SD2530. John Forster to Robert Bulwer Lytton
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 317–318 (in part).
Bangor Ferry, North Wales
15th October ’61
My dearest Robert,
I write you a hasty word … as a sufficient present acknowledgement of both your late letters, and the Review, safely received, of Browning. …
Now as to the Browning paper. I have not yet read it with sufficient care to tell you all I have to say respecting it. Suffice it that in the main it seems to me the material of a very good review indeed. Whether I should, when the time comes for using it, prune it here & there, & add to it here & there, and even alter here & there, myself—or, with some marginal pencillings, send it back for this purpose to you—I shall not be able to make up my mind, until further reflection and more careful reading. At present I will only say that you have gone too exclusively on the Xmas Eve & Easter day poem to keep quite the due balance as to the rest. And you are at times a little in excess in the wording of your praise—though not substantially in your praise itself perhaps. I should however so modify parts, as less to say the thing directly yourself, than let the impression be actually produced which you wish to say.
As to where the review can appear I am yet unable to say. I shall try the “Quarterly”—but, I fear, may not be successful there. The “Edinburgh” is to have a paper, in its present number, on poor Mrs Browning—and the tone of this may determine our probabilities of success (not perhaps great) in that quarter. But apart from these two, where the difficulty is whether they will accept such unreserved & high praise of a truely original man (his chances as a quack would have been infinitely greater)—we should have all the rest of the Quarterlies open to us.
However, we have time to consider—because I have a project on foot (suggested by F Chapman & at once acquiesced in by Browning) to make A Volume of Selections from Browning while I am in my holiday here—a little book of which the object will be to force attention to his Poems—and I propose that your Review should be made apropos to that Selection. It would thus have a why and wherefore—a proper peg to hang on—& that is highly important. The “Selection” should be published at the same time with the “Review”—at End of the year. What think you? …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.
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