5746. RB to Unidentified Correspondent

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 78–79.

19 Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.

Apr. 27. ’66.

Dear Sir,

I was not in London when your letter with its enclosures reached me,—let this excuse the delay in replying to it. I have read the poems you are good enough to care for my opinion about: and will at least deserve your kind feeling by plainness & truthfulness. You know I have given all my life to poetry,—not a short life, now: and I have observed the procedures of my contemporaries, great & small: the result is,—I distinguish markedly between the good of having the poetical temperament, and the not-good of attempting to make poetry one’s self, except in the extraordinary cases where there is original creative power added to the merely sensitive & appreciative,—valuable and distinguishing as these are. I have never seen an instance of success in verse,—to the extent even of selling fifty copies,—where something absolutely new, for good, or even for bad, was not prominent in it. I can hardly hope to please you by this frankness: and, after all, I incline too much, perhaps, to severity in criticism,—alas, what is it worth else? At all events, my practical advice would be, to continue publishing in periodicals until something more decisive is effected: the amount of publicity obtained in this way,—which is, I suppose, the object in view,—will be immeasurably greater.

Let me say, in reference to your postscript, that the Chevalier [1] and I have never interchanged a word in our lives: he lives next door, to me, and has written more than once respecting translations &c

I am, Dear Sir,

Yours very faithfully,

Robert Browning.

Publication: NL, pp. 171–172.

Manuscript: Boston Public Library.

1. Jean Baptiste François Ernest de Chatelain (see letter 3588, note 1).

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