[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ROBERT BROWNING
(See Vol. I., p. 270)]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, November 11, 1845.]
If it were possible that you could do me harm in the way of work, (but
it isn't) it would be possible, not through writing letters and
reading manuscripts, but because of a reason to be drawn from your own
great line
What man is strong until he stands alone?
What man ... what woman? For have I not felt twenty times the desolate
advantage of being insulated here and of not minding anybody when I
made my poems?--of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and
caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing
in the pane?--_That_ made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls
'insolent,'--untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much
by strength, you see, as by separation. _You_ touch your greater ends
by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads
which, in your position would have hampered _me_.
Still ... when all is changed for me now, and different, it is not
possible, ... for all the changing, nor for all your line and my
speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being
within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in
other ways. We shall see--you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I
confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of
Indolence and watching the new sunrise--as why not?--Do I mean to be
idle always?--no!--and am I not an industrious worker on the average
of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think
perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like
trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York
people, and the something rather better besides we may hope ... may
_I_ not hope, if _you_ wish it? Only there is no 'crown' for me, be
sure, except what grows from this letter and such letters ... this
sense of being anything to _one_! there is no room for another crown.
Have I a great head like Goethe's that there should be room? and mine
is bent down already by the unused weight--and as to bearing it, ...
'Will it do,--tell me; to treat _that_ as a light effort, an easy
matter?'
Now let me remember to tell you that the line of yours I have just
quoted, and which has been present with me since you wrote it, Mr.
Chorley has quoted too in his new novel of 'Pomfret.' You were right
in your identifying of servant and waistcoat--and Wilson waited only
till you had gone on Saturday, to give me a parcel and note; the novel
itself in fact, which Mr. Chorley had the kindness to send me 'some
days or weeks,' said the note, 'previous to the publication.' Very
goodnatured of him certainly: and the book seems to me his best work
in point of sustainment and vigour, and I am in process of being
interested in it. Not that he is a _maker_, even for this prose. A
feeler ... an observer ... a thinker even, in a certain sphere--but a
maker ... no, as it seems to me--and if I were he, I would rather herd
with the essayists than the novelists where he is too good to take
inferior rank and not strong enough to 'go up higher.' Only it would
be more right in me to be grateful than to talk so--now wouldn't it?
And here is Mr. Kenyon's letter back again--a kind good letter ... a
letter I have liked to read (so it was kind and good in you to let
me!)--and he was with me to-day and praising the 'Ride to Ghent,' and
praising the 'Duchess,' and praising you altogether as I liked to hear
him. The Ghent-ride was 'very fine'--and the