5386. RB to Walter G. Wilkinson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 62.
London, 19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
May 21. ’64.
Dear Sir, [1]
I am much obliged by your enquiry about a line missing through a blunder of the printer’s: he cancelled the sheet before many copies had been issued, and the passage now runs–
We shall have the word
In that minor third &c. &c. [2]
I may add that at page 140. stanza IV. line 2. the substitution of “Then” for “Than” makes sense out of nonsense: [3] also that at page 165 line 4. should end “had set.” [4]
Pray believe me, Dear Sir,
Very sincerely yours
Robert Browning.
Address: The / Rev. Walter G. Wilkinson, / Redlynch Parsonage, / Salisbury.
Publication: Nathaniel I. Hart, “A Browning Letter on ‘The Poetical Works’ of 1863,” Notes and Queries, June 1974, p. 214 (in part).
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Walter George Wilkinson (1829–1906), Anglican clergyman.
2. RB, “A Lovers’ Quarrel,” (Men and Women, 1855), lines 122–123. Line 122 was left out of the poem in the first copies of Poetical Works (3 vols., 1863).
4. RB, “Count Gismond” (Dramatic Lyrics, 1842), line 70. In Poetical Works (1863), the line ends “hath set.”
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