SD2044. Walter Savage Landor to John Forster

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 253–254 (in part).

[Florence]

[ca. February 1857]

I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy—Mrs. Browning’s Aurora Leigh. In many pages, and particularly 126 and 127, there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare. I have not yet read much farther. I had no idea that any one in this age was capable of so much poetry. I am half-drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good hearty draught of poetry again: the distemper had got into the vineyard that produced it. Here are indeed, even here, some flies upon the surface, as there always will be upon what is sweet and strong. I know not yet what the story is. Few possess the power of construction.

Text: John Forster, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography (London, 1869), I, 104.

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