SD1867. Charles Kingsley to Augustus William Gurney

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 384 (in part).

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3 October 1855

As for poor Maud. It is a sad falling off. There are some scraps in it most exquisite …

I am glad you appreciate Browning’s plays: but he will never be a poet. The iron has entered into his soul. He was born and bred a Dissenter of the trois état, and though he is a good fellow, nothing will take the smell of tallow and brown sugar out of him. He cannot help being coarse and vulgar, and is naively unaware of the fact. However, if he had been born either a gentleman (of course I mean a churchman, for all gentlemen owe that name to Church influence over themselves or their parents) or a hard handed working-man, in contact with iron fact, he might have been a fine poet. As it is “plaudite”—but also “exeat.” He has done and run. Who comes next? …

Text: Margaret Farrand Thorp, Charles Kingsley (Princeton, 1937), pp. 94–95.

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