SD2824. Edward Dowden to John Dowden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 346 (in part).
8 Montenotte, Cork
[May] 1866
… Thanks for the notes on the Sonnet, especially the calling the different arrangements major and minor. I wonder is there any truth in that. I think the major and minor effects depend more on the last six (not the first eight) lines, and that a distant rhyme for the final one produces the minor effect. I know Blanco White’s very fine sonnet, but forget it—that is, retain only the general impression. Did he say anything of the very finest sonnets (or indeed poems) of their kind in English—Mrs Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese”? He has written some good sonnets himself but rather dilute.
I quite agree with you about the interpretation of “The Lamb of God” in “Ecce Homo.” I am glad you think it the work of a “genius”—so do I! There is something, however, unsatisfying (like Mr Gladstone’s Reform Bill) in dividing the theological and the historical or legislative subjects. There is, I think, a good review in the last number of the Contemporary Review—the best number yet. Did I tell you I got the proofs and sent them off my article. It is 22 pages long—disappointing—the subject too big.
I got another letter from R. Browning in answer to one telling him of some errata in “Sordello,” and expressing my pleasure at the prospect of his new poem. Of course I do not feel at all flattered by being told I “understand his poems surprisingly.”
A carte blanche to fill up for Haw of St Ann’s with French literature is funny. Molière was an eminent French writer, and so was Descartes—and Rousseau—and Pascal—and Bossuet—and Voltaire. However, I can recommend strongly volumes of the Revue des Deux Mondes—all of them. Jouffroy’s “Mélanges Philosophiques” is a book great parts of which would interest and enlighten and stimulate anyone, and costs 3s. 6d. Sainte-Beuve is the most French of Frenchmen and an exquisite critic—but too delicately French to knock one down with admiration—he insinuates and charms—not a great thinker by any means. Everything of Taine’s an Englishman would enjoy, I think, and be most adequately repaid by reading—I should say for Au Taine by all means—his “English Literature” or “Voyage in Italy”—or “Philosophy of Art” (a very little book).
I am taking now an interesting French Review, Revue des Cours littéraires de la France et de l’Etranger, i.e. reports of the University and Public lectures in France and abroad. It keeps one at the centre of literary ideas—Mr Gladstone’s address at Edinburgh is given, and Sir John Browning’s “Lay Sermon à Londres”—and of French—reports of Guizot, Taine, and the other men of note. In the last number a comparison between Henri Heine and Alfred de Musset.
What of the Bible Word-book? I have rested on my oars for the last fortnight—but have got all Jouffroy’s works and begun to read them—a man whose personal intellectual character and history is most interesting—a true man—no wind-bag (spite of his cousin’s real genius) like Cousin. His breaking with Christianity is a poem of the Soul—told in the sincerest and most pathetic way. …
—Yours,
E.D.
Text: Letters of Edward Dowden and his Correspondents (London, 1914), pp. 17–18 (as ?June 1866).
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