2464. Walter Savage Landor to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 121–122.
[Bath]
[Postmark: 5 July 1846]
Dear Miss Barrett,
Several days have elapsed since I received your very kind, but somewhat too flattering, letter. My excuse might be unacceptable to one less considerate. The fact is, I could not, by any exertion of ingenuity, decypher your signature. Do you write your name in such a manner, that nobody may attempt a forgery? There are higher and better things in which you ought to be contented to be inimitable.
I am delighted that you are pleased with my casts of the Hellenic. [1] You are profound in German: I am only profound in my ignorance of it. But I remember to have re[a]d, fifty years ago, Theseus, a Monodrame by Stolberg. [2] Of course I mean in the translation. It is the only greek modern thing I ever saw. Göethe is so little hellenic that he represents Iphigenia (a girl of 12 or 13) arguing on the injustice done to the sex in various ways. [3]
His tragedy [4] is insufferably dull. I find the marble: I find nowhere the Pygmalion.
Believe me, Dear Miss Barrett,
Very truly yours
W S Landor
Address: Miss Barrett / 50 Wimpole Street / London.
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 855–856.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. From the context, it is apparent that this is Landor’s response to EBB’s acknowledgment of a presentation copy of Landor’s Works, which she first mentioned in letter 2415. The second volume contained a number of “Hellenics.”
2. “Thaeseus” appeared in Schauspiele mit Choeren by Christian and Friedrich Leopold, Grafen zu Stolberg (Leipzig, 1787), pp. 1–82.
3. Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris was published in 1787.
4. Perhaps a reference to Faust, published in two parts in 1808 and 1832.
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