==
19, Warwick Crescent, W.: July 9, '80.

My dear Sir, -- You pay me a compliment in caring for my opinion --
but, such as it is, a very decided one it must be. On every account,

your method of giving the original text, and subjoining in a note
the variations, each with its proper date, is incontestably preferable

to any other. It would be so, if the variations were even improvements --
there would be pleasure as well as profit in seeing what was good

grow visibly better. But -- to confine ourselves to the single `proof'
you have sent me -- in every case the change is sadly for the worse:

I am quite troubled by such spoilings of passage after passage
as I should have chuckled at had I chanced upon them

in some copy pencil-marked with corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed,
they are nearly as wretched as the touchings-up of the `Siege of Corinth'

by the latter. If ever diabolic agency was caught at tricks
with `apostolic' achievement (see page 9) -- and `apostolic',

with no `profanity' at all, I esteem these poems to be --
surely you may bid it `aroint' `about and all about' these desecrated stanzas

-- each of which, however, thanks to your piety, we may hail, I trust,
with a hearty

Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain
Nor be less dear to future men

Than in old time!
Believe me, my dear Sir,

Yours very sincerely,
Robert Browning.

==
==

19, Warwick Crescent, W.: March 23, '87.
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.*
--

* By `them' Mr. Browning clearly means the later poems,
and probably has omitted a few words which would have shown this.

--
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 1884 he 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.

--
* This Association was instituted in 1833, and is a union

of literary and debating societies. It is at present composed of five:
the Dialectic, Scots Law, Diagnostic, Philosophical, and Philomathic.

--
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 1881 and 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 1883 Mr. 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.

--
* It was, I think, during this visit to Venice that he assisted

at a no less interesting ceremony: the unveiling of a commemorative tablet
to Baldassaro Galuppi, in his native island of Burano.

--
==

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 1885 he 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 otherwisethoroughly English constitution. Everything now pointed
to his settling in Italy, and pursuing his artist life there,