Correspondence

3843.  Leigh Hunt to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 37–38.

[London]

[Postmark: 21 August 1856]

Many thanks for relief respecting the safe arrival of the first of my letters, and for the good reception of both. I will take care not to touch your sensibility again on the point to which you allude (if I rightly conceive it) only adding, in excuse for myself (what would sound very strange to common ears, and would be no less mistaken by them) that I am impelled to express myself with my most joyous unreserve to none but the most delicate apprehensions,—being sure of their handsomest construction;—as I am in this instance.– Ecce signum. [1] You are both such loving people that it emboldens the old man to call himself your loving friend,

Leigh Hunt.

P.S. The 2d of September then stands good, unless call into the country should intervene. [2]

Address: Robert Browning Esqre / 39 Devonshire Place, / Portland Place.

Publication: Luther A. Brewer, My Leigh Hunt Library, the Holograph Letters (Iowa City, 1938), pp. 361–362 (as 21 August 1858).

Manuscript: University of Iowa.

1. “Behold the sign,” or “look at the proof.”

2. It did. The Brownings left London for Ventnor, Isle of Wight, on 23 August.

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