VII - ROSALIND

Summary

“But heavenly Rosalind!”

“That gaze

Kept, and shall keep me to the end her own!

She was above it—but so would not sink

My gaze to earth.”

—Colombe's Birthday, act ii. sc. 1.

DEAR MR BROWNING,—

THE note in which you thanked me with many kind words for sending you my letter upon Imogen, ended with the following suggestion, “And now you must give us Rosalind.” I would fain think you were moved to write these stimulating words by some not unpleasing remembrance of the way in which, to use Rosalind's own phrase, “I set her before your eyes, human as she is,” in the days when our kindred studies,—yours as a dramatist, mine as an interpreter of the drama,—first drew us into the communion which has ripened into a lifelong friendship. For whom would I try, with more alacrity, to execute a task so difficult, yet so congenial, than for the poet whose Lucy Carlisle, whose Mildred Tresham, and, last not least, whose exquisite Colombe are associated with the earliest recollections of my artist life?

With what sweet regret I look back to the time when, with other gifted men,—Talfourd, Bulwer, Marston, Troughton, and the rest,—you made common cause with Mr Macready in raising the drama of our time to a level not unworthy of the country of Shakespeare! How generously you all wrought towards this end! How warmly were your efforts seconded by the public!