SD2375. Harriet Martineau to Editor of National Anti-Slavery Standard
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 350.
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April 23d, 1860
… I see, by your newspapers, as well as hear by private letters, that you have got Mrs. Browning’s new “Poems Before Congress.” Some of us may be conscious of an absurd wish to put off the arrival of that book among you, under a sense of shame that any such book should have been produced by such a woman. But, as it is actually in your hands, there is nothing to be done but to see and tell the truth about it. Those who know her mind after a study of many years will be the first to protest against the natural supposition that she is guilty of the coarse and vulgar worship of success exemplified by the flatterers of the French Emperor generally. Without disputing that his present success blinds her to some things which will disgust her if she lives to see his fall, we may confidently say that her aberration is mainly owing to an ideal and unpractical habit of mind which is no secret to her friends. There have been prior evidences of such misconception of the character of persons whom she supposed she thoroughly knew as may enable us to understand how she may fancy even Louis Napoleon a great man and a public blessing. It is a sad pity—not because any person in the world will adopt her view, in the face of existing facts, but because it is a misfortune when literary genius diverges from its high path to deal falsely with vice, and give fictitious names to a depraved ambition, and a tyranny and treachery unsurpassed in the history of the world. …
H. M.
Text: National Anti-Slavery Standard, 19 May 1860, p. 3.
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