Correspondence

1533.  RB to Richard Hengist Horne

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 202–205.

New Cross, Hatcham,

Wednesday. [mid-February 1844] [1]

Dear Horne,

Let’s to work, at once—and talk after, if post-time serve.

Hood & Hook./ “Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously; as if our veins ran with quicksilver; and not utter a phrase but what shall come forth steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire.”

Ben Jonson: Cynthia’s Revels. [2]

Henry Taylor./ (to exemplify what you contrast—“sound-sense poetry with the passionate & imaginative.” [3] |Loye!|)—

Then put on all thy gorgeous arms—thy helmet

And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon,

Vant-bras and greaves, and gauntlet, and thy spear

A weaver’s beam, and seven-times-folded shield!—

I only with an oaken staff will meet thee,

And raise such outcries on thy clattered Iron,

Which long shall not with[h]old me from thy head,

That in a little time while breath remains thee

Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath!

Milton: Samson Ags [4]

The Dramatists & the Stage.

1. Too popular is Tragic Poesy,

Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee.

Painters and Poets, hold your ancient right!

Write—what you will—and write not—what you might!

Their limits be their list,—their reason, will!

Bishop Hall. 4th Satire. [5]

—But the thing of things to say—is out of the Prologue to Goethe’s Faust, which I have spent much time this morning in a hunt after—& with no success. The “Poet,” there, answers the solicitations or requirements of the “Manager”—that he should popularize and degrade his style & matter ad captand. vulg. [6] —and answers famously: I would get the book, had I time—cannot you refer to some Translation—Hayward’s Prose, or Anster’s verse? [7] it is well worth while.

Bob Montgomery (while quoting from Hall)

Parnassus is transformed to Zion-Hill,

And Jewry-palms her steep ascents do fill.

Now good St Peter weeps pure Helicon

And both the Maries make a music-moan—

Yea, and the prophet of the heavenly lyre,

Great Solomon, sings in the English quire,

And is become a new-found Sonnetist,

Singing his love, the holy spouse of Christ,

Like as she were some light-skirts!

Bp Hall, Satire 8. [8]

Miss Martineau

—She walks, thro’ the great city, veiled

In virtue’s adamantine eloquence,

’Gainst scorn, and death, and pain thus trebly mailed,

And blending in the smiles of that defence,

The serpent and the dove—wisdom and innocence. [9]

Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach

To woman, outraged and polluted long,

Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach

For those fair hands, when free—while armed wrong

Trembles before her look!

Shelley. Revolt of Islam. [10]

Mrs Jameson.

yet shouldst thou silent be,

The rose & lily which thou strowest

All the cheerful way thou goest

Would direct to follow thee!

Middleton (I think) [11]

“Mrs Shelley & the very few Imaginative Romancists”

Sweet whispers are heard by the Traveller,

Which make Night—Day:

And a silver shape like his early love doth pass,

Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,

And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,

He finds night—day!

Bulwer (general ambition in literature)

Pitch thy project high!

Sink not in spirit! Who aimeth at the sky

Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.

Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where,

And when, and how, the business may be done.

Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller

Though he alights sometimes still goeth on.

Active and stirring spirits live alone:

Write on the others—“Here lies such an one”!

Croker, or his Kindred,

“When men strike at genius, they strike at the face of God—in the only way wherein he ever manifests it to them”.

Landor. [14]

Miss Barret[t].

I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,

With the calm within, & the light around!

—And thou, when the gloom is deep & stark,

Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,—

My Moon-like flight thou then may’st mark!

Shelley. [15]

Mrs. Norton.

As one who drinks from a charmed cup

Of foaming & sparkling & murmuring wine—

Whom a mighty Enchantress, filling up,

Invites to love with her kiss divine.

Shelley. [16]

The Clock! I got yours late on Monday (being out) & was out yesterday perforce– I will try again at Macaulay & Banim—but do you do[.]

Yours ever,

RB.

Publication: NL, pp. 30–35 (as Autumn 1843).

Manuscript: Yale University.

1. It seems probable that Horne would have asked RB for suggestions for mottoes at about the same time as his request to EBB (letter 1524).

2. Cynthia’s Revels (1601), act II, sc. 1. Although Horne drew an oblique line through this passage, he used this quotation to introduce the chapter on Hood and Hook (II, 52).

3. RB had apparently seen a draft of Horne’s chapter, as this is a paraphrase of his opening remarks on Taylor (II, 283).

4. Samson Agonistes (1671), lines 1119–27. Horne did not use this quotation.

5. Joseph Hall (1574–1656), “Satires,” bk. I, no. 4, lines 1–2 and 15–17 (Virgidemiarum, 1598). Horne used them to introduce the chapter on Knowles and Macready (II, 84), although he also drew a diagonal line through this passage, as he did for the suggested mottoes for Montgomery, Martineau and Bulwer.

6. “Ad captandum vulgus: for the sake of pleasing the crowd.” The passage to which RB refers appears in “Prelude in the Theatre,” not “Prologue in Heaven,” at the beginning of Faust.

7. Abraham Hayward (1801–84) and John Anster (1793–1867) published translations of the first part of Faust in 1833 and 1835 respectively, the former’s being in prose, the latter’s in verse.

8. Hall’s “Satires,” bk. I, no. 8, lines 3–11. Horne used the first seven lines of this quotation to introduce his chapter on Montgomery (II, 234).

9. These three words, in Horne’s handwriting, were added above a deleted phrase of RB’s.

10. These lines are from Laon and Cythna (1818, 167–172 and 181–185), not The Revolt of Islam. Horne used the first five lines to introduce his chapter on Miss Martineau and Mrs. Jameson (II, 64).

11. Not Middleton, but Shirley, The Triumph of Peace (1633), song 3, lines 3–6. Horne did not use this quotation.

12. “The Two Spirits” (Posthumous Poems, 1824), lines 43–48. Horne did not use this quotation.

13. “The Church-Porch” (The Temple, 1633), lines 331, 333–334, 337–342. Horne used the first five lines to introduce the chapter on Bulwer (II, 188).

14. We have not located the source of this quotation. It was not used by Horne, who did not mention Croker in A New Spirit.

15. “The Two Spirits,” lines 26–27 and 29–31, not used by Horne.

16. “Music” (Posthumous Poems, 1824), lines 19–22. Used to introduce the chapter on EBB and Mrs. Norton (II, 130).

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