Letter from T. E. Brown, Clifton, to W. E. Henley, 1874 July 5 : fragment of an autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Saying "What an impersonate being you are! You have written me a long letter and not one word have you said about your comforts or discomforts, friends or foes. You seem to have gained some kind friends lately, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas. Mr. Douglas called on me some time ago, and expressed the liveliest interest in you. If I get to Scotland on my way to Switzerland (!) this year, I will come and see you. This sounds little an unseasonable jest. But the fact is we think of leaving our children in Scotland, and starting thence for Switzerland. How about your poems? Mr. Douglas told me they were going to be published. When may we expect them? I can't make out whether Mr. Van Laun is still in Edinburgh. If he has left, you will miss him, I should think, a good deal. I believe your plan of remaining in Edinburgh will be a very good one. I hope you will procure some regular stated employment. This is, I take it, the indispensable basis : upon it build what the Gods may give you to build. They won't give you this. You must make it yourself. A haggard hungry petroleuse sort of poesy may come out of hap-hazard conditions; but the [illegible] function generally requires peace and, scorn not the homely word ! comfort. I believe you want to be well fed and cared for physically, to be fenced round with some modest kind of security, before you can do your truest work. One doesn't wait to become a lap-dog or a pet parrot; but one wants - say a kennel, a bone, a pat and a smile. What do you think? My poor dear good brave lad, I believe you long intensely for some secured, let us call it - salaried status. I wish above all things you had this. The song would come all right then and some day perhaps you need do nothing but sing. The literary man pur et simple needs a tremendous physique; and when you have him, except at his very best, is he as good as the man who can wait, who can run off the heady must again and again and then at long last perhaps press to the world's lip a cup of Love's own nectar? You, for instance, want time to study; indeed you want time also not to study, not to write, not do anything but wait. It does not do to precipitate the stuff. You cannot safely force nature with external aids of language acquired of dictionaries thumbed, of criticism pondered or poems experimentally projected...;"the letter ends here except for a postscript at the top of the first page saying he has lost his mother's address to thank her for the plates and asking Henley to thank her for him.