926. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 262–263.
[London]
March 17. 1842
Ever dearest friend, here is the book, [1] & here the shaddocks!–
One of the subjects on which I venture to be two with you, is just this of Bulwer!– You know it is. He is an unequal artist .. but nearly always, it appears to me, true to the soul of poetic Art, in evolving from each of his books An Idea. In regard to Zanoni, I think with you that there is much in it, one wd yearn to see cast out of it, in reverence to the unity of the whole. [2] The roaring of the French Revolution grinds horribly through the mystic ideality of the groundwork—we are rent in twain, distracted, as the work is!– Also the supernatural parts are brought certainly as you observe too near the eye .. the Haunter of the threshold being quite a failure to my own instincts! [3] At the same time I like that castle scenery—I like the preparation .. the hushing of the heart, preparatory to the awakening of the soul. That is all, as it seems to me, fine & phil[o]sophical! The struggle too in Zanoni’s great nature between the aspiration toward knowledge & the yearning toward love, & the final evolvement of the first in its glory from the last in its devotion—which is the idea of the book—all seems to me a noble verity! “Knowledge puffeth up—but Love buildeth up” [4] says God’s book! It is a noble verity.
My chief objection to the work, is to the character of Viola. I object to her sinking by the influence of Love, rather than rising! She shd have risen into intellectual sympathy by the mere force of love—she, Viola! She was too high at first or too low afterwards. Am I right, or wrong?
After all, there are beautiful things in the book—beautiful thoughts in eloquent expression. He is a great writer I think in my soul.
Beautiful—exquisite indeed, is the poem—it is a poem—of the old musician & his instrument & his daughter! [5] So high fantastical [6] yet so true to that lowest simplicity of nature which a child may reach & feel true! The man capable of such a conception cannot be, my beloved friend, quite a common man. —You do not think so!
Did you ever read Ernest Maltravers & the Alice which perfects the work. [7] That is to my mind, Mr Bulwer’s chief work: this Zanoni standing far below <***>
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 363–364.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Chaucer, Modernized, for Lucy Anderdon, as promised in the previous letter.
2. Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (3 vols., 1842) was reviewed in The Athenæum of 26 February 1842 (no. 748, pp. 181–183). The writer found it “a strange patchwork of things the most discordant” and feared that readers would find it confused, its purpose “ill-defined.” It is interesting to note that the author himself, in a preface to the 1853 edition, held that it “ranks, perhaps, amongst the highest of my prose fictions.”
3. In bk. IV.
4. Cf. I Corinthians, 8:1.
5. In bk. I.
6. Twelfth Night, I, 1, 15.
7. These two works appeared in 1837 and 1838 respectively. EBB praises the former in letter 596, the latter in letter 621.
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