SOURCE: Blainey, Ann. “The Farthing Epic.” In her The Farthing Poet: A Biography of Richard Hengist Horne 1802-84. A Lesser Literary Lion, pp. 130-40. London: Longmans, 1968.

In the following excerpt, Blainey explores Horne's epic poem Orion, its plot, the unique requirements for its purchase, and its reception.

A year later Horne would feel exhausted and written out; for the present that unusual poetic facility which had produced his religious epic continued undimmed. If anything, it glowed more brightly. He had finished “Ancient Idols” on the twentieth day of July 1842, a day he felt sufficiently important to record exactly for posterity; and for four months thereafter he picked at desultory literary tasks—petty journalism, the reconstruction of some Jacobean plays, the revision of educational tales Mary was writing for children. In November, however, his aimless scribblings began to form themselves into order, and produce the plan of another poem...