to me,
When we were children twain,--
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter, as to see
That life had any pain."
It was this pet name of two small letters lovingly combined that dotted
Mr. Browning's spoken thoughts, as moonbeams fleck the ocean, and seemed
the pearl-bead that linked conversation together in one harmonious
whole. But what was written has now come to pass. The pet name is
engraved only in the hearts of a few.
"Though I write books, it will be read
Upon the leaves of none;
And afterward, when I am dead,
Will ne'er be graved, for sight or tread,
Across my funeral stone."
Mrs. Browning's letters are masterpieces of their kind. Easy and
conversational, they touch upon no subject without leaving an indelible
impression of the writer's originality; and the myriad matters of
universal interest with which many of them are teeming will render them
a precious legacy to the world, when the time shall have arrived for
their publication.
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