New Letters of Robert Browning. Edited with introduction and notes
by William Clyde DeVane and Kenneth Leslie Knickerbocker. (Murray. 30s.) HAD Browning been as fine a letter-writer as the earlier romantic poets who lived or died in Italy, this volume would no doubt have appeared before now. It might also have aroused the usual indignation about British manuscripts roosting in the U.S.A. Here are 400 pages of perhaps as many letters (the editors have not numbered or listed them) ; all—except those in the Dyce and Forster collection—in public or private American hands, and nearly all hitherto unpublished. It was useful and necessary to publish them, as a step towards a " Complete Corres- pondence." But these are not the letters of a poet, nor even—apart from business dis- cussions with his publisher—of a literary man. Browning, drawn out of his course,could write letters to Elizabeth Barrett so richly readable that, the moralists of 1899 thought they ought not to be read. In this general correspondence we have him dry and dis- creet—a busy, travelling, egotistic man of many acquaintances, scribbling hasty es- sentials in the first undistinguished phrase- ology that comes to mind. There are some better examples : thoughtful passages to John Forster, who receives a moving account of Elizabeth's death ; letters to his sister Sarianna where the patter has a genial flexibility ; early letters to Macready frotu a warm believer in his own dramatic powers. But the percentage of memorabilia is small enough. The two editors have worked hard to identify and annotate every reference. The Chicago Railway Guide, for instance, combined literature with official data by printing a time-table embellished with Browning's poems. He himself makes no objection' when a part of Sordello reaches him in .this format. In the light of the present volume we can understand that attitude ; the project was remunerative.
S. N.
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