5348. RB to Benjamin Manly Ball

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 27.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace,

March 18. ’64.

Dear Sir,

It is very good of you to tell me all these pleasant things, and to care so much about a piece of explanation I gave gladly. I now write to say that I am much your debtor for pointing out the strange blunder which had wholly escaped me—for “then,” and not “than” I supposed it continued to be in that 4th stanza. As it reads now, the passage is nonsense,—so you see how you have obliged [1]

Yours very faithfully

Robert Browning.

Address: B. M. Ball Esq. / 19. Trinity College, / Dublin.

Publication: Jackson J. Campbell, “Two Unpublished Browning Letters,” Notes and Queries, March 1987, p. 42.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Ball had pointed out the misprint at the beginning of line 14 in “Before,” as published in RB’s Poetical Works (1863).

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