5349. RB to Walter Alfred Hills
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 28.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
March 18. ’64.
Dear Sir, [1]
I have to thank you much for your Book of Poems [2] and the very interesting letter which accompanied it. I have read both of these attentively,—the rather that I noticed some weeks ago an extract from “Atys” [3] which struck me and augured well for the power of its writer, to my mind.
You should, and no doubt will, try again, and I think there is evidence in these pieces of much ability, as, in the letter, of the proper spirit with which a difficult business ought to be undertaken. It is by your own diligence and conscientiousness that you must be instructed: one can help another so little by direct advice in such a matter!
I would—looking over your shoulder, as you bid me, in this stage of your drawing, so to speak—recommend that you,—after making good and decisive outlines, (as you clearly can do,) passing to the next process of putting in the shadows and giving relief,—confine yourself to giving these sharply and limitedly, after the fashion of Rubens, and not pursuing them into their demi-traits, as feebler draughtsmen would: because the eye does that for itself, if your markings of shadow are boldly true at the beginning. In other words, and for example—if you try a subject like that of “Abijah,” [4] you should stop short of the main markings, as I call them: if you go on expressing every effect which you suppose these will produce, the reader’s work is superceded, and the general complexion of the poem gets modern and uncharacteristic. Say as little as you can, and let us reflect on it.
There are many real successes in your Book, and these want no comment: what I venture to propose for your consideration, seemed the principal mistake to observe upon: and I do it (roughly and hurriedly) in justice to your fair and well-meant desire. I am sure I wish you every success, and expect not a little.
Yours very faithfully
Robert Browning.
Address: Walter Alfred Hills, Esq. / 25. Royal Terrace, / Ramsgate.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. Walter Alfred Hills (1835–79), poet and barrister.
2. Orpah’s Return and Other Poems (1863), published by Robert Hardwicke.
3. RB probably refers to a review of Orpah’s Return and Other Poems, in The Athenæum of 6 February 1864 (no. 1893, p. 193) that contained an extract from “The Death of Atys,” the first poem after “Orpah’s Return.”
4. The third poem in Orpah’s Return.
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