1452. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 74–75.
5 Fortess Terrace[,] Kentish Town
Decr 4/43
My dear Miss Barrett, first observe the change of address—and for the future—at least all this winter, as I shall be more there than anywhere else all that time. (Previous delays &c were just my absence from town—or executive occupation). [1]
—Great thanks for your help, and your attention to the proof, and for your note of comments. In such a work as this there is no comfort so great (next to doing a thing honorably) as to have a thoroughly honest friend and assistant in the doing, and for consultation.
The proof you saw had never been read by me. Printers do sometimes make mistakes as well as authors. But thank you all the same—always correct everything you see that you think at all needs it.
Grand quæres. Poets, and others, who had liberal opinions, were at one time always called Cockney by the other party—that is all those who had ever lived in London—or who had not. Tennyson was called so in Blackwood &c. [2]
What I said about Leigh Hunt’s tendency to provoke one with over-amiability by his frequent disposition to confound right and wrong, was meant to point at social doings. You have pounced upon it—turned it into “good and evil” and made it a theological question! I never meant anything of the kind. It wd be to rip up old injuries. A more religious man in his feelings, or one more pure and generous in his sense of moral virtue, I never met. He may have uttered un-pleasantries concerning certain forms of faith, or certain dogmas, or opinions of certain sects. I have no doubt of it—though I never read any of them. This is all my defence—a good, and a true.
Also, what I said of Shakspeare, or Chaucer, referred to having tendency to confuse right and wrong (not theological Good and Evil) and I have said this very thing in the book you quote against thy friend, B Barrett[.] Yea, in the Introduct to Chaucer. See pages 93–94. [3] Curious enough, Hunt read the Introduct in proof—read to the remark that “Universality of sympathy does not preclude some antipathies’[’] & it is a fact that he objected, and wanted me to leave it out. There’s for you, now! Will you ever quote me against myself again! I have so little changed (if at all essentially) in any respect, since I first printed a thought that it will always be sharp work for you to slay me with my own sword.
Therefore be placable. You shall see another proof revised. And we will accommodate—“it comes from accommodo” [4] —as nearly as we can; but the top thing shall be the Truth.
I send another proof, with which I am greatly pleased. Keep it secret. In a day or two return it. Correct anything you object to—in the margin, rather than by note (if room enough) as it gives me fewer papers to refer to. I have thousands. Will you after returning Landor—any time this week—give me a page or two about Tennyson.
Yours truly
H.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This parenthetical remark was added as an afterthought.
2. Horne is adverting to EBB’s remark about Tennyson in letter 1444. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, in its review of Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), singled out “The Merman” as being “a perfect specimen of the super-hyperbolical ultra-extravagance of outrageous Cockney eulogistic foolishness” (May 1832, p. 728).
3. Horne’s remarks on these pages in Chaucer, Modernized included the comments “The genius of Chaucer was equally great in the profoundest pathos, and the richest humour.... His sympathy was universal.... Even the Devil is sometimes brought home to human sympathies.”
4. “I adjust, adapt.”
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