Dear Professor Knight,--I have seemed to neglect your commission shamefully enough:but I confess to a sort of repugnance to classifying the poems as even good and less good:because in my heart I fear I should do it almost chronologically --so immeasureably superior seem to me the 'first sprightly runnings'.Your selection would appear to be excellent;and the partial admittance of the later work prevents one from observing the too definitely distinguishing black line between supremely good and --well,what is fairly tolerable --from Wordsworth,always understand!I have marked a few of the early poems,not included in your list --I could do no other when my conscience tells me that I never can be tired of loving them:while,with the best will in the world,I could never do more than try hard to like them.
You see,I go wholly upon my individual likings and distastes:
that other considerations should have their weight with other people is natural and inevitable.
Ever truly yours,Robert Browning.
Many thanks for the volume just received --that with the correspondence.
I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut away from 'Dion'.
In 1884he was again invited,and again declined,to stand for the Lord Rectorship of the University of St.Andrews.
In the same year he received the LL.D.degree of the University of Edinburgh;and in the following was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of that city.During the few days spent there on the occasion of his investiture,he was the guest of Professor Masson,whose solicitous kindness to him is still warmly remembered in the family.
The interest in Mr.Browning as a poet is beginning to spread in Germany.
There is room for wonder that it should not have done so before,though the affinities of his genius are rather with the older than with the more modern German mind.It is much more remarkable that,many years ago,his work had already a sympathetic exponent in Italy.
Signor Nencioni,Professor of Literature in Florence,had made his acquaintance at Siena,and was possibly first attracted to him through his wife,although I never heard that it was so.
He was soon,however,fascinated by Mr.Browning's poetry,and made it an object of serious study;he largely quoted from,and wrote on it,in the Roman paper 'Fanfulla della Domenica',in 1881and 1882;and published last winter what is,I am told,an excellent article on the same subject,in the 'Nuova Antologia'.
Two years ago he travelled from Rome to Venice (accompanied by Signor Placci),for the purpose of seeing him.He is fond of reciting passages from the works,and has even made attempts at translation:
though he understands them too well not to pronounce them,what they are for every Latin language,untranslatable.
In 1883Mr.Browning added another link to the 'golden'chain of verse which united England and Italy.A statue of Goldoni was about to be erected in Venice.The ceremonies of the occasion were to include the appearance of a volume --or album --of appropriate poems;and Cavaliere Molmenti,its intending editor,a leading member of the 'Erection Committee',begged Mr.Browning to contribute to it.
It was also desired that he should be present at the unveiling.He was unable to grant this request,but consented to write a poem.
This sonnet to Goldoni also deserves to be more widely known,both for itself and for the manner of its production.Mr.Browning had forgotten,or not understood,how soon the promise concerning it must be fulfilled,and it was actually scribbled off while a messenger,sent by Signor Molmenti,waited for it.
Goldoni,--good,gay,sunniest of souls,--
Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine,--What though it just reflect the shade and shine Of common life,nor render,as it rolls Grandeur and gloom?Sufficient for thy shoals Was Carnival:Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to that opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls.
There throng the people:how they come and go Lisp the soft language,flaunt the bright garb,--see,--On Piazza,Calle,under Portico And over Bridge!Dear king of Comedy,Be honoured!Thou that didst love Venice so,Venice,and we who love her,all love thee!
Venice,Nov.27,1883.
A complete bibliography would take account of three other sonnets,'The Founder of the Feast',1884,'The Names',1884,and 'Why I am a Liberal',1886,to which I shall have occasion to refer;but we decline insensibly from these on to the less important or more fugitive productions which such lists also include,and on which it is unnecessary or undesirable that any stress should be laid.
In 1885he was joined in Venice by his son.It was 'Penini's'first return to the country of his birth,his first experience of the city which he had only visited in his nurse's arms;and his delight in it was so great that the plan shaped itself in his father's mind of buying a house there,which should serve as 'pied-a-terre'for the family,but more especially as a home for him.Neither the health nor the energies of the younger Mr.Browning had ever withstood the influence of the London climate;a foreign element was undoubtedly present in his otherwise thoroughly English constitution.Everything now pointed to his settling in Italy,and pursuing his artist life there,only interrupting it by occasional visits to London and Paris.
His father entered into negotiations for the Palazzo Manzoni,next door to the former Hotel de l'Univers;and the purchase was completed,so far as he was concerned,before he returned to England.
The fact is related,and his own position towards it described in a letter to Mrs.Charles Skirrow,written from Venice.
Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati,S.Moise:Nov.15,'85.
