Correspondence

5919.  RB to Edward Twisleton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 215.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.

June 21. ’67.

My dear Twisleton,

You have always cared so kindly about me,—and especially about Robert’s Oxford career,—that I think I ought to tell you,—not let you hear otherwise, or miss hearing as the case might be,—that I am just informed that the University gives me the Degree of M.A. by Diploma—which the Keeper of the Archives describes as “not a lower but a much higher honour than the D.C.L. Degree,—one hardly given since Dr Johnson’s time except to Kings & Royal Personages (see Vol 1. of Boswell under the year 1755)—the Diploma making its recipient a Member of Convocation, which the D.C.L. would not.” “It will be passed in the Convocation of Tuesday—not at the Commemoration—and will be sent to you”,—adds my informant. [1] You will sympathise with my pleasure in being thus brought so close to the machinery which is to turn the homunculus [2] into a man, I hope: I was, and am, absolutely ignorant of the project—“how begot how nourished,” [3] and my gratitude is the greater.

Ever affectionately yours

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

1. Benjamin Jowett (see letter 5917).

2. “Little man.”

3. The Merchant of Venice, III, 2, 65.

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