77. EBB to Samuel Moulton-Barrett (uncle)
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 66–67.
[?Hope End]
November 1818
Offered for sale by Sotheran, Catalogue 737 (1913), item 258. 3 pp., 4to. EBB covers a wide range of literary topics: “I have read ‘Douglas on the Modern Greeks.’ [1] I think it a most amusing book … I have not yet finished “Bigland on the Character and Circumstances of Nations.’ [2] An admirable work indeed … I do not admire ‘Mme. de Sevigné’s letters,’ [3] though the French is excellent—the idioms beautiful—yet the sentiment is not novel, and the rhapsody of the style is so affected, so disgusting, so entirely French, that every time I open the book it is rather as a task than a pleasure– the last Canto of ‘Childe Harold’ (certainly much superior to the others) has delighted me more than I can express. The description of the waterfall is the most exquisite piece of poetry that I ever read, ‘The Hell of waters where they howl and hiss and boil in endless torture’ [4] —tis really fine, really poetry. All the energy, all the sublimity of modern verse is centered in these lines—they are models which would not dishonour any man to imitate.”
1. An Essay on Certain Points of Resemblance between the Ancient and Modern Greeks (1813), by Frederic Sylvester North Douglas (1791–1819).
2. An Historical Display of the Effects of Physical and Moral Courses on the Character and Circumstances of Nations (1816), by John Bigland (1750–1832).
3. Marquise de Sévigné (1626–96). The letters for which she is famous were published posthumously, the first collection (31 letters) in 1725, much enlarged in later editions.
4. Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth (1818), stanza 59.
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