334.7. Edmund Henry Barker to EBB
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 2.
Thetford,
April 13, 1829.
My dear Madam,
The pressure of some serious business has caused me to delay thanking you for your last communication much longer than I expected; but, though I could have easily written a short Letter, yet I deemed it best to wait till I could write to you at length & with a mind at ease. You must always write openly to me, or else we shall not correspond on equal terms, & when I write to a Lady of your mind & acquirements, I cannot do otherwise than write to you with a freedom, which may not very well correspond to the shortness of the acquaintance, but which does well represent a friendly spirit. I will write to you often, i.e. at short intervals after I have heard from you, if you assure me that it will not be unpleasant or tiresome to you, & if the frequency of correspondence gives no offence to your friends; for there is a delicacy due to females, which I am always desirous to observe, though I am but a literary recluse. I shall always know when you wish to hear from me by your Letters to me, & I will not send to you any second Letter before I have recd an answer to the first, unless anything particular should occur, which may make a further communication desirable. So much by way of preamble.
I am much obliged to you for your notice of my little book, & for your suggestions. My reason for not adopting in the body of the work the arrangement exhibited in the title-page, was my desire to bring the English matter next to the preface, & to give to it a conspicuous place, as I think it very important to have some alteration effected in our Latin schools. Perhaps you never saw my edition of Cicero’s Cato Major & Laelius: it is in its 4th edn I think: if you are curious to see it, you shall have a copy sent to you forthwith; if you have a happy indifference about the time of receiving it, then by waiting a little I may be able to send to you an edn better worth your acceptance; for it needs much revision, & it has received none during the time when I was employed on the Greek Thesaurus, & therefore I am not very proud of exhibiting it. Well, this said book is on exactly the same plan, viz. I do not translate the Latin notes, which I quote, but I give my own in English. I am not so rigid a uniformist as to be shocked at the want of homogeneity; but I love to see in persons of your sex the love of order and method. I am well aware that Tacitus’s Dialogue on Oratory should have been benoted; but you must bear in mind that it is not at present read in our public and private schools; if I find in schoolmasters a disposition to read it with their pupils, then I shall not only be willing to write notes, but even to put forth a separate edn of it. You must also bear in mind that my main object was to put forth an edn of the Catilinarian Orations, which are read in most schools; & I reasoned thus:—Those masters, who buy the book only for the sake of those Orations in a convenient form & are willing to give 5s/6 per copy for it, may not choose to give 7s or 8s for the book, if I add notes to the Dialogue on Oratory, which they do not want—let me first see what desire they manifest to read that Dialogue at all.
I am very glad that you were pleased with the extracts from Schottus’s Dissn If you desire to see the whole Dissn, I will lend the book to you, & it shall accompany the Cicero mentd above, & occasionally you may have friends going to London, & any book can be left for me at Mr Valpy’s office, & will reach me without expense. If this be agreeable to you, I will put into the parcel, which shall be sent to you from London, (as I am often sending parcels to London, & can enclose this,) a few more books. Yea, I will lend to you my whole collection of Robt Hall’s Works, & you shall be allowed ample time for the perusal of them; for I am a good easy sort of man about books, & you must not mind my lending books to you, for you must look on me as an old friend. I mention all these things in this Letter, that you may see what sort of an odd character you have to deal with in your Thetford correspondent.
You would remark that the matter in my Preface about adolescens, had been previously given in the book on Junius.
I have now in the press two books of English extracts, one called the American First Class-Book, & the other the National Reader, a reprint from two American books published by Mr Pierpont, a distinguished American poet: I shall put a Preface & an Appendix to each, & you will be much delighted with the sweetmeats preparing for you—it will lay open to your view some specimens of American composition in prose & verse, & your heart will leap for joy: in the Appendices I will bring forward some scattered pieces of great merit, such as L. Helsted’s address to the D. of Marlborough, which is fine indeed, & you shall have some grand pieces of prose.
Robt Hall’s later compositions are written in a more subdued tone than the earlier efforts of his pen. He is in point of style the author, whom I would imitate, if I thought it necessary or proper to imitate any style. He is the chastest of our living writers, & you must observe that there is in him no continued flight, no equal grandeur. He has very splendid passages; but it is by corruscation, not by conflagration that he works upon our minds, & in this respect he is distinguished from Mackintosh. He is always mellifluous & harmonious in the structure of his sentences, occasionally feeble, but he can exert elephantine power & energy at times.
Dr Parr thought Sir U. Price the finest living writer of English prose, & certainly no man’s style could be better suited to his subject than that which appears in the Essay on the Picturesque: elegance is there more required than strength, but, if there be no strength, there is no feebleness. I consider his style to be the very acme of perfection for epistolary composition;—if you were here, I could shew to you some charming Letters from him, many of them very long; all are written with the playfulness of youthful fancy, & with Attic elegance and ease. He was ‘dipt in dew of Castalies’; the Goddess of Persuasion sits on his lips. But his thoughts run as easily as his style, & when he touches on the subject of the fine arts, he is wonderfully eloquent, & carries you up into the third heaven, & emparadises you in sweets.
I have seen much of Mr Irving’s writing in Magazines, Reviews, Newspapers etc., but, though I think highly of his powers for composition, & though I have read some very splendid passages from his writings, yet I have never brought myself to read the whole of his Sermons, because his style is not good, & his taste is often defective or vicious, & I think that the only fair way of dealing with him is to suppose that he was one of the fine old writers of Elizabeth’s age! Nevertheless, if you are charitable enough to extract for me a few passages, which you think excellent, I will examine them carefully & tell to you honestly what I think of them.
I would recommend you to purchase, if you possess not, the 3d edn of Basil Montagu’s Selections from Barrow, Hooker etc. 2 vols 12mo Pickering. You will find a few extracts from Ms. Sermons by Mr Irving, & one or two delightful notes by Mrs Montagu, signed A. M. Dr Parr thought most highly of her style, but I do not always like her epistolary compositions: I saw many of her Letters to Dr Parr.
Our friend, Mr Boyd, is a man of particular taste, & scarcely relishes any compositions unconnected with his own department of literature. When I sent my Cicero to him, (I mean the little book, on which you have commented,) he told to me that he had no particular relish for Cicero, & would not mind if all Cicero’s writings were at the bottom of old Ocean. I said in reply that, as Cicero was the standard of Latinity, I would give up all other authors to preserve his writings, if I had the power of rescuing only one work from an Alexandrian conflagration. I have not heard from him since. I suspect that he is irritable, but placable; but, if he was displeased, I will wait the return of the tide, & you will not say anything to him. You surprise me by telling to me that Mr Boyd is well read in our old English writers: I am absolutely sceptical about this fact, because in my correspondence with him he has never manifested any such knowledge. If you have the third edn of his Select Passages, it is the latest: at this moment I cannot lay my hands on my copy to see whether it contains the passage, to which you refer. If you have Dr Bidd’s work at hand, let your benevolence extract the passage for me. If you will remind me, I will transcribe for you what the Bp. of Limerick says about Mr Boyd; but this Letter will be too long without the extract. I have lent to the Bishop many books on this subject, for instance the Theory & Practice of Eloquence, the original & the translated work, (a copy of the latter I gave to Mr Boyd,) where all the examples of eloquence are taken from Chrysostom, & Auger’s French Translations from Chrys. 4 vols 8vo The French have been for ages attached to Chrys., & they have translations of him & excerpts without number. I hold that his Sermon on the Fall of Eutropius is a masterpiece, & I should doubt whether Gregory has anything superior to that. I have no acquaintance with the originals. Mr Burke was a reader of Chrys. & of the fathers generally.
In respect to the Jury-system, you have well defended yourself on one point. But, though when you say that our Jury-system is as perfect as we can bear, you do admit its imperfection, yet you must recollect, good Madam, that the tendency of your argument was the same as if you had admitted its perfection, because you opposed yourself to me, who argued that the system being imperfect might & should & could be changed. “The unanimity required by a verdict in this country, in order to make it legal, may perhaps, in the case of a pleader blinding the judgmt of an obstinate & tenacious juryman, by the arts above-mentd, [aye in many other cases,] be productive of much real injustice. We are not ignorant that the sages of the law affirm, this unanimity gives credit & weight to a verdict. But our wise ancestors, it will be remembered, thought otherwise, in the times of Henry I, Henry II, & Edw. I. For then if the jurors dissented, sometimes there was added a number equal to the greater party, & they were to give up their verdict by twelve of the old jurors, & the jurors so added.” Card’s Literary Recreations, Lond. 1809 8vo p. 249. This machinery is cumbrous: simplify it by taking the majority of votes. Justice requires me to say that the obstinacy of one man sometimes, (as it did in a case of my own of very great importance,) prevents injustice by forcing the eleven to come over to his opinion: still the oaths of the eleven are affected by this, & therefore the system is bad.
I will not allow you, powerful & Milonic as you may be, to toss me on either horn of your dilemma:—in Platonic philosophy I admit an immense distance between Porson & Parr, the latter was a philosophical scholar, the former a critical scholar; Porson shewed more critical acumen, but Parr more intellectual strength; the reading of the former was more exact & more limited; Porson was the better boxer, & Parr the better pentathlete. Then I admit an immense distance between Parr & Taylor in matters of ancient philosophy, & thus my argument is not broken by your spear, though skilfully hurled.
In respect to Paetus & Arria, in the second vol. of the Parriana, you will see that I defend the epigram against Jortin: do you object to my introducing into a note what you have been so good as to communicate? With pleasure I shall name you as the writer but if you do not like to be named, (& I am sure that you will be as far above the affectation of modesty as of notoriety,) I shall speak of you as an intelligent correspondent, & if you are named, you shall be named with that moderate commendation, which will best mark my esteem & respect, & inspire the reader with the same sentiment; for if excessive praise injures fame, just praise increases it. I have no copy of what I have said in favour of Martial & against Jortin, but “I summoned the whole force of my mind” to combat the giant in philosophical criticism, & you will side with me in the end. Still the subject is curious, & I love to investigate deeply, & I must allow fair play to the arguments of a fair correspondent, & I like to furnish my readers with materials for thought by setting a topic in various points of view, & by bringing out the scintillations of many minds till the subject itself is in a flood of light. Human nature has many motives for action, & many impulses of feeling, but one may be predominant: Arria could still maintain the heroism of her character, & the ardent devotion to her husband, while she thought of the glory of the deed. The hero, who said to his sailors—‘Victory or Westminster-Abbey’—seemed to place fame before patriotism, & to detract from the splendour of his own achievement; but it is not so. The feeling of his mind was complex;—he thought of his country, & he thought of glory & eternity. Apply this to the passage in Pliny, & you will at once acquiesce in the propriety of Pliny’s remark—he only contrasts the conduct of Arria in privacy with her conduct in public; equally heroic in both, but in the one not unconscious of the glory of the deed, & in the other satisfied with the approbation of her own heart, & on that very account she shewed herself greater in the latter case, because the virtue of the action was more unmixed, but in the other case she gained more applause, because the heroism of the deed was too great to be eclipsed by the selfish consideration of glory, & it was performed in public. “Jam et alia illa femina, (sic appellar,) fortassis eadem Baronii et Bellarmini doctrina consceleratam mentem habuit, quia cum ad mortem viam quaereret, adverso parieti caput ingenti impetu impegit. Sed quid ais? alia femina fuit? Fuit eadem illa Arria, et hoc credese Plinio potuisti, Epist. 3, lb. Ait enim ille, geminum ejusdem animi robur comparans, clarius fuisse in Paeti uxore illud, Paete, non dolet; at majus, Duram quaesese ad letum viam, si facilis negaretur; caput in parietem illidere, et ostendere se posse, imo velle mori. Sic eadem haec femina et maxima et clarissima, sed diverso facinore fuit: maxima, cum ostendit, se suam esse, uno verbo, Arriam esse, et quod vel morte gravius, posse pati; clarissima autem, cum, ut ad constantiam maritum animaret, suum ipsa pectus ferüt, cum cruentum tradens pugionem, ut Lortius adhuc loquesetur quam fecerat, vocem hanc vulneri addidit, Paete, non dolet.” Erycü Puteane in G. Casaw boni ad Front. Ducaeum S. I. Theologum Epistolam Stricturae, Liber Prodromur, Lovanii 1612. Lito p. 15. Martial’s last line amplifies the idea conveyed in the words, Paete, non dolet; but the amplification is not wanted, as the imagination supplies & therefore it weakens the energy of the sentiment & the expression.
I did send to Sir Uvedale Price my definition of the word picturesque, & he approved of it, though he thought that it ran too much into description; but how else can I give the necessary amplitude of matter to convey the full idea of the word, according to the principles of his work? Compare Dugald Stewart’s Philosophical Essays 2d edn, where he differs somewhat from our friend, & let me hear your remarks on Stewart.
Mr T. Taylor is called by some a polytheist;—he is not a xtian;—he believes in Plato;—but his heart is holy, his morals are pure, his life is blameless. I could tell to you of a Norwich-philosopher, who died about 1810, & who belonged to the same order of intellectual beings.
The Dialogue on Oratory, if written by Tac,. was his early composition, & would naturally exhibit the spirit rather than the manner of his other & later compositions; there is a difference too between a spirited dialogue, & a grave biography and history.
Pliny decides the question of authorship by a direct reference, when writing to Tac., to this very Dialogue as Tac.’s composition.
You have an ample cortege of Brothers, & are rich enough in sisterhood. Are your sisters older than yourself? If so, I must not address you as <Miss> Barrett lest I war agt primogeniture.
I remain, dear Madam, with every good wish to No 1, & No 2, & No 8, your friend & servant, E. H. Barker.
Publication:None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
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