1550. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 230.

[London]

Sunday night– [25 February 1844] [1]

Here is another motto for the Banim crew—if you want an additional one.

“In walks of humour in that cast of style

Which probing to the quick yet makes us smile.”

Churchill. [2]

Here for Mrs Shelley’s majority

“Whose mind’s enamoured aim

Could forms of beauty draw

Sublime as ever sage or poet saw,

Yet still to Life’s rude scene the proud ideas tame.”

Akenside. [3]

There is something wanted for Mrs Shelley herself, & my stupidity is unfathomable—& I can think of nothing better than Dryden’s

“The sweet enthusiast / – – [4]

but really it wont do, so there’s the end of it; & I must write again in the course of the day, the last day, Monday.

By the way you have thrown me into convulsions of curiosity, in expectation of tomorrow,—accompanied by catchings of the hands at imaginary objects, <***>

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.

1. Dated by EBB’s anticipating receipt of the “very important proof” promised by Horne in letter 1548.

2. An Epistle to William Hogarth (1763), lines 557–558, by Charles Churchill (1732–64). Horne did not use this quotation.

3. “To the Honourable Charles Townshend in the Country. 1750,” verse 3, lines 7–10 (Odes on Several Subjects, 1760), by Mark Akenside (1721–70). Horne did not use this quotation.

4. Alexander’s Feast (1697), line 163, by John Dryden (1631–1700). Horne did not use this quotation.

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