5855. Richard Herne Shepherd to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 160–161.
5. Hereford-square, Brompton:
2nd February 1867.
Dear Sir,
Accept my best thanks for your kind letter, and the provisional permission you have accorded me.
By the same post I take the liberty of forwarding you a transcript of Pauline, in which, for facility of reference, I have numbered the lines in pencil. I propose to quote the opening passage to line 75; lines 280–329; lines 385–389; lines 466–475; lines 564–578; lines 735–809; and the conclusion ll. 1005–1050: altogether two hundred and seventy-five lines out of 1050. If I am asking too much, you will veto any particular passage or passages enumerated to which you object. I would also inquire if I am correct in the rectification of line 567, which seems to be disfigured by a printer’s error.
Should you wish to make any other verbal alterations or corrections in the passages cited, will you be kind enough to mark them in my transcript before returning it: I should of course make no allusion to the fact of such alterations having been made.
Your faithful Servant
Richard H. Shepherd.
Robert Browning. Esq.
I had never intended to make any allusion to the Essay on Mind, which though deeply interesting to the practised poetical student, is of course too youthful and immature a work, to be brought before the general public in illustration of the genius of the authoress of Aurora Leigh. I am glad to find this reticence is in accordance with your wishes in the matter. [1]
Address: Robert Browning, Esq., / 19. Warwick-crescent, / Upper Westbourne-Terrace, / W.
Publication: BBIS-8, p. 37 (in part).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Nevertheless, in 1878 Shepherd brought out The Earlier Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1826–1833, edited by himself, which included An Essay on Mind (1826).
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