1534. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 206–208.
[London]
[?17] [February 1844] [1]
My dear Mr Horne, A friend of mine has come & engaged me all day, without a moment for either Eden or yourself. Now for the mottos. Your’s about “divine philosophy” is from Comus. [2] I thought of it for Mon[c]kton Milnes, (for whom probably, you thought of it also) but it is so popularized as a quotation, that I looked away from it ultimately. People play certain verses to street-organs, & then, other people grow fastidious about them: Not that it shd be so.
Will this do for Mrs Jameson?. not that it is sufficient for her. It is on the other side of the page.
“A thousand winged intelligences daily
Shall be thy ministers ....
.... thou shalt command all arts
As handmaids.”
Microcosmus. [3]
or this?—yes, this is certainly better!
——“Is not thy brain’s rich hive
Fulfilled with honey which thou dost derive
From the Arts’ spirits and their quintessance”?
Donne. [4]
Mrs Norton, too, I have difficulty in. This, from Beaumont & Fletcher, is not specific enough—
“Thy mind shines through thee like a radiant sun,
Although thy body be a beauteous cloud.” [5]
Nor this (from the same writers); altho’ better—
<…> [6]
will this do?—
“Break Phant’sie from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings;
Now all thy figures are allowed,
And various shapes of things.
Create of airy forms a stream;
It must have blood & nought of phlegm;
And though it be a waking dream,
Yet let it like an odour rise
To all the senses here;
And fall like sleep, upon the eyes
Or music on the ear.”
Ben Jonson. [7]
You may stop, if it is too long, at the end of the first four lines; but the passage is so beautiful that I could not help writing it at length. And this from Ben Jonson, the learned & cold—as the calumny runs! .. but a true poet, such as God makes,—if ever there was one in the world! I am a devout admirer of him. Pathos, eloquence, sweetness, & a golden gift in lyrical poetry besides his dramatic power—by these things, he is greater than a schoolmaster!
How I am writing superfluities! Forgive me. My spiriting about the mottos is done however, .. except one last motto for Elizabeth Barrett. What metal do you think her made of, to put such a solicitation to her? Somebody, once intending to do me the honors of quotation, desired me to select what I considered the “best passage in my poems,”—to be straightway quoted,—& was a good deal surprised when I declined to do my part towards it– Perhaps you will be surprised when I tell you that I laughed (so nearly a laugh that Flush raised up his head to look at me) at the idea of your commanding me to select a complimentary motto for myself—nay, to talk about “fire-wings” [8] & take a place in the callendar of saints, elect by my own grace.! Well!—first, I thought of having this motto ..
“O front! O face”!
Ben Jonson. [9]
but, upon consideration of your adjuration about being complimentary,—my memory falling down in a fit sympathetically with my modesty,—I resolved to try my fate in the mode of the ‘Sortes Virgilianæ,” [10] .. which of course you believe in, .. like me, & other sensible persons. So I shut my eyes & opened Beaumont & Fletcher. And behold! this was the passage of destiny for Elizabeth Barrett,—
“Rather admirable,
Than anywise intelligible.” [11]
Imagine my feelings!
Ever truly yours
EBB–
I had a letter the other day from a gentleman who requires information about my cousin Mr Tennyson—having learnt the relationship, he says, through a word dropt by Leigh Hunt.!!—— He refers of course to the Feast of the violets. [12]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Dated by letter 1531, in which Horne asks EBB to write mottoes for Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Norton and herself, and in which he also asks her to identify a passage from Milton.
3. Microcosmus, A Morall Maske (1637), act III, sc. 1, by Thomas Nabbes (1600–45). Although Horne drew a line through this passage, he used this quotation to introduce the chapter on Miss Martineau and Mrs. Jameson (II, 64).
4. “To Mr. B.B.” (Letters to Severall Personages, 1633), lines 2–4, not used by Horne.
5. “The Triumph of Love” (Four Plays in One, 1647), sc. 1. Horne used these lines to introduce the chapter on EBB and Mrs. Norton (II, 130).
6. Here EBB has smudged out two short lines, presumably verse.
7. We have not identified the play from which these lines are taken. Horne drew a line through the first four lines of this quotation, but used them to introduce his chapter on RB and Marston (II, 154).
8. EBB is quoting from Horne’s letter (no. 1531).
9. Cynthia’s Revels (1601), act V, sc. 3.
10. For an explanation of “Sortes Virgilianæ,” see letter 1032, note 7.
11. We have not identified the play from which these lines are taken. They were not used by Horne.
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