Dear Mr. Browning,--To begin with the end (which is only
characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your
handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font.
If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I
couldn't do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle.
Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the
making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons
... Mr. Landor, for instance, who writes as if he had the sky for a
copybook and dotted his _i_'s in proportion. People who do such things
should wear gauntlets; yes, and have none to wear; or they wouldn't
waste their time so. People who write--by profession--shall I
say?--never should do it, or what will become of them when most of
their strength retires into their head and heart, (as is the case with
some of us and may be the case with all) and when they have to write a
poem twelve times over, as Mr. Kenyon says I should do if I were
virtuous? Not that I do it. Does anybody do it, I wonder? Do _you_,
ever? From what you tell me of the trimming of the light, I imagine
not. And besides, one may be laborious as a writer, without copying
twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a
moment what three times six is, without 'doing it' on their fingers;
and in the same way one may work one's verses in one's head quite as
laboriously as on paper--I maintain it. I consider myself a very
patient, laborious writer--though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn
when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were
netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my
stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste,
I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by
the mind, _will_ draw and concentrate the powers of the mind--and Art,
you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man--or woman. I
cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one--though
one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,--and though all
are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility--and to
entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of
facility. You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like
Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet
on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the
twenty and the three. And also, as you say, the lamp is trimmed behind
the wall--and the act of utterance is the evidence of foregone study
still more than it is the occasion to study. The deep interest with
which I read all that you had the kindness to write to me of yourself,
you must trust me for, as I find it hard to express it. It is sympathy
in one way, and interest every way! And now, see! Although you proved
to me with admirable logic that, for reasons which you know and
reasons which you don't know, I couldn't possibly know anything about
you; though that is all true--and proven (which is better than
true)--I really did understand of you before I was told, exactly what
you told me. Yes, I did indeed. I felt sure that as a poet you fronted
the future--and that your chief works, in your own apprehension, were
to come. Oh--I take no credit of sagacity for it; as I did not long
ago to my sisters and brothers, when I professed to have knowledge of
all their friends whom I never saw in my life, by the image coming
with the name; and threw them into shouts of laughter by giving out
all the blue eyes and black eyes and hazel eyes and noses Roman and
Gothic ticketed aright for the Mr. Smiths and Miss Hawkinses,--and hit
the bull's eye and the true features of the case, ten times out of
twelve! But _you_ are different. _You_ are to be made out by the
comparative anatomy system. You have thrown out fragments of _os_ ...
_sublime_ ... indicative of soul-mammothism--and you live to develop
your nature,--_if_ you live. That is easy and plain. You have taken a
great range--from those high faint notes of the mystics which are
beyond personality ... to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature,
'gr-r-r- you swine'; and when these are thrown into harmony, as in a
manner they are in 'Pippa Passes' (which I could find in my heart to
covet the authorship of, more than any of your works--), the
combinations of effect must always be striking and noble--and you must
feel yourself drawn on to such combinations more and more. But I do
not, you say, know yourself--you. I only know abilities and faculties.
Well, then, teach me yourself--you. I will not insist on the
knowledge--and, in fact, you have not written the R.B. poem yet--your
rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight. I see you only in
your moon. Do tell me all of yourself that you can and will ... before
the R.B. poem comes out. And what is 'Luria'? A poem and not a drama?
I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you
sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works
into the great mill of the 'rank, popular' playhouse, to be ground to
pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one,
would as soon have 'my soul among lions.' 'There is a fascination in
it,' says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for
it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but to distil the dregs of the
public and baptise oneself in that acrid moisture, where can be the
temptation? I could swear by Shakespeare, as was once sworn 'by those
dead at Marathon,' that I do not see where. I love the drama too. I
look to our old dramatists as to our Kings and princes in poetry. I
love them through all the deeps of their abominations. But the theatre
in those days was a better medium between the people and the poet; and
the press in those days was a less sufficient medium than now. Still,
the poet suffered by the theatre even then; and the reasons are very
obvious.
How true--how true ... is all you say about critics. My convictions
follow you in every word. And I delighted to read your views of the
poet's right aspect towards criticism--I read them with the most
complete appreciation and sympathy. I have sometimes thought that it
would be a curious and instructive process, as illustrative of the
wisdom and apprehensiveness of critics, if anyone would collect the
critical soliloquies of every age touching its own literature, (as far
as such may be extant) and _confer_ them with the literary product of
the said ages. Professor Wilson has begun something of the kind
apparently, in his initiatory paper of the last _Blackwood_ number on
critics, beginning with Dryden--but he seems to have no design in his
notice--it is a mere critique on the critic. And then, he should have
begun earlier than Dryden--earlier even than Sir Philip Sydney, who in
the noble 'Discourse on Poetry,' gives such singular evidence of being
stone-critic-blind to the gods who moved around him. As far as I can
remember, he saw even Shakespeare but indifferently. Oh, it was in his
eyes quite an unillumed age, that period of Elizabeth which _we_ see
full of suns! and few can see what is close to the eyes though they
run their heads against it; the denial of contemporary genius is the
rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest,
till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown. And here we
speak of understanding men, such as the Sydneys and the Drydens. Of
the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better
than might be expected of their badness, only the fact of their
_influence_ is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not
be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the
world over. But the influence is for to-day, for this hour--not for
to-morrow and the day after--unless indeed, as you say, the poet do
himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it. Do you know
Tennyson?--that is, with a face to face knowledge? I have great
admiration for him. In execution, he is exquisite,--and, in music, a
most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs. That such a poet
should submit blindly to the suggestions of his critics, (I do not say
that suggestions from without may not be accepted with discrimination
sometimes, to the benefit of the acceptor), blindly and implicitly to
the suggestions of his critics, is much as if Babbage were to take my
opinion and undo his calculating machine by it. Napoleon called poetry
_science creuse_--which, although he was not scientific in poetry
himself, is true enough. But anybody is qualified, according to
everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chymistry
and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But
then these are more serious things.
Yes--and it does delight me to hear of your garden full of roses and
soul full of comforts! You have the right to both--you have the key to
both. You have written enough to live by, though only beginning to
write, as you say of yourself. And this reminds me to remind you that
when I talked of coveting most the authorship of your 'Pippa,' I did
not mean to call it your finest work (you might reproach me for
_that_), but just to express a personal feeling. Do you know what it
is to covet your neighbour's poetry?--not his fame, but his poetry?--I
dare say not. You are too generous. And, in fact, beauty is beauty,
and, whether it comes by our own hand or another's, blessed be the
coming of it! _I_, besides, feel _that_. And yet--and yet, I have been
aware of a feeling within me which has spoken two or three times to
the effect of a wish, that I had been visited with the vision of
'Pippa,' before you--and _confiteor tibi_--I confess the baseness of
it. The conception is, to my mind, most exquisite and altogether
original--and the contrast in the working out of the plan, singularly
expressive of various faculty.
Is the poem under your thumb, emerging from it? and in what metre? May
I ask such questions?
And does Mr. Carlyle tell you that he has forbidden all 'singing' to
this perverse and froward generation, which should work and not sing?
And have you told Mr. Carlyle that song is work, and also the
condition of work? I am a devout sitter at his feet--and it is an
effort to me to think him wrong in anything--and once when he told me
to write prose and not verse, I fancied that his opinion was I had
mistaken my calling,--a fancy which in infinite kindness and
gentleness he stooped immediately to correct. I never shall forget the
grace of that kindness--but then! For _him_ to have thought ill of
_me_, would not have been strange--I often think ill of myself, as God
knows. But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season,
the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my
thoughts ever since. I do not know him personally at all. But as his
disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems,
and I heard from him as a consequence. 'Dear and noble' he is
indeed--and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You
feel it so--do you not? And the 'dear sir' has let him have the
'letter of Cromwell,' I hope; and satisfied 'the obedient servant.'
The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the
upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the
Romans in the farmyard--and it seems all quite natural that it should
be so, both to geese and Romans!
But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for
reasons which I know and for reasons which I don't know. You will let
me be grateful to you,--will you not? You must, if you will or not.
And also--I would not wait for more leave--if I could but see your
desk--as I do your death's heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but
the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.
Ever faithfully yours,