1635.5. RB to Richard Hengist Horne
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 9.
[London]
Thursday Mg [20 June 1844] [1]
Dear Horne,
We have a rather sudden death in our family—& I sit pleasantly in a shut-up house, aching & boding: yesterday I meant to look in every direction for your motto, but the aches & bodements increased to that degree as to send me to the sofa & keep me there till night.
Then I took physick & went to bed: I am pretty well, now, and ashamed, in proportion, of seeing your note. The Quarlesian bit, I mentioned, was for your own Admonition to Detractors, if you condescend to one, and runs thus—
Hath men’s censorious baseness gone about
With her rude blast to puff my taper out?
It hath: and let their full mouthed bellows puff!
It is their breath that stinks, and not my snuff.
I let them snarl & burst that I may smile.
Do, let them jerk, and I will laugh the while.
They cannot strike beyond my patience: no—
I’ll bear, and take it for an honor too.
The height that my ambition shall fly
Is only to deserve their calumny.
Oh what a Judgment ’twere, if such as they
Should but allow my actions, and betray
My endangered name, by their malign applause,
—To good opinion that were a just cause
Of grief, indeed!– But to be made the story
Of such base tongues, it is my crown, my glory.
Ay—let them spend their dust against the wind,
And bark against the moon, till they be blind
And weary!
Divine Fancies Bk 2.
Modern Manager’s Requirements.
and Poet’s answer.
Director /.
Besonders aber lasst genug geschehn!
Man kommt zu schaun, man will am liebsten sehn.
Wird Vieles vor den Augen abgesponnen,
So dass die Menge staunend gaffen kann,
Da habt ihr in der Breite gleich gewonnen,
Ihr seyd ein vielgeliebter Mann.
Dichter /.
Ihr fühlet nicht, wie schlecht ein solches Handwerk sey!
Wie wenig das den ächten Künstler zieme!
Der saubern Herren Pfuscherey.
Ist, merk ich, schon bey euch maxime.
Prelude to Faust. Göthe.
One may well say that! The (literally) “Puddling the clear spirit” of poets, has long been the “maxim” of managers.
Dickens I can find nothing for as yet. What can one say? Forge a passage out of Sir J. Mandeville, about a breadfruit tree “them maken moche use of”—with plum puddings a-growing, and dogroses a-blowing, in some Lubber-land “besouth Magellan.”
Excuse all this, under aforesaid circumstances, and believe me
Yours ever
RB.
Docket, in Horne’s hand: Towell Rutt.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to the death of his uncle, William Oliver Silverthorne, on Sunday 16 June 1844. The 20th was the following Thursday.
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