4736. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 138–141.
Baden
[Postmark: 7 September 1860]
Thank you most heartily my dearest Browning for your kind letter! [1] Welcome it was beyond measure. I have said so much about Lucile in my letter to your wife [2] that I need only say to you, how pleased I am by all [you] say thereon—but more especially by the words wh so truly as well as kindly describe what I feel myself to be the chief defect of the Poem– Too much prologuizing altogether[.] This & general diffuseness weaken the work– And I quite agree with you, no strong man nor woman neither hold salvation on sufference either from accident or their fellow creatures[.] Then my 2 men were not meant to be strong[.] But here is a serious fault—none of the characters in the Poem are worth the much that is said about them.
I am extremely toucht & flattered by Landor’s remarks inclosed in your letter. [3] May I keep them? For I have not the book by me, and should be glad to improve the text by reference to these suggestions when I get the book. I have not a word to say abt the orthography or scanning[.] He is quite right.
But the metre dont suit the language.
With the exception of some Servian Translations [4] —(if I can call them translations, for they are very roughly rendered) of which perhaps I may publish a small vol. in the course of the Year—I hope to lie fallow for some time—wishing to write less & read more– I am going all thro’ the earlier dramatists, many of them for the first time–
Marlow[e] with renewed pleasure & Beaumont & Fletcher, on the whole, with greater admiration than I felt when I first read them– Jonson (shall I own it?) with less. But Shakespeare dwarfs them all. What a Titan!
My dear Browning, it seems like old times, to be writing to, & hearing from, you again– Pray let me hear from you sometimes– I gratefully take you at your word, and shall write to you often– Your life is too complete to miss my vacant place in it, shd those old days at Florence never be renewed: But this long silent absence I have felt sadly, and your kind words bring back to my heart something that it has missed & needed in all things. If you should have ever in yr youth lived in such fortunate intercourse with a rarely great & noble man, as to learn yourself & all things else by the light of his mind & with the help of his heart, you will understand what this is.
Chapman told me you were writing, & Mrs Browning says so too. Is it a single work—or divers poems? [5] Is it lyrical or Dramatic? Am I too inquisitive? Your book, whatever it be, is some thing to look forward to: & I will wait. Do you see any thing of Fred Ten[n]yson? Where is he, & what doing? Pray give my best of loves to him & the Stories. I hear that Alfred Ten[n]yson is writing a Poem about Boadacea, [6] in one of Catullus’ metres– I know not which[.] Perhaps you have seen it. I saw a good deal of Forster in England who only changes from kindness to greater kindness, & who besides my father is my only tie to England. I like his wife very much too– She is thoroughly good, & unobtrusively so– F’s book [7] has been a great success, & made sensation amongst even those classes of the Public that good things rarely reach—or reach in vain.
Ld John [Russell] told me he had been reading it with great interest. My father reviews it in the Quarterly, [8] but altho’ fully acknowledging the masterly merit of the book, in a sense generally opposed to Forster’s conclusions—viz: to the effect that Pym & that party shot beyond the mark; & that nothing for wh they stirr’d the Civil War has been permanently achieved: e.g. the removal of the Bishops from the Lords– An Indissoluble Parliament, with sole authority over the army &c &c– Whereas, the existing constitutional liberties of the Country lie within the Program at wh Falkland & Hyde [9] stopped short– I have made the acquaintance of a Mr Lucas, who (via Philips) [10] writes the literary articles in the Times (reviewed ‘The Arrest of the 5 Membs’ & ‘Transformation’)– [11] He is a great admirer of yours, & spoke to me much & well about yr books. I asked him why he didn’t write what he had said to me in the Times. But he answered that De Laine [12] wont hear of Poetry; & that when he wanted to review Shell[e]y’s life & works De Laine cried “excrement! excrement!”
I have been thinking of writing something about Chaucer & Wycliffe– [13] But dont see my way clearly yet—& have flung it by for the present. I saw Mrs Sartoris a moment in London at a concert at C. Grevil[le]’s [14] & Leig[h]ton—who has become a volunteer! Capt Aidee, [15] & A. Tro[l]lop[e]: the latter for a moment only at Chapman’s.
Have you heard the 3 degrees of a Lawyer’s preferment?
First he gets on: then he gets honour: then he gets honest. Few it, is said, arrive at the superlative degree.
God bless you my dear Browning. Believe that I am ever most truly & lovingly yours
R. Lytton
I am going to write to Isa to night[.] If my letter to her shd be delayed & not enclosed in this, pray explain to her–
Address, on integral page: Robert Browning Esqr / Casa Guidi. / Florence / Italie. Redirected: Siena.
Publication: BBIS–10, pp. 170–173.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
3. “Landor’s remarks” have not surfaced.
4. Serbski Pesme; or, National Songs of Servia (1861), translations and paraphrases of Serbian folk poetry, published under Lytton’s pseudonym, Owen Meredith.
5. In letter 4725, EBB told Lytton: “Robert writes & rides.” But six months later she complains to Sarianna that “he had a room all last summer, & did nothing” ([ca. 25] [March 1861], ms at Lilly). The editors of The Poems of Robert Browning, Vol. 4, ed. John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, and Joseph Phelan (Harlow, England, 2012), cite the letter to Sarianna as further evidence that apart from the output of the previous winter (see letter 4671, note 15), RB produced little poetry from the time of Men and Women until the summer of 1862 (see pp. 575–576).
6. “Boädicea” was written by Alfred Tennyson in late 1859 (see Charles Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, 1949, p. 323) but remained unpublished until it appeared in Enoch Arden (1864). According to A.A. Markey, Tennyson uses “eight-stress trochaic lines” in the poem, with which he “approximates the Catullan galliambic” (Stateliest Measures: Tennyson and the Literature of Greece and Rome, Toronto, 2004, p. 114). Boadicea, or more properly Boudicca, was a Celtic queen who led a revolt against the Romans in 61 A.D. After initial success, the revolt failed, and Boadicea either took poison or died of illness; “the former seems the more likely” (ODNB).
7. Arrest of the Five Members by Charles the First (1860); see letter 4609, note 4.
8. Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s review of Forster’s book appeared in The Quarterly Review of October 1860 (pp. 499–547).
9. Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609–74), statesman and author of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (2 vols., 1702–04), which Forster, in Arrest of the Five Members, criticizes for its dishonesty. Clarendon’s friend, and fellow member of Parliament, Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland (1609/10–43) was a poet and writer on theological subjects, who entertained many of the leading clerics and literati on his estate at Great Tew, Oxfordshire. Both men sided with the Royalists.
10. Unidentified.
11. Samuel Lucas (1818–68), editor of Once A Week, reviewed Forster’s book in The Times of 13 April 1860 (p. 4) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Transformation (1860), the British title of The Marble Faun, in the issue of 7 April 1860 (p. 5).
12. John Thadeus Delane (1817–79), editor of The Times (1841–77).
13. John Wyclif/Wycliffe (d. 1384), religious reformer and Bible translator.
14. Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville (1794–1865), diarist and clerk-in-ordinary to the privy council. His diaries were edited by Henry Reeve and published as The Greville Memoirs (8 vols., 1874–87).
15. Charles Hamilton Aidé (1826–1906); see letter 3369, note 2.
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