476. RB to William Johnson Fox

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 75–76.

[London]

March 31. 1833.

I must intrude on your attention, my Dear Sir, once more than I had intended. —but a notice like the one I have just read will have its effect at all hazards– I can only say that I am very proud to be able to feel as grateful as I do, & not altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your most generous “coming forward”. [1] Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewhere tells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country who had “always prophesied he would be “something”!– I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured.

I am, Dear Sir, yours most truly

& obliged

Robt Browning

Publication: Orr, p. 54.

Manuscript: Huntington Library.

1. Fox reviewed Pauline in The Monthly Repository (vol. VII, April 1833, pp. 252–262). His view of it is summed up by his statement that “the work before us, which, though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, has truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius.” (For the full text, see pp. 341–344.)

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