4586. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 154–156.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 28 January 1860]
Dear Browning,
Yesterday I spent an hour with Miss Blagden, who exprest her concern that she had recieved no letter from Mrs B. and feared she might be less well than she had been.
I anxiously hope that the fear is groundless. Happy should I be if anything I write could amuse you. Schlegel has occupied me several days. Certainly there is no critic so judicious. None hitherto have been analytical, altho I believe we have in England a Review bearing that title. [1] Southey was the first and last among us who was a competent judge of poetry. A critic should be able both to analyze and to compare. I have written on several scraps of paper, which happened to be at hand, a few remarks on Schlegel. They are not worth transcribing, and perhaps are illegible. [2] However, I will keep them for you on your return to Florence– In your last letter [3] you notice the word bonus as a misprint– [4] I am driven mad by Mr Forster’s lying, when he says, as you see in his letter to me, that he has corrected the latin proof-sheet. In the first place, I desired both him and Nichol that he should not undertake the business, but leave it to Mr Pitman, [5] and [sic] excellent scholar. The bonus I do not venture to look for—but the whole poem was cancelled, and for it was substituted that which you possess, where there is nothing like a false quantity. [6] In this now reprinted are two strophes 6 and 7 Utrinque sparsam [7] and Quocunque spectaris, que [8] —long before sp. The poem was first printed in my absence and without my revision– I forget into whose hands I entrusted it, and whether he who recieved it could not read my hand-writing, or intended to improve the verses. In the first should be Utrinque lapsam [9] for sparsam—in the second Quocunque venisti [10] —for spectaris– [11] In p 271 Mr Forster (the friendly and diligent reviser) has permitted the printer to print viti for væ. [12] This will be to you incredible. I abstained from these remarks so long, hoping that you would have recieved your copy—none are to come to me. They will never reach Napier, who is on his death-bed [13] —they should have been in his hands above a year ago. The Dedication [14] has been the real cause of this delay. It, and all the rest of the Idyls, was expected in vain by my dear old friend, very long. I wish I never had given the impression to Nichol—the trouble of correcting it I did not give to Mr Forster, but I gave positive directions to the contrary. Worse, if worse can be, Mr Forster has struck out from one of the last poems three or four lines which indicate my reason for leaving England– [15] Those lines I had corrected, and the corrected lines had been sent to me– Such an action is unauthorized and inexcusable– He gave me no notice of doing it or having done it.
I can not now recover the lines– This is an audacity and insolence quite unpardonable. There was nothing actionable, as it is called—nothing of the kind preceding the words
fraud and perfidy condoned Unwisely–
I have not been idle. For several days I have been occupied in writing a dialogue in verse—the characters are Sappho, Alcæus, and Anacreon. [16] I hope I shall finish it on the eve of my birthday, which is monday the thirtieth of January. I then enter my eightysixth year. May you live more happily if you live as long. When I have inclosed this letter and taken it to the postoffice, which is near Miss Blagden’s, I shall call and make inquiries whether she has recieved from you a more favorable report of Mrs Browning’s ill-health. Remember me to my kind friends the Story’s and to Mr Wild, and believe me ever most truly and affectionately yours
W S Landor
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 28 Via del Tritone / 2 P.no/ Roma.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The only periodical “bearing that title” was The Analytical Review (1788–99). It had favorably reviewed Landor’s first book, The Poems of Walter Savage Landor (1795); see R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 24.
2. Some of Landor’s “scraps” have survived. One of these begins with “Schlegel’s remarks on the Edipus [sic] of Sophocles” but includes comments on Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59), who died on 28 December: “So, Macaulay is dead. His Lays of Rome are clever—but the word Lays is inapplicable to the poetry of antiquity. His history is partial, his criticism superficial, his style fantastic” (ms at ABL).
3. This letter has not surfaced.
4. We have been unable to find this word in The Hellenics (1859). Perhaps Landor misread RB’s handwriting.
6. One of the two copies of The Hellenics that Landor presented to RB contains a number of significant changes, the most drastic of which concerns a “whole poem”—namely, “Ad Libertatem.” According to Anderson’s sale catalogue of 15 January 1924, “corrections throughout the volume are in Landor’s autograph, and are quite extensive, and in some cases very important. … At page 265 ‘Ad Libertatem’ is completely scored through and altered line by line, and further, Landor has written it out a second time on an inserted leaf” (see Reconstruction, A1396).
7. “Whether flung” (“Ad Libertatem,” line 21).
8. “Where you have seen” (“Ad Libertatem,” line 27).
9. “Whether slipping.”
10. “Where you have come.”
11. These changes appeared in Landor’s Heroic Idyls (1863).
12. “A fault for woe,” in “Ad Pontificem,” line 3: “Haud facis ipse, inquis; viti! perfide! nonne coronam.” The word was corrected when the poem was reprinted in Heroic Idyls.
13. Napier died on 12 February 1860.
15. We have been unable to identify this poem.
16. This “dialogue in verse” was published as “Sappho, Alcæus, Anacreon, Phaon” in Heroic Idyls (pp. 38–47).
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