Correspondence

244. EBB to Uvedale Price

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 277–281.

Hope End

December 30th 1826.

My dear Sir,

I have defered writing to you, in the hope of being enabled to communicate Dr Russells resolutions respecting your m.s. which was sent to him very soon after its arrival here. My brother is not well acquainted with any person in the habit of regular communication with Dr Russell, of whom he could make use as an intermediate agent in the business. But he had no difficulty in applying to Dr R. personally both because he had been under his immediate instruction some months before he left Charterhouse, & from a feeling that no intimacy was necessary to justify the mention of your name to a literary man. Losing time, in this case, would have been losing opportunity. Without delay therefore Bro forwarded your m.s. alleging, as a motive, that its statements had appeared to some Persons likely to interest Dr R. & adding that its writer, who had given much attention to the subject of accent generally, was not only open to discussion but desirous of it. Dr Russell’s reply reached us last night. He begins by expressing himself gratified by “the communication of Mr Price’s letter which has certainly interested tho’ it has not convinced him”. He goes on to regret that want of leisure renders it quite impossible for him to enter on any discussion of this kind. He “will however just remark that he concieves sounds in language to be perfectly arbitrary, but that we approve most of those to which the ear has been habituated. Could we persuade all the nations of the Continent to agree with England in any pronunciation of Latin & Greek, it would be worth while to alter our habits, & conform. But as that can never be the case, the main point to which he looks, as teacher of those languages, is the best mode of communicating a knowledge of the Quantity at the same time with the word itself. If Mr Price, or any other gentleman, will point out a more ready & sure mode than that which the Charterhouse pronunciation supplies, he, Dr Russell, will have little hesitation in adopting it. As to accent & Quantity tho’ they be the same in our own language, they are not the same in the Greek & Latin. A modern Greek, it is well known, reads the Iliad according to accent only, neglecting Quantity; most Englishmen read it according to Quantity only, neglecting accent. What if it were possible to find a mode of reading it, observing both?”

I regret extremely, for the sake of the Charterhouse, this termination to a negociation from which I expected so much. The advantage, derivable from the knowledge of your system, can however only be deferred till that knowledge be made more public—for when light is general, no one can say “It is dark”—except the blind!– In the meanwhile I am surprised at Dr Russell’s not shewing more eagerness on a subject which we should have thought one naturally interesting to a man of his peculiar avocation, & reputed classical tastes: & I am still more surprised at the character of his few observations. His first objection that it would not be worth while to alter our habits of pronunciation unless we could persuade all nations of the Continent to agree with us may surely be used by an opponent to the Charterhouse System—which has altered our habits of pronunciation without consulting “all nations of the Continent”– By your adoption of the Italian pronunciation of the vowels, you come much nearer conformity. With regard to the best mode of communicating a knowledge of Quantity, you would hardly allow that Dr R. has hit upon it—& he strives with a shadow of his own conjuring when he contends that accent & Quantity are not the same in the ancient languages.

It is very disinterested in me to regret your having troubled yourself about this subject without the desired result, for my brother & I were much gratified by reading your m.s. before we dispatched it—as you permitted us to do. You desired Bro to mention any part of your statement relating to the Charterhouse which seemed to him doubtful. He thinks that in the words rubʹus Curʹius κυν´ε, you must concieve the u to be pronounced by Charterhouse scholars much as the u in ‘cunning or curry’—which is not the case. The u preserves its usual sound, & has only less stress bestowed on it. For my own part, from what I have been allowed to read of yours & to hear from you in conversation, the substance of the m.s. was not new to me. But you have concentrated on the disjecta membra [1] in so powerful a manner, & placed them in so luminous a point of view, that it would be my own fault if my convictions were not strengthened. Your proofs are indeed “armati del piu fin metallo [2] —” “from head to foot” I may add—for I like your attack on the Acephalous Monsters. I am delighted with all you say respecting Expression—especially with your comment on Virgil’s “vale valĕ”. It is a most poetical discovery. [3]

Your letter of the 20th pleased me so much—everywhere but where it spoke of your indisposition—that I hardly know how I have waited till now to thank you for it– I have not yet read the Subaltern, & your very animated comment on what must in itself be so striking, will add greatly to my interest when I do– The principal circumstance—i.e. the coincidence of the storm & the battle reminded me strongly of a passage, in the Supplementum Lucani, which represents a storm during a sea fight.

Nec jam remorum sonitus, clangorve tubarum,

Audiri poterant: hominum clamore premuntur:

Sed remos voces que hominum sonitumque tubarum

Bacchantes venti, tempestatesque sonoræ

Exsuperant. [4]

The Author of the Supplement evidently remembered his Master’s

Innumeræ vasto miscentur in æthere voces;

Remorumque sonus premitur clamore: nec ullæ

Audiri potuere tubæ. [5] Pharsalia. Lib. 3.

but I think rises above him, not only on account of the tempest, but on account of the fine moral climax which gradually elevates the mind—allowing it to dwell upon the dashing of the oars & the clang of the trumpets, before they are lost in the shouts of the combatants—& on the shouts of the combatants before the “Bacchantes venti, tempestatesque sonoræ” swallow all. In Lucan the climax is inverted; &, if I may judge by my own experience, the mind is rather startled than elevated. There is undoubtedly a new combination of striking circumstances in your Capture of St Sebastian. The Author of the Supplementum Lucani has a tempest & a sea fight, but no thunder. Hesiod in his Combat of the Immortals—I can hardly acknowledge any thing finer in poetry—adds to the βελεα στονοεντα [6] and the μεγαλω 'αλαλητω [7] —the

βροντη´ν τε στεροπη´ν τε και ἀιθαλοεντα κεραυνον [8]

but not a word about sulphur. I wish there were!– I cannot however allow that sulphur is only mentioned in Homer when I find this expressive passage in Petronius Arbiter–

[“]quum sulfure rupta corusco

Intremuit nubes, elisosque abscidit ignes”. [9]

The following fine lines are from Chamberlayn’s Pharonnida

Th’ imprisoned flame

When the clouds’ stock of moisture could not tame

Its violence, in sulphury flashes broke

Thorough the glaring air; the swoln clouds spoke,

In the loud voice of thunder. [10]

esides Beattie’s

When sulphurous clouds roll on th’ autumnal day [11]

& Shakespeare’s

“cracks

Of sulphurous roaring” [12]

After some searching, I have only found “the alarming impression of the storm, while yet collecting, on all animals” mentioned in Chatterton’s Excellent Balade of Charitie,—which I am sure you must think poetically excellent–

“The coming ghastness doth the cattle pall” [13]

but here the cattle have had a more ordinary indication of the approaching storm than your awful circumstances of close oppressive heat, præternatural stillness & silence—for “the bigg drops fall”– [13]

Your description has sunk me so deeply into gunpowder & sulphur, that you must forgive my proving my interest in a manner very unequivocal & perhaps very tiresome. The more I know of your indulgence, the more liberties I take with it! I anxiously hope to hear that you have no continuation of uncomfortable feelings to complain of—& beg you dear Sir, to believe me always

Most gratefully yours

E B Barrett.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. “Dismembered limbs” (Horace, Satires I, iv, 62).

2. “Armed with the finest metal” (Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, VII, 3, 1).

3. “Farewell, farewell” (Ecologues III, 79). Price’s comment (p. 235) was “When the last syllable of the iambus has its due length and stress … and when we appear to linger on it, and then connect and blend it with the pyrrhic nearly as one word—vale-vale—the last farewell, being breathed out in a weaker and lower tone, seems a faint echo of the first; and, in my mind, is very happily suited to the expression.”

4. “Now neither the splash of the oars nor the sound of the trumpets could be heard, they were drowned by the shouts of men; but the Bacchantian winds and the loud storm overcame the sounds of oars and voices and trumpets” (Thomas May, Supplementum Lucani, VI, 33–37).

5. “Innumerable voices were mixed together in the vast sky; the sound of oars was concealed by shouting, nor could any trumpets be heard” (Lucan’s Pharsalia, III, 540–543).

6. “Mournful shafts” (Theogony, 684).

7. “Great war cries” (Theogony, 686).

8. “Dazzling thunder and shining lightning” (Theogony, 707).

9. “When a cloud shook and was riven by shining sulphur, and shot forth a burst of flame.” EBB must have been quoting from memory; in all the editions of Satyricon we have checked, ranging from 1709 to 1912, the reading (cap. 122) is “fulgere” (“to flash” with lightning), not “sulfure.”

10. Pharonnida, an Heroic Poem (1659), III, canto 3, by William Chamberlayne (1619–89). EBB’s copy of the 1820 edition sold as Lot 562 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A610).

11. The Minstrel (1771), I, verse 54, by James Beattie (1735–1803).

12. The Tempest, I, 2, 203–204.

13. An Excelente Balade of Charitie (1777), verse 5, by Thomas Chatterton (1752–70).

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