You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other
reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two
instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they _are_ so,
by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one
of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'--see! (Can you give me
Horne's address--I would send then.)
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]
I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by
my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and
power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling
more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this--or
'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand
which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading
everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in
inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr.
Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what
contradiction!) the _British Quarterly_ has been abusing me so at
large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very
particular friend indeed,--of someone who positively never reviewed
before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I
suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are friends 'with a
difference.' Not that you are to fancy me pained--oh no!--merely
surprised. I was prepared for anything almost from the quarter in
question, but scarcely for being hung 'to the crows' so publicly ...
though within the bounds of legitimate criticisms, mind. But oh--the
creatures of your sex are not always magnanimous--_that_ is true. And
to put _you_ between me and all ... the thought of _you_ ... in a
great eclipse of the world ... _that_ is happy ... only, too happy for
such as I am; as my own heart warns me hour by hour.
'Serve _me_ right'--I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety
of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the
probability of it: but 'serve _me_ right' quite clearly. And yet--but
no more 'and yets' about it. 'And yets' fray the silk.
I see how the 'turret' stands in the new reading, triumphing over the
'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that
nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for
attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number--there are lights
enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by.
One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does
still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I
saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach
it--but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one
exception I _am quite_ sure that people who shall complain of darkness
are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed
everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible
by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your
writings--but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from _that_
cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,'
you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid
them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of
critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!--'Let them
rave.' You will live when all _those_ are under the willows. In the
meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your
poetry--as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the
creature, and _you_ than _yours_. Yes--_you_ than _yours_.... (I did
not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the 'bona
verba,' and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as _you_ are
better than _yours_; even when so much yours as your own