915. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 246–247.

[London]

[?March 1842] [1]

<***> [2] O most encouraging of Mæcænases, [3] by your account of your letter to the Reading poetess! [4]

And here am I, one of the race,––‘good for nothing’ [5] except to be loved a little––if you will continue to be so good to your ever

affectionate EBB–

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 356.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. We assume that “most encouraging of Mæcænases” refers to Miss Mitford’s reaction to the first of EBB’s papers on the Greek Christian Poets, in The Athenæum of 26 February; hence this conjectural date.

2. The beginning of the letter is missing; this single sheet was numbered “III” by EBB.

3. Gaius Cilnius Mæcenas (70?–8 B.C.), Roman statesman and man of letters, was the patron of Vergil, Horace, Propertius, and others; his name came to signify one who encouraged young writers.

4. Unidentified. The editors of EBB-MRM speculate that the reference is to Priscilla Maurice (1810–54), the sister of the theologian Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–72), but we have been unable to verify either that she was a poetess or that she was in Reading at this time.

5. All’s Well That Ends Well, II, 3, 207.

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