994. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 55.

Three Mile Cross,

August 18, 1842.

What you say of Milton is full of truth. [1] But one truth you have, I think, not perceived, that the want of distinctive character causes much of the heaviness, of character, individuality, the power of identification, which is the salt of all literature from Horace to Scott. It is the one great merit of your own Chaucer, the glory of Shakespeare, the one grand quality by which writers worthy to live will live to all time, and without which they may indeed exist, praised, but unread, amongst moths and cobwebs. Heaven bless you, my beloved friend!

Ever yours,

M.R.M.

Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 157–158.

1. In the fourth part of her article on The Book of the Poets in The Athenæum of 6 August (no. 771, pp. 706–708).

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