4668. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 1–2.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 13 May 1860]
Dear Browning, Pray tell Mr Forster that, if I did not answer his letter, it was because I waited to thank him for procuring, and sending to me, my last publications. [1] He informed me that he could hear of no conveyance. Every tradesman in London finds means of sending papers to Italy, and they go every week. I would gladly have paid for mine by railroad, or even by post, as I wanted them for Mr Story. This is the tenth month since I wrote for them. Even if Mr Forster had paid for them, which was unnecessary and never thought of by me, the cost would be under twenty shillings. He never came to visit me without asking for a favorite picture, and never was refused, altho he saw it left a vacant place which could not be supplied– It is only to you that I have mentioned this.
Empson has not yet returned to Florence. I hope his delay is not occasioned by any accident. I fear he will have left me before you come– By chance I have found one more scrap of my remarks in reading Shakespeare. These are worth nothing, altho they are just. I wish Coleridge had exercised his critical powers more extensively on the subject. It is thought that Schlegel was contented with the excessive praise of Shakespeare out of a little malignity toward Göethe, to whose drama he once or twice attended. I wonder that any man should take the trouble to be invidious.
Here are a few remarks, the last I shall ever send to you on Shakespeare.
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Arthur is quite a child when his eyes are to be burnt out, yet, in the midst of what is natural he speaks like a person of much thought, reflection, and imagination. [2] Joan of Arc talks of Cæsar and the ship that bore him “and his fortunes” [3] after she had declared how utterly ignorant she was, and a mere shepherdess. [4] In the first part of Henry 6, one of Salisburys cheeks is blown off, yet Talbot says
“He beckons with his hand and smiles on me.” [5] Curious the smile after one of the cheeks is cut off, yet a friend might imagine it–
I hate to “find fault,” and never look for it. There are innumerable in Shakespeare; but it seems like impiety to bring them into the light. We must not every hour put a taper up to the high candles on the altar. I will blow mine out. I will not even mark with a pencil what Coleridge and Schleghel [sic] ought to have noticed.
Address: R Browning Esq / No 28. 2no Piano. Via del Tritone / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-5, p. 32 (in part, as 15 May 1860).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. In King John, IV, 1. In this and subsequent quotations from and allusions to Shakespeare’s works, the line numbers correspond to those in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).
3. Cf. 1 Henry VI, I, 2, 138–139. In the play, Joan of Arc is called Joan de Pucelle.
4. Cf. 1 Henry VI, I, 2, 72–73.
5. I Henry VI, I, 4, 92.
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