643. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 47–48.
[London]
Friday. [15 June 1838] [1]
I felt rather like a criminal in remembering how long I have kept two new books, even when I remember besides my own intentional innocence & the probability of your never having had a moments time to miss the books from your table. But I have had rather a bad attack & was too unwell for several days to do more than imitate reading, which tho’ a process not altogether uncongenial perhaps with one of the books (I dont mean the unMiltonic Miltonic “Speech”) [2] did not cause me to turn over its leaves very quickly.
You are quite right I think in your thoughts of this book,—the large one. [3] A little humeur [4] (for a wonder, a French word is more graceful than an English one) was in mine, as remembrances of the Childe swept across almost every page with their [‘]‘Why do you mock me”?——The parallel passages as to ideas dispositions & cadence are seventy times seven! and I know C. Harold so well, & wonder so, how any human being could write upon Felino [5] in that measure, & print the writing afterwards! But there are powerful lines—yes, & passages—& altho’ an imitative work of such a length & from a practised writer does to me argue a deficiency in inherent, what is called, original power, yet every one has a heart & mind apiece, & if this writer had drawn from his, we shd all have been satisfied.
The ‘Speech’ has talent, but it is not after Milton, I think, either in the character of style or thought—— Now you see what discontentedness comes of being shut up for a week! No! not quite for a week. This is Saturday, & I received last night the medical permission to go down stairs today, on the condition of very quiet behaviour–
A letter this morning from dear Miss Mitford. She is so anxious to see you, & altho’ not daring (she says) to ask your “fit comrade” Mr Southey to accompany you, would feel happy & honored by his doing so! Do contrive it for her if you can! Do you know that Dash is dead?–
Your affecte cousin
E B Barrett
Address, on integral page: John Kenyon Esqr
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by the mention of the same events as in letter 644.
2. It is difficult to interpret this enigmatic remark. It is possible that EBB refers to the 1837 French prose translation of Paradise Lost by François René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768–1848).
3. The following remarks make it clear that the book in question is John Edmund Reade’s Italy, just published, which drew much criticism because of its astonishing parallels with Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The review in The Athenæum (no. 557, 30 June 1838, p. 453) commences “We have rarely addressed ourselves to the ungracious task of criticism with greater reluctance than in the present instance” and later says that “in cast of thought, simile, allusion,—in the use of language and of imagery,—nay, in the very artifices of cadence and versification, do we find a strong unmistakeable leaven of Byron”; examples of similar passages in both works follow.
4. “Ill-humour.”
5. Sic, for Velino, a river N.E. of Rome. Its cataract, 5 miles E. of Terni, in Umbria, had a total fall of about 650 ft. in three separate stages. Both Byron and Reade give a description of the falls, in passages starting “The roar of waters!—from the headlong height” (Byron, stanza lxix) and “Velino rushes from his mountain home” (Reade, pt. II, stanza xxxiii).
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