1841-1843
In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually achieved, and
Miss Barrett returned to her father's house in London, from which she
was never to be absent for more than a few hours at a time until the
day, five years later, when she finally left it to join her husband,
Robert Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to her room
for the greater part of each year, and unable to see any but a
few intimate friends. Still, she regained some sort of strength,
especially during the warmth of the summer months, and was able to
throw herself with real interest into literary work. In a life such
as this there are few outward events to record, and its story is best
told in Miss Barrett's own letters, which, for the most part, need
little comment. The letters of the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842
are almost entirely written to Mr. Boyd, and the main subject of them
is the series of papers on the Greek Christian poets and the English
poets which, at the suggestion of Mr. Dilke, then editor of the
'Athenaeum,' she contributed to that periodical. Of the composition of
original poetry we hear less at this time.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: October 2, 1841.
My very dear Friend,--I thank you for the letter and books which
crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your
welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read--I
have read them _again_: for I remember reading them under your star
(or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, on the other
hand, may remember of _me_, that I never could concede to you much
admiration for your Gregory as a poet--not even to his grand work 'De
Virginitate.' He is one of those writers, of whom there are instances
in our own times, who are only poetical in prose.
The passage imitative of Chryses I cannot think much of. Try to be
forgiving. It is toasted dry between the two fires of the Scriptures
and Homer, and is as stiff as any dry toast out of the simile. To be
sincere, I like dry toast better.
The Hymns and Prayers I very much prefer; and although I remembered a
good deal about them, it has given me a pleasure you will approve of
to go through them in this edition. The one which I like best, which I
like far best, which I think worth all the rest ('De Virginitate'
and all put together), is the _second_ upon page 292, beginning 'Soi
charis.' It is very fine, I think, written out of the heart and for
the heart, warm with a natural heat, and not toasted dry and brown and
stiff at a fire by any means.
Dear Mr. Boyd, I coveted Arabel's walk to you the other day. I shall
often covet my neighbour's walks, I believe, although (and may God be
praised for it!) I am more happy--that is, nearing to the feeling of
happiness now--than a month since I could believe possible to a heart
so bruised and crushed as mine has [been] be at home is a blessing and
a relief beyond what these words can say.
But, dear Mr. Boyd, you said something in a note to Arabel some little
time ago, which I will ask of your kindness to avoid saying again. I
have been through the whole summer very much better; and even if it
were not so I should dread being annoyed by more medical speculations.
Pray do not suggest any. I am not in a state to admit of experiments,
and my case is a very clear and simple one. I have not _one symptom_
like those of my old illness; and after more than fifteen years'
absolute suspension of them, their recurrence is scarcely probable. My
case is very clear: not tubercular consumption, not what is called a
'decline,' but an affection of the lungs which leans towards it. You
know a blood-vessel broke three years ago, and I never quite got over
it. Mr. Jago, not having seen me, could scarcely be justified in a
conjecture of the sort, when the opinions of four able physicians,
two of them particularly experienced in diseases of the chest, and
the other two the most eminent of the faculty in the east and west of
England, were decided and contrary, while coincident with each other.
Besides, you see, I am becoming better--and I could not desire more
than that. Dear Mr. Boyd, do not write a word about it any more,
either to me or others. I am sure you would not willingly disturb me.
Nelly Bordman is good and dear, but I can't let her prescribe for me
anything except her own affection.
I hope Arabel expressed for me my thankful sense of Mrs. Smith's kind
intention. But, indeed, although I would see _you_, dear Mr. Boyd,
gladly, or an angel or a fairy or any very particular friend, I am
not fit either in body or spirit for general society. I _can't_ see
people, and if I could it would be very bad for me. Is Mrs. Smith
writing? Are you writing? Part of me is worn out; but the poetical
part--that is, the _love_ of poetry--is growing in me as freshly and
strongly as if it were watered every day. Did anybody ever love it and
stop in the middle? I wonder if anybody ever did?... Believe me your
affectionateE.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: December 29, 1841.
My dear Friend,--I should not have been half as idle about
transcribing these translations[58] if I had fancied you could care so
much to have them as Arabel tells me you do. They are recommended to
your mercy, O Greek Daniel! The _last_ sounds in my ears most like
English poetry; but I assure you I took the least pains with it. The
second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does not) equal
it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to the Greek. I praised
that Greek poem above all of Gregory's, for the reason that it has
_unity and completeness_, for which, to speak generally, you may
search the streets and squares and alleys of Nazianzum in vain. Tell
me what you think of my part.
Ever affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Have you a Plotinus, and would you trust him to me in that case? Oh
no, you do not tempt me with your musical clocks. My time goes to the
best music when I read or write; and whatever money I can spend upon
my own pleasures flows away in books.
[Footnote 58: Translations of three poems of Gregory Nazianzen,
printed in the _Athenaeum_ of January 8, 1842.]
_To Mr. Westwood_[59]
50 Wimpole Street: January 2, 1842.
Miss Barrett, inferring Mr. Westwood from the handwriting, begs his
acceptance of the unworthy little book[60] he does her the honour of
desiring to see.
It is more unworthy than he could have expected when he expressed that
desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was
scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is
worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity
of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief
poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole
volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal
reasons--except for the traces of dear affections, since rudely
wounded, and of that _love_ of poetry which began with her sooner than
so soon, and must last as long as life does, without being subject
to the changes of life. Little more, therefore, can remain for such
a volume than to be humble and shrink from circulation. Yet Mr.
Westwood's kind words win it to his hands. Will he receive at the same
moment the expression of touched and gratified feelings with which
Miss Barrett read what he wrote on the subject of her later volumes,
still very imperfect, although more mature and true to the _truth_
within? Indeed she is thankful for what he said so kindly in his note
to her.
[Footnote 59: Mr. Thomas Westwood was the author of a volume of
'Poems,' published in 1840, 'Beads from a Rosary' (1843), 'The Burden
of the Bell' (1850), and other volumes of verse. Several of his
compositions were appearing occasionally in the _Athenaeum_ at the
time when this correspondence with Miss Barrett commenced.]
[Footnote 60: The _Essay on Mind_.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: January 6, 1842.
My dear Friend,--I have done your bidding and sent the translations
to the 'Athenaeum,' attaching to them an infamous prefatory note which
says all sorts of harm of Gregory's poetry. You will be very angry
with it and me.
And you _may_ be angry for another reason--that in the midst of my
true thankfulness for the emendations you sent me, I ventured to
reject one or two of them. You are right, probably, and I wrong; but
still, I thought within myself with a womanly obstinacy not altogether
peculiar to me,--'If he and I were to talk together about them, he
would kindly give up the point to me--so that, now we cannot talk
together, _I might as well take it_.' Well, you will see what I have
done. Try not to be angry with me. You shall have the 'Athenaeum' as
soon as possible.
My dear Mr. Boyd, you know how I disbelieved the probability of these
papers being accepted. You will comprehend my surprise on receiving
last night a very courteous: note from the editor, which I would
send to you if it were legible to anybody except people used to
learn reading from the pyramids. He wishes me to contribute to the
'Athenaeum' some prose papers in the form of reviews--'the review
being a mere form, and the book a mere text.' He is not very
clear--but I fancy that a few translations of _excerpta_, with a prose
analysis and synthesis of the original author's genius, might suit
his purpose. Now suppose I took up some of the early Christian Greek
poets, and wrote a few continuous papers _so_?[61] Give me your
advice, my dear friend! I think of Synesius, for one. Suppose you send
me a list of the names which occur to you! _Will_ you advise me? Will
you write directly? Will you make allowance for my teazing you? Will
you lend me your little Synesius, and Clarke's book? I mean the one
commenced by Dr. Clarke and continued by his son. Above all things,
however, I want the advice.
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Wednesday, January 13, 1842 (postmark).
My dear Friend,--Thank you, thank you, for your kind suggestion and
advice altogether. I had just (when your note arrived) finished two
hymns of Synesius, one being the seventh and the other the ninth.
Oh! I do remember that you performed upon the latter, and my modesty
should have certainly bid me 'avaunt' from it. Nevertheless, it is so
fine, so prominent in the first class of Synesius's beauties, that I
took courage and dismissed my scruples, and have produced a version
which I have not compared to yours at all hitherto, but which probably
is much rougher and _rather_ closer, winning in faith what it loses
in elegance. 'Elegance' isn't a word for me, you know, generally
speaking. The barbarians herd with me, 'by two and three.'
I had a letter to-day from Mr. Dilke, who agrees to everything, closes
with the idea about 'Christian Greek poets' (only begging me to keep
away from theology), and suggesting a subsequent reviewal of English
poetical literature, from Chaucer down to our times.[62] Well, but
the Greek poets. With all your kindness, I have scarcely sufficient
materials for a full and minute survey of them. I have won a sight of
the 'Poetae Christiani,' but the price is ruinous--_fourteen guineas_,
and then the work consists almost entirely of Latin poets, deducting
Gregory and Nonnus, and John Damascenus, and a cento from Homer by
somebody or other. Turning the leaves rapidly, I do not see much else;
and you know I may get a separate copy of John Dam., and have access
to the rest. Try to turn in your head what I should do. Greg. Nyssen
did not write poems, did he? Have I a chance of seeing your copy of
Mr. Clarke's book? It would be useful in the matters of chronology.
I humbly beg your pardon, and Gregory's, for the insolence of my note.
It was as brief as it could be, and did not admit of any extended
reference and admiration to his qualities as an orator. But whoever
read it to you should have explained that when I wrote 'He was an
orator,' the word _orator_ was marked emphatically, so as to appear
printed in capital letters of emphasis. Do not say 'you _chose_,' 'you
_chose_.' I didn't and don't choose to be obstinate, indeed; but I
can't see the sense of that 'heavenly soul.'
Ever your grateful and affectionate
E.B.B.
I shall have room for praising Gregory in these papers.
[Footnote 61: The series of papers on the Greek Christian Poets
appeared in the _Athenaeum_ for February and March 1842; they are
reprinted in the _Poetical Works_, v. 109-200.]
[Footnote 62: This scheme took shape in the series of papers on the
English Poets which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the course of June
and August 1842 (reprinted in _Poetical Works_, v. 201-290).]
_To H.S. Boyd_
February 4, 1842.
My dear Friend,--You must be thinking, if you are not a St. Boyd for
good temper, that among the Gregorys and Synesiuses I have forgotten
everything about you. No; indeed it has not been so. I have never
_stopped_ being grateful to you for your kind notes, and the two last
pieces of Gregory, although I did not say an overt 'Thank you;' but
I have been very very busy besides, and thus I answered to myself for
your being kind enough to pardon a silence which was compelled rather
than voluntary.
Do you ever observe that as vexations don't come alone, occupations
don't, and that, if you happen to be engaged upon one particular
thing, it is the signal for your being waylaid by bundles of letters
desiring immediate answers, and proof sheets or manuscript works whose
writers request your opinion while their 'printer waits'? The old
saints are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have
been _busy upon busy_.
The first part of my story about the Greek poets went to the
'Athenaeum' some days ago, but, although graciously received by the
editor, it won't appear this week, or I should have had a proof sheet
(which was promised to me) before now. I must contrive to include all
I have to say on the subject in _three parts_. They will admit, they
tell me, a fourth _if I please_, but evidently they would prefer as
much brevity as I could vouchsafe. Only two poets are in the first
notice, and _twenty_ remain--and neither of the two is Gregory.
Will you let me see that volume of Gregory which contains the
'Christus Patiens'? Send it by any boy on the heath, and I will
remunerate him for the walk and the burden, and thank you besides. Oh,
don't be afraid! I am not going to charge it upon Gregory, but on the
younger Apollinaris, whose claim is stronger, and I rather wish to
refresh my recollection of the height and breadth of that tragic
misdemeanour.
It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain, and equally so
that I continue most decidedly better, notwithstanding the winter. I
feel, too--I do hope not ungratefully--the blessing granted to me in
the possibility of literary occupation,--which is at once occupation
and distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher) calls
literature a 'fireproof pleasure.' How truly! How deeply I have felt
that truth!
May God bless you, dear Mr. Boyd. I don't despair of looking in your
face one day yet before my last.
Ever your affectionate and obliged
E.B.B.
Arabel's love.
_To H.S. Boyd_
March 2, 1842.
My ever very dear Friend,--Do receive the assurance that whether I
leave out the right word or put in the wrong one, you never can be
other to me than just _that_ while I live, and why not after I have
ceased to live? And now--what have I done in the meantime, to be
called 'Miss Barrett'? 'I pause for a reply.'
Of course it gives me very great pleasure to hear you speak so kindly
of my first paper. Some _bona avis_ as good as a nightingale must have
shaken its wings over me as I began it; and if it will but sit on
the same spray while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly
four-fold. The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was so
fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to my writing
case with both its hands), that I would not do any writing, even as
little as this note, until it was quite gone out of sight. You know it
is possible that he, the editor, may not please to have the _fourth_
paper; but even in that case, it is better for the 'Remarks' to remain
fragmentary, than be compressed till they are as dry as a _hortus
siccus_ of poets.
Certainly you do and must praise my number one too much. Number one
(that's myself) thinks so. I do really; and the supererogatory virtue
of kindness may be acknowledged out of the pale of the Romish Church.
In regard to Gregory and Synesius, you will see presently that I have
not wronged them altogether.
As you have ordered the 'Athenaeums,' I will not send one to-morrow
so as to repeat my ill fortune of being too late. But tell me if you
would like to have any from me, and how many.
It was very kind in you to pat Flush's[63] head in defiance of danger
and from pure regard for me. I kissed his head where you had patted
it; which association of approximations I consider as an imitation
of shaking hands with you and as the next best thing to it. You
understand--don't you?--that Flush is my constant companion, my
friend, my amusement, lying with his head on one page of my folios
while I read the other. (Not _your_ folios--I respect _your_ books,
be sure.) Oh, I dare say, if the truth were known, Flush understands
Greek excellently well.
I hope you are right in thinking that we shall meet again. Once I
wished _not_ to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up
in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.
Be it all as God wills.
Believe me, your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
[Footnote 63: Miss Barrett's dog, the gift of Miss Mitford. His praise
is sung in her poem, 'To Flush, my Dog' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 19),
and in many of the following letters. He accompanied his mistress to
Italy, lived to a good old age, and now lies buried in the vaults of
Casa Guidi.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
Saturday night, March 5, 1842.
My very dear Friend,--I am quite angry with myself for forgetting your
questions when I answered your letter.
Could you really imagine that I have not looked into the Greek
tragedians for years, with my true love for Greek poetry? That is
asking a question, you will say, and not answering it. Well, then,
I answer by a 'Yes' the one you put to me. I had two volumes of
Euripides with me in Devonshire, and have read him as well as
Aeschylus and Sophocles--that is _from_ them--both before and since
I went there. You know I have gone through every line of the three
tragedians long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive reading.
You know also that I had at different times read different dialogues
of Plato; but when three years ago, and a few months previous to my
leaving home, I became possessed of a complete edition of his works,
edited by Bekker, why then I began with the first volume and went
through the whole of his writings, both those I knew and those I did
not know, one after another: and have at this time read, not only all
that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those dialogues and
epistles which pass falsely under his name--everything except two
books I think, or three, of the treatise 'De Legibus,' which I shall
finish in a week or two, as soon as I can take breath from Mr. Dilke.
Now the questions are answered.
Ever your affectionate and grateful friend,
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Thursday, March 10, 1842 [postmark].
My very dear Friend,--I did not know until to-day whether the paper
would appear on Saturday or not; but as I have now received the proof
sheets, there can be no doubt of it. I have been and _am_ hurried and
hunted almost into a corner through the pressing for the fourth paper,
and the difficulty about books. You will forgive a very short note to
night.
I have read of Aristotle only his Poetics, his Ethics, and his work
upon Rhetoric, but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I
finish Plato's last page. Aristophanes I took with me into Devonshire;
and after all, I do not know much more of _him_ than three or four of
his plays may stand for. Next week, my very dear friend, I shall be at
your commands, and sit in spirit at your footstool, to hear and answer
anything you may care to ask me--but oh! what have I done that you
should talk to _me_ about 'venturing,' or 'liberty,' or anything of
that kind?
From your affectionate and grateful catechumen,
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_.
March 29, 1842.
My very dear Friend,--I received your long letter and receive your
short one, and thank you for the pleasure of both. Of course I am very
_very_ glad of your approval in the matter of the papers, and your
kindness could not have wished to give me more satisfaction than
it gave actually. Mr. Kenyon tells me that Mr. Burgess[64] has been
reading and commending the papers, and has brought me from him a newly
discovered scene of the 'Bacchae' of Euripides, edited by Mr. Burgess
himself for the 'Gentlemen's Magazine,' and of which he considers that
the 'Planctus Mariae,' at least the passage I extracted from it, is an
imitation. Should you care to see it? Say 'Yes,'--and I will send it
to you.
Do you think it was wrong to make _eternity_ feminine? I knew that
the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined that the English
personification should be so. Am I wrong in this? Will you consider
the subject again?
Ah, yes! That was a mistake of mine about putting Constantine for
Constantius. I wrote from memory, and the memory betrayed me. But say
nothing about it. Nobody will find it out. I send you Silentiarius and
some poems of Pisida in the same volume. Even if you had not asked for
them, I should have asked you to look at some passages which are fine
in both. It appears to me that Silentiarius writes difficult Greek,
overlaying his description with a multitude of architectural and
other far fetched words! Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other
causes, particularly in the 'Hexaëmeron,' which is not in the book
I send you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish
giants), which you may see if you please. I will send a coach and six
with it if you please.
John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge of to _you.
You_ lent me the book with his poems, you know. He is a great favorite
of mine in all ways. I very much admire his poetry.
Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe that the book I
send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places,
unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from
my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked to compare
judgments with you.
Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.
[Footnote 64: George Burges, the classical scholar. He had in 1832
contributed to the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (under a pseudonym) some
lines purporting to be a newly discovered portion of the _Bacchae_,
but really composed by himself on the basis of a parallel passage
in the _Christus Patiens_. It is apparently to these lines that Miss
Barrett alludes, though the 'discovery' was then nearly ten years
old.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: April 2, 1842.
My very dear Friend,--... As to your kind desire to hear whatever in
the way of favorable remark I have gathered together for fruit of my
papers, I put on a veil and tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well
done, although 'labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of
the subject;' that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the
warmheartedness common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [_sic_] read them
'with great pleasure' unconsciously of the author; and that Mr. Home
the poet and Mr. Browning the poet were not behind in approbation. Mr.
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 Nazianzen,
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 class 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 Saturday 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_. Flushie
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 rivalship 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 Flushie 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 anticipate 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 Association 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.
Flushie 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 glass, because he
thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking glass, 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 gods, 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 noble 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 gods[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 'Gods
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 wishing
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 noble and glorious passages
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 assure 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 God 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 circumstances, 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?...
And now you will kindly like to have a word said about myself, and it
need not be otherwise than a word to give your kindness pleasure. The
long splendid summer, exhausting as the heat was to me sometimes, did
me essential good, and left me walking about the room and equal to
going downstairs (which I achieved four or five times), and even to
going out in the chair, without suffering afterwards. And, best of
all, the spitting of blood (I must tell you), which more or less kept
by me continually, _stopped quite_ some six weeks ago, and I have thus
more reasonable hopes of being really and essentially better than
I could have with such a symptom loitering behind accidental
improvements. Weak enough, and with a sort of pulse which is not
excellent, I certainly remain; but still, if I escape any decided
attack this winter--and I am in garrison now--there are expectations
of further good for next summer, and I may recover some moderate
degree of health and strength again, and be able to _do_ good instead
of receiving it only.
I write under the eyes of Wordsworth. Not Wordsworth's living eyes,
although the actual living poet had the infinite kindness to ask Mr.
Kenyon twice last summer when he was in London, if he might not
come to see me. Mr. Kenyon said 'No'--I couldn't have said 'No' to
Wordsworth, though I had never gone to sleep again afterwards. But
this Wordsworth who looks on me now is Wordsworth in a picture. Mr.
Haydon the artist, with the utmost kindness, has sent me the portrait
he was painting of the great poet--an unfinished portrait--and I am
to keep it until he wants to finish it. Such a head! such majesty! and
the poet stands musing upon Helvellyn! And all that--poet, Helvellyn,
and all--is in my room![69]
Give my kind love to Mr. Martin--_our_ kind love, indeed, to both of
you--and believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,
Your ever affectionate BA.
Is there any hope for us of you before the winter ends? Do consider.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Monday, October 31, 1842.
My very dear Friend,--I have put off from day to day sending you
these volumes, and in the meantime _I have had a letter from the great
poet_! Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to
Mr. Haydon, and that Mr. Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth? The result
was that Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me. King John's barons were never
better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.[70]
But I won't tell you any more about it until you have read the poems
which I send you. Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet
written on Westminster Bridge, vol. iii. page 78. Then take from the
sixth volume, page 152, the passage beginning 'Within the soul' down
to page 153 at 'despair,' and again at page 155 beginning with
I have seen
A curious child, &c.
down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these
passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me
further by reading, out of the _second_ volume, the two poems called
'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page 172 and page 161. I will not
ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own
account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound'
in the same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet,
with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be
candid. Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,
Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 69: It was this picture that called forth the sonnet, 'On
a Portrait of Wordsworth by B.R. Haydon' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 62),
alluded to in the next letter.]
[Footnote 70: The following is the letter from Wordsworth which gave
such pleasure to Miss Barrett, and which she treasured among her
papers for the rest of her life. Two slips of the pen have been
corrected between brackets.
'Rydal Mount: Oct. 26, '42.
'Dear Miss Barrett,--Through our common friend Mr. Haydon I have
received a sonnet which his portrait of me suggested. I should have
thanked you sooner for that effusion of a feeling towards myself, with
which I am much gratified, but I have been absent from home and much
occupied.
'The conception of your sonnet is in full accordance with the
painter's intended work, and the expression vigorous; yet the word
"ebb," though I do not myself object to it, nor wish to have it
altered, will I fear prove obscure to nine readers out of ten.
"A vision free
And noble, Haydon, hath thine art released."
Owing to the want of inflections in our language the construction here
is obscure. Would it not be a little [better] thus? I was going to
write a small change in the order of the words, but I find it would
not remove the objection. The verse, as I take it, would be somewhat
clearer thus, if you would tolerate the redundant syllable:
"By a vision free
And noble, Haydon, is thine art released."
I had the gratification of receiving, a good while ago, two copies of
a volume of your writing, which I have read with much pleasure, and
beg that the thanks which I charged a friend to offer may be repeated
[to] you.
'It grieved me much to hear from Mr. Kenyon that your health is so
much deranged. But for that cause I should have presumed to call upon
you when I was in London last spring.
'With every good wish, I remain, dear Miss Barrett, your much obliged
'WM. WORDSWORTH.'
[Postmark: Ambleside, Oct. 28, 1842.]
It may be added that although Miss Barrett altered the passage
criticised by the great poet, she did not accept his amendment. It now
runs
'A noble vision free
Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist.
_To H.S. Boyd_
December 4, 1842.
My very dear Friend,--You will think me in a discontented state of
mind when I knit my brows like a 'sleeve of care' over your kind
praises. But the truth is, I _won't_ be praised for being liberal in
Calvinism and love of Byron. _I_ liberal in commending Byron! Take out
my heart and try it! look at it and compare it with yours; and answer
and tell me if I do not love and admire Byron more warmly than you
yourself do. I suspect it indeed. Why, I am always reproached for my
love to Byron. Why, people say to me, '_You_, who overpraise Byron!'
Why, when I was a little girl (and, whatever you may think, my
tendency is not to cast off my old loves!) I used to think seriously
of dressing up like a boy and running away to be Lord Byron's page.
And _I_ to be praised now for being 'liberal' in admitting the merit
of his poetry! _I_!
As for the Calvinism, I don't choose to be liberal there either.
I don't call myself a Calvinist. I hang suspended between the two
doctrines, and hide my eyes in God's love from the sights which other
people _say_ they see. I believe simply that the saved are saved by
grace, and that they shall hereafter know it fully; and that the lost
are lost by their choice and free will--by choosing to sin and die;
and I believe absolutely that the deepest damned of all the lost will
not dare to whisper to the nearest devil that reproach of Martha: 'If
the Lord had been near me, I had not died.' But of the means of the
working of God's grace, and of the time of the formation of the
Divine counsels, I know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to
guess nothing; and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was
ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the world, their
tendency is almost always towards a confusion of His eternal nature
with the human conditions of ours; and to an oblivion of the fact that
with _Him_ there can be no after nor before.
At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine any more the
brickbats of controversy--there is more than enough to think of in
truths clearly revealed; more than enough for the exercise of the
intellect and affections and adorations. I would rather not suffer
myself to be disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely
that I should ever be informed. And although you tell me that your
system of investigation is different from some others, answer me with
your accustomed candour, and admit, my very dear friend, that this
argument does not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or
the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word[71] be 'fore-know' or
'publicly _favor_,' room for a stormy controversy yet remains. I went
through the Romans with you partially, and wholly by myself, by your
desire, and in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not
then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and Adam Clarke,
and yourself I believe, as to the _Jews and Gentiles_. Neither could
I conceive that a particular part of the epistle represents an actual
dialogue between a Jew and Gentile, since the form of question and
answer appears to me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was
learned in rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and
vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit common
to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant through God in Christ
Jesus. These are my impressions. Yours are different. And since we
should not probably persuade each other, and since we are both of us
fond of and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should
we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in, religious and
otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless contention? 'What!' you would
say (by the time we had quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk
without being excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray _do_ lower
your voice--it goes through my head!' In another ten minutes: 'I could
scarcely have believed you to be so obstinate.' In another: 'Your
prejudices are insurmountable, and your reason most womanly--you are
degenerated to the last degree.' In another--why, _then_ you would
turn me and Flush out of the room and so finish the controversy
victoriously.
Was I wrong too, dearest Mr. Boyd, in sending the poems to the
'Athenaeum'? Well, I meant to be right. I fancied that you would
rather they were sent; and as your _name_ was not attached, there
could be no harm in leaving them to the editor's disposal. They
are not inserted, as I anticipated. The religious character was a
sufficient objection--their character of _prayer_. Mr. Dilke begged me
once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus
Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with
the secular character of the journal!
Ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Tell me how you like the sonnet; but you won't (I prophesy) like it.
Keep the 'Athenaeum.'
[Footnote 71: The Greek [Greek: progignôskein], used in Romans viii.
29.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
December 24, 1842.
My very dear Friend,--I am afraid that you will infer from my silence
that you have affronted me into ill temper by your parody upon my
sonnet. Yet 'lucus a non lucendo' were a truer derivation. I laughed
and thanked you over the parody, and put off writing to you until I
had the headache, which forced me to put it off again....
May God bless you, my dear Mr. Boyd. Mr. Savage Landor once said that
anybody who could write a parody deserved to be shot; but as he has
written one himself since saying so, he has probably changed his mind.
Arabel sends her love.
Ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
_To H.S. Boyd_
January 5, 1842 [1843].
My very dear Friend,--My surprise was inexpressible at your utterance
of the name. What! Ossian superior as a poet to Homer! Mr. Boyd saying
so! Mr. Boyd treading down the neck of Aeschylus while he praises
Ossian! The fact appears to me that anomalous thing among believers--a
miracle without an occasion.
I confess I never, never should have guessed the name; not though
I had guessed to Doomsday. In the first place I do not believe in
Ossian, and having partially examined the testimony (for I don't
pretend to any exact learning about it) I consider him as the poetical
_lay figure_ upon which Mr. Macpherson dared to cast his personality.
There is a sort of phraseology, nay, an identity of occasional
phrases, from the antique--but that these so-called Ossianic poems
were ever discovered and translated as they stand in their present
form, I believe in no wise. As Dr. Johnson wrote to Macpherson, so I
would say, 'Mr. Macpherson, I thought you an impostor, and think so
still.'
It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian, and I never did much
delight in him, as that fact proves. Since your letter came I have
taken him up again, and have just finished 'Carthon.' There are
beautiful passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think,
'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled
by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm
of these things is the _only_ charm of all the poems. There is a sound
of wild vague music in a monotone--nothing is articulate, nothing
_individual_, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from
these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the
old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold they
grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer's grand breathing
personalities, with Aeschylus's--nay, but I cannot bear upon my lips
or finger the charge of the blasphemy of such comparing, even for
religion's sake....
I had another letter from America a few days since, from an American
poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine, and asked for
contributions from my pen. The Americans are as good-natured to me as
if they took me for the high Radical I am, you know.
You won't be angry with me for my obliquity (as you will consider it)
about Ossian. You know I always talk sincerely to you, and you have
not made me afraid of telling you the truth--that is, _my_ truth, the
truth of my belief and opinions.
I do not defend much in the 'Idiot Boy.' Wordsworth is a great poet,
but he does not always write equally.
And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest between Ossian and
Homer. _I_ fashion it in this way: Homer sometimes nods, but Ossian
_makes his readers nod_.
Ever your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Did I tell you that I had been reading through a manuscript
translation of the 'Gorgias' of Plato, by Mr. Hyman of Oxford, who is
a stepson of Mr. Haydon's the artist? It is an excellent translation
with learned notes, but it is _not elegant_. He means to try the
public upon it, but, as I have intimated to him, the Christians of the
present day are not civilised enough for Plato.
Arabel's love.
_To H.S. Boyd_
[About the end of January 1843.]
My very dear Friend,--The image you particularly admire in Ossian, I
admire with you, although I am not sure that I have not seen it or its
like somewhere in a classical poet, Greek or Latin. Perhaps Lord
Byron remembered it when in the 'Siege of Corinth' he said of
his Francesca's uplifted arm, 'You might have seen the moon shine
through.' It reminds me also that Maclise the artist, a man of
poetical imagination, gives such a transparency to the ghost of Banquo
in his picture of Macbeth's banquet, that we can discern through it
the lights of the festival. That is good poetry for a painter, is it
not?
I send you the magazines which I have just received from America, and
which contain, one of them, 'The Cry of the Human,' and the other,
four of my sonnets. My correspondent tells me that the 'Cry' is
considered there one of the most successful of my poems, but you
probably will not think so. Tell me exactly what you do think. At
page 343 of 'Graham's Magazine,' _Editor's Table_, is a review of
me, which, however extravagant in its appreciation, will give your
kindness pleasure. I confess to a good deal of pleasure myself from
these American courtesies, expressed not merely in the magazines,
but in the newspapers; a heap of which has been sent to me by my
correspondent--the 'New York Tribune,' 'The Union,' 'The Union Flag,'
&c.--all scattered over with extracts from my books and benignant
words about their writer. Among the extracts is the whole of the
review of Wordsworth from the London 'Athenaeum,' an unconscious
compliment, as they do not guess at the authorship, and one which you
won't thank them for. Keep the magazines, as I have duplicates.
Dearest Mr. Boyd, since you admit that I am not prejudiced about
Ossian, I take courage to tell you what I am thinking of.
_I am thinking_ (this is said in a whisper, and in confidence--of two
kinds), _I am thinking that you don't admire him quite as much as you
did three weeks ago_.
Ever most affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Arabel not being here, I send her love without asking for it.
_To Mrs. Martin_
January 30, 1843.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Thank you for your letter and for dear Mr.
Martin's thought of writing one! Ah! _I_ thought he would not write,
but not for the reason you say; it was something more palpable and
less romantic! Well, I will not grumble any more about not having my
letter, since you are coming, and since you seem, my dear Mrs. Martin,
something in better spirits than your note from Southampton bore
token of. Madeira is the Promised Land, you know; and you should hope
hopefully for your invalid from his pilgrimage there. You should hope
with those who hope, my dearest Mrs. Martin....
Our '_event_' just now is a new purchase of a 'Holy Family,' supposed
to be by Andrea del Sarto. It has displaced the Glover over the
chimney-piece in the drawing-room, and dear Stormie and Alfred nearly
broke their backs in carrying it upstairs for me to see before the
placing. It is probably a fine picture, and I seem to see my
way through the dark of my ignorance, to admire the grouping and
colouring, whatever doubt as to the expression and divinity may occur
otherwise. Well, you will judge. I won't tell you _how_ I think of it.
And you won't care if I do. There is also a new very pretty landscape
piece, and you may imagine the local politics of the arrangement and
hanging, with their talk and consultation; while _I_, on the storey
higher, have my arranging to manage of my pretty new books and my
three hyacinths, and a pot of primroses which dear Mr. Kenyon had the
good nature to carry himself through the streets to our door. But all
the flowers forswear me, and die either suddenly or gradually as soon
as they become aware of the want of fresh air and light in my room.
Talking of air and light, what exquisite weather this is! What a
summer in winter! It is the fourth day since I have had the fire wrung
from me by the heat of temperature, and I sit here _very warm indeed_,
notwithstanding that bare grate. Nay, yesterday I had the door thrown
open for above an hour, and was warm still! You need not ask, you see,
how I am.
Tell me, have you read Mr. Dickens's 'America;' and what is your
thought of it like? If I were an American, it would make me rabid, and
certain of the free citizens _are_ furious, I understand, while others
'speak peace and ensue it,' admire as much of the book as deserves
any sort of admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the
prejudices of the party with whom the writer 'fell in,' and not to
a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions. I admire Mr.
Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love the Americans--I cannot
possibly admire or love this book. Does Mr. Martin? Do _you_?
Henrietta would send her love to you if I could hear her voice nearer
than I do actually, as she sings to the guitar downstairs. And her
love is not the only one to be sent. Give mine to dear Mr. Martin,
though he can't make up his mind to the bore of writing to me. And
remember us all, both of you, as we do you.
Dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate BA.
_To James Martin_
February 6, 1843.
You make us out, my dear Mr. Martin, to be such perfect parallel lines
that I should be half afraid of completing the definition by our never
meeting, if it were not for what you say afterwards, of the coming
to London, and of promising to come and see Flush. If you should be
travelling while I am writing, it was only what happened to me when I
wrote not long ago to dearest Mrs. Martin, and everybody in this house
cried out against the fatuity of the coincidence. As if I could know
that she was travelling, when nobody told me, and I wasn't a witch!
If the same thing happens to-day, believe in the innocence of my
ignorance. I shall be consoled if it does--for certain reasons. But
for none in the world can I help thanking you for your letter, which
gave me so much pleasure from the first sight of the handwriting to
the thought of the kindness spent upon me in it, that after all I
cannot thank you as I would.
Yet I won't let you fancy me of such an irrational state of simplicity
as not to be fully aware that _you_, with your 'nature of the fields
and forests,' look down disdainfully and with an inward heat of
glorying, upon _me_ who have all my pastime in books--dead and
seethed. Perhaps, if it were a little warmer, I might even grant that
you are right in your pride. As it is, I grumble feebly to myself
something about the definition of _nature_, and how we in the town
(which 'God made' just as He made your hedges) have _our_ share
of nature too; and then I have secret thoughts of the state of the
thermometer, and wonder how people can breathe out of doors. In the
meantime, Flush, who is a better philosopher, pushes deep into
my furs, and goes to sleep. Perhaps I should fear the omen for my
correspondent.
Oh yes! That picture in 'Boz' is beautiful. For my own part, and by a
natural womanly contradiction, I have never cared so much in my life
for flowers as since being shut out from gardens--unless, indeed, in
the happy days of old when I had a garden of my own, and cut it out
into a great Hector of Troy, in relievo, with a high heroic box nose
and shoeties of columbine.[72] But that was long ago. Now I count the
buds of my primrose with a new kind of interest, and you never
saw such a primrose! I begin to believe in Ovid, and look for a
metamorphosis. The leaves are turning white and springing up as high
as corn. Want of air, and of sun, I suppose. I should be loth to think
it--want of friendship to _me_!
Do you know that the royal Boz lives close to us, three doors from Mr.
Kenyon in Harley Place? The new numbers appear to me admirable, and
full of life and blood--whatever we may say to the thick rouging and
extravagance of gesture. There is a beauty, a tenderness, too, in the
organ scene, which is worthy of the gilliflowers. But my admiration
for 'Boz' fell from its 'sticking place,' I confess, a good furlong,
when I read Victor Hugo; and my creed is, that, _not_ in his
tenderness, which is as much his own as his humour, but in his serious
powerful Jew-trial scenes, he has followed Hugo closely, and never
scarcely looked away from 'Les Trois Jours d'un Condamné.'
If you should not be on the road, I hope you won't be very long
before you are, and that dearest Mrs. Martin will put off building her
greenhouse--you see I believe she _will_ build it--until she gets home
again.
How kind of you and of her to have poor old Mrs. Barker at Colwall!
Do believe me, both of you, with love from all of _us_,
Very affectionately yours,
BA.
[Footnote 72: See 'Hector in the Garden' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 37).]
_To H.S. Boyd_
February 21, 1843.
Thank you, my very dear friend, I am as well as the east wind will
suffer me to be; and _that_, indeed, is not very well, my heart being
fuller of all manner of evil than is necessary to its humanity. But
the wind is changed, and the frost is gone, and it is not quite out of
my fancy yet that I may see you next summer. _You and summer are not
out of the question yet_. Therefore, you see, I cannot be very deep
in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom that I have just
finished a poem of some five hundred lines in stanzas, called 'The
Lost Bower,'[73] and about nothing at all in particular.
As to Arabel, she is not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in
the frost--when we brambles are brown with their inward death--and she
is of them, dear thing. _You_ are not a bramble, though, and I hope
that when you talk of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer
to your sensation, and not to your health. Remember also, dearest Mr.
Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had. Take away the last ten days
and a few besides, and call the whole summer rather than winter. Ought
we to complain, really? Really, no.
I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the ast, though my
hand shakes so that nobody will read it.
_You can't abide my 'Cry of the Human,' and four sonnets_. They have
none of them found favor in your eyes.
In or out of favor,
Ever your affectionate E.B.B.
Do you think that next summer you _might, could_, or _would_ walk
across the park to see me--supposing always that I fail in my
aspiration to go and see you? I only ask by way of _hypothesis_.
Consider and revolve it so. We live on the verge of the town rather
than in it, and our noises are cousins to silence; and you should pass
into a room where the silence is most absolute. Flush's breathing is
my loudest sound, and then the watch's tickings, and then my own heart
when it beats too turbulently. Judge of the quiet and the solitude!
[Footnote 73: _Poetical Works_, iii. 105.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
April 19, 1843.
My very dear Friend,--The earth turns round, to be sure, and we turn
with it, but I never anticipated the day and the hour for _you_ to
turn round and be guilty of high treason to our Greeks. I cry '_Ai_!
_ai_!' as if I were a chorus, and all vainly. For, you see, arguing
about it will only convince you of my obstinacy, and not a bit of
Homer's supremacy. Ossian has wrapt you in a cloud, a fog, a true
Scotch mist. You have caught cold in the critical faculty, perhaps. At
any rate, I can't see a bit more of your reasonableness than I can see
of Fingal. _Sic transit_! Homer like the darkened half of the moon
in eclipse! You have spoilt for me now the finest image in your
Ossian-Macpherson.
My dearest Mr. Boyd, you will find as few believers in the genuineness
of these volumes among the most accomplished antiquarians in poetry
as in the genuineness of Chatterton's Rowley, and of Ireland's
Shakespeare. The latter impostures boasted of disciples in the first
instance, but the discipleship perished by degrees, and the place
thereof, during this present 1843, knows it no more. So has it been
with the belief in Macpherson's Ossian. Of those who believed in the
poems at the first sight of them, who kept his creed to the end? And
speaking so, I speak of Macpherson's contemporaries whom you respect.
I do not consider Walter Scott a great poet, but he was highly
accomplished in matters of poetical antiquarianism, and is certainly
citable as an authority on this question.