SD2539. Bryan Waller Procter to John Forster

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 320 (in part).

32 Weymouth Street

Portland Place

November 8th 1861

My dear Forster–

I was about to write to you—to ask about your probable return …

I have looked over Browning’s poems. I doubt whether it be advisable to extend the Selection beyond the smaller poems. They will I think make their way the best. I send a list of what strikes me to be the best.

I do not know Paracelsus well—& it appears difficult to cut out specimens from the dramas. There are very fine parts in Luria—& others—but they would require a little prose explanation, perhaps. Whenever I have heard people speak of Browning, they have generally referred to “My Last Duchess” & others of the Lyrics.– What a magnificent fellow Luria is—the model of a hero—yet scarcely of an African hero—unless we go back for a type to Hannibal. …

Shall I offer her a pair of stockings before she starts against Deerfoot?

Always your sincere

B.W. Procter.

Publication: Richard Willard Armour, Barry Cornwall, a Biography of Bryan Waller Procter (Boston, 1935), pp. 275–277.

Manuscript: Victoria and Albert Museum.

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