1527. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 196–198.
[London]
Monday– [12 February 1844] [1]
My dear Mr Horne,
I write & send off two of the packets in great haste,—having received your notice to do so. Thank you much—I have been very much interested .. just as your kindness wd have it. You will find the mottos; occurring to me; & a few marks of doubt, founded well or ill. There is one thing––I wish very much that you wd modify a sentence in the paper on Dr Southwood Smith. I may write ignorantly, .. not having read his works; but my impression is, & the public impression generally, I think, is, that he is a Socinian—& by leaving the sentence a question, which you will find by my mark, the inference of the reader will attribute to you, opinions of that class; & I shd be sorry for it. With every respect for Dr Smith, I am anxious you shd alter it– Will you? It might be done in a moment. [2]
For the rest, .. I cd see that you had not corrected, .. that you had only written. The paper on Dickens is full of subtle criticism,—perhaps almost too full, considering the nature of the work,—but it was an exceedingly interesting paper to me, & quite carried me off my feet here & there, (in a metaphor) by its eloquence. Against Ingoldsby, you are clever in another way [3] —but .. oh! I have no time to talk.
But I must say that you have discrowned Mary Howitt of her bay most disloyally– [4] She, such a true poetess, and in whom is the genius of the Howitt’s [sic], in its aspectable form!— What cd induce you to suffer her to be so overthrown, is astonishing to me! Just as if the writing of poems & ballads fell naturally into a parenthesis!!
And now I want to know .. I have wanted to know so long .. & for particular reasons, did not like to ask—but now I want to know, & must know——who is to write about Orion & Cosmo? [5] Tell me.
One word more– Would it be possible for you, in case you have not already in any way, mentioned Mr Kenyon, .. to do so? He has published one or two volumes of poems, .. the first called “Rhymes on Tolerance” and the second consisting of various miscellanies, which are not what you & I (no, nor he) wd call poetry in the highest sense & an utterance of genius; but which have strength & grace in them, .. & a sensibility to the beautiful with graphical results. Moreover he will be remembered hereafter as having “lived near the rose,” [6] ––as the friend for years & years, of the Wordsworths, Coleridges, Lambs & all those Immortals—to say nothing of his being listened to now, as one of the most brilliant talkers in the literary circles of London. For kindness,—for the true ‘crême de la crême’ of human kindness, the full cup of it is continually in his hand—and altogether, it wd grace your book to say something kind & true of him in it— [7] .. & please me very much besides. Believe me I shd [8] not, in spite of the last clause, ask you to do what you had no reason for doing—but I think …
To ye the post is going; & I am flying—
Ever truly yours
EBB.
It would be wise of you to stay a little longer at Brighton,—wdnt it?—even after you have done with the book—to gather repose & refreshment at leisure?
Address: R H Horne Esqr
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This letter is a response to Horne’s last two: nos. 1524 and 1526.
2. This remark apparently relates to Horne’s use of the phrase “gloomy theologian of Geneva” in the paper on Southwood Smith; in letter 1531 he said he would alter it. The adherents of the Italian theologians Lælius and Faustus Socinus denied the divinity of Christ.
3. Horne discusses Thomas Ingoldsby in his first volume (pp. 129–150). The Ingoldsby Legends, published as a collection in 1840, had previously appeared in numbers of Bentley’s Miscellany, edited by Dickens, and The New Monthly Magazine. They were the work of Richard Harris Barham (1788–1845), using the nom-de-plume of Thomas Ingoldsby.
4. EBB may be referring to the assertion (I, 197) that the series of translations of Fredrika Bremer’s works, published under Mary Howitt’s name, were actually the result of collaboration with her husband.
5. Horne’s own works were not discussed in A New Spirit; a very brief reference to Orion occurs in the final chapter (II, 298).
6. We have not located the source of this quotation.
7. Kenyon was not mentioned in A New Spirit.
8. EBB has also written wd above shd
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