_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]
Kindest and dearest you are!--that is 'my secret' and for the others,
I leave them to you!--only it is no secret that I should and must be
glad to have the words you sent with the book,--which I should have
seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I
not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of
critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the
dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of
human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on--it is the stamp
on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or
farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said
than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up
to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could
have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said
rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the
brain,--which is as true as truth can be. Then, I _shall have
'Pauline' in a day or two_--yes, I shall and must, and _will_.
The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that
name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley's, and is one of his very best
papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about
his writings in general, with a grace and _savoir faire_ nevertheless,
and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says
of 'many-sidedness' seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That,
he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having
such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of
principle--yet 'many-sidedness' is certainly no word for him. The
effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy
and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather _bends_ to
a phase of humanity and literature than contains it--than comprehends
it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all
round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things:
universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the
contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the
mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the
willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now
toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is
different altogether ... _as_ different as a willow-tree from a church
tower.
Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while
I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me
to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so
much, of thinking of only you--which _is_ too much, perhaps. Shall I
tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to
any woman what you are to me--the fulness must be in proportion, you
know, to the vacancy ... and only _I_ know what was behind--the long
wilderness _without_ the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for
happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is
it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve--not
_you_--but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a
lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without
the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And
you love me _more_, you say?--Shall I thank you or God?
Both,--indeed--and there is no possible return from me to either of
you! I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God. How
shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it
as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.
Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for
your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a
thought of any others--_that_ is all I could ask you with any disquiet
as to the granting of it--May God bless you!--