1017. Richard Hengist Horne to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 95.
[London]
4 October [1842] [1]
The writer of the very inadequate review of Mr Browning’s poems in the Church Quarterly, begs to apologize for various errors in the quotations, and for the feeble absurdity of an interpolation to the effect that Sordello was “not devoid of beauties.” [2] For none of these things is the writer accountable. He could obtain no proofs till too late to compare them with Mr Browning’s works; and as for the other errors, God knows how they occurred!
Publication: None traced.
Source: Copy in Sarianna Browning’s hand at Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year supplied by reference to the Church of England Quarterly Review of October 1842. Sarianna Browning copied this letter in the margin of RB’s copy of the journal (see Reconstruction, A656).
2. The review included the sentence: “As to the poetry of ‘Sordello,’ apart from all these disquisitions, we think it not devoid of beauties.” (For the full text of the review, see pp. 381–388.)
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