1035. EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 125–126.
[London]
[29 October 1842] [1]
Dear Mr Haydon,
I certainly ought to express my sense of obligation to you by throwing myself at your feet. Can you guess what pleasure you have procured me,—you, indirectly?—Guess! A letter from Mr Wordsworth– Yes indeed! I had a very kind letter from him yesterday morning, a letter in his own handwriting: and if you had not sent him the sonnet (an act which I have just told him, “simply confounded me” at first!) where wd have been my letter? where my pleasure? I owe you my pleasure Mr Haydon, & am grateful to you!. I am obliged to you—obliged to your picture ..! and the superabundance of my good humour expends itself even on my sonnet, because that caught the light of the poet’s countenance “as it fell”. [2]
Mr Wordsworth proposes the substitution of
By a vision free
And noble, Haydon, is thine art releast–
for what I wrote: but the criticism came too late to be put to use. Here is the Athenæum,—and you will send me in exchange your theory. No! dont send it! Because I believe,—I am afraid,—that the theory is founded upon a truth. The Athenæum people spend their enthusiasm, upon Thalberg & his generation, as I have told you: and poets and painters do not enter into their secret. [3]
I have to thank you for another copy of the Lecture—and also for the sight of a very interesting letter to the Sheffield paper [4] which I seem to be bound to return to you, as you do not say “keep it”. Your MS. letters to myself have scarcely been a means to me of less pleasure,—for I delight in all such reminiscences as you tell me of, .. and your “urn” wd be as hallowed in my eyes as any urn which Memory leans upon in an allegory– Indeed I do hope to see it some day. But you say “call upon me in the spring”—and I have no business perhaps to think of springs, far less to make engagements for them.
A friend of mine—that is, a friend on paper,—for I correspond with him without having looked ever in his face, .. Mr Horne the poet of Cosmo de’ Medici .. a true poet & most kind friend, .. knew Keats personally & has often written to me of him. “The divine Keats” he calls him! Very divine—and human!– I am sorry that Professor Wilson, himself a man of genius, shd have struck an unrighteous blow against Keats,—and I was not aware of the fact until you told me– One dagger was enough, with its base Quarterly plunge—one dagger and exhausted nature!– [5]
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 6–8 (as ca. 28 October 1842).
Manuscript: Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.
1. Dated by the letter received from Wordsworth “yesterday morning,” 28 October 1842.
2. Cf. Job, 29:24.
3. The Athenæum of 1 October 1842 discussed Sigismond Thalberg (1812–71), a composer and pianist who studied under Hummel, at some length (no. 779, p. 853).
4. A letter from Haydon, regarding the formation of a School of Design in Sheffield, appeared in The Sheffield Mercury on 1 October 1842 (p. 7).
5. Haydon apparently told EBB that Wilson (“Christopher North”) was the author of a series of essays on “The Cockney School of Poetry” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine; the “unrighteous blow against Keats” was contained in the fourth article (August 1818, pp. 519–524). In addition, a very negative review of Endymion appeared in The Quarterly Review of April 1818 (pp. 204–208). The Blackwood’s essays are now believed to have been the work of Lockhart (DNB).
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