“Words, and symbols—which latter include sculpture and painting—are the…” — Richard Henry Horne | V2Melody

“Words, and symbols—which latter include sculpture and painting—are the only medium of communication between the generations of mankind.”

Affirming that words alone preserve and transmit human thought across time · Essay, Remarks on Translation (1844)

Richard Henry Horne

About Richard Henry Horne

Richard Henry Horne

31 December 1803–13 March 1884

Richard Henry Horne entered the world in London on the last day of 1802 (though he himself, with characteristic contrariness, sometimes gave the date as New Year's Day 1803), the son of James Horne, a quarter-master in the 61st Regiment of Foot. His father's military postings took the family to Guernsey, where they…

More by Richard Henry Horne

Poems by Richard Henry Horne

More remarks by Richard Henry Horne

“The price of the present edition is one farthing, in order to bring it within the reach of the million.”

Expressing an ambition to make ambitious poetry accessible to a broad readership · Preface to Orion

Fame
Poetry

“Hitherto they have had almost everything done for them that a nation could desire... everything, in short, has been done, except to make them intelligible to the general reader.”

Observing that scholarship had failed to render Chaucer readable by ordinary people · Introduction to Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernised (1841)

“The present publication does not result from an antiquarian feeling about Chaucer as the Father of English Poetry, highly interesting as he must always be in that character alone; but from the extraordinary fact, to which there is no parallel in the history of the literature of nations, that although he is one of the great poets for all time, his works are comparatively unknown to the world.”

Explaining the motive for modernising Chaucer as making a timeless poet accessible · Introduction to Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernised (1841)