SD1604. John Ruskin to John James Ruskin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 371 (in part).
[Herne Hill]
Sunday Evening [5 September 1852]
My dearest Father,
We heard Mr. Bridge this morning—very pleasant, but I like Mr. Moore better, and we shall come there with you when it is possible. We had a very pleasant breakfast with Mr. Rogers—his niece Miss Rogers was there, with Lord Glenelg, and he himself was very lively and happy, talking much about Homer and much about himself, quoting himself with great enjoyment, and saying naïvely, “How sublime people would have called that if they had found it in the Iliad.” The worst point about him is the envy of other poets. I never knew any one conceal it so little. He cannot bear to hear Tennyson so much as named; and some one speaking of Mrs. Browning (Elizabeth Barrett), he sent for one of her poems to read it with a burlesque accent on the ends of the lines, flinging the book from him at last, with an ironical “It’s very affecting.” He was not a little indignant at finding out that we had her last poem, Casa Guidi Windows, in our carriage. I was getting it up, for Patmore had invited me to meet her and her husband the same evening. As Frank had the other horse fresh, I went in, in the evening, but of course only the husband came—whom, however, I liked; he is the only person whom I have ever heard talk rationally about the Italians, though on the liberal side. He sees all their worthlessness, and is without hope. His wife’s poem takes the same view, and is in most respects very noble. She follows good models in her favourite poets, Dante and Æschylus, and there are some fine pieces about Michael Angelo.
Text: The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London, 1903–12), 36, 141–142.
___________________
