522. RB to Unidentified Correspondent [1]
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 168–169.
Hanover Cottage. Southampton St Camberwell,
Jan 18. 1836.
Dear Sir,
Let me thank you very sincerely for your obliging letter, and for the invitation it contains, which I am delighted to accept. I form, however, too just an opinion of the nature and value of our respective occupations, not to be vexed that you have left the day and hour of calling at my disposal. A little arrangement will obviate this, for the future,—and in the meantime I have only to hope that I do not seriously inconvenience you by appointing Wednesday, 11. a.m. for a meeting from which I expect so much gratification.
With reference to an allusion in your letter, suffer me to observe that though I cannot take on me to be peremptory, yet I may venture to expostulate––and I do assure you that if you knew the strength of the feeling you would seem to wish to dislodge, in speaking slightingly of the first notice of the Press on Paracelsus [2] —you would desist from a sufficiently hopeless task. It is good that it should be so for both of us—for me, certainly:—but time must show. I reserve further discussion of this matter till Wednesday.
Meanwhile believe me to be,
Dear Sir,
Yours ever truly and obliged,
Robert Browning.
P.S. / Some goodnatured friend having just forwarded a number of the “Sheffield Iris,” I beg leave to enclose an extract. [3]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. It seems possible that this letter was addressed to John Forster (1812-76), historian and biographer, friend of Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, chief critic of The Examiner. RB had met Forster for the first time at Macready’s house on New Year’s Eve.
2. The first review of Paracelsus appeared in The Spectator of 15 August 1835 (VIII, 780–781), quickly followed by others in The Atlas, The Weekly Dispatch and The Athenæum. The former stated that “Evidences of mental power, perhaps of poetical talent, are visible throughout, but there is no nice conception and development of character, nothing peculiar or striking in the thoughts, whilst the language in which they are clothed gives them an air of mystical or dreamy vagueness.” The Athenæum said “There is talent in this dramatic poem … but it is dreamy and obscure. Writers would do well to remember … that though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him … not because of these characteristics—but in spite of them.”
3. A clipping of a review of Paracelsus, identified by RB as “Sheff. Iris. Jan. 12. 36.” The review, very negative in tone, dismissed the work as a “still-born volume,” and included such comments as “The author of this volume has been most unfortunate and unpoetical in the choice of his subject … so vile, degrading and infamous in itself, that there is nothing in it to inspire the sublimity of the full blaze of poetic truth”; “This poem is a mere prosaic memoir of the selected hero”; “whether it be poetry, or whether it be prose, the reader may judge for himself.” (For the full text of this review, and those mentioned in note 2, see pp. 347–350, 364.)
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