4630. RB to Edward Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 239–240.
Rome, Via del Tritone 28.
March 23. 1860.
Dear Chapman,
Please take care that the “Athenæum” gets the accompanying note at once. You know,—and probably the friendly critic also, that there is not a word about “malediction against England” in the “sixty pages” he would fain “best give an idea of” [1] —and that had he quoted the other half of the poem he pretends to extract, every body else would have known likewise that it refers to the Slave-States in America, where it was printed and circulated years ago. (You reprinted it from a broadside containing poems of a similar intention by Emerson & others.) [2] Indeed, had the friendly critic gone back but a single line in his citations he would have been obli<ged> to record that the poem was “sent over the Western Sea.” [3] Is England “in the old world’s sight” [4] I wonder, or famous for using “brand & thong” [5] to any one,—even a friendly critic, and so he exercises his trade as you see. If it is all a blunder, why not cure such blundering even at the eleventh hour? Are all criticisms written in this painstaking, conscientious way? I have been used rather to stupidity than malignity, it seems to me,—but live & learn!
Please send a copy to Lytton– I don’t think I put his name in the list I made out in a hurry.
Ever yours faithfully
Robert Browning.
Publication: NL, pp. 130–131.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. RB quotes from Chorley’s review of Poems Before Congress in The Athenæum of 17 March 1860. For the full text of this review, see p. 358.
2. The broadside was entitled “Hymns and Songs for the Anti-Slavery Celebration of the Declaration of Independence, at Framingham, July 5, 1858.” Besides EBB’s poem, it included Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Ode for Fourth of July” and poems by George Thompson (1804–78), English abolitionist, and Daniel Ricketson (1813–98), American poet and friend of Thoreau. The broadside used as printer’s copy for Poems Before Congress (now at ABL) contains numerous revisions in EBB’s hand, including the deletion of one stanza and the addition of another. See the illustration facing p. 145.
3. Cf. “A Curse for a Nation,” lines 4 and 52.
4. “A Curse for a Nation,” line 67.
5. Cf. “A Curse for a Nation,” line 56.
___________________
