539. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 195–196.
Three Mile Cross,
Oct. 13, 1836.
Dearest Miss Barrett,
I have just read your delightful ballad. [1] My earliest book was “Percy’s Reliques,” [2] the delight of my childhood; and after them came Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Borders,” [3] the favourite of my youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads, although perhaps a little biassed in favour of great directness and simplicity, by the earnest plainness of my old pet. Do read Tennyson’s “Ladye of Shalot.” You will be charmed with its spirit and picturesqueness. Are you a great reader of the old English drama? I am—preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought, just as I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew that I could not comprehend. Have you read Victor Hugo’s Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his “Notre Dame?” [4] I admit the bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great. And then he has broken through the conventional phrases, and made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by going back to the old fountains, Froissart, [5] &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of mine.
Heaven bless you, my dear young friend!
Ever your faithful and affectionate
M. R. M.
Address: Miss Barrett, Gloucester Place.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 60–61.
1. “The Poet’s Vow,” mentioned in the previous letter.
2. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), by Thomas Percy (1729–1811).
3. Three volumes of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders were published anonymously in 1802–03.
4. Notre-Dame de Paris (1831).
5. Jean Froissart (1337?–1410?). His Chronicles give a vivid, if inaccurate, picture of 14th-century Europe.
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