Home > Author > Elizabeth Barrett Browning >

" At last we see your advertisement. Viva ‘Agnes Tremorne’! We find it in ‘Orley Farm.’ How admirably this last opens! We are both delighted with it. What a pity it is that so powerful and idiomatic a writer should be so incorrect grammatically and scholastically speaking! Robert insists on my putting down such phrases as these: ‘The Cleeve was distant from Orley two miles, though it could not be driven under five.’ ‘One rises up the hill.’ ‘As good as him.’ ‘Possessing more acquirements than he would have learned at Harrow.’ Learning acquirements! Yes, they are faults, and should be put away by a first-rate writer like Anthony Trollope. It’s always worth while to be correct. But do understand through the pedantry of these remarks that we are full of admiration for the book. The movement is so excellent and straightforward — walking like a man, and ‘rising up-hill,’ and not going round and round, as Thackeray has taken to do lately. He’s clever always, but he goes round and round till I’m dizzy, for one, and don’t know where I am. I think somebody has tied him up to a post, leaving a tether. "

Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Image for Quotes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning quote : At last we see your advertisement. Viva ‘Agnes Tremorne’! We find it in ‘Orley Farm.’ How admirably this last opens! We are both delighted with it. What a pity it is that so powerful and idiomatic a writer should be so incorrect grammatically and scholastically speaking! Robert insists on my putting down such phrases as these: ‘The Cleeve was distant from Orley two miles, though it could not be driven under five.’ ‘One rises up the hill.’ ‘As good as him.’ ‘Possessing more acquirements than he would have learned at Harrow.’ Learning acquirements! Yes, they are faults, and should be put away by a first-rate writer like Anthony Trollope. It’s always worth while to be correct. But do understand through the pedantry of these remarks that we are full of admiration for the book. The movement is so excellent and straightforward — walking like a man, and ‘rising up-hill,’ and not going round and round, as Thackeray has taken to do lately. He’s clever always, but he goes round and round till I’m dizzy, for one, and don’t know where I am. I think somebody has tied him up to a post, leaving a tether.