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Life and Letters of Robert Browning-Part5_Mrs.Sutherland Orr(1828-1903)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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which Carlyle borrowed for his `Life of Cromwell'; an equally early copy

of Bernard Mandeville's `Bees'; very ancient Bibles --



are some of the instances which occur to me. Among more modern publications,

`Walpole's Letters' were familiar to him in boyhood,



as well as the `Letters of Junius' and all the works of Voltaire.

Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part



in the mentalculture superintended by Robert Browning's father:

we can indeed imagine no case in which they would not have found their way



into the boy's life. Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him

in their due time, though his special delight in the Greek language



only developed itself later. But his loving, lifelongfamiliarity with

the Elizabethan school, and indeed with the whole range of English poetry,



seems to point to a more constant study of our national literature.

Byron was his chief master in those early poetic days.



He never ceased to honour him as the one poet who combined

a constructiveimagination with the more technical qualities of his art;



and the result of this period of aesthetic training

was a volume of short poems produced, we are told, when he was only twelve,



in which the Byronic influence was predominant.

The young author gave his work the title of `Incondita',



which conveyed a certain idea of deprecation. He was, nevertheless,

very anxious to see it in print; and his father and mother,



poetry-lovers of the old school, also found in it sufficient merit

to justify its publication. No publisher, however, could be found;



and we can easily believe that he soon afterwards destroyed

the little manuscript, in some mingled reaction of disappointment and disgust.



But his mother, meanwhile, had shown it to an acquaintance of hers,

Miss Flower, who herself admired its contents so much



as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her friend,

the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was transmitted



to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox;

and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at his urgent request,



that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse contained in a letter

from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much later that a friend, who had



earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitely heard of its destruction.

The fragment, which doubtless shared the same fate, was, I am told,



a direct imitation of Coleridge's `Fire, Famine, and Slaughter'.

These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible



to believe them such when we remember that he composed verses

long before he could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact



has recently appeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning

have found their way into the market, and have been bought respectively



by Mr. Dykes Campbell and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them.

It was addressed to Mr. Thomas Powell:



==

Dear Sir, -- I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities.



They were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly

a hundred of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way,



having a great aversion to the practice of many biographers

in recording every triflingincident that falls in their way.



He has not the slightest suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances

are in existence. I have several of the originals by me.



They are all extemporaneous productions, nor has any one a single alteration.

There was one amongst them `On Bonaparte' -- remarkably beautiful --



and had I not seen it in his own handwriting I never would have believed it

to have been the production of a child. It is destroyed.



Pardon my troubling you with these specimens, and requesting you

never to mention it, as Robert would be very much hurt.






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