Instead of writing this note to you yesterday, as should have been, I
went down-stairs--or rather was carried--and am not the worse.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]
Yes, the poem _is_ too good in certain respects for the prizes given
in colleges, (when all the pure parsley goes naturally to the
rabbits), and has a great deal of beauty here and there in image and
expression. Still I do not quite agree with you that it reaches the
Tennyson standard any wise; and for the blank verse, I cannot for a
moment think it comparable to one of the grand passages in 'Oenone,'
and 'Arthur' and the like. In fact I seem to hear more in that latter
blank verse than you do, ... to hear not only a 'mighty line' as in
Marlowe, but a noble full orbicular wholeness in complete
passages--which always struck me as the mystery of music and great
peculiarity in Tennyson's versification, inasmuch as he attains to
these complete effects without that shifting of the pause practised by
the masters, ... Shelley and others. A 'linked music' in which there
are no links!--_that_, you would take to be a contradiction--and yet
something like that, my ear has always seemed to perceive; and I have
wondered curiously again and again how there could be so much union
and no fastening. Only of course it is not model versification--and
for dramatic purposes, it must be admitted to be bad.
Which reminds me to be astonished for the second time how you could
think such a thing of me as that I wanted to read only your lyrics,
... or that I 'preferred the lyrics' ... or something barbarous in
that way? You don't think me 'ambidexter,' or 'either-handed' ... and
both hands open for what poems you will vouchsafe to me; and yet if
you would let me see anything you may have in a readable state by you,
... 'The Flight of the Duchess' ... or act or scene of 'The Soul's
Tragedy,' ... I shall be so glad and grateful to you! Oh--if you
change your mind and choose to be _bien prié_, I will grant it is your
right, and begin my liturgy directly. But this is not teazing (in the
intention of it!) and I understand all about the transcription, and
the inscrutableness of rough copies,--that is, if you write as I do,
so that my guardian angel or M. Champollion cannot read what is
written. Only whatever they can, (remember!) _I_ can: and you are not
to mind trusting me with the cacistography possible to mortal readers.
The sun shines so that nobody dares complain of the east wind--and
indeed I am better altogether. May God bless you, my dear friend.