SD2943. Bryan Waller Procter to John Forster

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 378 (in part).

32 Weymouth Street

Portland Place, W.

Tuesday 26 Novr. [1867]

My dear Forster

I hope that Dr. Wilkes does not fag you too much. …

My birthday dinner went off in not too hilarious a style. As you and my physician (Dr. W.) ratted, I was obliged to call in other aid & I invited Lord Houghton & Browning, who came accordingly. …

Browning has a poem in progress which will consist of twenty thousand lines. I—who am merely one of the oi polloi—should never have ventured on so voluminous an experiment of course. Why the Paradise Lost & Regained (two poems) are of less length! Even the Excursion, reckoning all its dreary passages, is not much more than half as long. …

I am always your sincere

B.W. Procter

Publication: Richard Willard Armour, Barry Cornwall, a Biography of Bryan Waller Procter (Boston, 1935), pp. 323–325.

Manuscript: Victoria and Albert Museum.

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