SD2037. Robert Maxwell Hanna to John & Frances Julia Pakenham

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 265 (in part).

[Florence]

Jan., 1857.

I fear few boys would bear your critical tests …

… Mrs. Browning is the most etherialized creature I have ever known; a wondrous mind held by a thread to a wondrous feeble body. Her little boy at six writes little poems of his own accord. Here is his first verse of his last on Saul and David. …

Saul was a king,

And he was very ill.

But David took a harp,

And played him a beautiful song,

And he got a little better.

Mr. Browning, who has also written on Saul and David, declares that the child’s is better than his. …

Text: Frances Julia Pakenham, Life Lines (London, 1862), pp. 159–160.

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