1496. EBB to Cornelius Mathews
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 147–148.
[London]
[?8] [January 1844] [1]
I have this letter to send you my dear Mr Mathews, from Mr Horne, & do not like to delay sending it. Up to this moment I have not looked into your last sent books,—yes, I have looked into them, but done as little more as possible—& now I follow hard upon the heels of a letter which acknowledged their arrival & explained my admiration of your Behemoth, [2] with a note such as you see. I am very much occupied with my book which is to come, & has not yet burst its ms folds. You are the secretary of an author protection society, & promised to extend a wing over my head. [3] In what way will this be done? Wd it be well, should you think, to make a proposition of copyright to the booksellers in New York?—copyright of whatever number of copies may be likely to sell among you? I am likely to have the copyright here in my own hands & employ a publisher. Do not give yourself any trouble upon this point, but answer as it strikes you. My glances at your poem of ‘Man’ help me to good thoughts of you—but really to give an opinion yet, wd be like measuring a flash of lightening.
I hear that Mr Horne is about to bring out a Continuation of the “Spirit of the Age” by Hazlitt, in which the living writers of England will be analyzed & synthesized too. No author of the day is more capable of this execution than the author selected—for it is a bookseller’s work & likely to succeed with the public. The “New Spirit of the Age” is the title. I have no room for more–
Faithfully yours
Elizabeth B Barrett
Publication: The Collector, January 1892, p. 75.
Source: Photocopy at Princeton University.
1. EBB acknowledged receipt of Horne’s letter for Mathews in letter 1489. As the following day was a Sunday, the earliest that she could have posted it was Monday, the 8th.
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