1444. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 61–63.
[London]
Monday [27] Nov. 1843– [1]
Thanks many & true my dear Mr Horne, for the glance at the proofs. [2] You shall find me what is called a “safe person”, & worthy of confidence—and I am secretly proud of the confidence & of the association, & of your condescending to think that we write pretty well together. Reading this paper has amused me beyond your guessing. I have not a copy of my m∙s. (an evidence of the “safety”) but I remember nearly all the way, & am particularly amused to observe where & in what octave you strike your trumpet-note of accompaniment, & where you see fit to change the Key, as chorægus. [3] Really the paper, altogether, reads well. And now to my criticisms–
I have been intrepid enough to make some slight alterations & corrections of the press where there could be no doubt, I fancied, of the truth of my suggestion—& in other places I have written down my quære.
I struck out “hacknied” before Cockney,—because the next words are “which was so incessantly repeated”, & you wd choose to eschew the ‘vain repetition’. [4]
Lower down, I object to your addition to “The cheek of the impartial historian” .. of “as of the true critics of present times.” There is confusion & pleonasm—& a division of the identity of impartial historians & true critics. Why not simply, “the cheek of the true critic of present times”—? [5] It may be one or the other—but shdnt be both, I think.
A very little lower .. “Coleridge, so full of genius & all such acquirements.” Surely genius is not an acquirement. [6]
‘Alfred Tennyson’!– It appears to me certain that Tennyson wrote long & long after the extinction,—as a critical phrase,—of “the cockney school”—— And even if this were not so, it appears to me doubtful whether Tennyson lived in London long enough to take class as an hypothetical cockney. His family have a country house somewhere in Kent; and civically he never did any more—did he?,—than ‘visit’ London. That is my impression, at least. [7]
Below .. I fancy that our “two heads” rather knock against each other, in the observation about the imaginations of Wordsworth & Hunt. The sentences straggle—& do not follow according to the laws of what Browne calls “suggestion.” Look at them & see. [8]
“In exterior nature Wordsworth has a wider faith, and a less discriminating taste”– Why not ‘or’ instead of ‘and’.? It is correcter I think. [9]
“In religious feeling, however he may have been misrepresented”–
And on the last page, .. “they were provoked at his tendency to confound the distinctions of good & evil, by saying too much on the amiable side of the condemned”—— [10]
Now will you have patience with me my dear Mr Horne, while I speak a little on these two texts, & regret deeply that you shd allow your friendship & admiration for Mr Leigh Hunt, to draw the question away from the truth, to the extent of this inch– “Amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas” [11] .. is the noblest expression of friendship—surely & the most acceptable even to Socrates– You,—who are candid, .. tell me if it is true that he was “misrepresented” in matters of religion? Is it true .. strictly true, … that he confounded the distinctions of good & evil only by saying too much & too amiably “for the condemned.”? Does it not stand clear out in his books, in his early writings, that he laughed to scorn [12] what is recognized as the Christian revelation? Is it not clear in those early writings that he confounded good & evil, in principles rather than by persons? If you deny this, you may become a partial historian: but is the fact altered, before the eyes of your own friendship?—that fact being so undeniable, that the poet himself has taken advantage of the opportunity of a later edition, in order to obliterate & change the offensive passages–
That great injustice has been done to Mr Leigh Hunt, I am well aware—that what was reprobated in him, passed free in others, I am well aware. But one sort of injustice is not to be corrected by another: and on the point of what his views of religious truth & moral virtue used to be, I cannot agree with you that he has been “misrepresented”,—and I am of opinion that you confront the offensive injustice of the world, with the defensive injustice of your individual friendship.
For myself I will say, that out of the circle of Mr Leigh Hunt’s immediate friends, there cannot be one who regards him with more respect & admiration than I do– Yet I must write so.
Also it seems to me clear––you have been guilty of some (& that no small degree) of ‘offensive’ injustice to the great fathers of our poetry, Chaucer & Shakespeare, by accusing them of confounding or seeming to confound the bounds of good & evil, which they never did confound, .. which in all their universality of heart & intellect & their boundless charity & sympathy with human nature, they never did confound,—seeing that in this they were godlike, that they wd not consent to lower from their starry height, to the level of persons, the principles of either verity or virtue.
Can you forgive me, my dear friend, for writing my whole thought out so freely. As we see truth, it becomes the duty of each of us to utter it—and just in proportion to my high consideration for you, & .. if you will permit me to say so .. my true & grateful regard for you, .. was I pricked & provoked by your line of defence. The generous motive is obvious—& therefore I shd like the defence to be worthy of the motive. Forgive me at least. And—try if you can’t avoid charging our Chaucer & Shakespeare (in contrariousness to your own estimate of the former, in the admirable preliminary essay to the modernization), of confounding or seeming to confound the bounds of good & evil. [13]
There now! You will never send me any more proofsheets– Nay—who knows but what you will quarrel with me for life, as a climax of vengeance!
Forgive me generously, on the contrary. For
I am faithfully your friend, so much
the more! EBB–
Is Mr Hunt a voluminous writer? I shd have taken quite a contrary view—but ignorantly perhaps–
Have I taken a note of my admiration of your estimate of Wordsworth as no-prophet? It seems to me both subtle & true. [14]
Are you aware that poor Mrs Orme is very unwell, & shut up in one room—ever since you saw her?– She is somewhat better I trust—but far from well still.
Address: R H Horne Esqr / 38. Finsbury Square.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 176–186.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. This letter falls between no. 1443, in which Horne sends EBB proof sheets, and no. 1452, in which he acknowledges her comments on them; the intervening Monday was 27 November.
2. EBB’s remarks indicate that the proofs sent were of the chapter on Wordsworth and Hunt.
3. The leader of the chorus in Greek plays.
4. Cf. Matthew, 6:7.
5. Horne did not accept this suggestion. EBB’s references in this and the preceding paragraph are to I, 315 of A New Spirit.
6. Horne changed “such” to “rare” (I, 315).
7. Horne left Tennyson as one of the writers stigmatized as of the Cockney School (I, 315).
8. EBB refers to I, 323. Browne is taken to be Isaac Hawkins Browne the Younger (1745–1818), author of Essays, Religious and Moral (1815) and Essays on … Metaphysics, Morals and Religion, published posthumously in 1822, although we have not found the passage on suggestion to which EBB alludes.
9. Horne accepted this suggestion (I, 322).
10. These two phrases were omitted from the printed text.
11. “Socrates is dear to me, but dearer still is truth” (Ammonius, Aristotelis Vita, 399).
12. Cf. Psalms, 22:7.
13. The passage on Chaucer and Shakespeare is at I, 330–331. Horne’s earlier remarks on Chaucer are found in Chaucer, Modernized, pp. xciii–xciv.
14. See A New Spirit, I, 329.
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