6069. RB to Thomas Forbes Kelsall
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 327–328.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W
June 2. ’68.
My dear Sir,
I have just sent the packet [1] —you should receive it to morrow morning, by the L. & South Western Railway.
What can I say to your last letter? [2] It is a continuation of that “full measure, pressed down & running over,” [3] which has been so generously granted my unworthiness: do believe what I say. At first, all I hoped for was the sight of & the talk with one whose zeal & knowledge together had given me such prodigious delight. You have given me to touch & handle what I only asked to hear about; and you promise me more than I ever supposed to exist,—other m.s.s! Why want to give me more? I never said how interested I was by the capital skeleton-undergraduate, [4] which I dare swear is just the Beddoes. Be sure I looked a good look at his College [5] whenever I passed it last week: but I shall lose the post, which ought not to befall us. & I could not in many words do more than say that I shall ever be
My dear Sir, Yours most truly
& gratefully
Robert Browning.
Address: Thomas F. Kelsall Esq. / Fareham.
Publication: Donner, p. 106.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Containing the Beddoes manuscripts that Kelsall describes in letter 5974 and RB discusses in letter 6062.
3. Cf. Luke 6:38. See also The Ring and the Book, VI, 1767.
5. i.e., Pembroke College, Oxford (see letter 5974, note 4).
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