2706. Dante Gabriel Rossetti to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 318.
50 Charlotte Street
Portland Place
Oct 17 1847
Sir,
Being a most enthusiastic admirer of your works, I can no longer restrain myself from intruding upon you (though I feel that I do so at the risk of being considered presumptuous) with a question concerning them, which I have for some time been deliberating whether or not to venture on.
It is now two or three months ago that I met, at the British Museum, with a Poem published in 1833, entitled “Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession,” which elicited my warm admiration, and which, having failed in an attempt to procure a copy at the publisher’s, I have since transcribed. It seemed to me, in reading this beautiful composition, that it presents a noticeable analogy in style and feeling to your first acknowledged work, “Paracelsus”: so much so indeed as to induce a suspicion that it might actually be written by yourself. Which doubt has ever since so haunted and perplexed me, that now, in taking this somewhat hazardous measure to rid myself of it, I am bold enough to hope that even should you look upon me as having no right to pretend to the solution so much desired, I may at least obtain your indulgent forgiveness.
Believe that I am, Sir,
Always,
Your distant respectful admirer,
Gabriel Rossetti [1]
R. Browning Esq.
Address: For / Robert Browning Esqre
Publication: Rossetti, 1, 45–46.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82), painter and poet, was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was admitted to the Royal Academy in 1846. For the copy of Pauline which he transcribed, see Reconstruction, B28.
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