765. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 284–286.
Torquay.
[Postmark: 14 June 1840]
Thank you dear Mr Horne for the Statesman which is returned by the present post. So dramatists cant originate under the Guelphs—cant ‘call their souls thr own’—and nothing is originated in your tragedies. Such nonsense shdnt provoke us as it does—but it does. [1]
Now there is that Mr Darley who has written a Dramatic Chronicle (Thos a Becket) to prove that Nature being exhausted, there can be no more tragedies!– No!—the Chronicle was’nt written to prove it—the preface was! [2] But he might more safely have left it to the Chronicle. Q E D– A clever picturesque composition—powerful in a certain way, tho’ not in the tragic. If Mr Darley stood alone as a tragedian, his proposition wd be irrefragable– Not that I dis-esteem him. He wrote a beautiful fanciful pastoral once—Sylvia or the May Queen [3] —but the missing thing is passion—pathos—if not a besides.
How wonderful that such ideas shd be taken up by people with one!– You know he is a spirit of the Athenæum. [4] I care for the Athenæum—but as to poetry, they are all sitting (in mistake) just now, upon Caucasus for Parnassus—& wondering why they dont see the Muses. [5] He has’nt a heart even for Bea[u]mont & Fletcher! And to his mind—the cause of the abundance of poetical genius in the old times, was .. the difficulty they had in writing!– We spell too well for anything!!——– There’s a discovery!–
It comes to this. If poetry under any form be exhaustible, Nature is—and if Nature be––we are near a blasphemy. I, for one, cd not believe in the immortality of the soul.
Si l’ame est immortelle,
L’amour ne l’est il pas? [6]
extending ‘l’amour’ into all love of the ideal, & attendant power of idealising.
But—ah—there may be another mistake!– Dear Mr Horne, do you fancy that directly you have opened the minor theatres, Cosmos & Gregories unsent by you, will pour through the doors?– I dont—tho’ the present system is iniquitous, & everything involving a patent odious, & your reformation is all ways desirable. [7] I dont believe in mute inglorious Miltons [8] —& far far less in mute inglorious Shakespeares. Van Amburgh’s new elephant will take turns with Gregory the Seventh—you will see.
Which reminds me of another sort of taking turns—the sort you propose––in cruel jest as I must suppose. You think it wd be a good joke to take the “click of small machinery” into yr Gregorian chaunt!– Well—I can only answer in sober sadness—that I shd like to do anything with you—both for the pleasure’s sake & the honor’s sake—but I am afraid of you. You wd tread on me if I were so near, with the great Gregory foot [9] —& everybody wd talk of want of proportion.
Where do you go in July? For me, I cant answer. I am longing to go to London, & hoping to the last. That is all. For the present, .. certainly the window has been opened twice—an inch,—but I cant be lifted even to the sofa without fainting—and my physician shakes his head or changes the conversation (which is worse) whenever London is mentioned. But I do grow stronger; and if it becomes possible, I shall go—will go! That sounds better—does’nt it?– Putting it off to another summer is like a never.
Oh I was so glad to have your note. I really thought you had gone to America [10] —or were tired of me—worse still. I never thought of “neglect”—that being such a wrong word—but otherwise, I lie here fancying all sorts of things in Heaven & earth–
It is a shame to expect all this stuff to be read by any person with their time filled as yours must be– Never mind throwing aside what I write for your leisure. Never let me be in the way. Pray dont. To prove myself not quite inconsiderate, .. I wanted (shd have preferred it) to send you something meant for the Mthly Chronicle—to know from you whether it shd be something or another thing—but I enclose it by this post to the editor, [11] —that I may not wear you quite away. Now if you are tired you are avenged––for I am too!
Ever & truly yours
EBB.
Address: R H Horne Esqr– / 2– Gray’s Inn Square / Gray’s Inn / London.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 49–54 (in part).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. The Statesman (10 May 1840, p. 10), in a review of Gregory VII, said: “Mr. Horne is unlucky not to have lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He might only have been admired by about the same number of persons as at present; but then that number would have been a much larger and more commanding portion of the reading public. … His dramas then would have been acted. And they might now have been … revived, with a little softening of the language or situations … No critic in that case, would have objected that his language was so like that of the old dramatists … But if Mr. Horne will live under the Guelphs, instead of the Tudors, he must take the consequences. … Forbidden to originate, he may still emulate.... ‘Gregory the Seventh’ is a tragedy of colossal structure; but, to our apprehension, with defects and flaws proportionate to the vastness of the design.”
2. In the preface to his play, Darley said: “Being impressed with an idea that the age of legitimate Acting Drama has long gone by,—that the means to reproduce such a species of literature do not exist in our present cast of mind, manners, and language,—I have under this persuasion spent no vain time upon attempts to fit ‘Thomas à Becket’ for the public scene.” The play’s full title was Thomas à Becket. A Dramatic Chronicle. In Five Acts (1840).
3. EBB’s copy of Darley’s 1827 work is now at the Brighton Area Library (see Reconstruction, A760).
4. Darley was on The Athenæum’s staff.
5. In classical literature, the Caucasus was inhabited by savages, while Parnassus was sacred to the Muses.
6. “If the soul is immortal, is not love also?”
8. Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751), 59.
9. Cf. “Before thy mediating feet,” Gregory VII, act IV, sc. 3 (p. 67).
11. “A Lay of the Rose,” printed in the July number (VI, 13–17).
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