_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]
Now I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very
indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your 'Soul's Tragedy'
last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a
mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It
is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the
first act of 'Luria' did, though I do not mean to compare such
dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness 'Luria' is
unapproachable--will prove so, it seems to me. But this 'Tragedy'
shows more heat from the first, and then, the words beat down more
closely ... well! I am struck by it all as you see. If you keep it up
to this passion, if you justify this high key-note, it is a great
work, and worthy of a place next 'Luria.' Also do observe how
excellently balanced the two will be, and how the tongue of this next
silver Bell will swing from side to side. And _you_ to frighten me
about it. Yes, and the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the
worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be
something inferior--for _you_--and the adviseableness of its
publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is,
that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it
be possible that the same
'Robert Browning'
who (I heard the other day) said once that he could 'wait three
hundred years,' should not feel the life of centuries in this work
too--can it be? Why all the pulses of the life of it are beating in
even _my_ ears!
Tell me, beloved, how you are--I shall hear it to-night--shall I not?
To think of your being unwell, and forced to go here and go there to
visit people to whom your being unwell falls in at best among the
secondary evils!--makes me discontented--which is one shade more to
the uneasiness I feel. Will you take care, and not give away your life
to these people? Because I have a better claim than they ... and shall
put it in, if provoked ... _shall_. Then you will not use the
shower-bath again--you promise? I dare say Mr. Kenyon observed
yesterday how unwell you were looking--tell me if he didn't! Now do
not work, dearest! Do not think of Chiappino, leave him behind ... he
has a good strong life of his own, and can wait for you. Oh--but let
me remember to say of him, that he and the other personages appear to
me to articulate with perfect distinctness and clearness ... you need
not be afraid of having been obscure in this first part. It is all as
lucid as noon.
Shall I go down-stairs to-day? 'No' say the privy-councillors,
'because it is cold,' but I _shall_ go peradventure, because the sun
brightens and brightens, and the wind has gone round to the west.
George had come home yesterday before you left me, but the stars were
favourable to us and kept him out of this room. Now he is at
Worcester--went this morning, on those never ending 'rounds,' poor
fellow, which weary him I am sure.
And why should music and the philosophy of it make you 'melancholy,'
ever dearest, more than the other arts, which each has the seal of the
age, modifying itself after a fashion and _to_ one? Because it changes
more, perhaps. Yet all the Arts are mediators between the soul and the
Infinite, ... shifting always like a mist, between the Breath on this
side, and the Light on that side ... shifted and coloured; mediators,
messengers, projected from the Soul, to go and feel, for Her, _out
there_!
You don't call me 'kind' I confess--but then you call me 'too kind'
which is nearly as bad, you must allow on your part. Only you were not
in earnest when you said _that_, as it appeared afterward. _Were_ you,
yesterday, in pretending to think that I owed you nothing ... _I_?
May God bless you. He knows that to give myself to you, is not to pay
you. Such debts are not so paid.