4686. RB to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 41.
[Florence]
15 June 1860
<***> I find him [1] very well, satisfied on the whole, busy with verse-making, and particularly delighted at the acquisition of three execrable daubs by Domenichino [2] and Gaspar Poussin, [3] most benevolently battered by time. He has a beautiful beard, foam-white and soft. He reads the Odyssey in the original with extraordinary ease. When he alludes to that other matter, [4] it is clear that he is, from whatever peculiarity, quite impervious to reasoning or common sense. He cannot in the least understand that he is at all wrong, or injudicious, or unwary, or unfortunate in anything, but in the being prevented by you from doubling and quadrupling the offence. He spent the evening here the night before last. Whatever he may profess, the thing he really loves is a pretty girl to talk nonsense with; and he finds comfort in American visitors, who hold him in proper respect. <***>
Text: John Forster, Walter Savage Landor, a Biography (London, 1869), II, 570.
1. i.e., Walter Savage Landor.
3. Gaspard Dughet (1615–75), also known as Gaspard Poussin, a French landscape painter born in Rome. He was a brother-in-law of Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), with whom he served an apprenticeship.
4. Regarding books Landor had asked Forster to send.
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