1544. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 223.
[London]
[22 February 1844] [1]
Browning
… “I dare compare with any man.
–––.. for though it be
Not to be pierced by the dull eye, whose beam
Is spent on outward shapes, there is a way
To make a search into its hidden’st passage.”
Shirley. [2]
It will not do, I fear. [3] It is not sufficient praise. I will write again by the eight oclock post (tonight) & have only five minutes in which to jot down this.—
EBB
The next is better– See it on the next page.
“His learning savours not the school-like gloss,
That most consists in echoeing words & terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name
Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance
Wrapt in the curious generalties of arts.
And for his poesy, ‘tis so ramm’d with life,
That it shall gather strength of life, with being,
And live hereafter more admired than now.”
Ben Jonson. [4]
This for Mrs Shelley.
“A fiction indeed, Chloe, & fit for the fit of a poet.” B Jonson [5]
or
“Leap forth: your light it is the nobler made
By being struck out of a shade.”
B Jonson [6]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. This letter is in response to the previous letter.
2. Love Tricks, or, The School of Complement (1631), act I, sc. 1.
3. The above passage has been deleted by Horne with a single vertical stroke.
4. The Poëtaster; or, His Arraignment (1616), act V, sc. 1.
5. Op. cit., act IV, sc. 1.
6. We have not identified the play from which these lines are taken. Horne did not make use of any of these suggestions.
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