_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]
But I never _did_ strike you or touch you--and you are not in earnest
in the complaint you make--and this is really all I am going to say
to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part,
while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go
deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to
bear without deprecation:--as when, for instance, you talk of being
'grateful' to _me_!!--Well! I will try that there shall be no more of
it--no more provocation of generosities--and so, (this once) as you
express it, I 'will not have the heart to blame' you--except for
reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr.
Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook
literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was
roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember
he asked me ... 'Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?'; to which I answered
that nobody was to be excepted--and thus he was quite right in
resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were
quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious?
Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins
and yours gladly, to get into the _Hood_ poems which have delighted me
so--and first to the St. Praxed's which is of course the finest and
most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of
death. It has impressed me very much. Then the 'Angel and Child,' with
all its beauty and significance!--and the 'Garden Fancies' ... some of
the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in
them, and grace of every kind--and with that beautiful and musical use
of the word 'meandering,' which I never remember having seen used in
relation to _sound_ before. It does to mate with your '_simmering_
quiet' in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure
as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much!--you
have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things
through and through it. And the 'Laboratory' is hideous as you meant
to make it:--only I object a little to your tendency ... which is
almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think, ... of
making lines difficult for the reader to read ... see the opening
lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in
_them_ certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the
reader's mind off the _rail_ ... and interrupts his progress with you
and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from
rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the
changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to _forget it
altogether_; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps--but you see how
I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my
sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing
ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of
them--never!--except the 'Tokay,' which is inferior to all; and that I
was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood--or at all,
except this 'Tokay,' and this 'Duchess'! The world is very deaf and
dumb, I think--but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not
learning its lesson.
Could you come--for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay
to write of your poems even, any more to-day--could you come on
Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on
Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so--it is not a caprice.
And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria
seems discredited just now for Malta--and 'anything but Madeira,' I go
on saying to myself. These _Hood_ poems are all to be in the next
'Bells' of course--of necessity?