SD1120.05. Richard Hengist Horne to William Johnson Fox
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 4.
2 Gray’s Inn Square, Gray’s Inn,
April 24, 1840.
My dear Sir,—After the hearty and most satisfactory notice of the new edition of Schlegel in the Statesman it may seem the height of ingratitude and stupidity if the publishers of Gregory VII. do not send a copy to the same quarter. …
“Who will, may buy Pope Gregory’s story bold.”
As God’s my judge, I have bought Sordello; and, by the same transcendental witness, I have read steadily through Book I. and firmly believe that I understand almost everything in it, except the story; the connection of the sentences; the perking interrogations; the grammatical structure of most of the longer sentences; the showery aptitude of the historical pepper-box. One poem seems chiefly addressed to gulp-Gorton-swill-Guthrie readers. But what pure diamonds of the first water are to be found in this confused setting! His genius is equal to his perversity—the pity of it is that the shades run so continually into each other. We cannot skip. The poem wants a second volume of unreadable notes, to make it quite perfect. What a waste of genius!—so far as I can judge from Book I. and about fifty dips in the devious whole. …
Text: Richard Garnett and Edward Garnett, The Life of W.J. Fox (London, 1910), p. 197.
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