1557. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 236–237.
[London]
Saturday [2 March 1844] [1]
My dear Miss Barrett, shall I be forgiven for a very inadequate notice of you in our work? But as [a] matter of justice to myself, no less than on the score of personal regard and estimation, I should tell you that the review is not what it was; for an accident occurred at the printers with one of the sheets, which I had kept back to the last in order to revise more carefully. It was a weighty one—for it had two or three of the concluding pages of an article on Knowles and Macready (with all his clique[)]—smote at—the last two pages were on Banim, and the Irish novelists—and the centre was the Seraphim and the Undying One &—I had no time to contend with the chaos, and therefore sent my pen (for safety) through the disquisition, and marked extracts to be set up from books instead. I fear I have not chosen so well from the Seraphim as I might have done [2] —and as for comment, it is of the poorest. I was afraid of doing mischief—there really was not half an hour left me to clear my head properly. However—do not be [‘]‘alarmed” at all this—for my tameness will be the worst part of it. No mischief is done—for I read the proof so often finally, that my head went round. In the few pages of the ‘Macready’ part, however, I believe I have left some serious mischief; in the sense of ‘open war’ I mean, and which I had intended to polish off, a little.
Yours truly
In great haste
R.H.H.
P.S. Yes, I saw the “Examiner” on “Orion.” [3] By dint of many inquiries—and opinions—he has pretty well got at the truth. He tells the story—fable—allegory—very well. That the work is not an Epic on the old model, he clearly shows. I never intended it should be. Why should it be? was much pleased with the review—observe—but I know that it did not proceed from love so much as other things[.]
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sqre.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Both “Friday” and “Saturday” appear at the top of this letter but in such a manner as to make it unclear if Saturday has been altered to read Friday, or Saturday has been added; the latter seems more probable. The postmark is a morning stamp for 4 March 1844.
2. Horne quoted 34 lines from “The Seraphim” in the second volume of A New Spirit (pp. 137–138), beginning “Thou—wherefore dost thou wait?”
3. The Examiner of 24 February 1844 said of Orion: “It may be doubted whether this is an Epic Poem: that it is a work of singular beauty, of a rare intellectual design, and very marked poetical power, we do not think open to any kind of doubt.... It is studded with rich and glowing pictures” (pp. 115–116).
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