5065. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 78–80.
[Florence]
[mid-May 1862] [1]
Dear Browning,
Greatly should I blame myself if I delayed an answer to your kind letter a single day.
Tell Milnes that I feel myself too highly honored by the opinion of the Dean of Saint Paul’s [2] that I am able to write such an epitaph on Hallam [3] as he could. Hallam was a very indifferent judge both of poetry and prose. He gave a specimen out of Paradise Regained as excellent. [4] It is poor: just after it comes one of the best parts of the poem, which I pointed out, somewhere I think in my Imaginary Conversations. [5] I wish you would point out to me any negligence of mine, or Mr Forster’s, or the printers, in the Epitaphs now publisht. [6] They did not fall under my inspection until long after the two volumes came out. Pray tell Milnes that, altho I would not write a latin epitaph on his father, [7] I have written a latin inscription for his statue, [8] which was sent to Newby several months ago. It appears to me an absurdity to place a latin epitaph in a country church, where only the parson, and perhaps the squire can ever read it. I did indeed commit this mistake in regard to my father’s– [9] My friend Lord Nugent [10] would have it so, and he brought a copy of it to me at Bath.
Few english names can be latinized: the german worse. Italian and spanish are not all so difficult. Milnes is tractable. It may be Milnes—Milnis or Milnetis. I esteemed highly this wise and honorable man. Suthaius succedes to Southey—but Browning must remain within the boundaries of Britain.
I am delighted to hear of Story’s success. [11] My neighbour’s Godiva, I hear, has been less admired. [12] I read no criticisms. The only articles in the Times I ever look at are those which concern Garibaldi and the less worthy Americans. The Southerns have law on their side, I wish the Northerns had justice. But they delivered up the wretches who took refuge with them from slavery. [13] There never more can be a Union, there may be a Conf[ed]eracy. Robert may see North America contain a hundred million, and South America more, supposing he lives to my age. The Southern States, once independent, will have innumerably more immigrants than the Northern. Let only every slave who has worked fourteen years be free. His master will have been compensated for his cost by a labour of such duration. Let the northern show the sincerity of their zeal by helping to send into Liberia 2000 weekly, the southern as many, and in 14 years few will remain beside the aged and infirm. Undoubtedly the English would help in the same proposition, at a less cost of men and money than is expended by our cruizers on the coast. Our abolition has been most improvident, disastrous, and ruinous. [14] We have only made idlers and drunkards. The Americans may make cultivators, proprietors, and soldiers, and ultimately the civilizers of Africa.
Truly yours
W.S. Landor
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Trinity College, Cambridge.
1. Date based on Landor’s comments directed to Milnes. RB enclosed this letter with letter 5072 to Milnes.
2. Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868).
3. Henry Hallam (1777–1859), English historian. His epitaph is inscribed on the base of his memorial statue, executed in marble by William Theed (1863), in the crypt of St. Paul’s. The epitaph reads in part: “This monument is raised by many friends, who regarding the soundness of his learning, the simple eloquence of his style, his manly and capacious intellect … desire to perpetuate his memory within these sacred walls.”
4. Landor refers to a passage in Hallam’s Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries (4 vols., 1837–39): “We know how finely Milton … has alluded to Boiardo’s poem [Orlando Innamorato] in the Paradise Regained. The lines are perhaps the most musical he has ever produced” (I, 315). Hallam continues with lines 337–343 from Book III in Paradise Regained.
5. In “Southey and Landor, Second Conversation,” Landor introduces the lines from Paradise Regained (III, 337–343) quoted by Hallam with a denigrating remark: “And here, if you could find any pleasure in a triumph over the petulance and frowardness of a weak adversary, you might laugh at poor Hallam, who cites the following as among the noble passages of Milton” (The Works of Walter Savage Landor, 1846, II, 158). For a better part of the poem,” Landor has Southey point to a passage in Book IV, 10–13.
6. The epitaphs that appeared in Landor’s Hellenics (new ed., enlarged, Edinburgh, 1859), which Forster saw through the press. For Landor’s unhappiness with Forster’s assistance, see, for example, letters 4545 and 4570.
7. Robert Pemberton Milnes (1784–1858).
8. i.e., for some imagined future statue of the son, Richard Monckton Milnes. Landor’s “inscription” was published as “Ricardus Milnes” in Heroic Idyls (1863), p. 320.
9. Dr. Walter Landor (1733–1805) was buried in the parish church of Tachbrook. The Latin inscription on his tomb reads in part: “Lepidus, doctus, liberalis, probus, amicis jucundissimus” (“Pleasant, learned, liberal, upright, most delightful to his friends”). See R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography (New York, 1954), pp. 71 and 523. The full inscription is given in John Forster, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography (2 vols., 1869), II, 216n. According to Forster, the inscription was “written mainly by Landor himself, but with additional touches by his brother Robert” (II, 216n).
10. George Nugent Grenville (1788–1850), 2nd Baron Nugent of Carlanstown, son of the 1st Marquess of Buckingham (1753–1813) and his wife, Lady Mary Elizabeth Nugent (1758/59–1812).
12. The “neighbour” was Charles Francis Fuller (1830–75), English sculptor, whose studio was located in Via Nunziatina near Landor’s apartment. Fuller’s “Lady Godiva” is listed in the International Exhibition’s Official Catalogue of the Fine Art Department (1862) as an “Equestrian Sculpture in Plaster” (p. 260). The Times of 28 April 1862 called it a “paltry plaster figure” and recommended it “be sent to Coventry” so that “the spirit of the legend will then … be kept to the letter by no one looking at it” (p. 5).
13. A reference to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (see letter 4870, note 6).
14. The Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833 ended slavery in all British possessions, though not all slaves gained their freedom until 1838 (see letter 513, note 20).
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