3647. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 293–295.
Paris–
8br 4. / 55
My dear Browning–
I have been very unwell for the last week or so—or you shd certainly have heard from me before now, for I have been anxious to record more distinctly & positively than I was able verbally to do before leaving England, the genuine delight & admiration with which I read the proofs you so kindly suffered me to look at, and the various impressions they have left upon me– I read your poems at a very great disadvantage to myself:—my mind being, at that time vexatiously occupied by certain domestic annoyances, and the brief time allowed me to read them thro’, not enabling me to linger over what I read as long as the beauty & depth of it demanded. Nevertheless the impressions left on my mind from that hurried perusal have been both lasting & peculiar, and perhaps I am better able to judge now, than I was then, of the great excellence of the work.
It wd be quite superfluous (and I am sure you will at once understand why) for me to say ‘I admire this’; or ‘I think that beautiful’, or ‘the book is powerful’ &c– Whatever you write will always be pregnant with the power & beauty wh is elemental to your mind, and I shall be sure to admire it; therefore I will not stop to offer you any silly and indiscriminate praise. The question wd be—whether what I have read fully realized those high anticipations wh I had formed long ago of the merit of your new work,—and what wd seem to be its prospects of appreciation among the nobler part of the public–
Nor can my opinion be of any value except in so far as it may anticipate and partially represent the opinion of that Public–
Well, let me lose no time in saying that it surpasses even my most ardent hopes and thoroughly convinces me that limits are not to be anticipated to the progression of wh your genius is capable– The last will be the best with you–
2dly. I entertain the most sanguine belief that the publication of the new poems will place you immediately in more friendly relations with the public, than you have yet cared to seek, & that it must ultimately add the greatest dignity to your position among the greatest English Poets–
You have of course—here as elsewhere,—thought fit to place about the Hesperian fruit such spiked fences & quick-set hedges that I cannot but foresee that many will go away with scratcht hands. And those that enter the enchanted garden will still be a society select & reverend—but the question is—how will these fare? And with these, I prophecy that you have herein establisht the loftiest letter to immortality.
I am haunted by all that I have read—new sensations of beauty—new thoughts of power from immeasurable depths well up thro’ my recollections of poem after poem—and I regard the new book—(that is all I have seen of it, wh I take in token for the rest) as the quintessential flower of all that has preceeded [sic] it.
Many, no doubt, of the so called reading Public, that is those for whom the Book-Manufacturers provide, will approach such poetry as yours with a puzzled face, and doubting the Author’s rather than their own capacity they will begin to think in their own hearts, “by what other names & under what other forms do I already know that wh under forms so singular Browning wd express to me?”
The Answer will be “You know it not at all, and never will know it, and if you ever did come to know it, you wd perceive it as clearly under this form as any other.”
But you, in the meanwhile, will be going on to other developments of your self quite out of sight of these people. On that pilgrimage I wish you heartily ‘God speed’; I hope I may long live to see you as Cowley says the poet shd do—like the sun travel the world unsullied, & set bright! [1]
Your aff
R Lytton
My best love & all affectionate wishes to Mrs Browning.
Address: Affranchie / Robert Browning Esq / 13 Dorset St / Baker St / London / Angleterre.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 113–115 (as ?6 September 1855).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Cf. Abraham Cowley, “On the Death of Mr. William Hervey” (1656), lines 125–128.
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