_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]
Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear
Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began
reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a 'more' or a 'most'
in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about
you--as, do you not know?
Thank you, from my soul.
Now, let me never pass occasion of speaking well of Horne, who
deserves your opinion of him,--it is my own, too.--He has unmistakable
genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow--it is
the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think--the people he
has praised fancying that they 'pose' themselves sculpturesquely in
playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each
other's hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a
dishonour: _I_ feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous
criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's
standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man
too,--for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature,
which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer
'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done
over blue)--and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a
'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite
an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a
jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of
grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;--a thing he cannot
understand--_so_, I am not the one he would have picked out to
praise, had he not been _loyal_. I know he admires your poetry
properly. God help him, and send some great artist from the country,
(who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who
'exasperates his H's' when the feat is to be done)--to undertake the
part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The
subject of your play is tempting indeed--and reminds one of that wild
Drama of Calderon's which frightened Shelley just before his
death--also, of Fuseli's theory with reference to his own Picture of
Macbeth in the witches' cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed
head from the cauldron is Macbeth's own.
'If you ask me, I must ask myself'--that is, when I am to see you--I
will _never_ ask you! You do _not_ know what I shall estimate that
permission at,--nor do I, quite--but you do--do not you? know so much
of me as to make my 'asking' worse than a form--I do not 'ask' you to
write to me--not _directly_ ask, at least.
I will tell you--I ask you _not_ to see me so long as you are unwell,
or mistrustful of--
No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me
not be only writing myself