SD1578.2. Mary Russell Mitford to Agnes Jennings
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 18.
Swallowfield
June 1, 1852.
Do, please, send me “The Laird of Caithness,” and any ballads you think good. I can securely trust your taste. I presume my version of “Bonnie Dundee” to be correct, since it is taken from Scott’s own text, in his quite-forgotten or rather never-known play, “The Doom of Devorgoil,” one of those weak dramas which it seems really incredible that such a poet and such a novelist should have written. The most incredible of all is, that, besides its absolute want of merit, this ballad is introduced as having been written thirty years; and a prior of some monastery is also introduced, as having, about the same period, been driven from his priory by the Reformation, thus making contemporaries of John Knox and Claverhouse!
Another ballad that I have been long in search of is “We’ll gae nae mair a roving,” by James the Fifth of Scotland, called by Scott the best comic ballad in any language. “The Gaberlunzie Man,” by the same author, is in Percy; but the other I can nowhere find, although I have half a dozen different collections myself, and sent for Chambers’ “Comic Ballads of Scotland,” making sure to find it there.
The Kossuth trait is capital. I hold the man to be a mere adventurer, and one of the worst sort, blowing up strife amongst the nations. Have you any sympathy with Louis Napoleon? I have. Two or three of my friends, who have been in Paris since the autumn—Mrs. Browning for one—say that “the French people have been with him from the first to the last;” and the ability and courage of the man are worthy of his name. In another thing, too, every letter from France is unanimous—that war with England would be most popular with army and with people, whilst we are as unprepared for such a contingency as anything well can be. Well, I hope the primroses will come first, and you with them.
Yes, I delight in Longfellow, especially “The Golden Legend,” which is full of salt and savour—rich, racy, graphic,—breathing the air of the middle ages, of Gothic architecture, grand cathedrals, quaint German towns. There is an open-air sermon upon bells that one can fancy to have been preached at Paul’s Cross before the Reformation; and a scene in the Scriptorium, or rather a soliloquy of an old monk, employed on illuminating a manuscript, that one can really hear and see, it is so true.
Always faithfully and affectionately yours
M. R. Mitford.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 227–228.
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