1531. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 201–202.
[Brighton]
Thursday Evg [Postmark: 15 February 1844]
Thanks for all things, and I shall profit by most. One or two of the matters are excellent—tho’ I prefer the dreadful simplicity of “Poison in Jest” [1] to all amplifications, and light infantry. The one from Chaucer for Lord Ashley I shall use in place of those from Shelley. I quite forgot (I always do) that Shelley and Ld A had different notions on religion. [2] I will alter the sentence you mark in the article about “the gloomy theologian of Geneva”—tho’ how this shd make me seem to belong to any sect I do not comprehend; but I dare say you do, so I have “bowed.” [3]
Will you be so good as tell me where abouts the quotation is—of philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical, as is Apollo’s lute? [4]
Somewhere in Milton?
Can you think of a Motto for Mrs Jameson? and for “Mrs Shelley (and the Imaginative romance writers”) and for Mrs Norton, and for your Ladyship’s own muse. Mind—the last must be a good one—the best you can think of, or it will do me no sort of service. Modesty will defeat me. I want the good motto, I ask. Now, do think. (Impromptu)– [“]On fire-wings tow’rds my God”! [5] It must be not less than that. But try to find one.
Do you happen to know anything of the Irish tales of Carlton? [6] Some extracts I have seen I think excellent.
All you say about Lorrequer, is quite to my mind. Do not repeat the same to anybody just now, lest we be thought “to confer too deeply.”
Be so kind as address as usual– I shall be at Kentish town tomorrow.
Yours truly
R H.H.
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sq / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Hamlet, III, 2, 234. Horne used this phrase to introduce the essay on Ingoldsby (I, 128).
2. Shelley was a self-confessed atheist (see letter 1453). Antony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley (1801–85), later (1851) 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, was “a very cordial supporter of evangelical views” (DNB). For many years he was president of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and was an energetic supporter of the Church Missionary Society and the Young Men’s Christian Association.
3. This is apparently a response to the objection voiced by EBB in letter 1527.
4. Comus (1645), lines 477–478. Horne did not make use of this quotation in A New Spirit.
5. We have not located the source of this quotation.
6. William Carleton (1794–1869) was the author of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830), Tales of Ireland (1834) and The Fawn of Springvale and Other Tales (1841). He was mentioned briefly in A New Spirit (II, 150).
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