4545. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 77–78.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 13 December 1859]
Now for news. Is it not wonderful that I should have any? Several friends and some strangers have visited me. Nothing can excede [sic] the kindness of Mr Eckley, who has undertaken the sending of my Defence [1] to America. Until it is printed and circulated I shall never have a day’s peace or night’s rest. No report has reacht me of the probable time when my Hellenics, and other poems, will arrive. [2] Mr Forster was pleased to tell you that the delay could only be accounted for by the death of the publisher’s brother. [3] The books had been printed and revised. A brother’s death could not have hindered the publication for many weeks. Mr Forster could give a better reason, so can I. Much was I averse, as I told him, to his undertaking the revisal, when two learned friends had made the offer: he however persisted, and I suspected the consequence. It was intended that Napier should never be gratified by the Dedication. [4] I thank God that, in the improvement of his health, he may yet see it, altho probably from an American press.
I have been reading a translation of Goethes Dramas, which I was deterred from doing, some years ago, when I had travelled as far as the ninetyninth page. I wish his Faust had begun with Margaret. What a strange notion must Goethe have entertained of Shakespeare, in thinking he resembles him by walking in dirty boots. Shakespeare never did it when he went into good company. He left them at the tavern when a guard of honour was attending him to the palace. I am now reading Iphigeneia in Aulis. [5] In p 186 Orestes announces himself to Iphigeneia. She hears his long speech without once interrupting him, at [sic] lets him go without reply. Is this in nature? Before the end of the same page Fulfilment is personified. Warton was among the first of our English poets who personified everything, and thought by this trickery to give an air of poetry. [6] It is not out of fashion yet—nor is crinoline. How refreshing it is to take a walk with Gray in his churchyard, or in his walk at a distant view of Eton College: [7] —then to be a fellow traveler with Goldsmith, to give a kick against the closed door of the rude Carinthian, and rest on our return at the hospitable ale-house in Auburn. [8] But I am rather disposed to walk upon higher ground. I must return to Shakespeare in good earnest: I must brush up my greek for the Odyssea. I laugh at this expression. It reminds me of the very same I made to my fair cousin Shuckburg, [9] who was going to France. She said she must brush up her french. My reply was, [“]Take care, take care; use a soft brush or you may brush it all away.” In fact, she had not enough of it to litter the desk.
I have been writing a long rigmarole, but I have been reading a longer. Shall I go on? I think I must.
Durum! sed levius fit patientiâ. [10]
Permit me now, and always in future, to omit the expression of those sentiments which no man ever felt more deeply in his heart than W. Landor.
Mrs Romagnoli told me yesterday of the gratifying letter she recieved yesterday from the Dragoon.
Address: R Browning Esq / 28 Via del Tritone. / 2 Piano / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 18–19 (as 27 July 1859).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The “Defence,” concerning the Yescombe libel suit, was entitled Mr. Landor’s Remarks on a Suit Preferred against Him, at the Summer Assizes in Taunton, 1858. It had been issued as an eight-page pamphlet and privately circulated “about the end of May” by Holyoake & Co., though without the publisher’s imprint (see R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, pp. 466–467). An American reprinting of the pamphlet (perhaps as limited as six copies), entitled Mr. Landor’s Remarks on His Trial for Libel, was issued without the publisher’s imprint by James T. Fields the following year. See letter from Sophia Landor to RB, 15 December [1860], and RB’s reply to her, 28 January 1861 (mss at Yale). See also note 1 in the biographical sketch of James T. Fields (p. 329).
4. Sir William Francis Patrick Napier (1785–1860), British army officer and historian. Landor’s dedication reads, in part: “The prime glory of my life is your friendship. This life of mine is drawing to a close, and friendship must end with it. Your incurable and tormenting wounds, endured for half a century, leave to you a date not much longer. … An illustrious man ordered it to be inscribed on his monument, that he was the friend of Sir Philip Sidney; an obscurer one can but leave this brief memorial that he was the friend of Sir William Napier” (The Hellenics, Edinburgh, 1859, p. [v]).
5. Sic, for Iphigenia among the Taurians (or Iphigenia in Taurus) by Euripides. In Iphigenia at Aulis, Orestes is only an infant. The passages Landor mentions occur at lines 826–1006 (see Iphigenia among the Taurians, trans. David Kovacs).
6. Thomas Warton, the Younger (1728–90), whose poem The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747) personifies not only Melancholy, but also Contemplation, Mirth, Folly, Reason, Fancy, and Pity.
7. Two poems by Thomas Gray (1716–71): “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1747) and “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751).
8. In Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Traveller” (1764), the “rude Carinthian boor / Against the houseless stranger shuts the door” (lines 3–4). In “The Deserted Village” (1770), “sweet Auburn” is the lovely village abandoned by time and so-called progress.
9. Sophia Shuckburg (née Venour, 1769–1848). The Venours and Landors were related through Catherine Landor (1745–1825), daughter of Robert Landor (1708–81) and his wife, Mary (née Noble, 1706–98), who in 1766 married John Venour (1734–87) of Wellesbourne, Warwickshire.
10. “It is hard. But endurance can make lighter” (Horace, Odes, I, 24, 19, trans. Niall Rudd). The finished thought in the next line reads: “quidquid corrigere est nefas” (“what no one is allowed to put right”).
___________________
