5839. RB to Lady Lothian
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 148–149.
[London]
Monday Mg [1867] [1]
Dear Lady Lothian,
I wonder whether you & Lord Lothian, with your interest in Shelley, remember that he had projected a poem on Job, and was only prevented by death from carrying out his design, “which had deeply interested him,”—says Leigh Hunt. [2]
There is also a wonderful poem, on the same subject,—determined, dared & done by Francis Quarles,—not otherwise a man to be slighted, I think,—and here is his fashion of that appearance of Satan we were examining yesterday–
Satan came too: and in the midst he stands
Like to a vulture midst a herd of swans:
Said then the Eternal, “From what quarter now
Hath business brought thee, Satan? Whence comest Thou?”
“O Lord of Heaven!” said the Infernal “since
Thou hast entitled me the World’s great prince,
I have been practising mine old prossession
And come from compassing my large possession,
Tempting thy sons and (like a roaring lion)
Seeking my prey, disturb the peace of Zion:
I come from sowing tares among thy wheat—
To him, that shall dissemble Peter’s seat,
I have been plotting how to prompt the death
Of Christian Princes, &c &c &c [3]
Do you not think this is the most amazing anachronism on record?
The same poet has versified the story of Jonah with equal felicity—take one example,—the rendering of the celebrated “I do well to be angry” [4] —see how such a phrase may be worthily treated:
“I fear not to acknowledge and profess
Deserved rage,—I’m angry, I confess:
’T would make a spirit that is thorough frozen
To blaze like flaming pitch and fry like rosin!” [5]
Yet there was good stuff in Quarles for all the above!
Ever most sincerely yours
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Docket, in unidentified hand: Robert Browning. 1867.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Date supplied by the docket.
2. In Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (1828), Leigh Hunt writes that Shelley “thought of founding a tragedy” on “the Book of Job” (p. 220).
3. Cf. Francis Quarles (1592–1644), “Job Militant,” 2, 9–22 (Divine Poems: Containing The History of Jonah, Ester, Job, Sampson [and] Sions Sonets, Elegies, 1634, p. 179). RB’s 1633 edition of this work sold as lot 1023 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1910).
4. Jonah 4:9.
5. Cf. Quarles, “A Feast for Worms,” 13, 39–42 (Divine Poems, p. 54).
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