4570. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 131–133.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 10 January 1860]
There is a gross absurdity in W. Schelgel [sic], where he says “It is only before the groups of Niobe [1] or Laocoon [2] that we first enter into the Spirit of the tragedies of Sophocles[.]” [3]
How many thousand men of genius have entered into it who never saw even a cast of either statue! In fact, these noble works afford no help whatever to the comprehension and appreciation of the glorious poet. Reflection must follow the glare of admiration, and the labours of plastic art must rest upon the floor. Flaxman himself, the most classical of artists, [4] could be only the interpreter of those Divinities whose habitation was in Athens, Sophocles the Apollo, Æschylus the Zeus– I am always afraid of writing my thoughts over and over again. Many of them may not be worth a farthing, but they occupy only a farthing’s worth of paper, and only five minutes in reading. I know not whether Stolberg had even seen the Niobe or Laocoön, but I do know that his monodrama of Theseus is the only piece of dramatic poetry the moderns have produced. [5] Goethe turned out some cast iron, cast imperfectly from an ill-heated furnace. The Mirra of Alfieri [6] comes nearer to the masters– Macready carried Ion upon his shoulders, but it would not do. [7]
At this instant the new volume of my Hellenics is brought to me from the postoffice with a letter from the publisher, in which he tells me that he has sent other copies to Molini of Florence thro Molini of London. [8] —After five minutes I open my new volume, to look at the Latin.
I gave strict orders that the last sheets should not be sent to Mr Forster, but to Mr Pitman, who wrote some good notes on Euripides. [9] I found both inattention and blunders—and here are the proofs– I had cancelled the Ode ad Libertatem, because this was printed while I was abroad [with] two false quantities, which are not to be found in the six or seven thousand verses contained in my Poemata Latina. [10] This Ode was written at the close of last century, when the English Government was adverse to the cause of liberty on the Continent. This urged me to write Degenoremque fugis Britannum. [11]
Miss Blagden favored me with a visit this morning, and told me that Mrs Browning had completed a new volume of poems. You, who are so near to her in poetry as in everything else, may not be jealous. I must be.
Now tell me how I am to send to you the 2 volumes when they reach Florence, which I expect daily. [12]
My pen, the thirteenth, being a goslin[g]’s quill, not a goose’s, gives me and you infinite trouble. I know not where to buy a metallic pen. Those of the German I sent back as a present to him, [13] not being able to fix one on the stick.
I will now look into my Hellenics. I sadly fear for those which I did not revise. Mr Forster, I see, has taken the liberty to strike out two lines from the english, ending “—fraud and perfidy condoned unwisely—” [14]
Adieu til I hear again from you. You see I do not let you forget WS Landor by all this scribble.
Address: Robert Browning Esq / Via del Tritone / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 23–24.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. In Greek mythology, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, was the mother of a large family (sometimes given as seven sons and seven daughters). Proud of her children and her own motherhood, she claimed equality with the Titaness Leto, who had only one son, Apollo, and one daughter, Artemis. Enraged by this blasphemy, Leto sent her children to kill all of Niobe’s children with arrows. Doubtless, Schlegel refers to the sculpture of Niobe and her youngest daughter in the Hall of Niobe in the Uffizi, Florence. It is believed to be a Roman copy of an earlier Greek work.
2. Trojan priest of legend who, along with his two sons, was killed by serpents. The famous sculpture depicting this event, inspired by a passage in the Æneid, was dug up at Rome in the early sixteenth century and is thought to be of the first century A.D. It has been in the Vatican since its discovery, except for the period 1797–1816, when it was in Paris.
3. Although this statement does not appear in Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur: Vorlesungen, Schlegel does compare ancient sculpture to ancient tragedy in Lecture V: “But in the distinct outstanding group, and in Tragedy, sculpture and poetry alike bring before our eyes an independent and definite whole. … The comparison with ancient tragedy is the more apposite here, as we know that both Æschylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and that Sophocles was also the author of a Laocoön. … Amid all the agitating emotions which these groups give rise to, there is still a something in their aspect which attracts the mind and gives rise to manifold contemplation; so the ancient tragedy leads us forward to the highest reflections involved in the very sphere of things it sets before us—reflections on the nature and the inexplicable mystery of man’s being” (A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black, 1861, pp. 76–77). Only fragments remain of Sophocles’ Niobe and Laocoön.
4. John Flaxman (1755–1826); see letter 3320, note 15.
5. Theseus by Friedrich Leopold, Graf zu Stolberg (1750–1819), first appeared in Schauspiele mit Choeren (Leipzig, 1787), co-authored with his brother, Christian, Graf zu Stolberg (1748–1821).
6. Mirra (1789) by Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) is based on a story in Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X, that tells the tragedy of the title character’s forbidden passion for her father.
7. Landor refers to William Charles Macready in the title role of Thomas Noon Talfourd’s Ion (1836).
8. Members of the Molini family were merchants and booksellers, with premises at Florence, London, and Paris.
9. The Iphigenia in Taurus of Euripides (Oxford, 1857), ed. Edward Rogers Pitman (1821–79).
10. i.e., Poemata et Inscriptiones (1847).
11. Cf. “Ad Libertatem” (The Hellenics, 1859), line 8.
12. Landor presented two copies of The Hellenics to RB (see letter 4586, note 6).
13. Brecker’s bookshop, founded by Joseph Brecker but operated at this time by his widow (see letter 2787, note 5).
14. We have been unable to identify this poem.
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