517. RB to William Charles Macready [1]
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 160–161.
Camberwell
Dec 20. 1835.
Dear Sir,
Many thanks for your kind invitation; I shall be delighted to visit you on the day appointed. [2] Only, I must remark on the manifest unfairness of taunting me with the “distance to be defied,” when you so effectually provide against my showing a particle of gallantry in encountering it. If the offer of a bed be equivalent to the chasing-away of all Quixote’s Giants,—surely the direction to the Stage-coach amounts to the not leaving him a solitary windmill to shake a spear at. Believe me, Dear Sir,
Your most obedient, faithful Svt
Robt Browning Junr
W. C. Macready Esq.
Publication: NL, p. 11.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. For details of RB’s association with Macready, see pp. 318-319.
2. The “day appointed” was probably New Year’s Eve (The Diaries of William Charles Macready, 1833–1851, ed. William Toynbee, 1912, I, 267).
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