1318. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 234–235.
[London]
Monday Morg [10 July 1843] [1]
Dear Miss Barrett, I send the two Magazines—and several of the best of the Letters. Please to return them to me, any time this week.
Read the Notice of “Orion” first in the “Illuminated Mag.” as it would have made an amusing 2nd Notice for the Athenæum—the first being the pure ether, only; and this the good earth of the thing, chiefly. Then read the “Monthly” which, curiously enough, comprises the views (essentially and materially) of the two. [2]
Thank you for telling about Miss Cockell. Why should you have been shy with her? Shyness usually implies doubt.
Yours truly
H.
P.S. Mr Kenyon is very kind to take so much interest in my writings. I intend to call upon him some morning.
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This letter falls between 1315, in which EBB said that Horne had offered to let her see “various critical letters” pertaining to Orion, and 1321, with which she returned them. The intervening Monday was 10 July.
2. The Illuminated Magazine reviewed Orion in the June 1843 number (pp. 119–121). The Monthly Magazine of June carried a much longer notice (pp. 490–501), including these passages: “here is the highest class of literature for the poorest coin of the realm” (p. 490); “Beauty is the distinguishing characteristic of the poem; it overflows with pictures of loveliness” (p. 493); “In this exquisite poetry … there is a singular felicity in every allusion and every epithet” (p. 498); “there is … in this poem a greater amount of the highest order of imagination, passion, and ethical philosophy, than can be found in any other production of the present age” (p. 501).
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