[28 May 1845]. Browning, Robert to Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.

              Saturday, Monday, as you shall appoint: no need to say that, or my thanks-but this note troubles you, out of my bounden duty to help you, or Miss Mitford, to make the Painter run violently down a steep place into the sea, if that will amuse you, by further informing him, what I know on the best authority, that Wordsworth’s “bag-wig,”-or at least, the more important of his court-habiliments, were considerately furnished for the nonce by Mr Rogers from his own wardrobe, to the manifest advantage of the Laureate’s pocket, but more problematic improvement of his person, when one thinks on the astounding difference of “build” in the two Poets:-the fact should be put on record, if only as serving to render less chimerical a promise sometimes figuring in the columns of provincial newspapers-that the two apprentices, some grocer or other advertises for, will be “boarded and clothed like one of the family”- May not your unfinished (really good) head of the great man have been happily kept waiting for the body which can now be added on, with all this picturesqueness of circumstances?