SD2384. Benjamin Paul Akers to Unidentified Correspondent
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 353 (in part).
[Rome]
[ca. 25 May 1860]
Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, said it was Milton, the man-angel. He praised the wealth of hair which I have given the head, and then said that Mrs. Browning had a lock of Milton’s hair, the only one now in existence. This was given her by Leigh Hunt, just before his death,—who had the records proving it to be genuine. The hair was, he said, like mine. He invited me to visit him in Florence, where he would show me the first edition of Milton’s poems, marked to indicate the peculiar accent which the poet sometimes adopted, a knowledge of which makes clear somewhat that otherwise seems discordant. Milton was so great a musician that there could have been no fault in sound in his compositions. He looked over my books; said my edition of Shelley was one which he had corrected for the press, not from a knowledge of the original MS., but from his internal evidence that so it must have been; said Poe was a wonderful man; spoke of Tennyson in the warmest terms. Took up a copy of his own poems published in the United States, and remarked that it was better than the English edition, yet had some awful blunders, and wished me to allow him to correct a copy for me. My head of the “Drowned Girl” caught his eye and interested him. I told him that I had thought of Hood’s “Bridge of Sighs.” He then said that Hood wrote that on his deathbed, and read it to him before any one else had seen it. Hood was doubtful whether it was worth publishing. To-morrow Mrs. Browning is to come; she has been quite ill since she came to Rome, and I have seen her but once. I derive much comfort from the friendship of Charlotte Cushman. She has just gone from here. She has frequent breakfast parties;* I have attended but one. Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields, Wild, the painter, and myself were the guests. Fields I like much, and she is a gift of God.
*on 12 March 1860 (see Fields’ Diary).
Text: The New Englander Magazine, December 1894, pp. 464–465.
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