Correspondence

3937.  EBB & RB to Robert Bulwer Lytton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 156-157.

[mid-December 1856] [1]

<***> They abound in beautiful things [2] —decisive things in any question of the writer’s genius. I doubt, however, whether you will produce quite the work I want from you—I who do not want now mere proofs of your being a poet, but the fruit of having long been a poet: or rather, I want it now, and too soon perhaps, instead of waiting patiently.

[Continued by EBB]

What we want in you is a more absorbing life of your own, my dear friend, more individuality, so that you should not remind us of this poet and that poet, when you are so certainly and thoroughly a poet yourself. You don’t imitate, then why should you not be original? But you sympathise too much. It’s your own wine, but you use your neighbour’s glass to drink it out of [3] —from some cause or other—too much love perhaps—or unconscious indolence.... Dear Mr. Lytton, let us remember that Art requires the whole man, austerely and unreservedly given, and that great things must be done greatly, with a great purpose, a great heart, a great courage, a great energy, and a great persistent patience. So, to you, who know this as well as I do, I say just, “Patience, courage, the victory is sure,” [4] because it is pleasant to hear one’s thought echoed by the voice of a friend, and I am yours indeed. <***>

Text: Personal & Literary Letters of Robert First Earl of Lytton, ed. Betty Balfour (London, 1906), I, 79–80.

1. Approximate dating based on the reference to Lytton’s poem “L’Abbess.” Lytton could not have received this letter prior to writing letter 3933, which contained no acknowledgment of the Brownings’ criticism, nor after writing the 19 December section of a letter to his father, in which he mentions the criticism (see note 3 below).

2. i.e., the first two books of “L’Abbess” (see letter 3799, note 7), which Lytton had sent with letter 3890.

3. Evidently, at some point in this letter, Byron was suggested as one of the glasses. Lytton writes to his father: “Both Forster & the Brownings to whom I sent copies of the ‘Abbess’ are very discouraging abt it & recommend me not to go on with it. They both declare that it is under the influence of Byron” (see SD2016).

4. Cf. Casa Guidi Windows, II, 194–200:

“Men who might

Do greatly in a universe that breaks

And burns, must ever know before they do.

Courage and patience are but sacrifice;

And sacrifice is offered for and to

Something conceived of. Each man pays a price

For what himself counts precious.”

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