Supporting Documents

SD2111.  Ralph Waldo Emerson to Caroline Sturgis Tappan

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 268 (in part).

Concord,

October 13, 1857.

Dear Caroline,

You will never write me again, I have been so ungrateful … We are all the worse that you, & those who are like you, if any such there be, as there are not,—but persons of positive quality, & capacious of beauty,—desert us, & abdicate their power at home. Why not a mind as wise & deep & subtle as your Browning, with his trained talent? Why can we not breed a lyric man as exquisite as Tennyson; or such a Burke-like longanimity as E. Browning (whom you mention in interesting positions, but do not describe to me-)? …

Publication: The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton (New York, 1991), 8, 534–536.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

___________________