Dato: April 1848
Fra: Mary Russell Mitford   Til: Charles Boner
Sprog: engelsk.

The last thing I read of Andersen's was his 'Autobiography', and between the vanity of the writher, and the baldness and poverty of the translation, I was completely disgusted. I did not think it possible to so entirely do away with the interest of the rise of a poor boy into intellectual eminence. But he has no sympathy with his own order - he is essentially a toad-eater, a hanger-on in great houses, like the led captains of former days, a man who values his acquaintances for their rank and their riches and their importance in the world; not one who, like you, fills with honour and independence the most honourable and useful part in a great family, but one who uses fame merely as a key to open drawing-room doors, a ladder to climb to high places. Of all living writers the one most free from this fault is Beranger, and at his feet one could cast oneself inadmiration. But I doubt Andersen, and in a different way (for the sin and weakness of am- bition) I doubt Lamartine. [..]

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