1389. Cornelius Mathews to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 344–345.
New York.
30th. Sep. 1843
My Dear Miss Barrett.
Players in concert ought to be able to come in “time & tune[”] [1] with their fellows or discord, inevitably, ensues: mood is as needful to a correspondent, and jangled & out of tune this morning through various causes I shall do my part, I know but haltingly. The first note to be struck would be one of thanksgiving for your choice gift of “Chaucer Modernized” which by carelessness of the Booksellers’ fell into some pit or other at their store where it lay perdu for a couple of weeks. Your version I like, as happily combining the modern & antique, & Mr. Horne’s Introduction I took to greatly. I could say more but my pen hops about so on the page & has so much to speak that it will not stay at a topic a minute. Your approval of the writings I sent you gives me great pleasure & I hope you will find when the later nos. reach you, that time may have mellowed some of the wildness of which you complain. As you made no (special) mention of that odd creation “Behemoth” I suppose it failed to harmonize in your imagination. In that opinion you may be more right than the author in constructing such a piece of fantasy-work. I send you, by the steame[r], a volume of “Poems” fire-new & perhaps worthy of fire. [2] I shall place you in charge of copies for Mr. Horne, in token of the pleasure, I have derived from his “Orion”—for which thanks to you as well!—also for Miss Mitford in the hope to recover the ground lost in her favor, or rather not gained, by “Wakondah”– To be done with this matter of my own Frailties & Feeblenesses let me tell you that with the Nos. I send you, you have them complete, with the exception of 20 pp. or so to include the New Poems & to be printed hereafter, which, when done, you shall receive to insert in their place, making your set, complete.
The new Volume of Poems by yourself, hinted at some time ago, I hope grows apace—it will, not only numerically increase books written by one but by a larger ration, I doubt not, add to your good name. I have much to say about yourself, & the good opinion of your writings growing, here, as it should, but also on other copies in two letters of yours lying by me unanswered, except in this scrambling fashion. With the Anon, sir! Anon, sir! [3] of the tapster, I promise an early return to the chords of this great musical Shell of the Atlantic on the extreme edges of which you & I are, at work ‘most musical, most melancholy’. [4]
Truly & gratefully
Cornelius Mathews.
To
Elizabeth B. Barrett.
London.
Address, on integral page: To / Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. / 50 Wimpole Street. / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Byron, Beppo (1818), LX, 6.
2. Poems on Man in His Various Aspects Under the American Republic (1843).
3. I Henry IV, II, 4, 27.
4. “Il Penseroso” (1645), line 62.
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