Correspondence

6035.  RB to Richard Chenevix Trench

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 304.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.

March 22. ’68.

My dear Lord Archbishop, [1]

I shall be no less gratified than honoured by your using any poems of mine, or any of the others you mention, for such a purpose. [2] I must be permitted to doubt, however, whether an Anthology, in your hands, will include as many beautiful poems as if somebody else undertook the task of selection. [3]

Pray believe me most truly &

faithfully yours

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

1. Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–86), Archbishop of Dublin (see letter 5077, note 1).

2. A Household Book of English Poetry, ed. Richard Chenevix Trench (1868), was published by Macmillan and Co. on 6 June. It contains EBB’s “A Dead Rose” (pp. 307–308) and “The Sleep” (pp. 323–325); and RB’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” (pp. 331–340), “Home-Thoughts, from Abroad” (pp. 366–367), and “Home-Thoughts, from the Sea” (p. 367). Neither of the last two titles was printed with hyphens.

3. RB implies that a different editor would have included some of Trench’s poetry.

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