1538. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 210–212.
[London]
Tuesday Feb 20. 1844.
I quite forgot to say to you, my dear Mr Horne, what I think is your only omission of importance, in your admirable critical essay upon Charles Dickens. It is the influence upon his mind, most manifest & undeniable, of the French School of imaginative literature. When people talk of Fielding or Smollet as being ideals & models before him, elected by his own judgement,—they (& even you) omit what consciously or unconsciously, “in the body or out of the body I cannot say,” [1] Victor Hugo has been to him. Did you ever read the powerful, the wonderfully powerful “Trois jours d’un condamnè”?—& will you (if you have read it) confront your recollections of it with most of the tragic saliencies of Oliver Twist, .. the scenes about the Jew Fagin, the trial-scene & otherwise?– [2] Since, two or three years ago, I went regularly through all the romances of the gifted Frenchman, my admiration for our countryman has paled down paler & paler. The fact is, that we have no such romance-writer as Victor Hugo, .. let us be as anti-Gallic as we please. And anti-Gallicism is the very merest affectation at this hour of the day, upon which all the burning glasses of French genius appear to be concentrated. The indelicacy & want of elemental morality make another side of the question: but the genius is just as undeniable to me, as the sun would be in Italy. George Sand for instance, is the greatest female genius, the world ever saw—at least since it saw Sappho, who broke off a fragment of her soul to be guessed by—as creation did by its fossils. And George Sand, it is remarkable, precisely like her prototype, has suffered her senses to leaven her soul, .. to permeate it through & through, .. & made a sensual soul of it. She is a wonderful woman,—&, I hope, rising into a purer atmosphere by the very strength of her wing. And then, Balzac—Eugène Sue—even the Soulie’s, & the grade lower! We cannot even wish them to be popular in England, for obvious reasons—but it is melancholy to look round & see no such bloom of intellectual glory on our own literature, in shutting our doors against theirs.
I send you a letter, received this morning from America—because there is as much about you in it, as about me. [3]
A Mr Welford, a New York bookseller brought a letter of introduction to me some ten days ago, [4] —&, when I was forced to decline seeing him, wrote to introduce himself to me “paternally” as being the first bearer of my poetry into the new world. It was this gentleman, who begged me to send him some account personally of my “cousin Mr Tennyson”; “Leigh Hunt having intimated somewhere that he was my cousin.” [5] So, as you give me “grand paternal advice” sometimes,—see what a number of distinguished relations I have!! inclusive of the New York bookseller!–
I send you this letter of Mr Mathews, a little for him as well as for you,—and would entreat you, .. you who have power;—to use any just influence within your power, in order to procure him the critical courtesy he looks for among us. I have explained once to him, but I fear he does not understand, how I can do nothing at all, .. & that if I were to presume a step, or even seem to presume a step, upon the circumstance of my accidental connection with the Athenæum, Mr Dilke would very properly laugh me to scorn [6] for my pains. In the case of my own book, I shall let it float down the stream as other books. I never did otherwise,—& never shall. You know, the very act of offering a civility to some editors, is considered in the light of offering a bribe to a judge—and in fact, it should [7] not be done, as well as could not be done. Still, I am embarrassed—because I see plainly that Mr Mathews thinks I can do something—the “something” being out of my power. The Athenæum reviewed his poems ‘On Man’ the other day; &, in admitting the ability, dwelt in a way likely to be offensive, on the want of “grace”; & I was very sorry quite impotently. [8] Well– If you have it in your power to help his works, & can do so honestly,—or if any friend of yours within your influence, can do so honestly,—you will, I am sure, remember Mr Mathews. He has no ordinary degree of mental power, which is developping itself into light in America,—and he is no imitator of English models,—which for an American, is remarkable. Moreover I believe him to be full of genial kindness & generosity, upright & warm-hearted,—& for the best reasons, well worth serving.
You have no time to hear me talk, & I have little time to talk in; & therefore logically I am talkative this morning.
Ever & truly yours
EBB
What I say of French literature versus our own of the day, refers of course to a particular department of it. The French have no rhythmetic poetry, from a defect in the language:—& their poetry finds issue in prose, while ours (thank God, & blessings on our “pure well of English undefiled”) [9] flows in its right channel. We have no right to complain, therefore, that we have not a chorus of prose poets, such as the French boast of at this moment. [10]
Address: R H Horne Esqr / 5. Fortess Terrace / Kentish Town.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 242–250.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. Cf. II Corinthians, 12:2.
2. EBB had previously commented on this similarity to Miss Mitford (letter 1063) and to Mrs. Martin (letter 1146). Hugo’s novel was published in 1829, Dickens’s in 1837–38.
3. Letter 1426 from Cornelius Mathews.
6. Psalms, 22:7.
7. Underscored three times.
8. The Athenæum reviewed Poems on Man in the issue of 3 February, expressing the view that Mathews’s “verse is wanting in many accomplishments: amongst others, facility and simplicity.... His faults are those of exaggeration and a straining after effect: his merits lie in the nerve which he exhibits in so doing” (no. 849, pp. 104–105).
9. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV, ii, 32, 8.
10. 30 years later, Horne added the following note: “And at this moment, 1874, they still have Victor Hugo and George Sand[.]”
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