The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 12

Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists; and of Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss Mitford and Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly cultivated women, are not Grecians, and therefore judge the papers simply as English compositions.

The single unfavorable opinion _is_ Mr. Hunter's, who thinks that the criticisms are not given with either sufficient seriousness or diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of effort through the whole. Many more persons may say so whose voices I do not hear. I am glad that yours, my dear indulgent friend, is not one of them.

Believe me, your ever affectionate

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_To H.S. Boyd_ May 17, 1842.

My very dear Friend,--Have you thought all unkindness out of my silence? Yet the inference is not a true one, however it may look in logic.

You do not like Silentiarius _very much_ (that is _my_ inference), since you have kept him so short a time. And I quite agree with you that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory n.a.z.ianzen, however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his versification. My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two of each of them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the very first cla.s.s of the productions of the Christian centuries. Synesius and John of Euchaita! I shall always think of those two together--not by their similarity, but their dignity.

I return you the books you lent me with true thanks, and also those which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your hands for me. I thank _you_ for them, and _you_ must be good enough to thank _her_. They were of use, although of a rather sublime indifference for poets generally....

I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you asked for, and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the English Poets, under the pretence of a review of 'The Book of the Poets,' a bookseller's selection published lately. I begin from Langland, of Piers Plowman and the Malvern Hills. The first paper went to the editor last week, and I have heard nothing as to whether it will appear on Sat.u.r.day or not, and perhaps if it does you won't care to have it sent to you. Tell me if you do or don't. I have suffered unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty of east winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better, in _that_. Flus.h.i.+e means to bark the next time he sees you in revenge for what you say of him.

Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as

Your ever affectionate E.B.B.

_To H.S. Boyd_ June 3, 1842.

My very dear Friend,--I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know of the publication of my 'English Poets,' because I did not know myself when the publication was to take place, and I hope you will forgive the innocent crime and accept the first number going to you with this note. I warn you that there will be two numbers more at _least_. Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible magnanimity of reading them through.

And now I am fit for rivals.h.i.+p with your clocks, papa having given me an Aeolian harp for the purpose. Do you know the music of an Aeolian harp, and that nothing below the spherical harmonies is so sweet and soft and mournfully wild? The amusing part of it is (after the poetical) that Flus.h.i.+e is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes it as very hard that I should say 'beautiful' to anything except his ears!

Arabel talks of going to see you; but if you are sensible to this intense and most overcoming heat, you will pardon her staying away for the present.

We have heard to-day that Annie proposes to publish her Miscellany by subscription; and although I know it to be the only way, compatible with publication at all, to avoid a pecuniary loss, yet the custom is so entirely abandoned except in the case of persons of a lower condition of life than _your daughter_, that I am sorry to think of the observations it may excite. The whole scheme has appeared to me from the beginning _most foolish_, and if you knew what I know of the state and fortune of our ephemeral literature, you would use what influence you have with her to induce her to condemn her 'contributions' to the adorning of a private annual rather than the purpose in unhappy question. I wish I dared to appeal through my true love for her to her own good sense once more.

My very dear friend's affectionate and grateful E.B.B.

If you _do_ read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech you, your full and free opinion of them.

_To H.S. Boyd_ June 22, 1842.

My very dear Friend,--I thank you gratefully for your two notes, with their united kindness and candour--the latter still rarer than the former, if less 'sweet upon the tongue.' Sir William Alexander's tragedy _(that_ is the right name, I think, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling) you will not find mentioned among my dramatic notices, because I was much pressed for room, and had to treat the whole subject as briefly as possible, striking off, like the Roman, only the heads of the flowers, and I did not, besides, receive your injunction until my third paper on the dramatists was finished and in the press. When you read it you will find some notice of that tragedy by Marlowe, the first knowledge of which I owe to you, my dear Mr.

Boyd, as how much besides? And then comes the fourth paper, and I tremble to antic.i.p.ate the possible--nay, the very probable--scolding I may have from you, upon my various heresies as to Dryden and Pope and Queen Anne's versificators. In the meantime you have breathing time, for Mr. Dilke, although very gracious and courteous to my offence of extending the two papers he asked for _into four_,[65] yet could find no room in the 'Athenaeum' last week for me, and only _hopes_ for it this week. And after this week comes the British a.s.sociation business, which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of the reader,' whereas _I_ say (at least think) that it will help him quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that you like at least the second article. That is encouragement to me.

Flus.h.i.+e did not seem to think the harp alive when it was taken out of the window and laid close to him. He examined it particularly, and is a philosophical dog. But I am sure that at first and while it was playing he thought so.

In the same way he can't bear me to look into a gla.s.s, because he thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking gla.s.s, and he is jealous of its being so close to _me_. He used to tremble and bark at it, but now he is _silently_ jealous, and contents himself with squeezing close, close to me and kissing me expressively.

My very dear friend's ever gratefully affectionate E.B.B.

[Footnote 65: Ultimately five.]

_To John Kenyon_ 50 Wimpole Street: Sunday night [September 1842].

My dear Mr. Kenyon,--Having missed my pleasure to-day by a coincidence worse for me than for you, I must, tired as I am to-night, tell you--ready for to-morrow's return of the books--what I have waited three whole days hoping to tell you by word of mouth. But mind, before I begin, I don't do so out of despair ever to see you again, because I trust steadfastly to your kindness to _come_ again when _you_ are not 'languid' and I am alone as usual; only that I dare not keep back from you any longer the following message of Miss Mitford. She says: 'Won't he take us in his way to Torquay? or from Torquay? Beg him to do so--and of all love, to tell us _when_.' Afterwards, again: 'I think my father is better. Tell Mr. Kenyon what I say, and stand my friend with him and beg him to come.'

Which I do in the most effectual way--in her own words.

She is much pleased by means of your introduction. 'Tell dear Mr.

Kenyon how very very much I like Mrs. Leslie. She seems all that is good and kind, and to add great intelligence and agreeableness to these prime qualities.'

Now I have done with being a messenger of the G.o.ds, and verily my caduceus is trembling in my hand.

O Mr. Kenyon! what have you done? You will know the interpretation of the reproach, your conscience holding the key of the cypher.

In the meantime I ought to be thanking you for your great kindness about this divine Tennyson.[66] Beautiful! beautiful! After all, it is a n.o.ble thing to be a poet. But notwithstanding the poetry of the novelties--and you will observe that his two preceding volumes (only one of which I had seen before, having inquired for the other vainly) are included in these two--nothing appears to me quite equal to 'Oenone,' and perhaps a few besides of my ancient favorites. That is not said in disparagement of the last, but in admiration of the first. There is, in fact, more thought--more bare brave working of the intellect--in the latter poems, even if we miss something of the high ideality, and the music that goes with it, of the older ones. Only I am always inclined to believe that philosophic thinking, like music, is involved, however occultly, in high ideality of any kind.

You have not a key to the cypher of this at least, and I am so tired that one word seems tumbling over another all the way.

Ever affectionately yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

You will let me keep your beautiful ballad and the G.o.ds[67] a little longer.

[Footnote 66: This refers to the recent publication of Tennyson's _Poems_, in two volumes, the first containing a re-issue of poems previously published, while the second was wholly new, and included such poems as the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'Ulysses,' and 'Locksley Hall.']

[Footnote 67: No doubt Mr. Kenyon's translation of Schiller's 'G.o.ds of Greece,' which was the occasion of Miss Barrett's poem 'The Dead Pan.']

_To H.S. Boyd_ September 14, 1842.

My very dear Friend,--I have made you wait a long time for the 'North American Review,' because when your request came it was no longer within my reach, and because since then I have not been so well as usual from a sweep of the wing of the prevailing epidemic. Now, however, I am _better_ than I was even before the attack, only wis.h.i.+ng that it were possible to hook-and-eye on another summer to the hem of the garment of this last sunny one. At the end of such a double summer, to measure things humanly, I might be able to go to see you at Hampstead. Nevertheless, winters and adversities are more fit for us than a constant sun.

I suppose, dear Mr. Boyd, you want only to have this review read to you, and not _written_. Because it isn't out of laziness that I send the book to you; and Arabel would copy whatever you please willingly, provided you wished it. Keep the book as long as you please. I have put a paper mark and a pencil mark at the page and paragraph where I am taken up. It seems to me that the condemnation of 'The Seraphim' is not too hard. The poem wants _unity_.

As to your 'words of fire' about Wordsworth, if I had but a cataract at command I would try to quench them. His powers should not be judged of by my extracts or by anybody's extracts from his last-published volume.[68] Do you remember his grand ode upon Childhood--worth, to my apprehension, just twenty of Dryden's 'St. Cecilia's Day'--his sonnet upon Westminster Bridge, his lyric on a lark, in which the lark's music swells and exults, and the many n.o.ble and glorious pa.s.sages of his 'Excursion'? You must not indeed blame me for estimating Wordsworth at _his height_, and on the other side I readily confess to you that he is occasionally, and not unfrequently, heavy and dull, and that Coleridge had an intenser genius. Tell me if you know anything of Tennyson. He has just published two volumes of poetry, one of which is a republication, but both full of inspiration.

Ever my very dear friend's affectionate and grateful E.B.B.

[Footnote 68: _Poems, chiefly of early and late years, including The Borderers, a Tragedy_ (1842).]

_To Mrs. Martin_ 50 Wimpole Street: October 22, 1842.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Waiting first for you to write to me, and then waiting that I might write to you cheerfully, has ended by making so long a silence that I am almost ashamed to break it. And perhaps, even if I were not ashamed, you would be angry--perhaps you _are_ angry, and don't much care now whether or not you ever hear from me again. Still I must write, and I must moreover ask you to write to me again; and I must in particular a.s.sure you that I have continued to love you sincerely, notwithstanding all the silence which might seem to say the contrary. What I should like best just now is to have a letter speaking comfortable details of your being comparatively well again; yet I hope on without it that you really are so much better as to be next to quite well. It was with great concern that I heard of the indisposition which hung about you, dearest Mrs. Martin, so long--I who had congratulated myself when I saw you last on the promise of good health in your countenance. May G.o.d bless you, and keep you better! And may you take care of yourself, and remember how many love you in the world, from dear Mr. Martin down to--E.B.B.

Well, now I must look around me and consider what there is to tell you. But I have been uneasy in various ways, sometimes by reason and sometimes by fantasy; and even now, although my dear old friend Dr.

Scully is something better, he lies, I fear, in a very precarious state, while dearest Miss Mitford's letters from the deathbed of her father make my heart ache as surely almost as the post comes. There is nothing more various in character, nothing which distinguishes one human being from another more strikingly, than the expression of feeling, the manner in which it influences the outward man. If I were in her circ.u.mstances, I should sit paralysed--it would be impossible to me to write or to cry. And she, who loves and feels with the intensity of a nature warm in everything, seems to turn to sympathy by the very instinct of grief, and sits at the deathbed of her last relative, writing there, in letter after letter, every symptom, physical or moral--even to the very words of the raving of a delirium, and those, heart-breaking words! I could not write such letters; but I know she feels as deeply as any mourner in the world can. And all this reminds me of what you once asked me about the inscriptions in Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?...