1663. EBB to James Russell Lowell
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 67–68.
50 Wimpole Street–
[31] July– [1844] [1]
Dear Mr Lowell,
As you have remembered me so long, & as so kind a word as “regards” accompanies the book you have sent me, [2] you must try to forgive the freedom & irreverence of this address. It seems to come naturally, when the very next word on my part, must be an expression of cordial thanks for the honour you <…> [3] in a welcome gift. Indeed I thank
<…>
there seemed to be some signs of them in <…> poems, .. which appear to be the effect of select<…> of impulse, .. or of sympathy with the imp<ulses of> writers, .. such as the Tennysons—rather than inward impulse: and these, .. it is certainly well to put away entirely. You will forgive me for speaking quite frankly. I have too much respect for the beauty attained on so many pages of the work before me, to speak otherwise.
Your ‘Legend of Brittany’ [4] is full of beautiful touches, .. to go no farther,—and the whole of the cathedral scene presents signs of no ordinary power.
<…>
that your object is (a noble one!) to teach not merely the holiness but hallowingness of Love, I still shrink a little at the sudden escape from guilt & its results, which you confer on Mordred. [5]
Then among the miscellaneous poems my pencil has marked various beauties & felicities. Chief of all I like the ode, [6] which struck a deep string in me, as it must in all, to whom Poetry has been as to me, the Life-light of existence.
If I ventured to make a remark in criticism on this new volume in a general point of view, it wd be that there is a certain vagueness of effect, through a redundant copiousness of what may be called poetical diction! so that thoughts, images & descriptions rather swim dimly in a golden mist, than front the soul & iye [7] with their individualities cutting upon the sense forcibly & arrestingly. <***>
Address: James Russell Lowell Esqr / To the care of J. Owen Esqr Publisher / Cambridge / Boston / America.
Publication: BAF, pp. 353–354.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. Dated by the London postmark of 1 August 1844.
2. His Poems (2nd edn., 1844) formed lot 878 of Browning Collections and is now at ABL (see Reconstruction, A1490).
3. Here, and in the succeeding omissions, the manuscript has been cut away.
4. The principal work in Lowell’s Poems.
5. This formed the conclusion of the second part of “A Legend of Brittany” (stanzas xxxv–lxii). Mordred, a Knight Templar, was the murderer of Margaret.
6. “Ode” appears in Lowell’s Poems.
7. An obsolete form of “eye.”
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