612. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 10–11.
Three Mile Cross,
Feb. 1, 1838.
My dear Love,
I have got to think your obscurity of style, my love, merely the far-reaching and far-seeing of a spirit more elevated than ours, and look at the passages till I see light breaking through, as we see the sun shining upon some bright point (Oxford, for instance) in some noble landscape. I have just been reading Racine’s “Letters,” and Boileau’s. How much one should like both, if it were not for their slavish, servile devotion to the king (and I think it was real), and to that odious woman Madame de Maintenon. [1] Also Racine was a bigot, but sincere. My liking for Madame de Sevigné, is, I suppose, owing to my very ignoble love of gossip, which, if it be but honest and natural, I always like, whether on paper or de vive voix. [2] And French, being the very language of chit-chat and prittle-prattle, is one reason why I like so much the mémoires and letters of that gossiping nation. Certainly Molière is their greatest man. Do you know Foote’s farces? [3] They have more of Molière than any other English writer, to say nothing of a neatness of dialogue the most perfect imaginable ble—perfect as the dialogue part of the “Critic,” [4] which I take to be the most finished bit of Sheridan. I think you will like Mr. Townsend’s smaller pieces. [5] Lady Dacre you will love. Heaven bless you! Love to all.
Ever most faithfully yours,
M.R. Mitford.
Address: Miss Barrett, Gloucester Place.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 85–86.
1. Françoise D’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (1635–1719), mistress and later second wife of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (1638–1715).
2. “By word of mouth.”
3. Samuel Foote (1720–77), actor and dramatist, whose works included The Minor (1760) and All in the Wrong (1761), a version of Molière’s Cocu Imaginaire.
4. The Critic (1779) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816).
5. The further reference to Townsend’s poems in letter 647 suggests that this was Miss Mitford’s friend, Richard Edwin Austin Townsend.
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