1471. EBB to Cornelius Mathews
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 108–111.
50 Wimpole Street,
[ca. 27] Dec., 1843. [1]
My Dear Mr. Mathews:
Having waited from week to week for your kind gift of books, that I might acknowledge the promise and the coming in the same breath, I can only tell you after all that I have received them, and defer my judgment upon everything except the kindness, to a later letter. Two copies of the poems on Man have reached me, and a copy of each of the three last numbers of the prose republication. As one of the poems has my name on it in your writing, I can’t send it away—or won’t—but the other I have sent to Mr. Horne according to your direction, and my own I will lend to Miss Mitford, when I have done the reading of it myself. Scarcely a line have I read yet. There must be a later letter from me to you upon the subject of the “Man”—and also of the new prose numbers. Only I lean back to correct your impression drawn from a letter of mine—that I did not appreciate your Behemoth, [2] or if I did not express it clearly I cannot tell, or if I omitted to speak of it in the right place, under an idea that I had already or should subsequently speak it, I do not know; but one thing I can tell because I know it, that I do deeply appreciate Behemoth—that I consider it a fine subject, finely and massively treated—an American Mythos of a high and significant order—and that I admired it enough altogether to wish it had been cast into the mould of a poem by the same hand which had dealt with its hugeness in a poetical spirit, but in set prosaic forms. Therefore I beseech you, dear Mr. Mathews, do not limit me with a supposition of my being incapable of admiration for Behemoth. You speak with courteous resignation, but in your secret soul you must have pinned me flat under your scorn—all the flatter, perhaps, for the enforced preceding courtesy. Is it not so? By Behemoth[’s] “biggest horn” [3] did you not pin me down as a very small critic? Well, but you did mistake my thought, Mr. Mathews, and I choose to write myself down an admirer of your Behemoth, rather than mine own “ass.” [4] Am I understood at last? And in respect to the earlier numbers, my meaning was not that they were “too wild” [5] —but that they were likely to strike our public here as occasionally somewhat coarse—while my own chief objection is, that they want what the painters call keeping, and what the critics call unity—that everybody and everything are too equally worked up to the eye and the fancy, and that the cleverness and power of the writer spread themselves out too uniformly over all—the effect of which is that the interest of the reader cannot catch at any handle on that uniform surface. The defect of the papers is by no means want of power, but want of art. One grows bewildered with cleverness while reading you. Ought I not to say so? Perhaps not—yet I think I ought—because, what have I to give in exchange for your kindnesses, except my truth? and although my truth may be only mine—that is, the bare transcript of the impressions of one reader—still you will take it at its worth, nor be unregardful, as a writer of high aims, of the impression produced by your writings upon even one honest reader. Believe me, if you would pay me in kind, and tell me as fully and unreservedly your thoughts of me—I should reckon that candour in the list of your beneficences to me. For the rest you will bear in mind that what is spoken here is spoken of the early numbers, and not of those which I have just received, and have not yet read. Probably these last will be liable to no such observations. The fault, or what I take for the fault, of the early ones, is a good fault, and likely to wash itself clear in the fermentation. I can understand perfectly that much American hope in literature is reasonably set upon you. You are no imitator. You are national in your characteristics—may you fulfill your own hopes, and the hope set in you! And may I ask whether you have directed Messrs. Wiley and Putnam to send copies of your works to the chief English periodicals? I hope so—because this would be the only means of pushing them into circulation here. A book may circulate from hand to hand freely in America, and remain a Chinese poem for England.
And to your question about the estimate here of American literature, my reply will startle you if you are not prepared for a very vague general apprehension of the merits of your writers. Dr. Channing and Washington Irving and Cooper represent you to our multitude. Bryant’s name is known and Halleck’s, and Prescott is read and appreciated, and Dr. Bird as a writer of imagination. Emerson stands strong with the thinkers, and Longfellow with the poets. For my own part the latter seems to me to take rank far above Bryant and others of his class. Pierpont, Neal, Drake, are little read, and rather known by the occurrence of their names in books of extracts than otherwise, I fancy. Willis is a more current name, but he is a superficial writer—with a certain native grace, but of a bad school. [6] When I hold Graham’s Miscellany in my hand, I begin to moralize like Jaques [7] upon the fact of the many names in it (apparently popular names in America, and of the owners of whom portraits, says Graham, are in course of preparation for the Magazine), dropping through my mind without the suggestion of an idea. I certainly scarcely ever heard any one of them. Not that my answer to your question is by any means a complete one. I have omitted in it many, for instance, Mrs. Sedgewick, who is deservedly respected with us, and others of more caliber still.
Prosperity to the Society of Help in New York of which you are secretary; for if we need help you need it yet more, and thank you for your intention of extending a wing to my approaching volume in order to protect it with soft feathers. [8] I shall be too glad to avail myself of it when my book comes out, which will certainly be (D.V.) [9] in the course of next spring. It seems to me that I have written a great deal without saying anything. Consider this paper as a hieroglyphic of thanks for your kind gifts to me. Also I have the £10 5s from W. Putnam.
Yours very faithfully,
E. B. Barrett.
Text: The Collector, January 1892, pp. 74–75.
1. Dated by the reference to the copy of Mathews’s book sent to Horne; in letter 1475 EBB asks whether he has received it.
2. See letter 1367, in which EBB suggested that his book “might be called a little coarse.”
3. The mastodon Behemoth had “two far extending tusks, which curved and flashed in the sun like scimitars.”
4. Cf. Much Ado About Nothing, IV, 2, 76.
5. In letter 1367, EBB had spoken of “an inclination to the grotesque.”
6. William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) was the Unitarian preacher and author whose works EBB had praised in Diary (p. 155) and in letters 881 and 1042. Washington Irving (1783–1859), the author of Rip Van Winkle (1819) and The History and Life and Voyages of Columbus (1828), was Secretary of the American Legation in London (1829) and Minister to Spain (1843–46). James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) wrote The Spy (1821), The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Pathfinder (1840). William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was known for Thanatopsis (1817), Poems (1821 and 1832) and The Fountain and Other Poems (1842). Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867) is best known for his tribute on the death of Joseph Rodman Drake, “Green be the turf above thee” (1820). William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859) was an expert on the history of Spain and the conquest of Mexico and Peru. Robert Montgomery Bird (1806–54), playwright and novelist, wrote The Gladiator (1831), The Broker of Bogota (1834) and The Infidel; or the Fall of Mexico (1835). Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), founder and co-editor of The Dial, was known in England at this time only for his Essays (1841). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres at Harvard (1835–59) had by this time published several volumes of poetry that included such works as “Excelsior,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Village Blacksmith.” John Pierpont (1785–1866) was the author of Airs of Palestine, and Other Poems (1840) and a volume of Anti-Slavery Poems (1843). John Neal (1793–1889), poet and novelist, wrote Seventy-Six (1821) and Brother Jonathan (1825). Joseph Rodman Drake (1795–1820) published The Culprit Fay and Other Poems in 1835. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67), poet, playwright and journalist, was known for Melanie and Other Poems (1835), Inklings of Adventure (1836), and other works.
7. In As You Like It, II, 7, 139ff.
9. “Deo volente” (“God willing”).
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