6004. RB to George Murray Smith

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 285.

[London]

Jan: 4. ’68.

Dear Mr Smith,

Here are the two last volumes. [1] I really ought to say, what I have constantly felt while employed in going over the poems, how much they gain by being taken in the present arrangement: it stands to reason that the sequence which seemed natural to the writer of these pieces should be natural also to the reader of them; and that, as there was some original cause for passing from one to the other attempt, by way of a change,—so there must be an advantage in giving them just as they were produced. [2]

Ever yours most truly

Robert Browning.

Publication: Michael Meredith, “Browning and the Prince of Publishers,” Browning Institute Studies, 7 (1979), 9 (in part).

Manuscript: Eton College Library.

1. i.e., volumes five and six of Poetical Works (6 vols., 1868), which RB was preparing for the press. He had sent volume one with letter 5995.

2. The single titles that RB had published to date, beginning with Pauline (1833) and ending with Dramatis Personæ (1864), are printed in the same chronological order in Poetical Works (1868).

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