_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, August 8, 1845.]
Just to show what may be lost by my crossings out, I will tell you the
story of the one in the 'Duchess'--and in fact it is almost worth
telling to a metaphysician like you, on other grounds, that you may
draw perhaps some psychological good from the absurdity of it. Hear,
then. When I had done writing the sheet of annotations and reflections
on your poem I took up my pencil to correct the passages reflected on
with the reflections, by the crosses you may observe, just glancing
over the writing as I did so. Well! and, where that erasure is, I
found a line purporting to be extracted from your 'Duchess,' with
sundry acute criticisms and objections quite undeniably strong,
following after it; only, to my amazement, as I looked and looked, the
line so acutely objected to and purporting, as I say, to, be taken
from the 'Duchess,' was by no means to be found in the 'Duchess,' ...
nor anything like it, ... and I am certain indeed that, in the
'Duchess' or out of it, you never wrote such a bad line in your life.
And so it became a proved thing to me that I had been enacting, in a
mystery, both poet and critic together--and one so neutralizing the
other, that I took all that pains you remark upon to cross myself out
in my double capacity, ... and am now telling the story of it
notwithstanding. And there's an obvious moral to the myth, isn't
there? for critics who bark the loudest, commonly bark at their own
shadow in the glass, as my Flush used to do long and loud, before he
gained experience and learnt the [Greek: gnôthi seauton] in the
apparition of the brown dog with the glittering dilating eyes, ... and
as _I_ did, under the erasure. And another moral springs up of itself
in this productive ground; for, you see, ... '_quand je m'efface il
n'ya pas grand mal_.'
And I am to be made to work very hard, am I? But you should remember
that if I did as much writing as last summer, I should not be able to
do much else, ... I mean, to go out and walk about ... for really I
think I _could_ manage to read your poems and write as I am writing
now, with ever so much head-work of my own going on at the same time.
But the bodily exercise is different, and I do confess that the
novelty of living more in the outer life for the last few months than
I have done for years before, make me idle and inclined to be
idle--and everybody is idle sometimes--even _you_ perhaps--are you
not? For me, you know, I do carpet-work--ask Mrs. Jameson--and I never
pretend to be in a perpetual motion of mental industry. Still it may
not be quite as bad as you think: I have done some work since
'Prometheus'--only it is nothing worth speaking of and not a part of
the romance-poem which is to be some day if I live for it--lyrics for
the most part, which lie written illegibly in pure Egyptian--oh, there
is time enough, and too much perhaps! and so let me be idle a little
now, and enjoy your poems while I can. It is pure enjoyment and must
be--but you do not know how much, or you would not talk as you do
sometimes ... so wide of any possible application.
And do _not_ talk again of what you would 'sacrifice' for _me_. If you
affect me by it, which is true, you cast me from you farther than ever
in the next thought. _That_ is true.
The poems ... yours ... which you left with me,--are full of various
power and beauty and character, and you must let me have my own
gladness from them in my own way.
Now I must end this letter. Did you go to Chelsea and hear the divine
philosophy?
_Tell me the truth always_ ... will you? I mean such truths as may be
painful to me _though_ truths....
May God bless you, ever dear friend.