5353. Joseph Milsand to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 31–32.
[Paris]
[mid-April 1864] [1]
Mon cher Robert
Je ne veux pas perdre l’impression du premier moment, l’impression dans toute sa franchise et sa netteté. Je vous parlerai d’abord en ami, qui pense au public, et au succès, puisqu’au moment de publier votre livre c’est pour vous la seule chose qui fasse question. Je suis enchanté de votre œuvre[,] enchanté de la perfection de la forme. Les petites pièces—et c’etaient les petites pièces qui dans Men and Women étaient le plus faites pour arrêter—sont délicieuses quand elles ne sont pas sublimes comme votre Prospice. Sauf dans le premier morceau où un passage (VI under the Cliff) [2] présente peut-être quelque difficulté, je n’ai rien trouvé d’obscur, rien qui m’arretât. Comme expression il y a progrès marqué. Vous êtes moins abrupte[,] plus coulant fondu.– J’en battrais des mains.
Maintenant il y a progrès marqué: dans la forme: votre style atteint mieux que jamais le but que vous vous proposez: celui de disparaître en quelque sorte pour mettre sous les yeux des autres la chose même que vous voyez en esprit.
A chaque instant je m’aperçois que la masse des hommes éprouvent une sorte de colère quand il rencontre un esprit qui a plus d’ambition[,] qui a des besoins quil n’ont [pas][,] qui n’est pas lasse là où commence la fatigue[,] qui regarde .. Sans doute, ils ont ce rôle à jouer dans l’ordre universel c’est le sabot de la voiture l’élément conservant.
Publication: None traced.
Source: Author’s draft at Armstrong Browning Library, Joseph Milsand Archive.
Translation:
[Paris]
[mid-April 1864] [1]
My dear Robert
I do not want to lose the initial impression, the impression in all its freshness and its clarity. I will speak to you at first as friend, who thinks about the public, and about success, since at the time of publishing your book it is the only thing which is in question: I am delighted by your work[,] delighted by the perfection of the form. The little pieces—and it was the little pieces in Men and Women which were the most striking—are delicious when they are not sublime as your Prospice. Except in the first bit where one passage (VI under the Cliff) [2] perhaps presents a certain difficulty, I found nothing obscure, nothing which made me hesitate. In expressiveness there is marked progress. You are less abrupt[,] more flowing blended.– I would clap my hands.
Now there is a marked progress: in form: your style reaches more than ever the goal you set for yourself: that of disappearing, as it were, to put before the eyes of others the very thing you see in your mind.
Every moment I perceive that the mass of men feel a kind of anger when they encounter a mind which has more ambition, which has needs which they do not, which does not flag when it begins to be tired, which considers. Doubtless, they have this role to play in the universal order[;] it is the carriage shoe, the preserving element.
1. Dating suggested by Milsand’s comments on Dramatis Personæ, which he seems to have read in proof. See letter 5363, in which RB tells M.D. Conway that “with one exception” no one else had seen the proofs of Dramatis Personæ.
2. In “James Lee” (later retitled “James Lee’s Wife”). Stanzas 1–6 of section VI (“Under the Cliff”) were first printed as “Lines” (signed “Z”) in The Monthly Repository of May 1836.
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