2101. RB to Edward Moxon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 178–179.
[London]
Wednesday Night. [19 November 1845] [1]
Dear Moxon,
I’ll be bound, now, people are always “snubbing” me, like friend Harness [2] t’other day, just because they fancy I have nobody to take my part—whereas, look here,—what has come to me this very morning! [3] But I keep such matters to myself and so nobody is the wiser .. or rather the nobodies are not the wiser!
In earnest,—very kind & gracious this of Landor, is it not? And I am, I hope, properly proud of it—and so, knowing your own friendly sympathy, I have got a copy made for you for which you shall thank me—(you who love Chaucer, and can appreciate the felicity of the epithet “hale” as applied to him)—when I see you in a day or two. Forster’s notice .. is not that most generous, too? Mr Harness, forsooth! If he goes and does the “quizzing article” he hints at, I’ll be hanged if I don’t rhyme him to death like an Irish Rat! [4]
Ever yours faithfully,
R Browning.
Address: Edward Moxon Esq / Dover St Piccadilly.
Publication: NL, pp. 37–38.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Dated by the appearance of Forster’s review in The Examiner and by letter 2103 in which RB encloses a copy of Landor’s verses to EBB.
2. The Rev. William Harness (1790–1869). He was a schoolmate and friend of Byron, and the son of Miss Mitford’s godfather. At the time of this letter he was minister of Brompton Chapel.
3. A reference to Landor’s lines “To Robert Browning.” Two undated copies in Landor’s hand, one signed, were sold in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, L159 and L160). We reproduce the former (facing p. 178), which we assume to be the manuscript RB received from Landor; the latter probably came into RB’s possession at a later date. The copy RB is providing for Moxon was presumably made by Sarianna Browning.
4. We have been unable to identify an article about RB by Harness in The Quarterly Review to which he was a regular contributor. There is no evidence that RB ever wrote any rhymes about Harness.
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