1591. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 292.
[Brighton]
April 4/44
Thank you, my dear Miss Barrett, I am well. I began to get better as I found the “Enemy” advancing, and now that the Philistines are really upon me, I have quite recovered.
Very few of the attacks are at all worth an answer; some I shall probably not reply to, for other reasons—“Ainsworth’s Magazine,” for instance, which does its utmost—is very poor [1] —and, in any case, he had great “provocation.” So I shall probably take his blows quietly on my shield. But I am not sure that I shall patiently endure the cold imbecility and studied depreciation of the “Athenæum.” [2] I believe the articles were both written by––Oh but I shd like to have your opinion as to who wrote them—or your knowledge if you can obtain it without creating any suspicion that you wish to know on my account, in any way—but as matter of literary curiosity; or rather to know who the gentleman was who had praised you. Let me add “justly”—he is not right scarcely, anywhere, in any thing else.
I am almost sure I know ‘the man.’ But who do you say it is?
My admissions (to you) are that our Title is not borne out, even with the suggestions &c [in] the Preface; [3] and that the following articles are unequal, and as wholes not good—“Hood & Hook”—“Montgomery”—“EBB and Mrs Norton”—“The Howitts[”],—and the Novelists article.
I am dear E.B.
Yours truly
H.
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sqre / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Ainsworth’s Magazine reviewed A New Spirit in its April 1844 issue (pp. 317–325). For the text, see pp. 382–387.
2. For The Athenæum’s reviews, see pp. 371–373 and 378–381.
3. See A New Spirit, p. vii.
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