Supporting Documents

SD2131.  William Michael Rossetti to William Allingham

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 342–343 (in part).

Inland Revenue Office,

18 January [1858]

… The Brownings, I hear, are to be in London this spring or summer, and elsewhere in England—I think Devonshire. The boy got ill, and was almost given over, but is about well again now. I very much agree with (what I gather to be) your opinion of Aurora Leigh: there is a certain splendour and flood of expression about it which are quite overwhelming: but, after you have been overwhelmed, you get into a temper of resistance, and declare that it is all in excess—you would rather have the “one touch of nature” than Mrs. Browning’s one and a half. Still, it is a wonderful thing. I don’t object to the incident of Marian’s child but it is very much over finicalized in the writing. …

Publication: Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti, ed. Roger W. Peattie (University Park, Penn., 1990), pp. 92–93.

Manuscript: University of Illinois.

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