5804. Edward Dowden to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 126–127.
8 Monte Nolte.
Cork.
Oct 17. 1866.
My dear Sir,
I must say a hearty ‘Thank you’ for your kind reply to my letter. I am glad that I noticed the slip in a poem which you have got beyond & away from. I am far gladder to find that it was I who was in error about the other poem, which in foolish moments, when I compare one good or beautiful thing with another, I have been inclined to call the greatest poem of our greatest living poet. I was misled by histories of Italian painting which accepted Vasari’s errors, & I dwelt too much on the word ‘boy’ as implying a considerable difference of age between Fra Lippo & Masaccio which it does not.
And now shall I confess my own baseness? I hesitated in sending you my notes. I feared indeed partly that my letter might come in as an interruption some morning when you were at work on the promised poem– [1] But my chief fear was the dishonourable one that the spirit of my letter might be misunderstood. I remembered (see the depth of my baseness) some terrible lines in “Sordello” which you perhaps have forgotten: I will not copy them but I see them now on p 317 of my Edition & they describe your hero’s sufferings endured from the “Naddos”, “Pappacodas”, “Tagliafers”. [2] Then I thought too, with a laugh at myself, of my cousinship to one of Richter’s [3] scholars who never got into print but was engaged on a great work “The Errata of German Authors”. And I hesitated.
However my third thought was “a riper first”, [4] & the right one– “This is my own dishonourable fear,—but Robert Browning will understand all aright.” And so I wrote & was confident that I had done as you would think well.
Accept again my thanks & believe that “no one” (may I not use for my own purpose your dedication to Barry Cornwall?) [5] —no one at least who does not know him personally—“loves & honours” Robert Browning more than
his very truly
Edward Dowden.
Address: Robert Browning Esq., / 19 Warwick Crescent, / Upper Westbourne Terrace, / London.
Publication: BBIS-8, pp. 34–35.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The Ring and the Book.
2. Dowden refers to Sordello, II, 819–830.
3. Johann Paul Richter (1763–1825); see letter 2758, note 3.
4. Alfred Tennyson, “Sea Dreams” (Enoch Arden, etc., 1864), line 66.
5. RB’s dedication to Barry Cornwall (pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter) reads: “No one loves and honours Barry Cornwall more than Robert Browning; / who, having nothing better than this play to give him in proof of it, must say so. / March, 1844” (Colombe’s Birthday, 1844, Bells and Pomegranates, No. VI).
___________________
