2435. RB to Walter Savage Landor

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 81–82.

New Cross, Hatcham

Surrey.

June 25. 1846.

My dear Landor,

When your great gift of those two admirable books [1] reached me, I thought, without affectation, that a fresh study of their contents would be my best help toward acknowledging such a favor properly. As it is, now that the study has only extended to about half a volume, I seem to find I had much better thanked you at once—so altogether extraordinary is the display of the rarest intellectual powers, I do believe, that were ever brought together in one man. I believe too, that before a very few years, your bare rights will be given you and the age will do justice to its greatest Poet: you doubt this, I remember, and other people may doubt—be it so—I shall be glad and proud to try the question and wait the issue with doubters whosoever—and my reward in case of success will be ample, if they please not to forget that I entertained and expressed this opinion many years ago on much narrower evidence than the matchless work before me.

Ever yours most gratefully,

Robert Browning.

Publication: W.H. Arnold, Ventures in Book Collecting (New York, 1923), pp. 205–206.

Manuscript: Berg Collection.

1. Landor’s Works (1846) had just been published.

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