Supporting Documents

SD2644.  Matthew Arnold to John Llewelyn Davies

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 359 (in part).

The Athenæum

June 18, 1863

My dear Davies,

Forgive me for not answering your note sooner; …

I have several times been asked to review Browning, but I cannot do it, and for this reason. I think him a real man of genius, with a reach of mind compared to which Tennyson’s reach of mind is petty: on the other hand the indispensable duty of a modern poet is, I think, to “use great plainness of speech,” to be pellucidly and absolutely clear—and here Browning falls very short indeed. I could not in conscience review him without saying this, and the public would inevitably seize upon this, and neglect all one said about Browning’s genius—so that I should do his vogue no good, and should run the risk of annoying a man whom personally I know and like, and whose genius, as I have said, I most fully recognise. …

Text: The Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. Cecil Y. Lang (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1996–2001), 2, 214–215.

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