5801. Robert Williams Buchanan to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 123.

Bexhill

Sussex

Oct 8th 1866

My dear Mr Browning–

Your letter is very welcome. I did indeed guess that you might be out of reach—in the midst, I hope, of a more genial summer than we have had in England.

If “London Poems” [1] has not reached you, the blame is my Publisher’s. I send you herewith, therefore, a copy, & if (after perusal) you find it worth while to say a true word abt it, I shall be the gainer.

I am looking eagerly forward for your next,—wh: I already see announced. [2] — By the way, I have heard privately from America that Longfellow’s “Dante” is to be very fine. [3] Longfellow is a very thin thinker indeed, but he is great as a translator. I note this, thinking it may interest you—on Dante’s account.

Ever yours

Robert Buchanan

Robert Browning Esq.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Alexander Turnbull Library.

1. Buchanan’s London Poems (1866) was published by Alexander Strahan in the third week of July. RB’s copy sold in an unspecified lot in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A521).

2. We have been unable to trace any such announcement for RB’s next work, The Ring and the Book (1868–69).

3. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (3 vols., Boston, 1867).

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