523.5. RB to Thomas Noon Talfourd
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3.
Camberwell.
Feb 21. 1836.
Dear Sir,
I find, to my surprise, that I have still to thank you for the present of your admirable tragedy of “Ion”; Mr Forster (thro’ whose goodness I was first gratified with a sight of it) had engaged that a certain slip of paper furnished at his rooms, and containing a brief but sincere expression of my feelings, should stand me in-stead of a more formal acknowledgment: but he having somehow mislaid it, let me again offer you my warmest thanks for a gift I exceedingly value, and shall carefully preserve. So much for a personal matter. There remains a further and distinct avowal of gratitude to the Author of a Drama, in which, while the tremendous idea of Destiny is worked out with true Greek sternness of purpose and mastery of hand, there exists in the sweet and sacred nature of the “devoted Ion,” its impulses and aspirings, a mitigating and consolatory promise of compensation—a redeeming sunbeam amid the “giantshades of Fate”—which, in my mind, goes to the more perfect accomplishment of the hushed and acquiescing close the old Tragedians laboured to produce, than the stuff they worked with would admit. It is indeed a noble conception, nobly consummated, made truly “palpable in Statue of exactest form”—sit ære perennius!
There are some minor points on which I should say something:— I am very glad of the prompt and decisive award of the public-press, and anxious for the further triumph which awaits you—but I shall have, I hope, other occasions of expressing my sentiments more at large—in the meantime, suffer me to considered myself not merely a distant and devoted admirer, but
Dear Sir,
Your most obliged and faithful Servt
Robert Browning.
Mr Serjt Talfourd M.P.
&c &c &c
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Somerset Archives.
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