1543. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 222.
[London]
Thursday Morng [Postmark: 22 February 1844]
My dear E. B., Your motto from Akenside for good-sense Taylor was so much beyond any pat one I had hoped for, that it made me almost shout for joy. Yet once more, thy bright hand—and for Browning? What motto for Browning—I cannot conceive.
But by the next post—or the next but one—or I am lost!—that is, so far.
What good word can I say for my friend Heraud so as to be true and concise yet agreeable. Oh that I were a woman!—then were all these difficulties nothing.
Yours truly
(Notwithstanding)
H.
P.S. Ah me! and the Imaginative Romance (prose romances) of Mrs Shelley! What can I say. The motto you sent was too flanciful [sic]. “Frankenstein” deserves something rather weighty. So does “Banim”; and the “Irish Novelists” generally something bright. I see I shall die of this last week’s impossibilities—for I have none of these things.
I send the enclosed envelopes for ‘Dispatch,’ post haste—“the smallest contribution[”] “gratefully received.”
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sqre.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
___________________
