SD2356. William Michael Rossetti to William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 346–347.
Somerset House.
19 March. [1860]
Dear Allingham,
Thanks probably to your troubling yourself once more about the matter …
I have not done anything about the commentary on Sordello, which I am the more ashamed to confess as I had written to Browning himself mentioning the idea, & he expressed approval. Utter indisposition to writing has, I must admit, taken possession of me since my secession from the Spectator & dropping from the Saturday Review freed me from doing it as a routine matter of business. Yet I would really like, in a certain sense, to do the commentary: one serious objection is that there seems very little likelihood of getting it published in any form other than that of a separate pamphlet, which would cost something, & probably not sell a copy. I fear I shall never do the thing after all. Talking of Sordello, I have by me a letter from John Tupper telling me that “a great Cambridge Don, Profr Grote, has not only read Sordello, but has set himself & a mutual friend to write out a prose version of some of the most knotty passages, in order to see how the two interpretations look side by side. But Grote is not yet sufficiently confident that he takes in Sordello in its total perfection, & is determined to give, at his first opportunity, an entire week to its serious perusal. One of the outcomes of his present conviction is that Sordello, on the score of difficulty, is much to be preferred to the Agamemnon of Æschylus—his own words. This is curious news, & good.
I do agree in disliking “latest intelligence turned into poetry,” & dare say I shall be scarcely half pleased with Poems before Congress, which I have not yet seen. I also exactly agree with what you say about Louis Napoleon. I believe him to be a bad man—his motives selfish & vulgar; at the same time, I consider his whole course since he came into power compatible with his being a very great man, the spirit & motive being the whole quest<ion. He> has <cer>tainly, by hook or by crook, done a vast good to Italy, & I am not at all prepared to say that he is much out in his management of France. His person is assuredly repulsive: I saw himself in Paris—very like a clammy pork-butcher. Scores of photographs are to be had of him for small sums. I shall send you one (either in this letter or afterwards, as may prove more convenient): there was a most admirable one I saw months ago in a particular shop, showing him seated (very small size) in his cabinet with an expression of triumphant swindlerism which was the very thing. It was done just before he started for the Italian campaign. I shall get that if I can—if not, ano<ther>. …
Ruskin makes indeed the most unconsciona<ble …> every now & then in his poetic apprehension: his painful propensity for Longfellow is no new thing to me—he has coupled him with Browning in print ere now. …
Publication: Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti, ed. Roger W. Peattie (University Park, Penn., 1990), pp. 106–109.
Manuscript: University of Illinois.
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