5256. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 270–271.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 12 July 1863]
Dear Browning—At the bottom of the box which you have recieved are some (so-called) translations from the arabic and persian. [1] These, as you see on the title-page, were publisht before the end of last century, and written by me one year earlier, just after I had re[a]d some real versions from those languages by Sir W Jones. [2] I must now account to you for some other things. At college I and Stackhouse [3] were examined by the college tutor in Justin, who mentions the expulsion of the Phocæans from their country– [4] In my childish ambition I fancied I could write an epic on it. Before the year’s end I did what you see, and corrected it the year following. Forster very judiciously omitted it in my printed large volumes, [5] but I am persuaded, now, that it is worth preserving as a curiosity of the kind. [6]
Latterly I have spent seven or eight hours every day in reading the novels and romances of my friend James. [7] At present I have gone thro’ scarcely a third—for I believe there are about forty volumes. What wonderful fertility of invention! What prodigious depth of thought. In this he is far beyond the best novelists his contemporaries.
My son Walter comes frequently to take me [for] a drive in his carratella. One morning he drove to the place the most interesting to me of any in Florence. You may divine where it is. A white slab commemorates the residence of Mrs Browning.
If you have leisure, will you get printed the enclosed. [8] It matters not by whom. I want from it only a copy, and one for you, another for Twistleton. No authors name—it will be known for mine. Half a sheet will hold it, the interlocutors being at fair distances.
God bless you and your amiable and sensible Robert.
Yours truly
WSL
The Conversation [9] expects no profit[.]
Address: Angleterre / Robert Browning Esq / 19 Warwick Crescent / Westbourne Terrace / London.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 52–53.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. Presumably in Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (1772) by Sir William Jones (1746–94), philologist and linguist, who served as a supreme court justice in Bengal from 1783 until his death.
3. Edward William Pendarves (né Stackhouse, 1775–1853), M.P. from Cornwall (1826–32) and West Cornwall (1832–53). He and Landor were classmates at Trinity College, Oxford.
5. The Works of Walter Savage Landor (1846).
6. Untraced.
7. George Payne Rainsford James (1801–60), who, according to John Sutherland, “wrote nothing which posterity has thought worth keeping in print” (Victorian Fiction, 2nd. ed., 2009, p. 299).
8. As indicated in letter 5258, an imaginary conversation between Diogenes and someone.
9. See the preceding note.
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