Correspondence

234.  Uvedale Price to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 247–249.

Foxley

June 12th 1826

Dear Miss Barrett

I had heard with much satisfaction, from Mrs Barrett’s letter to my daughter, how favourably you had received my remarks & criticisms; but have great pleasure in receiving the same intelligence under your own hand, & in your own words. I am in general very apt to put down what remarks occur to me, whenever I am much pleased with any work: & in the present case I was interested in the work, in the writer, & in all that belongs to her.

You have very candidly acquiesced in the greater part of my criticisms; & have done right in defending yourself against those that did not carry conviction: I, again shall do right in defending my criticisms where I still think them well founded; & the discussion may not be useless, tho’ it should fail to alter your opinion. With regard to aonian, I agree with you in all you say of it; & am much pleased with your illustrations & quotations, particularly that from Gray: I agree with you that we have as good a right to the inspiration of the Aonides, Pierides or whatever name they may be called by, as the Romans had; & certainly full as good a one as the French have to Boileau’s “Chastes Nymphes de Permesse,” [1] but all this does not meet my objection, or, at least what I meant to object; which is to any Epithet as superfluous, & to such as one as Aonian as tending to mislead. If I mistake not, you could only intend to say that Cowley’s first productions were in rhyme or verse, simply as distinguished from prose: yet when I first read the passage I thought you intended some discrimination by the epithet: Aonian fills up the verse & the rhythm very harmoniously; but your verses are remarkably free from any thing like remplissage, [2] & that is one of their many excellencies: I think you will see, on looking at the passage, that, leaving out the epithet,—“made his first essay in rhyme,” is all that is wanting for the sense. When Milton says that his “adventurous song”

 

intends to soar

Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. [3]

He simply distinguishes the two modes of writing; & had he transferred the epithet from the mount, & said “in prose or in Aonian rhyme,” would you not have thought the epithet superfluous, or meant to convey some sort of discrimination? I may be mistaken, but the two cases seem to me much alike.

No defence of īllŭstrăte, in respect to usage, could at all satisfy me short of the word itself having been employed as a dactyl by some poet of reputation: & I should then say that it never ought to be so employed again. The instances you have given from Spencer [sic] & Milton, of the established accent having been changed by them, do not appear to me exactly in point. In the first place, there is no objection to ēnvý couráge or aspéct, on the score of cadence & articulation, especially when compared with īllŭstrăte: & secondly, the accent on the last syllable of those words, & the consequent change or their cadence was not a new creation, but a restoration: a restoration of what had been the established mode from the time of the Conquest, to Chaucer’s time, & thence to that of Henry 8th Almost all the words that we now accent on the first, as honoúr [sic, for hónour] viŕtue were then accented on the last as

 

Saw I Conquést sitting in great honoúr. [4]

If you accent this, & Chaucer’s verses in general, as we accent Dryden’s & Pope’s they have neither metre, nor rhythm. The same accent prevails in ancient proper names as

 

Fairest of fair O Lady mine Venús [5]

- - - - - - - - -

Thy Æneás is come to paradise. [6]

on this point, & on the pronunciation of Latin in those early days, I shall have a great deal to say in a work upon which I am now employed. The old accent I believe, lasted till about the middle of Henry 8ths reign, & then only began to give way to the new; which was but just established, & perhaps not completely, in his daughter Elizabeth’s time, when Spencer flourished: he was extremely fond of Chaucer, & used many of his antiquated words, & often his mode of accenting; Milton more sparingly.— I am still inclined to think that such elisions as Science’, prejudice’, tho’ they would be very convenient, are seldom, if ever used, except in proper names: & your quotation from Pope tends to confirm me in my opinion. If dulness had been, as it usually is, the name of a quality, & spelt accordingly with a small d, the elision would have been decidedly in your favour; but the quality is personified, having a lap, on which a head reposes: it is written, as you have written it with a large D, which bespeaks rank, &, in the present case the highest of all—that of a Goddess; which she bears throughout the Dunciad. She therefore has the same right to an elision as Venus or Thetis.— I hope you are going on with some new work, & that you will soon give me an opportunity, as you liked the sheet I took the liberty of sending you, of sending you another of the same kind: remember however, that I am in my 80th year, & that by any long delay you may lose an admirer & critic.

With all our best regards to Mr & Mrs Barrett, believe me

Most sincerely & faithfully yours

U Price

Address, on integral page: Miss Barrett / Hope End / Ledbury.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Line 3 of “Ode sur la prise de Namur” (Œuvres de Boileau Despréaux, 1821, II, 468).

2. “Padding.”

3. Paradise Lost, I, 14–16.

4. “The Knight’s Tale,” line 2028.

5. Ibid., line 2221.

6. Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women (III, “The Legend of Dido,” line 1103).

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