5199. RB to John Brett

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 222.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace.

Apr. 6. ’63

My dear Sir,

You do me great honour by caring to couple anything I have written with your beautiful Picture: [1] I can only say that it happens to be a realization of the sight I used to love in old days when, standing on or close by the very spot from which you painted,

White and wide

And washed by the evening’s [2] water-gold,

Florence lay out on the mountain-side:

River and bridge and street and square

Lay mine, as much at my beck and call,

Through the live translucent bath of air,

As the sights in a magic chrystal ball. [3]

So you find it in “Old Pictures in Florence”: but there are far better descriptions in “Aurora Leigh” [4] if you look for them.

But with, or without accompaniment of verses, your picture is delightful and I wish it success with all my heart.

Yours very sincerely

Robert Browning.

Address: John Brett Esq. / 6. Pump Court, / Middle Temple. / E.C.

Publication: The Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, 3 (Spring 1995), 12.

Manuscript: Mr. and Mrs. Michael Oliver.

1. “Florence from Bellosguardo” (1863). It is reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume.

2. Interpolated above “morning’s” as a variant more appropriate to Brett’s painting.

3. Cf. RB’s “Old Pictures in Florence” (1855), lines 6–12.

4. See EBB’s Aurora Leigh (4th ed., 1859), VII, 515–541.

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