1116. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 270–271.
[London]
[Postmark: 5 January 1843]
Dear Miss Barrett
It is very like, with this trifling alteration in the outline I have made [1] —whereby (and in great part because you made the first outline) I want to have your note back again.
You are fortunate and favor’d as to a publisher. I never met with such a man! and I never expect.
No, nobody ever flattered me that my adumbration was like that of Keats—and I never flattered myself: to that Olympian measure. As to one particular feature, now you remark it, I think I do recognize a strong family likeness. [2]
What in the world was it, in that scrap of ‘Ten thousands’ [3] I sent you, that threw you into a theologic anger, as it seemed. I have absolutely so little knowledge of any dogmas and their shades, that I really don’t know when I am likely to offend any of them. I mean, that I protest I am not aware of what criminal expressions therein (in that script) led to such a suggestion of a “fiery lecture.” I vow I only meant to say that any physician who allows a dying—certainly dying—patient to writhe in agony day after day, is a brute or a gentleman—that’s all. The thing was strictly medical, weak-minded, and only applied to cases of extreme corporal anguish. [4] But if you turn “frantic along that top like torches” into hands that may be “gently led down by their Creator” [5] —why, I say Amen[,] [6] let it be so.
H.
P.S. I have not sent your outline of Keats, in case you shd not send it back.
P.S. There has been almost a ‘storm’ between Biog. Dict people and one of their contributors. Because my article on “Albertus Magnus” [7] appears in the present No of the Church Quarterly. In the new “Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review” I have written ‘Chinese Characteristics,’ [8] for your own use—what you mentioned so I hope it may prove.
Address: Miss E.B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sq.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. i.e., the sketch of Keats (see letter 1104).
2. EBB had made the remark in letter 1104.
3. I Samuel, 18:7.
4. For EBB’s comments on Horne’s “Euthanasia,” see letter 1098.
5. EBB apparently had suggested a change to the fourth line of “Euthanasia.”
6. Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnets, 85, line 6.
7. Albertus Magnus (Albert of Cologne, 1206?–80), a philosopher of the Aristotelian school, was the author of Magister Sententiarum and Summa Theologiæ and the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–74). He was the subject of one of Horne’s contributions to The Biographical Dictionary (see letter 902, note 6). The article to which Horne now refers, “Albertus Magnus: His Biography, Works, and Fame,” appeared (unsigned) in The Church of England Quarterly Review, January 1843, pp. 96–112; it was structured around comments on five publications dealing with Albertus Magnus.
8. “Chinese Characteristics” appeared, also unsigned, in the January 1843 issue of The Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review (pp. 194–221).
___________________
