1277. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 177–178.
36 New Broad Str
June 9/43
My dear Miss Barrett
You made me laugh heartily at the dilemma your friends are in about my epic or no epic-sculpture and no picture(!) poem. I never conceived of the affair producing so much fun—but really every body seems to be put into one state or another by it—every body I know, I mean—and numbers, I do not.
Truly, the worthy and dismayed publisher—who was never before so beset—gave a hint as broad as the moon [1] in the last Examiner and Athenæum—and if he has any copies remaining he naturally keeps them for those who have faith enough to send him nine penny stamps. So, dear Miss Mitford must ‘have at’ the Bishop in that way—or tell him to send his mitre for one. [2]
My dear, and always kind critic (except when—et tu Brute! [3] —you want my blank verse “tagged” with jingles) it would be great pleasure to me to send you, or order you to obtain from the publisher, the 6 copies you want—but I have them not, and I cannot ask the poor tormented man (who now looks upon every single copy as a drop of his blood, which he dreads to part with) to exhume 6 copies from beneath his bed, where I know he did hide some two days ago. But about this day week he will have more—and they will be gone in a few days, to a certainty. You will be delighted to hear that all your predictions of what the Poem will not do, we already superceded. You shall see, what you shall see.
Yours truly
H
P.S. Who could have made that reply to you about “Festus.” What a nose the party must have had for the objectionables mentioned. [4]
P.S. 2nd Since writing the enclosed I have again read your note, and am ashamed to think that I was very near passing on without expressing to you my great pleasure in the admiration you express for it generally and particularly. I am so glad that you are the first to pick out Akinetos—and his dialogue with Chronos. [4] I do think (as you say so, too) that that dialogue belongs solely to me, and nobody else would have done it. I am so pleased that I actually squeeze out a copy of the Farthing venture from my own shelf—my copy—and send it as a free present for you to give or send anywhere. But 6!—you cannot have them for 6 guineas.
Address, on integral page: Miss E. B. Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Cf. Byron, Don Juan, II, clxxxv, 4.
2. Although the price of Orion remained one farthing, an announcement in The Athenæum of 3 June said: “For transmission by post, the weight and payment will require nine penny stamps; on receiving which the Publisher will forward a copy to any part of the kingdom, during the next fortnight, only” (no. 814, p. 536). A similar notice was carried in The Examiner (3 June, p. 352). Letter 1275 mentions Miss Mitford’s wish for Bishop Baines to receive a copy.
3. Julius Cæsar, III, 1, 77.
4. See the previous letter.
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