1519. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 186.
[London]
Monday Morng [Postmark: 5 February 1844]
I am going out of town to “finish”—i e the last four articles.
After much consideration of the dangers of accident, I have nevertheless resolved to risk the passage of the Proofs—confident in your inviolable secrecy. Shall I send you the proofs of the whole of the 1st Vol? You will understand, my dear Miss Barrett, that the tax to secrecy is to be entire—not any one is to know that you have them; nor (afterwards) that you have had them in proof!
Well, I must say a word or two of Mrs S. C. Hall. But what shall I say? Ah me! and do you know anything of Lover’s novels, and those of Lever (Harry Lorrequer) if you do, tell me what you think of each. [1] Five words a piece, will be quite enough, I dare say.
Yours truly
H.
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sqre.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Samuel Lover (1797–1868), Irish novelist, painter and song-writer, was the author of Rory O’More (1837), Songs and Ballads (1839) and Handy Andy (1842). Charles James Lever (1806–72), also Irish (whom EBB had dismissed as “unreadable” in letter 1336), wrote the popular novels Harry Lorrequer (1839), Charles O’Malley (1841) and Jack Hinton the Guardsman (1843). Horne dealt with both in his chapter on the Irish Novelists (II, 143–152). He also included a brief comment on the works of Mrs. Hall.
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