e 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--o