3025. Richard Hengist Horne to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 65–66.
[London]
[ca. 12 March 1852] [1]
Envelope only.
Address: Immediate / Robert Browning Esq.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Alexander Turnbull Library.
Enclosure:
proof To the Editor of the Literary Gazette [2]
the shelley letter fraud.
March 11, 1852.
I can but admire the frankness with which you admit that you were deceived by the forgery of the Shelley Letters, in common with Mr. Browning and others. The truth is, in all such cases, that a slight resemblance is sufficient to deceive all honest men, who, far from being prepared for the chance of a gross imposition, which would call forth their powers of scrutiny and judgment, come to the contemplation with minds pre-occupied by the writings and influence of the original, so that they are ready to meet everything more than half-way. It is a very different case when a doubt is once started; not to distinguish a forgery from an original, may then imply a want of all real knowledge of the original.
You allude to Mr. Browning having written a ‘grand metaphysical essay’ upon fallacious grounds. My purpose in requesting your insertion of this brief commentary (my friend Mr. Browning being absent from England) is to remind your readers that the metaphysical essay, if duly considered, will be found to have been written upon true and just grounds—viz. the peculiar genius and influence of Shelley’s poetry. That is the main purpose of the essay.
Some time since a number of eloquent begging-letters were written to various noblemen, and to several bishops, in the name of a much admired authoress, whose handwriting and signature were imitated so successfully as to secure entire belief; and the remittance of many sums of money to this literary swindler ensued. Even Lord Brougham was ‘softened’ and ‘taken in.’ The letter-forger was aided in these transactions by his wife, who seems to answer very closely to the mysterious lady that carried on the fraud with the bookseller who first purchased the forged Shelley Letters. If this be so, it may not be very difficult to discover the author of them.
R. H. Horne.
1. Dating provided by the enclosure which was published in The Literary Gazette, 13 March 1852, p. 254.
2. This line is in Horne’s hand.
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