SD1891. Robert Bulwer Lytton to John Forster

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 266 (in part).

Paris

Decr 5. 1855

My dear Forster,

Your last letter would have been a very welcome one, had it not contained such bad news of yourself …

Browning told me some weeks ago that Henry had been taken ill: I was much grieved to hear of it, both on his own, and on your account, and I trust sincerely that there has been nothing serious the matter with him, or which may for any length of time deprive you of his handy tendance. … Browning is about to strike his tent and come into warmer quarters on this side the River .. as I hope. But he has not yet found any decidedly suitable habitation. Embassy work has so swallowed up my days & nights of late that I have not seen half enough of either him or his wife, and had it not been for his kindness in frequently coming to see me, I shd not have seen him even so much as I have.

In despite of what you say about the great Reviews & which I foreboded indeed to be probable, I shall finish what I have been trying to say about him and if I cannot get it into any preferable Magazine I will at least send it to my old acquaintance the Dublin wh., by the way is to be sold, I hear—the Editor having failed.

I have just read your Review of Browning and think it Excellent! He is greatly pleased with it himself. I hear Our friend the Press has been full of the habitual foulmouthed stupidity .. Mr Aytoun, I suppose, with a wave of his dishy scotch hand disposing of Parnassus .. in nothing like Apollo but the playing-knife and that a clumsy one! …

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.

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