Correspondence

566.5.  EBB to Lady Dacre

Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3.

74 Gloucester Place

May 6th 1837.

Miss Barrett is anxious to express to Lady Dacre her acknowledgements, for an elegant volume of translations [1] —& for a note whose words are too flattering for anything except gratitude.

The translations have been hastily read,—but in that hasty reading, it has been found easy to appreciate their classical beauty,—& the graceful manner in which they flow over rather than surmount the obstacles of English rhymelessness & harshness—like a smooth stream which does not even suggest the inequality of its channel .. Miss Barrett ventures to say this, altho so many, with opinions worth hearing, must have said & will continue to say something like it—there being an exception, in a certain sense—the only sense in which there can be any—to Petrarch’s sentiment,—& in favor of his translator’s work as well as of his own–

Quanto piace al mondo, e breve sogno!– [2]

Miss Barrett cannot close her note without again thanking Lady Dacre for an honor which,—as all honors are not—is a pleasure too.

Address, on integral page: The Lady Dacre / 2. Chesterfield Street.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Translations from the Italian (London, 1836). See Reconstruction, A740.

2. “That what pleases on earth is a swift dream.” (Petrarch, “Sonnet 1”).

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