2082. RB to Eliot Warburton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 150.
Hatcham, Surrey.
Nov. 3. Night. [1845] [1]
You meant to give me great pleasure, my dear Warburton, [2] by this note brimming over with kindness .. and you have given me the very greatest pleasure, and made me proud & grateful, you must needs feel. It was a happy inspiration of Moxon to send you the proof-sheets, [3] and I quite forgive him forestalling me in, perhaps, the main gratification of an author—for that is a white minute when one’s book only exists for oneself and a friend. Thank you heartily .. all I can say, and too little: I hope to do more & better—but at no period of any possible career do I wish for truer reward than the sympathy and assistance such a warm-hearted letter makes my own. I will send a clean copy in a day or two, when I can get one. We meet often, I hope, in London next Spring or earlier .. meantime I have your Book [4] which I never take up without renewed delight.
Ever yours most faithfully,
Robt Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by RB’s reference to the proofsheets of Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, which was published on 6 November 1845.
2. Bartholomew Elliott George Warburton (1810–52), better known as Eliot Warburton, was the author of The Crescent and the Cross (1845), an account of his travels in the east. Extending into seventeen editions, its success eclipsed that of Kinglake’s Eōthen, which appeared at the same time, and was really the beginning of Warburton’s literary career (DNB). Although this is the first extant letter between the two, RB had presented a copy of Paracelsus to Warburton in April 1844; see Reconstruction, C441.
3. Presumably Moxon sent the proofsheets of Dramatic Romances and Lyrics to Warburton to facilitate his review of RB’s works in The English Review, December 1845, pp. 273–277; for the text, see pp. 364–365. RB presented Warburton with a copy of Dramatic Romances and Lyrics; see Reconstruction, C246.
4. i.e., The Crescent and the Cross (1845); inscribed by Warburton, this volume formed lot 1198 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2413).
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