5796. Edward Dowden to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 119.
8 Monte Notte
Cork.
Sept. 13. 1866.
Dear Sir,
You obliged me much some months ago by removing a difficulty of mine in understanding “Sordello”. [1] It seems to me I have now the chance of making you such a return for your kindness as you will value. But I hope I shall be disappointed.
I have noted what appear to me two errors in your 1st vol. Ed. 1863. I do not venture to be sure that they are errors but I am sufficiently doubtful to think it worth while to call your attention to them. The extent of an author’s culture is one’s excuse for supposing his volumes may contain one inaccuracy, or even two.
Here then are my notes:—
In “Transcendentalism”, (vol i, p 322)
“Swedish Bœhme”. [2] Why ‘Swedish’? Was not Bœhme a native of Upper Lusatia? Should we not read “German Bœhme? Could the writer have been confusing the birth-place of another great mystic,—Swedenborg—with that of Bœhme?
Fra Lippo Lippi. p 355.
We’ve a youngster here [3]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
His name is Guidi—he’ll not mind the monks—
They call him Hulking Tom. [4]
‘Hulking Tom’, Tommaso Guidi; Tommasaccio, (‘Slovenly Tom’)— But was not Fra Lippo Lippi the junior instead of the Senior of Masaccio, & a learner from Masaccio, rather than Masaccio a learner from Lippi?
I am, dear Sir,
truly yours
Edward Dowden.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library.
2. “‘Transcendentalism:’ A Poem in Twelve Books” (Men and Women, 1855), line 22. Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), German Christian mystic.
3. “Fra Lippo Lippi” (Men and Women, 1855), line 273.
4. “Fra Lippo Lippi,” lines 276–277. Tommaso Masaccio (1401–28), Florentine painter.
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