_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]
People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the
darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk
a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once
I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an
argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor _you_ up) for a mere
mystery. Nor that I can '_see what you have got in you_,' from a mere
guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not
because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our
sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the
lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see
_you_ by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and
because I am willing for you to know _me_ from the beginning, with all
my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people
who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you
were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to _Colburn's
Magazine_, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a
perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in
my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the
right--why the end would be that _you_ would take to 'running after
the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ...
then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my
desk...! (_Not_ a 'full stop'!.)
Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making
conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I
wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps.
Certainly not to _you_. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards
to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you
know,--and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of
'making conversation' in a letter to _you_--never. Women are said to
partake of the nature of children--and my brothers call me 'absurdly
childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest'
about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's!
Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as
you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of
course. _But_--give me something to vow by--whatever you meant in the
'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be
much more wrong--which is a comfortable reflection.
Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown--or you do not leap, ... you
simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel
leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for
the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ...
before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail,
rather than in rain--but count me the drops congealed in one
hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the Duchess'--do let us hear more of
her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a
flatterer.
Ever yours,