780. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 306–308.
[Torquay]
Decr 17th 1840.
I did not say half—not half—enough about the ‘Introduction’– The Apotheosis of Chaucer, or rather your witness to his poetic divineness, is very beautiful—that passage for instance about the greenness of his green leaves & the whiteness of his daisies (so true that is!) & above all a noble paragraph nearer the end, close to the end, testifying to the devotional verity of every veritable poet. I have read it again & again. [1]
Notwithstanding all the merit & the grace, do not some of the poems militate against the principle you set out with? I venture to think that the refashioners stand,—some of them & in a measure,—too far from Chaucer’s side—however graceful the attitudes. You yourself & Wordsworth are devoutly near, & most devoutly. Most—for even Mr Leigh Hunt is sometimes satisfied with being with Chaucer in the spirit, & spurns the accidents of body [2] —while Mr Bell’s Mars & Venus is too smooth & varnished & redolent of the 19th century, as appears to me, for spirit or body. [3] I think people will say ‘you might keep nearer Chaucer’—but however .. they may’nt: and if they are not (say what they please) delighted with this volume, this breathing of sweet souths [4] over the bank of deathless violets, there can be no room for delight in their souls.
No—are you in earnest about liking Psyche? [5] And after that huge mass of spiritual matter hight Gregory?– Perhaps after all, the passion you throw into everything wd exhale too dimly in the allegorical twilight of such a subject. But I will think as you tell me. Only dear Mr Horne, how do you know that I shall think effectively? And indeed you do me “an infinite deal” [6] of superfluous credit, when you suffer my providence of poetry to predestinate habitually the whole future of every poetic subject. I always struggle for a purpose—& mold a beginning middle & end part in my mind before writing a line! No—nothing can be done towards unity without wholeness—& the one purpose, is the soul of the composition,—the proof of life, the puto ergo sum. [7] So I do struggle for the purpose—but not for a ‘plan’ implying I suppose details. Oh but I do not wonder at your doing so—& indeed with so artistic a developper of high dramatic designs, it cd scarcely be otherwise.
You see how the inequalities begin to manifest themselves at the first step!——
Mr Powell’s question was about a stanza in “Cowper’s Grave”, my little poem, which he said Mr Leigh Hunt & himself did not understand in the same way. [8] That was all.
Papa has ventured to leave his card upon you. So he tells me. He is a very bad visitor, or wd have done it long ago,—with his strong impression of all your kindness towards one of his family. Do go and see them in Wimpole Street, dear Mr Horne some day when you are in the neighbourhood—do—before I am there—if really it is not out of all order in me to say such a thing. But it wd give them real pleasure to know you, I am very sure—& besides, I shall like to think that they do–
Ever & truly yours
EBB—
No, we dont agree—& I want to set up not the contrariety but the identity of the principle[s] of Greek versification & ours.
Address: R H Horne, Esqr / 2. Gray’s Inn Square / Gray’s Inn / London.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 107–110 (in part).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. In the introduction to The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, Modernized, Horne said of him, “he is so graphic, so sure of eye and hand, so rich in the power of conveying objects of sense to the imaginations of others, that his words have almost the effect of substances and colours … Certainly, the green leaves of Chaucer are among the very greenest we ever saw, the coolest and freshest; his white and red, the utmost realities the mind, apart from sensuous contact, can possibly apprehend of those colours” (p. xcvi). “His garlands of daisies are so white and full of fresh fragrance in the loveliest mornings in May, that we can scarcely leave them to look at the troop of knights and ladies in various attire, who ride forth” (p. xcvii). At the end, he says, “As every true poet ‘has a song in his mind,’ yet more certainly has every great poet a religious passion in his soul” (p. civ).
2. Horne’s own contributions were the “Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,” “The Reve’s Tale,” and “The Franklin’s Tale.” Wordsworth’s were “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” and “Extract from Troilus and Cresida.” Leigh Hunt supplied “The Manciple’s Tale,” “The Friar’s Tale,” and “The Squire’s Tale.”
3. “The Complaint of Mars and Venus,” by Robert Bell, pp. 211–234.
5. The subject of a projected drama, for which EBB would prepare the outline and Horne the dialogue. As subsequent letters show, a considerable amount of work was done by both during the spring and summer of 1841, but after her return to London in September, she lost interest. Horne never entertained the idea of completing the drama alone, feeling that it would be “like treading upon sacred ground” (EBB-RHH, II, 110). Accounts of the genesis and history of “Psyche Apocalypté” can be found in EBB-RHH (II, 61–110), The St. James’s Magazine and United Empire Review (February 1876, pp. 478–492) and HUP (II, 201–221).
6. The Merchant of Venice, I, 1, 114.
7. “I think therefore I am.”
8. This question was presumably answered in letter 775.
___________________
