Correspondence

1224.  EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 95–96.

[London]

April 29. 1843.

This is my certificate my dear Mr Haydon, that I have taken & quaffed a cup of amreeta [1] from your urn of the Immortals! And seeing that my dog Flush did take & quaff of the lees of my cup, this is also a humble suggestion that in the case of your carrying into practice your talk of honoring me in a second inscription, you do inscribe the worthy name of Flush first & my name afterwards .. we two completing together a very perfect antithesis to your Dii majores. [2]

For the rest, the urn was going to you when you sent, & I am sensible that I ought not to have kept it so long. Thank you for the memorials of Fontainbleau [3] —thank you twenty times. So it was under Lyons velvet that he passed the agony of his kingship? it was yard-wide gold lace which throbbed to the throbbing of his great heart? Poor Napoleon!–

You amused me by your flattering naivetè of liking to write to me because I let you write of yourself! [4] Well!—I may always promise you such a reason for liking to write to me!—& I do–

When you differ from me, understand distinctly that I never advocated hypocrisy [5] An assumed humility is the most odious of the forms of vanity—and Truth under every form is noble. What I said a word in favor of, was no hypocrisy—but reserve—just what Carlyle describes excellently in his new work, .. “Leave it to your enemies to praise you—or at least to your friends.” [6] Nevertheless you may be right in your particular case—I will not say that you are not: and I quite believe for my own part, that no high power exists without the possessor being conscious of it, .. that, .. according to my figure, .. the lion knows always that he can roar–

I am anxious, you see, for the success of the Biography—judge whether I must not be, for it’s progress. Your manner of writing, if not always correct & classical, is always characteristic & vivacious—& Wilkie’s is pale & common by the side of it—which remark I make only from the extracts in reviews & not from the book itself as I have not seen it. To two separate booksellers, have I sent for this book—& they answer, “in a few days” .. which vexes me because I wanted it for you. Tell me ..... have you seen it? I suspect that you have seen it & read it, by what you say,—& because, in the extracts I sent you in the reviews, there was surely nothing offensive to you. It appears that he has spoken <***>

Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 89–91.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. An elixir conferring immortality on the drinker. For an explanation of its production, see letter 977, note 4.

2. “Greater gods.”

3. The sketches sent with the previous letter.

4. Haydon made this comment in letter 1219.

5. EBB is referring to comments made in letter 1217 on Haydon’s manuscript.

6. Cf. Past and Present, p. 193.

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