Читать книгу The Brownings, Their Life and Art - Lilian Whiting - Страница 13

“… I cannot well say nothing of my constant thoughts of you, most pleasant remembrances of you, earnest desires for you. I have a notion you will come back some bright morning a dozen years hence and find me just gone—to heaven, or Timbuctoo! I give way to this fancy, for it lets me write what, I dare say, I have written niggardly enough, of my real love for you, better love than I had supposed I was fit for. … I have read your poems; you can do anything, and I should think would do much. I will if I live. At present, if I stand on head or heels I don’t know; what men require I know as little; and of what they are in possession I know not. … With this I send you your ‘Sordello.’ I suppose, I am sure, indeed, that the translation from Dante, on the fly-leaf, is your own. …”

In another letter to Alfred Domett, Browning thus refers to Tennyson:

“… But how good when good he is! That noble ‘Locksley Hall!’ ”

Browning had already become enamored of Italy; and Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writing to William Sharp, speaks of meeting the poet after his return, and thus describes the impression he made upon her:[2]

“I remember him as looking in often in the evenings, having just returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot tell the date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind of etching. Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilizing the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola, on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood.”

This visit of the young poet to Italy forged the link of that golden chain which was to unite all his future with that land of art and song which held for him such wonderful Sibylline leaves of the yet undreamed-of chapters of his life.