[Footnote 1: The following is the version of the passage in Mrs.
Browning's later translation of the 'Prometheus' (II. 247-251 of the
original):
_Prom._ I did restrain besides
My mortals from premeditating death.
_Cho._ How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?
_Prom._ I set blind hopes to inhabit in their house.
_Cho._ By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
March 5, 1845.
But I did not mean to strike a 'tragic chord'; indeed I did not!
Sometimes one's melancholy will be uppermost and sometimes one's
mirth,--the world goes round, you know--and I suppose that in that
letter of mine the melancholy took the turn. As to 'escaping with my
life,' it was just a phrase--at least it did not signify more than
that the sense of mortality, and discomfort of it, is peculiarly
strong with me when east winds are blowing and waters freezing. For
the rest, I am _essentially better_, and have been for several
winters; and I feel as if it were intended for me to live and not die,
and I am reconciled to the feeling. Yes! I am satisfied to 'take up'
with the blind hopes again, and have them in the house with me, for
all that I sit by the window. By the way, did the chorus utter scorn
in the [Greek: meg' ôphelêma]. I think not. It is well to fly towards
the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of
wings against the windowpanes, is it not?
There is an obscurer passage, on which I covet your thoughts, where
Prometheus, after the sublime declaration that, with a full knowledge
of the penalty reserved for him, he had sinned of free will and
choice--goes on to say--or to seem to say--that he had _not_, however,
foreseen the extent and detail of the torment, the skiey rocks, and
the friendless desolation. See v. 275. The intention of the poet
might have been to magnify to his audience the torment of the
martyrdom--but the heroism of the martyr diminishes in proportion--and
there appears to be a contradiction, and oversight. Or is my view
wrong? Tell me. And tell me too, if Æschylus not the divinest of all
the divine Greek souls? People say after Quintilian, that he is savage
and rude; a sort of poetic Orson, with his locks all wild. But I will
not hear it of my master! He is strong as Zeus is--and not as a
boxer--and tender as Power itself, which always is tenderest.
But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not
to think--whatever I may have written or implied--that I lean either
to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through
darkness instead of light, and speaks of it wailingly. Now, may God
forbid that it should be so with me. I am not desponding by nature,
and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily
seclusion, I come out with two learnt lessons (as I sometimes say and
oftener feel),--the wisdom of cheerfulness--and the duty of social
intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in
society; it has been a wholesome and not unnatural reaction. And
altogether, I may say that the earth looks the brighter to me in
proportion to my own deprivations. The laburnum trees and rose trees
are plucked up by the roots--but the sunshine is in their places, and
the root of the sunshine is above the storms. What we call Life is a
condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and
wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these
faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.
And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to _happiness_, and I
feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.
Still, it is obvious too that you have been spared, up to this time,
the great natural afflictions, against which we are nearly all called,
sooner or later, to struggle and wrestle--or your step would not be
'on the stair' quite so lightly. And so, we turn to you, dear Mr.
Browning, for comfort and gentle spiriting! Remember that as you owe
your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. And I
thank you for some of it already.
Also, writing as from friend to friend--as you say rightly that we
are--I ought to confess that of one class of griefs (which has been
called too the bitterest), I know as little as you. The cruelty of the
world, and the treason of it--the unworthiness of the dearest; of
these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal
experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions,
and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the
moralists. People have been kind to _me_, even without understanding
me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:--nay, have not the
very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as
sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world,
though I am not of it, as you see. And I have the cream of it in your
friendship, and a little more, and I do not envy much the milkers of
the cows.
How kind you are!--how kindly and gently you speak to me! Some things
you say are very touching, and some, surprising; and although I am
aware that you unconsciously exaggerate what I can be to you, yet it
is delightful to be broad awake and think of you as my friend.
May God bless you!
Faithfully yours,