389.5. Edmund Henry Barker to EBB
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 2.
Thetford,
Nov. 13, 1830.
My dear Madam,
I will waste no time in making apologies for my silence, & I shall have no space to spare, & perhaps you never read the preface to a book, but dash into the cup without regarding the cream which crowns it, & into the ocean in despite of the spray. Well, at length I am emancipated, as well as the Catholics; my labor is done, the book is finished, & the resuscitated Schrevelius will appear at the end of this month in a coat of fashionable cut, & you must welcome his approach with your softest music, & entertain him with heroic hospitality.
You were rather surprised at my commendations of Cicero, more particularly offended at my declaration that I would rescue him from an universal destruction of authors, if I were allowed the liberty to select one & one only. Then for your satisfaction & my triumph, open wide your eyes to read what follows, & let no naughtiness escape your lips in reply:—“Theodorus Gaza, the learnedest Greek that ever came from Constantinople, being asked by a friend of his, what authour he would preserve, in case a generall wrack were to destroy all the rest, would not seem so fond of his own translations, as to prefer Aristotle or Cicero before Plutarch. Him he thought worthy to survive all the rest, not so much, as I conceive, for his admirable learning & variety, as to preserve in him the most judicious authour that ever was, (Montaigne 2,2.) what could not have been found in any other, to wit, the judgmt he gave of all the things he treated of, which we might make use of as a certain mark to distinguish truth from falsehood, or as a guide to conduct us thorow those noble ruines of antiquity, which we find in his worker.”
The History of Magick, Englished from
naude’s Apology by j. davies, 1657, p. 115.
“If Bacon had written as easily & harmoniously as Cicero, he would have lost a portion of his weight with the generality of the learned, who are apt to conceive that in easy movement there is a want of solidity & strength. Take away all Cicero’s wit, & half his eloquence, & you leave a Bacon at bottom. Very wise men, & very wary & inquisitive walk over the earth, & are ignorant not only what minerals lie beneath, but what herbs & foliage they are treading. Some time afterwards, & probably some distant time, a specimen of ore is extracted & exhibited,—then another,—lastly the leaving & diameter of the vein are observed & measured. Thus it is with writers, who are to have a currency through ages. In the beginning they are confounded with most others,—soon they fall into some secondary class,—next into one rather less obscure & humble;—by degrees they are liberated from the dross and lumber, that hamper them, & being once above the heads of contemporaries, rise slowly and waveringly, then regularly & erectly, then rapidly & majestically, till the vision strains & akes as it pursues them in their ethereal elevation.” W. S. Landor’s Imaginary Conversations, 2d Series, V. 2. p. 7.
I agree with you that the Class-Book is more interesting & more generally useful than the National Reader. If I have an opportunity of reprinting them, I shall improve both greatly by substitutions & alterations. You now see a further proof that the American prose-writers are men of very great merit in matter & style. Let me entreat you to get the American Common-Place Book of Prose, pr. 6s sold by Bennett of Great Queen Street, London, & when you have read it, let me know what you think of it.
The Toyshop was written by a very superior hand; it is founded on Robert Dodsley’s Play so called, I mean the celebrated bookseller, the first patron of Johnson. That is, the Toyshop, contains 3 or 4 passages, which are taken verbatim from Dodsley’s Play, which was itself popular in its day. The Juvenile Rambler is by the same author, & the Picture-Exhibition is by a different hand. I should be glad to catch hold of some more of these old books for children; one in particular called The Sugar Plum, on the recollection of which Mrs Barker hangs with delight. But no copy is now to be had, & without a copy I cannot reprint it. You was is an oversight of the printer; I laid I do not remember to have left, & you give no page. I laid may be used actively, or neutrally by the ellipse of myself; delicious eating is not wrong, eating being substantived; her tongue went 19 to the dozen, is not a vulgarism, but a colloquialism, & idioms must not from an affectation of delicacy be struck out of style in a child’s book; for they are the nerves of a language, & this alone gives to the language of common life an energy, which the most refined eloquence can never reach; the former is a thunderbolt of war, the latter is but the lightning’s play; the one inflicts a wound, while the other can only probe it, circum praecordia ludit.
I sympathise with you in what you say about Mr Boyd, but you will bear in mind that the tempers of men are to be judged of by their conduct to their fellow men, not by their conduct towards your sex. A man of Saturnine spirits, (such our friend is in no sense,) will not or may not betray a particle of it in his conversation with women; in their presence bears drop their rage, & the wolves their howl, the winds are laid, and gentleness reigns supreme.
I know not whence Mr Pierpont obtained those admirable & seraphic verses of Coleridge.
I shall in about 10 days be able to reply to your previous communication, & in the interim believe me to be most truly your friend,
E. H. Barker.
Address, on integral page: Miss Barrett / Hope-End / Ledbury / Herefordshire.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
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