1682. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 94–95.
[London]
Monday. [12 August 1844] [1]
My very dear & kind friend, how grateful I am for your kindness, .. & how proud, of being your ‘pet’! Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the book, the pleasure I have had from it cannot be undone, and that is associated with you, root & branch. [2] And so you may call this, my “philosophy”–
I thank you, too, earnestly, for letting me see the fragment of Miss Bayley’s benevolence towards me– All I have heard of her makes me attach a value to all I hear from her,—and although there must be a certain exaggeration in such words as these I have just read, it is the sort of over-saying which comes of a generous vibration in the sympathies, & makes one glad & grateful, while it leaves one humble.
Not very humble though, .. you will say, .. when I tell you what I have done & what I am going to do! What? Why, .. after a great deal of ebbing & flowing, .. written Carlyle’s name on the page of a copy, which I mean to send when you tell me his address at Chelsea. [3] It is a sort of tribute money on my part; &, if Mrs Carlyle makes curlpapers of it afterwards, there will be no great harm done. Will there? If you see anything impudent in it, tell me, & I will keep it back. Only it is a sort of fancy of mine—and to tell you the truth I have been ten times on the point of writing to him “by an impulse,” [4] .. which wd have been considerably worse perhaps.
I hope I shall have the books for Mr Burges tonight: for the sight of his parcel quite pricked me with remorse because I forgot him, .. missed him, .. in the second distribution of copies this morning. I shall have more tonight, .. or early tomorrow. And if you would but let me insist on your going to Moxon’s for whatever you require yourself, for Miss Bayley or others? Do let me insist. You wd please me best by it.
But Mr Burges is very goodnatured,—very: and I shall like to look at the translations. Medwin’s I did see once. [5] It is far more poetical than mine—only not correct. I saw a great many different editions when I was translating,—& was particularly provoked by the different arrangements for the choruses, which make a translator’s head go round. It cannot be necessary to do more than select the text apparently best upon the whole,—can it? But he is very good—my nominative being Mr Burges.
May God bless you, dearest Mr Kenyon! Your praise, I appreciate indeed,—and that you shd take so much pleasure in my Morning Star, [6] or anything in my books, gives me the very greatest.
Ever affectely & gratefully yours
EBB–
Here are Mr Burges’s volumes. [7] Now send me one line with Carlyle’s address.
Address: John Kenyon. Esqr
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by reference to the publication of Poems on 13 August 1844. Mr. Kenyon had been sent an advance copy on 10 August.
2. Malachi 4:1.
3. EBB sent this copy with letter 1687, and letter 1698 indicates that Carlyle acknowledged receipt of the book; however, its present whereabouts is unknown.
4. Cf. Johnson, The Idler, 22 April 1758.
5. Medwin’s translation of both Agamemnon and Prometheus had been published in 1832. George Burges had published translations of Æschylus’s Prometheus and Supplices in 1831, and he “translated the new readings in Hermann’s posthumous edition of Æschylus in 1848” (DNB).
6. See “A Drama of Exile,” lines 2230 and 2233.
7. See Reconstruction, C67, now at Morgan.
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