Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From a Photograph of a Marble Bust

The writer of any narrative of Mrs. Browning's life, or the editor of a collection of her letters, is met at the outset of his task by the knowledge that both Mrs. Browning herself and her husband more than, once expressed their strong dislike of any such publicity in regard to matters of a personal and private character affecting themselves. The fact that expressions to this effect are publicly extant is one which has to be faced or evaded; but if it could not be fairly faced, and the apparent difficulty removed, the present volumes would never have seen the light. It would be a poor qualification for the task of preparing a record of Mrs. Browning's life, to be willing therein to do violence to her own expressed wishes and those of her husband. But the expressions to which reference has been made are limited, either formally or by implication, to publications made during their own lifetime. They shrank, as any sensitive person must shrink, from seeing their private lives, their personal characteristics, above all, their sorrows and bereavements, offered to the inspection and criticism of the general public; and it was to such publications that their protests referred. They could not but be aware that the details of their lives would be of interest to the public which read and admired their works, and there is evidence that they recognised that the public has some claims with regard to writers who have appealed to, and partly lived by, its favour. They only claimed that during their own lifetime their feelings should be consulted first; when they should have passed away, the rights of the public would begin.

It is in this spirit that the following collection of Mrs. Browning's letters has now been prepared, in the conviction that the lovers of English literature will be glad to make a closer and more intimate acquaintance with one—or, it may truthfully be said, with two—of the most interesting literary characters of the Victorian age. It is a selection from a large mass of letters, written at all periods in Mrs. Browning's life, which Mr. Browning, after his wife's death, reclaimed from the friends to whom they had been written, or from their representatives. No doubt, Mr. Browning's primary object was to prevent publications which would have been excessively distressing to his feelings; but the letters, when once thus collected, were not destroyed (as was the case with many of his own letters), but carefully preserved, and so passed into the possession of his son, Mr. R. Barrett Browning, with whose consent they are now published. In this collection are comprised the letters to Miss Browning (the poet's sister, whose consent has also been freely given to the publication), Mr. H.S. Boyd, Mrs. Martin, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. John Kenyon, Mr. Chorley, Miss Blagden, Miss Haworth, and Miss Thomson (Madame Emil Braun).^[1] To these have been added a number of letters which have been kindly lent by their possessors for the purpose of the present volumes.

The duties of the editor have been mainly those of selection and arrangement. With regard to the former task one word is necessary. It may be thought that the almost entire absence of bitterness (except on certain political topics), of controversy, of personal ill feeling of any kind, is due to editorial excisions. This is not the case. The number of passages that have been removed for fear of hurting the feelings of persons still living is almost infinitesimal; and in these the cause of offence is always something inherent in the facts recorded, not in the spirit in which they are mentioned. No person had less animosity than Mrs. Browning; it seems as though she could hardly bring herself to speak harshly of anyone. The omissions that have been made are almost wholly of passages containing little or nothing of interest, or repetitions of what has been said elsewhere; and they have been made with the object of diminishing the bulk and concentrating the interest of the collection, never with the purpose of modifying the representation of the writer's character.

The task of arranging the letters has been more arduous owing to Mrs. Browning's unfortunate habit of prefixing no date's, or incomplete ones, to her letters. Many of them are dated merely by the day of the week or month, and can only be assigned to their proper place in the series on internal evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by the postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the others can be tested; and ultimately all have fallen into line in chronological order, and with at least approximate dates to each letter.

The correspondence, thus arranged in chronological order, forms an almost continuous record of Mrs. Browning's life, from the early days in Herefordshire to her death in Italy in 1861; but in order to complete the record, it has been thought well to add connecting links of narrative, which should serve to bind the whole together into the unity of a biography. It is a chronicle, rather than a biography in the artistic sense of the term; a chronicle of the events of a life in which there were but few external events of importance, and in which the subject of the picture is, for the most part, left to paint her own portrait, and that, moreover, unconsciously. Still, this is a method which may be held to have its advantages, in that it can hardly be affected by the feelings or prejudices of the biographer; and if it does not present a finished portrait to the reader, it provides him with the materials from which he can form a portrait for himself. The external events are placed upon record, either in the letters or in the connecting links of narrative; the character and opinions of Mrs. Browning reveal themselves in her correspondence; and her genius is enshrined in her poetry. And these three elements make up all that may be known of her personality, all with which a biographer has to deal.

It is essentially her character, not her genius, that is presented to the reader of these letters. There are some letter-writers whose genius is so closely allied with their daily life that it shines through into their familiar correspondence with their friends, and their letters become literature. Such, in their very different ways, with very different types of genius and very different habits of daily life, are Gray, Cowper, Lamb, perhaps Fitzgerald. But letter-writers such as these are few. More often the correspondence of men and women of letters is valuable for the light it throws upon the character and opinions of those whose character and opinions we are led to regard with admiration or respect, or at least interest, on account of their other writings. In these cases it may be held that the publication is justifiable or not, according as the character which it reveals is affected favourably or the reverse. Not all truth, even about famous men, is useful for publication, but only such as enables us to appreciate better the works which have made them famous. Their highest selves are expressed in their literary work; and it is a poor service to truth to insist on bringing to light the fact that they also had lower selves—common, dull, it may be vicious. What illustrates their genius and enhances our respect for their character, may rightly be made known; but what shakes our belief and mars our enjoyment in them, is simply better left in obscurity.

With regard to Mrs. Browning, however, there is no room for doubt upon these points. These letters, familiarly written to her private friends, without the smallest idea of publication, treating of the thoughts that came uppermost in the ordinary language of conversation, can lay no claim to make a new revelation of her genius. On the other hand, perhaps because the circumstances of Mrs. Browning's life cut her off to an unusual extent from personal intercourse with her friends, and threw her back upon letter-writing as her principal means of communication with them, they contain an unusually full revelation of her character. And this is not wholly unconnected with her literary genius, since her personal convictions, her moral character, entered more fully than is often the case into the composition of her poetry. Her best poetry is that which is most full of her personal emotions. The 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' the 'Cry of the Children,' 'Cowper's Grave,' the 'Dead Pan,' 'Aurora Leigh,' and all the Italian poems, owe their value to the pure and earnest character, the strong love of truth and right, the enthusiasm on behalf of what is oppressed and the indignation against all kinds of oppression and wrong, which were prominent elements in a personality of exceptional worth and beauty.

An editor can generally serve his readers best by remaining in the background; but he is allowed one moment for the expression of his personal feelings, when he thanks those who have assisted him in his work. In the present case there are many to whom it is a pleasure to offer such thanks. In the first place, I have to thank Mr. R. Barrett Browning and Miss Browning most cordially for having accepted the proposal of the publishers (Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., to whom likewise my gratitude is due) to put so pleasant and congenial a task into my hands. Mr. Browning has also contributed a number of suggestions and corrections while the sheets have been passing through the press. I have also to thank those who have been kind enough to offer letters in their possession for inclusion in these volumes: Lady Alwyne Compton for the letters to Mr. Westwood; Mrs. Arthur Severn for the letters to Mr. Ruskin; Mr. G.L. Craik for the letters to Miss Mulock; Mrs. Commeline for the letters to Miss Commeline; Mr. T.J. Wise for the letters to Mr. Cornelius Mathews; Mr. C. Aldrich for the letter to Mrs. Kinney; Col. T.W. Higginson for a letter to Miss Channing; and the Rev. G. Bainton for a letter to Mr. Kenyon. It has not been possible to print all the letters which have been thus offered; but this does not diminish the kindness of the lenders, nor the gratitude of the editor.

Finally, I should wish to offer my sincere thanks to Lady Edmond Fitzmaurice for much assistance and advice in the selection and revision of the letters; a labour which her friendship with Mr. Browning towards the close of his life has prompted her to bestow most freely and fully upon this memorial of his wife.

F.G.K.

July 1897.

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, still better known to the world as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was born on March 6, 1806, the eldest child of Edward and Mary Moulton Barrett. I Both the date and place of her birth have been matters of uncertainty and dispute, and even so trustworthy an authority as the 'Dictionary of National Biography' is inaccurate with respect to them. All doubt has, however, been set at rest by the discovery of the entry of her birth in the parish register of Kelloe Church, in the county of Durham.^[2] She was born at Coxhoe Hall, the residence of Mr. Barrett's only brother, Samuel, about five miles south of the city of Durham. Her father, whose name was originally Edward Barrett Moulton, had assumed the additional surname of Barrett on the death of his maternal grandfather, to whose estates in Jamaica he was the heir. Of Mr. Barrett it is recorded by Mr. Browning, in the notes prefixed by him to the collected edition of his wife's poems, that 'on the early death of his father he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr. Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a punishment for a supposed offence (burning the toast)'—which, indeed, has been a 'supposed offence' at other schools than Harrow—'by the youth whose fag he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage, went to Northumberland.' His wife was Miss Mary Graham-Clarke, daughter of J. Graham-Clarke, of Fenham Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but of her nothing seems to be known, and her comparatively early death causes her to be little heard of in the record of her daughter's life.

Nothing is to be gained by trying to trace back the genealogy of the Barrett family, and it need merely be noted that it had been connected for some generations with the island of Jamaica, and owned considerable estates there.^[3] It is a curious coincidence that Robert Browning was likewise in part of West Indian descent, and so, too, was John Kenyon, the lifelong friend of both, by whose means the poet and poetess were first introduced to one another.

The family of Mr. Edward Barrett was a fairly large one, consisting, besides Elizabeth, of two daughters, Henrietta and Arabel, and eight sons—Edward, whose tragic death at Torquay saddened so much of his sister's life, Charles (the 'Stormie' of the letters), Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred, Septimus, and Octavius; Mr. Barrett's inventiveness having apparently given out with the last two members of his family, reducing him to the primitive method of simple enumeration, an enumeration in which, it may be observed, the daughters counted for nothing. Not many of these, however, can have been born at Coxhoe; for while Elizabeth was still an infant—apparently about the beginning of the year 1809—Mr. Barrett removed to his newly purchased estate of Hope End, in Herefordshire, among the Malvern hills, and only a few miles from Malvern itself. It is to Hope End that the admirers of Mrs. Browning must look as the real home of her childhood and youth. Here she spent her first twenty years of conscious life. Here is the scene of the childish reminiscences which are to be found among her earlier poems, of 'Hector in the Garden,' 'The Lost Bower,' and 'The Deserted Garden.' And here too her earliest verses were written, and the foundations laid of that omnivorous reading of literature of all sorts and kinds, which was so strong a characteristic of her tastes and leanings.

On this subject she may be left to tell her own tale. In a letter written on October 5, 1843, to Mr. R.H. Horne, she furnishes him with the following biographical details for his study of her in 'The New Spirit of the Age.' They supply us with nearly all that we know of her early life and writings.

'And then as to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good a story, Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in my thoughts. I wrote verses—as I dare say many have done who never wrote any poems—very early; at eight years old and earlier. But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry has been a distinct object with me—an object to read, think, and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete muses from childish lips. The Greeks were my demi-gods, and haunted me out of Pope's Homer, until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than of Moses the black pony. And thus my great "epic" of eleven or twelve years old, in four books, and called "The Battle of Marathon," and of which fifty copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling me—is Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an imitative faculty and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar direction. The love of Pope's Homer threw me into Pope on one side and into Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek—and the influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards as in my "Essay on Mind," a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented of as worthy of all repentance. The poem is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual thinking and feeling—the bird pecks through the shell in it. With this it has a pertness and pedantry which did not even then belong to the character of the author, and which I regret now more than I do the literary defectiveness.

'All this time, and indeed the greater part of my life, we lived at Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to me except by books and my own thoughts, and it is a beautiful country, and was a retirement happy in many ways, although the very peace of it troubles the heart as it looks back. There I had my fits of Pope, and Byron, and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and eat and drank Greek and made my head ache with it. Do you know the Malvern Hills? The hills of Piers Plowman's Visions? They seem to me my native hills; for, although I was born in the county of Durham, I was an infant when I went first into their neighbourhood, and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful, beautiful hills they are! And yet, not for the whole world's beauty would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any more. It would be a mockery, like the taking back of a broken flower to its stalk.'^[4]

So, while the young Robert Browning was enthusiastically declaiming passages of Pope's Homer, and measuring out heroic couplets with his hand round the dining table in Camberwell, Elizabeth Barrett was drinking from the same fount of inspiration among the Malvern Hills, and was already turning it to account in the production of her first epic. The fifty copies of the 'Battle of Marathon,' which Mr. Barrett, proud of his daughter's precocity, insisted on having printed, bear the date of 1819. Only five of them are now known to exist, and these are all in private hands; even the British Museum possesses only the reprint which the hero-worship of the present generation caused to be produced in 1891. Seven years later, when she had just reached the age of twenty, her first volume of verse was offered to the world in general. It was entitled 'An Essay on Mind, and other Poems,' and included, besides the didactic poem after the manner of Pope which formed the pièce de rèsistance, a number of shorter pieces, several of which, as she informed Horne,^[5] had been written when she was not more than thirteen.

It was during the years at Hope End that Elizabeth Barrett was first attacked by serious illness. 'At fifteen,' she says in her autobiographical letter, already quoted in part, 'I nearly died;' and this may be connected with a statement by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, to the effect that 'one day, when Elizabeth was about fifteen, the young girl, impatient for her ride, tried to saddle her pony alone, in a field, and fell with the saddle upon her, in some way injuring her spine so seriously that she was for years upon her back.'^[6] The latter part of this statement cannot indeed be quite accurate; for her period of long confinement to a sick-room was of later date, and began, according to her own statement, from a different cause. Mr. R. Barrett Browning states that the injury to the spine was not discovered for some time, but was afterwards attributed, not to a fall, but to a strain whilst tightening her pony's girths. No doubt this injury contributed towards the general weakness of health to which she was always subject.

Of her earliest letters, belonging to the Hope End period, very few have been preserved, and most of those which remain are of little interest. The first to be printed here belongs to the period of her mother's last illness, which ended in her death on October 1, 1828. It is addressed to Mrs. James Martin, a lifelong friend, whose name will appear frequently in these pages. At the time when it was written she was living near Tewkesbury, within visiting distance of the Barretts.

My dear Mrs. Martin,—I am happy to be able to tell you that Mr. Garden was here two days ago, and that he has not thought it necessary to adopt any violent measure with regard to our beloved invalid. He seems entirely to rely, for her ultimate restoration, upon a discipline as to diet, and a course of strengthening medicine. This is most satisfactory to us; and her spirits have been soothed and tranquillised by his visit. She has slept quietly for the last few nights, and reports herself to be brisker and stronger, and to be comparatively free from pain. This account is, perhaps, too favorable,^[7] and will appear so to you when you see her, as I am afraid you will, not looking much better, much more cheerful, than when you paid us your last visit. But when we are very willing to hope, we are apt to be too ready to hope: though really, without being too sanguine, we may consider quiet nights and diminished pain to be satisfactory signs of amendment. I know you will be glad to hear of them, and I hope you will witness them very soon, in spite of this repulsive snow. It will do mama good, and I am sure it will give us all pleasure, to benefit by some of your charitable pilgrimages over the hill.

With our best regards, and sincerest thanks for your kind interest

Believe me, dear Mrs. Martin, most truly yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

To Miss Commeline
Hope End: Monday, [October 1828].

My dear Miss Commeline,—Thank you for the sympathy and interest which you have extended towards us in our heavy affliction. Even you cannot know all that we have lost; but God knows, and it has pleased Him to take away the blessing that He gave. And all must be right since He doeth all! Indeed we did not foresee this great grief! If we had we could not have felt it less; but I should not then have been denied the consolation of being with her at the last.

It is idle to speak now of such thoughts, and circumstances have unquestionably been rightly and mercifully ordered. We are all well and composed—poor papa supporting us by his own surpassing fortitude. It is an inexpressible comfort to me to witness his calmness.

I cannot say that we shall not be glad to see you, but the weather is dreary and the distance long: and if you were to come, we might not be able to meet you and to speak to you with calmness. In that case you would receive a melancholy impression which I should like to spare you. Perhaps it would be better for you and less selfish in us, if we were to defer this meeting a little while longer—but do what you prefer doing! I can never forget the regard and esteem entertained for you by one whose tenderness and watchfulness I have felt every day and hour since she gave me that life which her loss embitters—whose memory is more precious to me than any earthly blessing left behind; I have written what is ungrateful, and what I ought not to have written, and what I ought not to feel, and do not always feel, but I did not just then remember that I had so much left to love.

My dear Mrs. Boyd,—You were quite wrong in supposing that papa was likely to complain about 'the number of letters from Malvern;' and as to my doing so, why did you suggest that? To fill up a sentence, or to conjure up some kind of limping excuse for idle people? Among idle people, perhaps you have written me down. But the reason of my silence was far more reasonable than yours. I have been engaged in alternately wishing in earnest and wishing in vain for the power of saying when I could go to Malvern—and in being unwell besides. For the last week I have not been at all well, and indeed was obliged yesterday to go to bed after breakfast instead of after tea, where I contrived to abstract myself out of a good deal of pain into Lord Byron's Life by Moore. To-day this abstraction is not necessary; I am much better; and, indeed, little remains of the indisposition but the vulgar fractions of a cough and cold. I dare say (and Occyta^[8] agrees with me) cold was at the bottom of it all, for I was so very wise as to lie down upon the grass last Monday, when the sun was shining deceitfully, though the snow was staring at me from the hedges, with an expression anything but dog-daysical!

Henrietta's face-ache is quite well, and I don't mean to give any more bulletins to-day. I hope your 'tolerably well' is turned into 'quite well' too by this time.

In reply to your query, I will mention that the existence actually extended until Thursday without the visit here—a phenomenon in physics and metaphysics. I was desired by a note a short time previously, 'to embrace all my circle with the utmost tenderness,' as proxy. Considering the extent of the said circle, this was a very comprehensive request, and a very unreasonable one to offer to anyone less than the hundred-armed Indian god Baly. I am glad that your alternative of a house is so near to the right side of the turnpike—in which case, a miss is certainly not as bad as a mile. May Place is to be vacated in May, though its present inhabitants do not leave Malvern. I mention this to you, but pray don't re-mention it to anybody. The rent is 15£. Mr. Boyd^[9] will not be angry with me for not going to see him sooner than I can. At least, I am sure he ought not. Though you are all kind enough to wish me to go, I always think and know (which is consolatory to everything but my vanity) that no one can wish it half as much as I myself do.

Believe me, dear Mrs. Boyd, affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

The fear 1832 brought a great change in the fortunes of the Barrett family, and may be said to mark the end of the purely formative period in Elizabeth Barrett's life. Hitherto she had been living in the home and among the surroundings of her childhood, absorbing literature rather than producing it; or if producing it, still mainly for her own amusement and instruction, rather than with any view of appealing to the general public. But in 1832 this home was broken up by the sale, of Hope End,^[10] and with the removal thence we seem to find her embarking definitely on literature as the avowed pursuit and occupation of her life. Sidmouth in Devonshire was the place to which the Barrett family now removed, and the letters begin henceforth to be longer and more frequent, and to tell a more connected tale.

How can I thank you enough, dearest Mrs. Martin, for your letter? How kind of you to write so soon and so very kindly! The postmark and handwriting were in themselves pleasant sights to me, and the kindness yet more welcome. Believe that I am grateful to you for all your kindness—for your kindness now, and your kindness in the days which are past. Some of those past days were very happy, and some of them very sorrowful—more sorrowful than even our last days at dear, dear Hope End. Then, I well recollect, though I could not then thank you as I ought, how you felt for us and with us. Do not think I can ever forget that time, or you. I had written a note to you, which the bearer of Bummy's and Arabel's to Colwall^[11] omitted to take. Afterwards I thought it best to spare you any more farewells, which are upon human lips, of all words, the most natural, and of all the most painful.

They told us of our having past your carriage in Ledbury. Dear Mrs. Martin, I cannot dwell upon the pain of that first hour of our journey; but you will know what it must have been. The dread of it, for some hours before, was almost worse; but it is all over now, blessed be God. Before the first day's journey was at end, we felt inexpressibly relieved—relieved from the restlessness and anxiety which have so long oppressed us—and now we are calmer and happier than we have been for very long. If we could only have papa and Bro and Sette^[12] with us! About half an hour before we set off, papa found out that he could not part with Sette, who sleeps with him, and is always an amusing companion to him. Papa was, however, unwilling to separate him perforce from his little playfellows, and asked him whether he wished very much to go. Sette's heart was quite full, but he answered immediately, 'Oh, no, papa, I would much rather stay with you.' He is a dear affectionate little thing. He and Bro being with poor Papa, we are far more comfortable about him than we should otherwise be—and perhaps our going was his sharpest pang. I hope it was, as it is over. Do not think, dear Mrs. Martin, that you or Mr. Martin can ever 'intrude'—you know you use that word in your letter. I have often been afraid, on account of papa not having been for so long a time at Colwall, lest you should fancy that he did not value your society and your kindness. Do not fancy it. Painful circumstances produce—as we have often had occasion to observe—different effects upon different minds; and some feeling, with which I certainly have no sympathy has made papa shrink from society of any kind lately. He would not even attend the religious societies in Ledbury, which he was so much pledged to support, and so interested in supporting. If you knew how much he has talked of you, and asked every particular about you, you could not fancy that his regard for you was estranged. He has an extraordinary degree of strength of mind on most points—and strong feeling, when it is not allowed to run in the natural channel, will sometimes force its way where it is not expected. You will think it strange; but never up to this moment has he even alluded to the subject, before us—never, at the moment of parting with us. And yet, though he had not power to say one word, he could play at cricket with the boys on the very last evening.

We slept at the York House in Bath. Bath is a beautiful town as a town, and the country harmonises well with it, without being a beautiful country. As mere country, nobody would stand still to look at it; though as town country, many bodies would. Somersetshire in general seems to be hideous, and I could fancy from the walls which intersect it in every direction, that they had been turned to stone by looking at the Gorgonic scenery. The part of Devonshire through which our journey lay is nothing very pretty, though it must be allowed to be beautiful after Somersetshire. We arrived here almost in the dark, and were besieged by the crowd of disinterested tradespeople, who would attend us through the town to our house, to help to unload the carriages. This was not a particularly agreeable reception in spite of its cordiality; and the circumstance of there being not a human being in our house, and not even a rushlight burning, did not reassure us. People were tired of expecting us every day for three weeks. Nearly the whole way from Honiton to this place is a descent. Poor dear Bummy said she thought we were going into the bowels of the earth, but suspect she thought we were going much deeper. Between you and me, she does not seem delighted with Sidmouth; but her spirits are a great deal better, and in time she will, I dare say, be better pleased. We like very much what we have seen of it. The town is small and not superfluously clean, but, of course, the respectable houses are not a part of the town. Ours is one which the Grand Duchess Helena had, not at all grand, but extremely comfortable and cheerful, with a splendid sea view in front, and pleasant green, hills and trees behind. The drawing-room's four windows all look to the sea, and I am never tired of looking out of them. I was doing so, with a most hypocritical book before me, when your letter arrived, and I felt all that you said in it. I always thought that the sea was the sublimest object in nature. Mont Blanc—Niagara must be nothing to it. There, the Almighty's form glasses itself in tempests—and not only in tempests, but in calm—in space, in eternal motion, in eternal regularity. How can we look at it, and consider our puny sorrows, and not say, 'We are dumb—because Thou didst it'? Indeed, dear Mrs. Martin, we must feel every hour, and we shall feel every year, that what He did is well done—and not only well, but mercifully.

Mr. and Mrs. H——, with whom papa is slightly acquainted, have called upon us, and shown us many kind attentions. They are West India people, not very polished, but certainly very good-natured. We hear that the place is extremely full and gay; but this is, of course, only an on dit to us at present. I have been riding a donkey two or three times, and enjoy very much going to the edge of the sea. The air has made me sleep more soundly than I have done for some time, and I dare say it will do me a great deal of good in every way.

You may suppose what a southern climate this is, when I tell you that myrtles and verbena, three or four feet high, and hydrangeas are in flower in the gardens—even in ours, which is about a hundred and fifty yards from the sea. I have written to the end of my paper. Give our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me,

Your affectionate and grateful
E.B.B.

How very kind of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, to write to me so much at length and at such a time. Indeed, it was exactly the time when, if we were where we have been, we should have wished you to walk over the hill and talk to us; and although, after all that the most zealous friends of letter writing can say for it, it is not such a happy thing as talking with those you care for, yet it is the next happiest thing. I am sure I thought so when I read your letter ...

And now I must tell you about ourselves. Papa and Bro and Sette have made us so much happier by coming, and we have the comfort of seeing dear papa in good spirits, and not only satisfied but pleased with this place. It is scarcely possible, at least it seems so to me, to do otherwise than admire the beauty of the country. It is the very land of green lanes and pretty thatched cottages. I don't mean the kind of cottages which are generally thatched, with pigstyes and cabbages and dirty children, but thatched cottages with verandas and shrubberies, and sounds from the harp or piano coming through the windows. When you stand upon any of the hills which stand round Sidmouth, the whole valley seems to be thickly wooded down to the very verge of the sea, and these pretty villas to be springing from the ground almost as thickly and quite as naturally as the trees themselves. There are certainly many more houses out of the town than in it, and they all stand apart, yet near, hiding in their own shrubberies, or behind the green rows of elms which wall in the secluded lanes on either side. Such a number of green lanes I never saw; some of them quite black with foliage, where it is twilight in the middle of the day, and others letting in beautiful glimpses of the spreading heathy hills or of the sunny sea. I am sure you would like the transition from the cliffs, from the bird's eye view to, I was going to say, the mole's eye view, but I believe moles don't see quite clearly enough to suit my purpose. There are a great number of people here. Sam was at an evening party a week ago where there were a hundred and twenty people; but they don't walk about the parade and show themselves as one might expect. We know only the Herrings and Mrs. and the Miss Polands and Sir John Kean. Mrs. and Miss Weekes, and Mr. and Mrs. James have called upon us, but we were out when they came. I suppose it will be necessary to return their visits and to know them; and when we do, you shall hear about them, and about everybody whom we know. I am certainly much better in health, stronger than I was, and less troubled with the cough. Every day I attend [word torn out] their walks on my donkey, if we do not go in a boat, which is still pleasanter. I believe Henrietta walks out about three times a day. She is looking particularly well, and often talks, and I am sure still oftener thinks, of you. You know how fond of you she is. Papa walks out with her—and us; and we all, down to Occyta, breakfast and drink tea together. The dining takes place at five o'clock. To-morrow, if this lovely weather will stand still and be accommodating, we talk of rowing to Dawlish, which is about ten miles off. We have had a few cases of cholera, at least suspicious cases: one a fortnight before we arrived, and five since, in the course of a month. All dead except one. I confess a little nervousness; but it is wearing away. The disease does not seem to make any progress; and for the last six days there have been no patients at all.

Do let us hear very soon, my dear Mrs. Martin, how you are—how your spirits are, and whether Rome is still in your distance. Surely no plan could be more delightful for you than this plan; and if you don't stay very long away, I shall be sorry to hear of your abandoning it. Do you recollect your promise of coming to see us? We do.

You must have had quite enough now of my 'little hand' and of my details. Do not go to Matton or to the Bartons or to Eastnor without giving my love. How often my thoughts are at home! I cannot help calling it so still in my thoughts. I may like other places, but no other place can ever appear to me to deserve that name.

Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I hope you are very angry indeed with us for not writing. We are as penitent as we ought to be—that is, I am, for I believe I am the idle person; yet not altogether idle, but procrastinating and waiting for news rather more worthy of being read in Rome than any which even now I can send you.... And now, my dear Mrs. Martin, I mean to thank you, as I ought to have done long ago, for your kindness in offering to procure for me the Archbishop of Dublin's^[13] valuable opinion upon my 'Prometheus. I am sure that if you have not thought me very ungrateful, you must be very indulgent. My mind was at one time so crowded by painful thoughts, that they shut out many others which are interesting to me; and among other things, I forgot once or twice, when I had an opportunity, to thank you, dear Mrs. Martin. I believe I should have taken advantage of your proposal, but papa said to me, 'If he criticises your manuscript in a manner which does not satisfy you, you won't be easy without defending yourself, and he might be drawn into taking more trouble than you have now any idea of giving him.' I sighed a little at losing such an opportunity of gaining a great advantage, but there seemed to be some reason in what papa said I have completed a preface and notes to my translation; and since doing so, a work of exactly the same character by a Mr. Medwin has been published, and commended in Bulwer's magazine.^[14] Therefore it is probable enough that my trouble, excepting as far as my own amusement went, has been in vain. But papa means to try Mr. Valpy, I believe. He left us since I began to write this letter, with a promise of returning before Christmas Day. We do miss him. Mr. Boyd has made me quite angry by publishing his translations by rotation in numbers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine,' instead of making them up into a separate publication, as I had persuaded him to do. There is the effect, you see, of going, even for a time, out of my reach! The readers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine' are pious people, but not cultivated, nor, for the most part, capable of estimating either the talents of Gregory or his translator's. I have begun already to insist upon another publication in a separate form, and shall gain my point, I dare say. I have been reading Bulwer's novels and Mrs. Trollope's libels, and Dr. Parr's works. I am sure you are not an admirer of Mrs. Trollope's. She has neither the delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind and her extent of talent forms but a scanty veil to shadow her other defects. Bulwer has quite delighted me. He has all the dramatic talent which Scott has, and all the passion which Scott has not, and he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of character. There are very fine things in his 'Denounced.' We subscribe to the best library here, but the best is not a good one. I have, however, a table-load of my own books, and with them I can always be satisfied. Do you know that Mr. Curzon has left Ledbury? We were glad to receive your letter from Dover although it told us that you were removing so far from us. Do let us hear of your enjoying Italy. Is there much English society in Rome, and is it like English society here? I can scarcely fancy an invitation card, 'Mrs. Huggin-muggin at home,' carried through the Via Sacra. I am sure my 'little hand' has done its duty to-day. I shall leave the corners to Henrietta. Give our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me, my dear Mrs. Martin,

Your affectionate
E.B.B.

The letter just printed contains the first allusion in Miss Barrett's letters to any of her own writings. The translation of the 'Prometheus Bound' of Aeschylus was the first-fruits of the removal to Sidmouth. It was written, as she told Horne eleven years afterwards, 'in twelve days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards—the only means of giving it a little warmth.'^[15] Indeed, so dissatisfied did she subsequently become with it, that she did what she could to suppress it, and in the collected edition of 1850 substituted another version, written in 1845, which she hoped would secure the final oblivion of her earlier attempt.^[16] The letter given above shows that the composition of the earlier version took place at the end of 1832; and in the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that 'a few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy of Aeschylus.' The volume, which was published anonymously, received two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,' in which the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the hazardous lists of poetic translation to touch anyone rather than Aeschylus, and they may take warning by the author before us.'^[17]

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am half afraid of your being very angry indeed with me; and perhaps it would be quite as well to spare this sheet of paper an angry look of yours, by consigning it over to Henrietta. Yet do believe me, I have been anxious to write to you a long time, and did not know where to direct my letter. The history of all my unkindness to you is this: I delayed answering your kind welcome letter from Rome, for three weeks, because Henrietta was at Torquay, and I knew that she would like to write in it, and because I was unreasonable enough to expect to hear every day of her coming home. At the end of the three weeks, and on consulting your dates and plans, I found out that you would probably have quitted Rome before any letter of mine arrived there. Since then, I have been inquiring, and all in vain, about where I could find you out. All I could hear was, that you were somewhere between Italy and England; and all I could do was, to wait patiently, and throw myself at your feet as soon as you came within sight and hearing. And now do be as generous as you can, my dear Mrs. Martin, and try to forgive one who never could be guilty of the fault of forgetting you, notwithstanding appearances. We heard only yesterday of your being expected at Colwall. And although we cannot welcome you there, otherwise than in this way, at the distance of 140 miles, yet we must welcome you in this way, and assure both of you how glad we are that the same island holds all of us once more. It pleased us very much to hear how you were enjoying yourselves in Rome; and you must please us now by telling us that you are enjoying yourselves at Colwall, and that you bear the change with English philosophy. The fishing at Abbeville was a link between the past and the present; and would make the transition between the eternal city and the eternal tithes a little less striking. My wonder is how you could have persuaded yourselves to keep your promise and leave Italy as soon as you did. Tell me how you managed it. And tell me everything about yourselves—how you are and how you feel, and whether you look backwards or forwards with the most pleasure, and whether the influenza has been among your welcomers to England. Henrietta and Arabel and Daisy^[18] were confined by it to their beds for several days and the two former are only now recovering their strength. Three or four of the other boys had symptoms which were not strong enough to put them to bed. As for me, I have been quite well all the spring, and almost all the winter. I don't know when I have been so long well as I have been lately; without a cough or anything else disagreeable. Indeed, if I may place the influenza in a parenthesis, we have all been perfectly well, in spite of our fishing and boating and getting wet three times a day. There is good trout-fishing at the Otter, and the noble river Sid, which, if I liked to stand in it, might cover my ankles. And lately, Daisy and Sette and Occyta have studied the art of catching shrimps, and soak themselves up to their waists like professors. My love of water concentrates itself in the boat; and this I enjoy very much, when the sea is as blue and calm as the sky, which it has often been lately. Of society we have had little indeed; but Henrietta had more than much of it at Torquay during three months; and as for me, you know I don't want any though I am far from meaning to speak disrespectfully of Mr. Boyds, which has been a pleasure and comfort to me. His house is not farther than a five minutes' walk from ours; and I often make it four in my haste to get there. Ask Eliza Cliffe to lend you the May number of the 'Wesleyan Magazine;' and if you have an opportunity of procuring last December's number, do procure that. There are some translations in each of them, which I think you will like. The December translation is my favourite, though I was amanuensis only in the May one. Henrietta and Arabel have a drawing master, and are meditating soon beginning to sketch out of doors—that is, if before the meditation is at an end we do not leave Sidmouth. Our plans are quite uncertain; and papa has not, I believe, made up his mind whether or not to take this house on after the beginning of next month; when our engagement with our present landlord closes. If we do leave Sidmouth, you know as well as I do where we shall go. Perhaps to Boulogne! perhaps to the Swan River. The West Indians are irreparably ruined if the Bill passes. Papa says that in the case of its passing, nobody in his senses would think of even attempting the culture of sugar, and that they had better hang weights to the sides of the island of Jamaica and sink it at once. Don't you think certain heads might be found heavy enough for the purpose? No insinuation, I assure you, against the Administration, in spite of the dagger in their right hands. Mr. Atwood seems to me a demi-god of ingratitude! So much for the 'fickle reek of popular breath' to which men have erected their temple of the winds—who would trust a feather to it? I am almost more sorry for poor Lord Grey who is going to ruin us, than for our poor selves who are going to be ruined. You will hear that my 'Prometheus and other Poems' came into light a few weeks ago—a fortnight ago, I think. I dare say I shall wish it out of the light before I have done with it. And I dare say Henrietta is wishing me anywhere, rather than where I am. Certainly I have past all bounds. Do write soon, and tell us everything about Mr. Martin and yourself. And ever believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin,

Your affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Are you a little angry again? I do hope not. I should have written long ago if it had not been for Henrietta; and Henrietta would have written very lately if it had not been for me: and we must beg of you to forgive us both for the sake of each other. Thank you for the kind letter which I have been so tardy in thanking you for, but which was not, on that account, the less gladly received. Do believe how much it pleases me always to see and read dear Mrs. Martin's handwriting. But I must try to tell you some less ancient truths. We are still in the ruinous house. Without any poetical fiction, the walls are too frail for even me, who enjoy the situation in a most particularly particular manner, to have any desire to pass the winter within them. One wind we have had the privilege of hearing already; and down came the tiles while we were at dinner, and made us all think that down something else was coming. We have had one chimney pulled down to prevent it from tumbling down; and have received especial injunctions from the bricklayers not to lean too much out of the windows, for fear the walls should follow the destiny of the chimney. Altogether there is every reasonable probability that the whole house will in the course of next winter be as like Persepolis as anything so ugly can be! If another house which will fit us can be found in Sidmouth, I am sure papa will take it; but, as he said the other day, 'If I can't find a house, I must go.' I hope he may find one, and as near the sea as this ruin. I have enjoyed its moonlight and its calmness all the summer; and am prepared to enjoy its tempestuousness of the winter with as true an enjoyment. What we shall do ultimately, I do not even dream; and, if I know papa, he does not. My visions of the future are confined to 'what shall I write or read next,' and 'when shall we next go out in the boat,' and they, you know, can do no harm to anybody. Of one thing I have a comforting certainty—that wherever we may go or stay, the decree which moves or fixes us will and must be the 'wisest virtuousest discreetest best!' ...

So, I will change the subject to myself. You told me that you were going to read my book, and I want to know what you think of it. If you were given to compliment and insincerity, I should be afraid of asking you; because, among other evident reasons, I might then appear to be asking for your praise instead of your opinion. As it is—I want to know what you think of my book. Is the translation stiff? If you know me at all (and I venture to hope that you do) you will be certain that I shall like your honesty, and love you for being honest, even if you put on the very blackest of black caps....

Of course you know that the late Bill has ruined the West Indians. That is settled. The consternation here is very great. Nevertheless I am glad, and always shall be, that the negroes are—virtually—free!

May God bless you, dear Mrs. Martin!

Ever believe me, your affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Friend,—I don't know how I shall begin to persuade you not to be angry with me, but perhaps the best plan will be to confess as many sins as would cover this sheet of paper, and then to go on with my merits. Certainly I am altogether guiltless of your charge of not noticing your book's arrival because no Calvinism arrived with it. I told you the bare truth when I told you why I did not write immediately. The passage relating to Calvinism I certainly read, and as certainly was sorry for; but as certainly as both those certainties, such reading and such regret had nothing whatever to do with the silence which made you so angry with me.

The other particular thing of which I should have written is Mr. Parker and my letters. I am more and, more sorry that you should have sent them to him at all—not that their loss is any loss to anybody, but that I scarcely like the idea—indeed, I don't like it at all—of their remaining, worthless as they are, at Mr. P.'s mercy. As for my writing about them, I should not be able to make up my mind to do that. You know I had nothing to do with their being sent to Mr. Parker, and was indeed in complete ignorance of it. Besides, I should be half ashamed to write to him now on any subject. A very long interregnum took place in our correspondence, which was his own work; and when he wrote to me the summer before last, I delayed from week to week, and then from month to month, answering it. And now I feel ashamed to write at all.

Perhaps you will wonder why I am not ashamed to write to you. Indeed I have meant to do it very, very often. Don't be severe upon me. I am always afraid of writing to you too often, and so the opposite fault is apt to be run into—of writing too seldom. IF THAT is a fault. You see my scepticism is becoming faster and faster developed.

Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I have been reading the Bridgewater treatise, and am now trying to understand Prout upon Chemistry. I shall be worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows but what I may die a glorious death under the pons asinorum after all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does not hold that matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose the seeds of matter—the ultimate molecules—are a kind of tertium quid between matter and spirit. Certainly I can't believe that any kind of matter, primal or ultimate, can be indivisible, which it must according to his view.

Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful; as to matter, I could not walk with him all the way, although I longed to do it, for he walked on flowers, and under shade—'no tree on which a fine bird did not sit.' ...

Believe me, your affectionate friend,
E.B.B.

My dear Mr. Boyd,—I won't ask you to forgive me for not writing before, because I know very well that you would rather have not heard from me immediately.... And so, you and Mrs. Mathew have been tearing to pieces—to the very rags—all my elaborate theology! And when Mr. Young is 'strong enough,' he is to help you at your cruel work! 'The points upon which you and I differed' are so numerous, that if I really am wrong upon every one of them, Mrs. Mathew has indeed reason to 'punish me with hard thoughts.' Well, she can't help my feeling for her much esteem, although I never saw her. And if I were to see her, I would not argue with her; I would only ask her to let me love her. I am weary of controversy in religion, and should be so were I stronger and more successful in it than I am or care to be. The command is not 'argue with one another,' but 'love one another.' It is better to love than to convince. They who lie on the bosom of Jesus must lie there together!

Not a word about your book!^[19] Don't you mean to tell me anything of it? I saw a review of it—rather a satisfactory one—I think in an August number of the 'Athenaeum.' If you will look into 'Fraser's Magazine' for August, at an article entitled 'Rogueries of Tom Moore,' you will be amused with a notice of the 'Edinburgh Review's' criticism in the text, and of yourself in a note. We have had a crowded Bible meeting, and a Church Missionary and London Missionary meeting besides; and I went last Tuesday to the Exmouth Bible meeting with Mrs. Maling, Miss Taylor, and Mr. Hunter. We did not return until half-past one in the morning.... The Bishop of Barbadoes and the Dean of Winchester were walking together on the beach yesterday, making Sidmouth look quite episcopal. You would not have despised it half so much, had you been here.

Do you know any person who would like to send his or her son to Sidmouth, for the sake of the climate, and private instruction: and if you do, will you mention it to me? I am very sorry to hear of Mrs. Boyd being so unwell. Arabel had a letter two days ago from Annie, and as it mentions Mrs. Boyd's having gone to Dover, I trust that she is well again. Should she be returned, give my love to her.

The black-edged paper may make you wonder at its cause. Our dear aunt Mrs. Butler died last month at Dieppe—and died in Jesus. Miss Clarke is going, if she is not gone, to Italy for the winter.

Believe me, affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

Write to me whenever you dislike at least, and tell me what your plans are. I hear nothing about our leaving Sidmouth.

I am afraid that there can be no chance of my handwriting at least being unforgotten by you, dear Miss Commeline, but in the case of your having a very long memory you may remember the name which shall be written at the end of this note, and which belongs to one who does not, nor is likely to forget you! I was much, much obliged to you for the kind few lines you wrote to me—how long ago! No, do not remember how long—do not remember that for fear you should think me unkind, and—what I am not! I have intended again and again to answer your note, and I am doing it—at last! Are you all quite well? Mrs. Commeline and all of you? Shall I ever see any of you again? Perhaps I shall not; but even if I do not, I shall not cease to wish you to be well and happy 'in the body or out of the body.'

We came to Sidmouth for two months, and you see we are here still; and when we are likely to go is as uncertain as ever. I like the place, and some of its inhabitants. I like the greenness and the tranquillity and the sea; and the solitude of one dear seat which hangs over it, and which is too far or too lonely for many others to like besides myself. We are living in a thatched cottage, with a green lawn bounded by a Devonshire lane. Do you know what that is? Milton did when he wrote of 'hedgerow elms and hillocks green.' Indeed Sidmouth is a nest among elms; and the lulling of the sea and the shadow of the hills make it a peaceful one. But there are no majestic features in the country. It is all green and fresh and secluded; and the grandeur is concentrated upon the ocean without deigning to have anything to do with the earth. I often find my thoughts where my footsteps once used to be! but there is no use in speaking of that....

Pray believe me, affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—... We have lately had deep anxiety with regard to our dear papa. He left us two months ago to do his London business: and a few weeks since we were told by a letter from him that he was ill; he giving us to understand that his complaint was of a rheumatic character. By the next coach, we were so daring (I can scarcely understand how we managed it) as to send Henry to him: thinking that it would be better to be scolded than to suffer him to be alone and in suffering at a London hotel. We were not scolded: but my prayer to be permitted to follow Henry was condemned to silence: and what was said being said emphatically, I was obliged to submit, and to be

thankful for the unsatisfactory accounts which for many days afterwards we received.... I cannot help being anxious and fearful. You know he is all left to us—and that without him we should indeed be orphans and desolate. Therefore you may well know what feelings those are with which we look back upon his danger; and forwards to any threatening of a return of it.... It may not be so. Do not, when you write, allude to my fearing about it. Our only feeling now should certainly be a deep feeling of thankfulness towards that God of all consolation Who has permitted us to know His love in the midst of many griefs; and Who while He has often cast upon us the sorrow and the shadow, has yet enabled us to recognise it as that 'shadow of the wings of the Almighty,' wherein we may 'rejoice.' We shall probably see our dear papa next week. At least we know that he is only waiting for strength and that he is already able to go out—I fear, not to walk out. Here we are all well. Belle Vue is sold, and we shall probably have to leave it in March: but I do not think that we shall do so before. Henrietta is still very anxious to leave Sidmouth altogether; and I still feel that I shall very much grieve to leave it: so that it is happy for us that neither is the decider on this point. I have often thought that it is happier not to do what one pleases, and perhaps you will agree with me—if you don't please at the present moment to do something very particular. And do tell me, dear Mrs. Martin, what you are pleasing to do, and what you are doing: for it seems to me, and indeed is, a long time since I heard of you and Mr. Martin in detail. Miss Maria Commeline sent a note to Henrietta a fortnight ago: and in it was honorable mention of you—but I won't interfere with the sublimities of your imagination, by telling you what it was.... I should like to hear something of Hope End: whether there are many alterations, and whether the new lodge, of which I heard, is built. Even now, the thought stands before me sometimes like an object in a dream that I shall see no more those hills and trees which seemed to me once almost like portions of my existence. This is not meant for murmuring. I have had much happiness at Sidmouth, though with a character of its own. Henrietta and Arabel and I are the only guardians just now of the three youngest boys, the only ones at home: and I assure you, we have not too little to do. They are no longer little boys. There is an anxiety among us just now to have letters from Jamaica—from my dear dear Bro—but the packet is only 'expected.' The last accounts were comforting ones; and I am living on the hope of seeing him back again in the spring. Stormie and Georgie are doing well at Glasgow. So Dr. Wardlaw says.... Henrietta's particular love to you; and do believe me always,

Your affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

You have of course heard of poor Mrs. Boyd's death. Mr. Boyd and his daughter are both in London, and likely, I think, to remain there.

My dear Mr. Boyd,—... Now I am going to tell you the only good news I know, and you will be glad, I know, to be told what I am going to tell you. Dear Georgie has taken his degree, and very honorably, at Glasgow, and is coming to us in all the dignity of a Bachelor of Arts. He was examined in Logic, Moral Philosophy, Greek and Latin, of course publicly: and we have heard from a fellow student of his, that his answers were more pertinent than those of any other of the examined, and elicited much applause. Mr. Groube is the fellow student—but he has ceased to be one, having found the Glasgow studies too heavy for his health. Stormie shrank from the public examination, on account of the hesitation in his speech. He would not go up; although, according to report, as well qualified as Georgie. Mr. Groube says that the ladies of Glasgow are preparing to break their hearts for Georgie's departure: and he and Stormie leave Glasgow on May I. Now, I am sure you will rejoice with me in the result of the examination. Do you not, dear friend? I was very anxious about it; and almost resigned to hear of a failure—for Georgie was in great alarm and prepared us for the very worst. Therefore the surprise and pleasure were great.

I can't tell you of our plans; although the Glasgow students come to us in a week and this house will be too small to receive them. We may leave Sidmouth immediately, or not at all. I shall soon be quite qualified to write a poem on the 'Pleasures of Doubt'—and a very good subject it will be. The pleasures of certainty are generally far less enjoyable—I mean as pleasures go in this unpleasing world. Papa is in London, and much better when we heard from him last—and we are awaiting his decree....

And now what remains for me to tell you? I believe I have read more Hebrew than Greek lately; yet the dear Greek is not less dear than ever. Who reads Greek to you? Who holds my office? Some one, I hope, with an articulation of more congenial slowness.

Give Annie my kind love. May God preserve both of you!

Believe me, your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

The residence of the Barretts at Sidmouth had never been a very settled one—never intended to be permanent, and yet never having a fixed term nor any reason for a fixed term. Hence it spread itself gradually over a space of nearly three years, before the long contemplated move to London actually took place. During the latter part of that period, however, extant letters of Miss Barrett are almost wholly wanting, and there is little information from any other source as to the course of her life. It was apparently in the summer of 1835 that Sidmouth was finally left behind, Mr. Barrett having then taken a house at 74 Gloucester Place (near Baker Street), which, though never regarded as more than a temporary residence, continued to be the home of his family for the next three years.

The move to London was followed by two results of great importance for Elizabeth Barrett. In the first place, her health, which had never been strong, broke down altogether in the London atmosphere, and it is from some time shortly after the arrival in Gloucester Place that the beginning of her invalid life must be dated. On the other hand, residence in London brought her into the neighbourhood of new friends; and although the number of those admitted to see her in her sick-room was always small, we yet owe to this fact the commencement of some of her closest friendships, notably those with her distant cousin, John Kenyon, and with Miss Mitford, the authoress of 'Our Village,' and of a correspondence on a much fuller and more elaborate scale than any of the earlier period. To this, no doubt, the fact of her confinement to her room contributed not a little; for being unable to go out and see her friends, much of her communication with them was necessarily by letter. At the same time her literary activity was increasing. She began to contribute poems to various magazines, and to be brought thereby into connection with literary men; and she was also employed on the longer compositions which went to make up her next volume of published verse.

All this was, however, only of gradual development; and for some time her correspondence is limited to Mr. Boyd, who was now living in St. John's Wood, and Mrs. Martin. The exact date of the first letter is uncertain, but it seems to belong to a time soon after the arrival of the Barretts in town.

My dear Mr. Boyd,—As Georgie is going to do what I am afraid I shall not be able to do to-day—namely, to visit you—he must take with him a few lines from Porsonia greeting, to say how glad I am to feel myself again at only a short distance from you, and how still gladder I shall be when the same room holds both of us. Don't be angry because I have not visited you immediately. You know—or you will know, if you consider—I cannot open the window and fly.

Papa and I were very much obliged to you for the poison—and are ready to smile upon you whenever you give us the opportunity, as graciously as Socrates did upon his executioner. How much you will have to say to me about the Greeks, unless you begin first to abuse me about the Romans; and if you begin that, the peroration will be a very pathetic one, in my being turned out of your doors. Such is my prophecy.

Papa has been telling me of your abusing my stanzas on Mrs. Hemans's death. I had a presentiment that you would: and behold, why I said nothing to you of them. Of course, I maintain, versus both you and papa, that they are very much to be admired: as well as everything else proceeding from or belonging to ME. Upon which principle, I hope you will admire George particularly.

Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

Arabel's and my love to Annie. Won't she come to see us?

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am half willing and half unwilling to write to you when, among such dearer interests and deep anxieties, you may perhaps be scarcely at liberty to attend to what I write. And yet I will write, if it be only briefly, that you may not think—if you think of us at all—that we have changed our hearts with our residence so much as to forget to sympathise with you, dear Mrs. Martin, or to neglect to apprise you ourselves of our movements. Indeed, a letter to you should have been written among my first letters on arriving in London, only Henrietta (my scape-goat, you will say) said, 'I will write to Mrs. Martin.' And then after I had waited, and determined to write without waiting any longer, we heard of poor Mrs. Hanford's affliction and your anxiety, and I have considered day after day whether or not I should intrude upon you; until I find myself—thus!

I do hope that you have from the hand of God those consolations which only He in Jesus Christ can give to the so afflicted. For I know well that you are afflicted with the afflicted, and that with you sympathy is suffering; and that while the tenderest earthly comfort is administered by your presence and kindness to your dear friends, you will feel bitterly for them what a little thing earthly comfort is, when the earthly beloved perish before them. May He who is the Beloved in the sight of His Father and His Church be near to them and you, and cause you to feel as well as know the truth, that what is sudden sorrow, to our judgments, is only long-prepared mercy in His will whose names are Wisdom and Love. Should it not be, dear friend, that the tears of our human eyes ought to serve the happy and touching purpose of reminding us of those tears of Jesus which He shed in assuming our sorrow with our flesh? And the memory of those tears involves all comfort. A recognition of the oneness of the human nature of that Divine Saviour who ever liveth, with ours which perishes and sorrows so; an assurance drawn from thence of His sympathy who sits on the throne of God, with us who suffer in the dust of earth, and of all those doctrines of redemption and sanctification and happiness which come from Him and by Him.

Now you will forgive me for writing all this, dearest Mrs. Martin. I like to write my thoughts and feelings out of my own head and heart, just as they suggest themselves, when I write to you; and I cannot think of affliction, particularly when it comes near to me in the affliction or anxiety of dear friends, without looking back and remembering what voice of God used to sound softly to me when none other could speak comfort. You will forgive me, and not be angry with me for trying, or seeming to try, to be a sermon writer.

Perhaps, dear Mrs. Martin, when you do feel inclined and able to write, you would write me a few lines. Remember, I do not ask for them now. No, do not think of writing now. I shall very much like to hear how your dear charge is—whether there should appear any prospect of improvement; and how poor Mrs. Hanford bears up against this heavy calamity; and whether the anxiety and nursing affect your health. But we shall try to hear this from the Biddulphs; and so do put me out of your head, except when its thoughts would dwell on those on earth who sympathise with you and care for you.

You see we are in London after all, and poor Sidmouth left afar. I am almost inclined to say 'poor us' instead of 'poor Sidmouth.' But I dare say I shall soon be able to see in my dungeon, and begin to be amused with the spiders. Half my soul, in the meantime, seems to have stayed behind on the seashore, which I love more than ever now that I cannot walk on it in the body. London is wrapped up like a mummy, in a yellow mist, so closely that I have had scarcely a glimpse of its countenance since we came. Well, I am trying to like it all very much, and I dare say that in time I may change my taste and my senses—and succeed. We are in a house large enough to hold us, for four months, at the end of which time, if the experiment of our being able to live in London succeed, I believe that papa's intention is to take an unfurnished house and have his furniture from Ledbury. You may wonder at me, but I wish that were settled so, and now. I am satisfied with London, although I cannot enjoy it. We are not likely, in the case of leaving it, to return to Devonshire, and I should look with weary eyes to another strangership and pilgrimage even among green fields that know not these fogs. Papa's object in settling here refers to my brothers. George will probably enter as a barrister student at the Inner Temple on the fifth or sixth of this month, and he will have the advantage of his home by our remaining where we are. Another advantage of London is, that we shall see here those whom we might see nowhere else. This year, dear Mrs. Martin, may it bring with it the true pleasure of seeing you! Three have gone, and we have not seen you.... May God bless you and all that you care for, being with you always as the God of consolation and peace.

Your affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

It is from the middle of this year that Miss Barrett's active appearance as an author may be dated. Hitherto her publications had been confined to a few small anonymous volumes, printed rather to please herself and her friends than with any idea of appealing to a wider public. She was now anxious to take this farther step, and, with that object, to obtain admission to some of the literary magazines. This was obtained through the instrumentality of Mr. R.H. Home, subsequently best known as the author of 'Orion.' He was at this time personally unknown to Miss Barrett, but an application through a common friend led both to the opening to the poetess of the pages of the 'New Monthly Magazine,' then edited by Bulwer, and also to the commencement of a friendship which has left its mark in the two volumes of published letters to Mr. Home. The following is Mr. Home's account of the opening of the acquaintance ('Letters,' i. 7, 8):

The poem with which Miss Barrett thus made her bow to the world of letters was 'The Romaunt of Margret,'^[20] which appeared in the July number of the magazine. Mr. Home must, however, have been in error in speaking of 'The Dead Pan' as its successor, since that was not written till some years later. More probably it was 'The Poet's Vow,^[21] which was printed in the October number of the 'New Monthly.'

My dear Friend,—Be as little angry with me as you can. I have not been very well for a day or two, and shall enjoy a visit to you on Monday so much more than I shall be able to do to-day, that I will ask you to forgive my not going to you this week, and to receive me kindly on that day instead—provided, you know, it is not wet.

The αχαιιδες [Achaiides] approach the αχαιοι [Achaioi]^[22] more tremblingly than usual, with the 'New Monthly Magazine' in their hands. Now pray don't annoy yourself by reading a single word which you would rather not read except for the sake of being kind to me. And my prophecy is, that even by annoying yourself and making a strenuous effort, the whole force of friendship would not carry you down the first page. Georgie says you want to know the verdict of the 'Athenaeum.' That paper unfortunately has been lent out of the house; but my memory enables me to send you the words very correctly, I think. After some observations on other periodicals, the writer goes on to say: 'The "New Monthly Magazine" has not one heavy article. It is rich in poetry, including some fine sonnets by the Corn Law Rhymer, and a fine although too dreamy ballad, "The Poet's Vow." We are almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of a writer of so much inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, and exhort him once again, to greater clearness of expression and less quaintness in the choice of his phraseology; but this is not the time or place for digression.'

You see my critic has condemned me with a very gracious countenance. Do put on yours,

I forgot to say that you surprised and pleased me at the same time by your praise of my 'Sea-mew.'^[23] Love to Annie. We were glad to hear that she did not continue unwell, and that you are well again, too. I hope you have had no return of the rheumatic pain.

My dear Friend,—I am much disappointed in finding myself at the end of this week without having once seen you—particularly when your two notes are waiting all this time to be answered. Do believe that they were not, either of them, addressed to an ungrateful person, and that the only reason of their being received silently was my hope of answering them more agreeably to both of us—by talking instead of writing.

Yes; you have read my mystery.^[24]

You paid a tithe to your human nature in reading only nine-tenths of it, and the rest was a pure gift to your friendship for me, and is taken and will be remembered as such. But you have a cruel heart for a parody, and this one tried my sensibility so much that I cried—with laughing. I confess to you notwithstanding, it was very fair, and dealt its blow with a shining pointed weapon.

But what will you say to me when I confess besides that, in the face of all your kind encouragement, my Drama of the Angels^[25] has never been touched until the last three days? It was not out of pure idleness on my part, nor of disregard to your admonition; but when my thoughts were distracted with other things, books just begun inclosing me all around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, I could not possibly rise up to the gate of heaven and write about my angels. You know one can't sometimes sit down to the sublunary, occupation of reading Greek, unless one feels free to it. And writing poetry requires a double liberty, and an inclination which comes only of itself.

But I have begun. I tried the blank metre once, and it would not do, and so I had to begin again in lyrics. Something above an hundred lines is written, and now I am in two panics, just as if one were not enough. First, because it seems to me a very daring subject—a subject almost beyond our sympathies, and therefore quite beyond the sphere of human poetry. Perhaps when all is written courageously, I shall have no courage left to publish it. Secondly, because all my tendencies towards mysticism will be called into terrible operation by this dreaming upon angels. Yes; you will read a mystery, but don't make any rash resolutions about reading anything. As I have begun, I certainly will go on with the writing.

Here is a question for you:

Am I to accept your generous sacrifice of reading nine-tenths of my 'Vow,' as an atonement for your WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN ME? Oh, your conscience will understand very well what I mean, without a dictionary.

Arabel and I intend to pay you a visit on Monday, and if we can, and it is convenient to you, we are inclined to invite ourselves to your dinner table. But this is all dependent on the weather.

Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Mr. Boyd,—I have been so busy that I have not been able until this morning to take breath or inspiration to answer your lyrics. You shall see me soon, but I am sorry to say it can't be Monday or Tuesday.

I have had another note from the editor of the 'New Monthly Magazine'—very flattering, and praying for farther supplies. The Angels were not ready, and I was obliged to send something else, which I will not ask you to read. So don't be very uneasy.

Arabel's and my best love to Annie. And believe me in a great hurry, for I won't miss this post,

Yours affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Indeed I have long felt the need of writing to you (I mean the need to myself), and although so many weeks and even months have passed away in silence, they have not done so in lack of affection and thought.

I had wished very much to have been able to tell you in this letter where we had taken our house, or where we were going to take it. We remain, however, in our usual state of conscious ignorance, although there is a good deal of talking and walking about a house in Wimpole Street—which, between ourselves, I am not very anxious to live in, on account of the gloominesses of that street, and of that part of the street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned inside out. I would rather go on, in my old way, inhabiting castles in the air than that particular house. Nevertheless, if it is decided upon, I dare say I shall contrive to be satisfied with it, and sleep and wake very much as I should in any other. It will certainly be a point gained to be settled somewhere, and I do so long to sit in my own armchair—strange as it will look out of my own room—and to read from my own books.... For our own particular parts, our healths continue good—none of us, I think, the worse for fog or wind. As to wind, we were almost elevated into the prerogative of pigs in the late storm. We could almost see it, and the feeling it might have been fatal to us. Bro and I were moralising about shipwrecks, in the dining-room, when down came the chimney through the skylight into the entrance passage. You may imagine the crashing effect of the bricks bounding from the staircase downwards, breaking the stone steps in the process, in addition to the falling in of twenty-four large panes of glass, frames and all. We were terrified out of all propriety, and there has been a dreadful calumny about Henrietta and me—that we had the hall door open for the purpose of going out into the street with our hair on end, if Bro had not encouraged us by shutting the door and locking it. I confess to opening the door, but deny the purpose of it—at least, maintain that I only meant to keep in reserve a way of escape, in case, as seemed probable, the whole house was on its way to the ground. Indeed, we should think much of the mercy of the escape. Bro had been on the staircase only five minutes before. Sarah the housemaid was actually there. She looked up accidentally and saw the nodding chimneys, and ran down into the drawing-room to papa, shrieking, but escaping with one graze of the hand from one brick. How did you fare in the wind? I never much imagined before that anything so true to nature as a real live storm could make itself heard in our streets. But it has come too surely, and carried away with it, besides our chimney, all that was left to us of the country, in the shape of the Kensington Garden trees. Now do write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin, and soon, and tell me all you can of your chances and mischances, and how Mr. Martin is getting on with the parish, and yourself with the parishioners. But you have more the name of living at Colwall than the thing. You seem to me to lead a far more wandering life than we, for all our homelessness and 'pilgrim shoon.' Why, you have been in Ireland since I last said a word to you, even upon paper....

I sometimes think that a pilgrim's life is the wisest—at least, the most congenial to the 'uses of this world.' We give our sympathies and associations to our hills and fields, and then the providence of God gives them to another, It is better, perhaps, to keep a stricter identity, by calling only our thoughts our own.

Was there anybody in the world who ever loved London for itself? Did Dr. Johnson, in his paradise of Fleet Street, love the pavement and the walls? I doubt that—whether I ought to do so or not—though I don't doubt at all that one may be contented and happy here, and love much in the place. But the place and the privileges of it don't mix together in one's love, as is done among the hills and by the seaside.

I or Henrietta must have told you that one of my privileges has been to see Wordsworth twice. He was very kind to me, and let me hear his conversation. I went with him and Miss Mitford to Chiswick, and thought all the way that I must certainly be dreaming. I saw her almost every day of her week's visit to London (this was all long ago, while you were in France); and she, who overflows with warm affections and generous benevolences, showed me every present and absent kindness, professing to love me, and asking me to write to her. Her novel is to be published soon after Christmas, and I believe a new tragedy is to appear about the same time, 'under the protection of Mr. Forrest.' Papa has given me the first two volumes of Wordsworth's new edition. The engraving in the first is his own face. You might think me affected if I told you all I felt in seeing the living face. His manners are very simple, and his conversation not at all prominent—if you quite understand what I mean by that. I do myself, for I saw at the same time Landor—the brilliant Landor!—and felt the difference between great genius and eminent talent; All these visions have passed now. I hear and see nothing, except my doves and the fireplace, and am doing little else than [words torn out] write all day long. And then people ask me what I mean in [words torn out]. I hope you were among the six who understood or half understood my 'Poet's Vow'—that is, if you read it at all. Uncle Hedley made a long pause at the first part. But I have been reading, too, Sheridan Knowles's play of the 'Wreckers.' It is full of passion and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears. How do you get on with the reading society? Do you see much or anything of Lady Margaret Cocks, from whom I never hear now? I promised to let her have 'Ion,' if I could, before she left Brighton, but the person to whom it was lent did not return it to me in time. Will you tell her this, if you do see her, and give her my kind regards at the same time? Dear Bell was so sorry not to have seen you. If she had, you would have thought her looking very well, notwithstanding the thinness—perhaps, in some measure, on account of it—and in eminent spirits. I have not seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she is, down at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making quite a colony of it, and everybody, in each several letter, grumbling in an undertone at the dullness of the place. What would I give to see the waves once more! But perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a happiness to them to be together, and that, I am sure, they all feel....

Oh that you would call me Ba!^[29]

My dear Mr. Boyd,—... Two mornings since, I saw in the paper, under the head of literary news, that a change of editorship was taking place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;' and that Theodore Hook was to preside in the room of Mr. Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as if I asked you to read it; begging you to be assured—to write it down in your critical rubric—that it is the very finest composition you ever read, next (of course) to the beloved 'De Virginitate' of Gregory Nazianzen.^[30]

Mr. Stratten has just been here. I admire him more than I ever did, for his admiration of my doves. By the way, I am sure he thought them the most agreeable of the whole party; for he said, what he never did before, that he could sit here for an hour! Our love to Annie—and forgive me for Baskettiring a letter to you. I mean, of course, as to size, not type.

Yours affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

Is your poem printed yet?

My dear Friend,—I am very much obliged to you for the two copies of your poem, so beautifully printed, with such 'majestical' types, on such 'magnifical' paper, as to be almost worthy of Baskett himself. You are too liberal in sending me more than one copy; and pray accept in return a duplicate of gratitude.

As to my 'Seraphim,' they are not returned to me, as in the case of their being unaccepted, I expressly begged they might be. Had the old editor been the present one, my inference would of course be, that their insertion was a determined matter; but as it is, I don't know what to think.^[31] A long list of great names, belonging to intending contributors, appeared in the paper a day or two ago, and among them was Miss Mitford's.

Are you wroth with me for not saying a word about going to see you? Arabel and I won't affirm it mathematically—but we are, metaphysically, talking of paying our visit to you next Tuesday. Don't expect us, nevertheless.

Yours affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

What are my Christmas good wishes to be? That you may hold a Field in your right hand, and a Baskerville in your left, before the year is out! That degree of happiness will satisfy at least the bodily part of you.

You may wish, in return, for me, that I may learn to write rather more legibly than 'at these presents.'

Our love to Annie.

Won't you send your new poem to Mr. Barker, to the care of Mr. Valpy, with your Christmas benedictions?

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am standing in Henrietta's place, she says—but not, I say, to answer your letter to her yesterday, but your letter to me, some weeks ago—which I meant to answer much more immediately if the ignis fatuus of a house (you see to what a miserable fatuity I am reduced, of applying your pure country metaphors to our brick pollutions) had not been gliding just before us, and I had not much wished to be able to tell you of our settlement. As it is, however, I must write, and shall keep a solemn silence on the solemn subject of our shifting plans....

No! I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth, although perhaps I should not have singled him from the multitude as a great man. There is a reserve even in his countenance, which does not lighten as Landor's does, whom I saw the same evening. His eyes have more meekness than brilliancy; and in his slow even articulation there is rather the solemnity and calmness of truth itself, than the animation and energy of those who seek for it. As to my being quite at my ease when I spoke to him, why how could you ask such a question? I trembled both in my soul and body. But he was very kind, and sate near me and talked to me as long as he was in the room—and recited a translation by Cary of a sonnet of Dante's—and altogether, it was quite a dream! Landor too—Walter Savage Landor ... in whose hands the ashes of antiquity burn again—gave me two Greek epigrams he had lately written ... and talked brilliantly and prominently until Bro (he and I went together) abused him for ambitious singularity and affectation. But it was very interesting. And dear Miss Mitford too! and Mr. Raymond, a great Hebraist and the ancient author of 'A Cure for a Heartache!' I never walked in the skies before; and perhaps never shall again, when so many stars are out! I shall at least see dear Miss Mitford, who wrote to me not long ago to say that she would soon be in London with 'Otto,' her new tragedy, which was written at Mr. Forrest's own request, he in the most flattering manner having applied to her a stranger, as the authoress of 'Rienzi,' for a dramatic work worthy of his acting—after rejecting many plays offered to him, and among them Mr. Knowles's.... She says that her play will be quite opposed, in its execution, to 'Ion,' as unlike it 'as a ruined castle overhanging the Rhine, to a Grecian temple.' And I do not doubt that it will be full of ability; although my own opinion is that she stands higher as the authoress of 'Our Village' than of 'Rienzi,' and writes prose better than poetry, and transcends rather in Dutch minuteness and high finishing, than in Italian ideality and passion. I think besides that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit, whatever Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him. The published title of the last play is 'The Daughter,' not 'The Wreckers,' although I believe it was acted as the last. I am very anxious to read 'Otto,' not to see it. I am not going to see it, notwithstanding an offered temptation to sit in the authoress's own box. With regard to 'Ion,' I think it is a beautiful work, but beautiful rather morally than intellectually. Is this right or not? Its moral tone is very noble, and sends a grand and touching harmony into the midst of the full discord of this utilitarian age. As dramatic poetry, it seems to me to want, not beauty, but power, passion, and condensation. This is my doxy about 'Ion.' Its author^[32] made me very proud by sending it to me, although we do not know him personally. I have heard that he is a most amiable man (who else could have written 'Ion'?), but that he was a little elevated by his popularity last year!...

I have read Combe's 'Phrenology,' but not the 'Constitution of Man.' The 'Phrenology' is very clever, and amusing; but I do not think it logical or satisfactory. I forget whether 'slowness of the pulse' is mentioned in it as a symptom of the poetical aestus. I am afraid, if it be a symptom, I dare not take my place even in the 'forlorn hope of poets' in this age so forlorn as to its poetry; for my pulse is in a continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough for a pedestal—so I must make my honours over to poor papa straightway. He has been shivering and shuddering through the cold weather; and partaking our influenza in the warmer. I am very sorry that you should have been a sufferer too. It seems to have been a universal pestilence, even down in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the whole colony have had their share of 'groans.' And one of my doves shook its pretty head and ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in great consternation for the result. But it is well again—cooing as usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write a sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves—of the utilitarianisms of this corrupt age—among some of the chief of which are steel pens!

I am so glad that you liked my 'Romaunt,' and so resigned that you did not understand some of my 'Poet's Vow,' and so obliged that you should care to go on reading what I write. They vouchsafed to publish in the first number of the new series of the 'New Monthly' a little poem of mine called 'The Island,'^[33] but so incorrectly that I was glad at the additional oblivion of my signature. If you see it, pray alter the last senseless line of the first page into 'Leaf sounds with water, in your ear,' and put 'amreeta' instead of 'amneta' on the second page; and strike out 'of' in the line which names Aeschylus! There are other blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my 'contentment' for some time. I have begged for [proof] sheets in future; and as none have come for the ensuing month, I suppose I shall have nothing in the next number. They have a lyrical dramatic poem of mine, 'The Two Seraphim,' which, whenever it appears, I shall like to have your opinion of. As to the incomprehensible line in the 'Poet's Vow' of which you asked me the meaning, 'One making one in strong compass,' I meant to express how that oneness of God, 'in whom are all things,' produces a oneness or sympathy (sympathy being the tendency of many to become one) in all things. Do you understand? or is the explanation to be explained? The unity of God preserves a unity in men—that is, a perpetual sympathy between man and man—which sympathy we must be subject to, if not in our joys, yet in our griefs. I believe the subject itself involves the necessity of some mysticism; but I must make no excuses. I am afraid that my very Seraphim will not be thought to stand in a very clear light, even at heaven's gate. But this is much asay about nothing ...

The Bishop of Exeter is staying and preaching at Torquay. Do you not envy them all for making part of his congregation? I am sure I do as much. I envy you your before-breakfast activity. I am never a complete man without my breakfast—it seems to be some integral part of my soul. You 'read all O'Connell's speeches.' I never read any of them—unless they take me by surprise. I keep my devotion for unpaid patriots; but Miss Mitford is another devotee of Mr. O'Connell ...

Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

Thank you for the 'Ba' in Henrietta's letter. If you knew how many people, whom I have known only within this year or two, whether I like them or not, say 'Ba, Ba,' quite naturally and pastorally, you would not come to me with the detestable 'Miss B.'

My dear Mrs. Martin,—It seems a long long time since we had any intercourse; and the answer to your last pleasant letter to Henrietta must go to you from me. We have heard of you that you don't mean to return to England before the spring—which news proved me a prophet, and disappointed me at the same time, for one can't enjoy even a prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed, I do long to see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances were as much multiplied as you wrongly suppose them to be. But the truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place; and, except our relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense. Dear Miss Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies buried in geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive what Henrietta had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time—until we conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre, who kindly sent me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to receive me at her conversations—and you know me better than to doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal unworthiness and unwillingness towards the honor of it. Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin, it is almost surprising how we contrive to be as dull in London as in Devonshire—perhaps more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a sense of seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to voices than we see and hear in this place. No house yet! And you will scarcely have patience to read that papa has seen and likes another house in Devonshire Place, and that he may take it, and we may be settled in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses, that the pivot is broken—and now they won't turn any more. All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well sur le tapis as it is. It is a thousand to one but that the feeling of four red London walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or twenty-five years, would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry wistfully to 'get out.' I am sure you will look up to your mountains, and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture.

Talking of mountains and lakes is itself a trying thing to us poor prisoners. Papa has talked several times of taking us into the country for two months this summer, and we have dreamt of it a hundred times in addition; but, after all, we are not likely to go I dare say. It would have been very delightful—and who knows what may take place next summer? We may not absolutely die, without seeing a tree. Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have heard, I dare say, of the enjoyment she had in her week at Camden House. She seems to have walked from seven in the morning to seven at night; and was quite delighted with the kindness within doors and the sunshine without. I assure you that, fresh as she was from the air and dew, she saluted us amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting just in this way—it was almost her first exclamation—'What a very disagreeable smell there is here!' And this, although she had brought geraniums enough from Camden to perfume the Haymarket!...

I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove has appeared from a shell—over which nobody had prognosticated good—on August 16, 1837. I and the senior doves appear equally delighted, and we all three, in the capacity of good sitters and indefatigable pullers-about, take a good deal of credit upon ourselves....

Arabel has begun oil painting, and without a master—and you can't think how much effect and expression she has given to several of her own sketches, notwithstanding all difficulties. Poor Henrietta is without a piano, and is not to have one again until we have another house! This is something like 'when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.' Speaking of Homer and Virgil, I have been writing a 'Romance of the Ganges,'^[34] in order to illustrate an engraving in the new annual to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden's tableaux for 1838. It does not sound a very Homeric undertaking—I confess I don't hold any kind of annual, gild it as you please, in too much honour and awe—but from my wish to please her, and from the necessity of its being done in a certain time, I was 'quite frightful,' as poor old Cooke used to say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she was quite pleased—she is very soon pleased—and the ballad, gone the way of all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do wish I could send you some kind of news that would interest you; but you see scarcely any except all this selfishness is in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of us more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest Mrs. Martin, remember how deeply and unchangeably I must regard you—both with my mind, my affections, and that part of either, called my gratitude. BA.

Henrietta's kindest love and thanks for your letter. She desires me to say that she and Bro are going to dine with Mrs. Robert Martin to-morrow. I must tell you that Georgie and I went to hear Dr. Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose extreme beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon it—God is love. His eloquence was very great, and his views noble and grasping. I expected much from his imagination, but not so much from his knowledge. It was truer to Scripture than I was prepared for, although there seemed to me some want on the subject of the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart, which work we cannot dwell upon too emphatically. 'He worketh in us to will and to do,' and yet we are apt to will and do without a transmission of the praise to Him. May God bless you.

My dear Miss Commeline,—I could not hear of your being in affliction without very frequent thoughts of you and a desire to express some of them in this way, and although so much time has passed I do hope that you will believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather we, have thought of you, and in the regard we shall not cease to feel for you even if we meet no more in this world. It is blessed to know both for ourselves and for each other that while there is a darkness that must come to all, there is a light which may; and may He who is the light in the dark place be with you [now] and always, causing you to feel rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in all beside—that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass the bitterness of even grief. Do give my love to Mrs. Commeline and to your sisters, and believe me, all of you, that the friends who have gone from your neighbourhood have not gone from my old remembrance, either of your kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest in you.

Trusting to such old remembrances, I will believe that you care to know what we are doing and how we are settling—that word which has now been on our lips for years, which it is marvellous to think how it got upon human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London and ourselves, and see whether or not we could live together; and after more than a year and a half close contact with smoke we find no very good excuse for not remaining in it; and papa is going on with his eternal hunt for houses—the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing to him, all except the sublimity—intending very seriously to take the first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won't tell where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall be heartily glad, at least I think so, for it is possible that the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, and we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and books. I am so anxious to see my old books. I believe I shall begin at the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of meeting, and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own arm-chair. I remember when I was a child spreading my vitality, not over trees and flowers (I do that still—I still believe they have a certain animal susceptibility to pleasure and pain; 'it is my creed,' and, being Wordsworth's besides, I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and tables and books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I have written a great deal of nonsense—'Je m'en doute.'

Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant air which I always fancy people 'just from the country' put on towards us hapless Londoners.

But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day long at being in London. There are many advantages here, as I say to myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can't see even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face with Wordsworth and Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books, has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one. She visits London at long intervals, and lives thirty miles away....

Bro and I were studying German together all last summer with Henry, before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last of my languages, for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did. Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I read, even of Greek poetry, and am resolute to work whatever little faculty I have, clear of imitations and conventionalisms which cloud and weaken more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be believed possible without looking into it....

As to society in London, I assure you that none of us have much, and that as for me, you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre of solitude. My doves are my chief acquaintances, and I am so very intimate with them that they accept and even demand my assistance in building their innumerable nests. Do tell me if there is any hope of seeing any of you in London at any time. I say 'do tell me,' for I will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to write me a few lines in one of the idlest hours of one of your idlest days just to tell me a little about you, and whether Mrs. Commeline is tolerably well. Pray believe me under all circumstances,

Yours sincerely and affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.

The spring of 1838 was marked by two events of interest to Miss Barrett and her family. In the first place, Mr. Barrett's apparently interminable search for a house ended in his selection of 50 Wimpole Street, which continued to be his home for the rest of his life, and which is, consequently, more than any other house in London, to be associated with his daughter's memory. The second event was the publication of 'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' which was Miss Barrett's first serious appearance before the public, and in her own name, as a poet. The early letters of this year refer to the preparation of this volume, as well as to the authoress's health, which was at this time in a very serious condition, owing to the breaking of a blood-vessel. Indeed, from this time until her marriage in 1846 she held her life on the frailest of tenures, and lived in all respects the life of an invalid.

My dear Friend,—I do hope that you may not be very angry, but papa thinks—and, indeed, I think—that as I have already had two proof sheets and forty-eight pages, and the printers have gone on to the rest of the poem, it would not be very welcome to them if we were to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides, I would rather—I for myself, I—that you had the whole poem at once and clearly printed before you, to insure as many chances as possible of your liking it. I am promised to see the volume completed in three weeks from this time, so that the dreadful moment of your reading it—I mean the 'Seraphim' part of it—cannot be far off, and perhaps, the season being a good deal advanced even now, you might not, on consideration, wish me to retard the appearance of the book, except for some very sufficient reason. I feel very nervous about it—far more than I did when my 'Prometheus' crept out [of] the Greek, or I myself out of the shell, in the first 'Essay on Mind.' Perhaps this is owing to Dr. Chambers's medicines, or perhaps to a consciousness that my present attempt is actually, and will be considered by others, more a trial of strength than either of my preceding ones.

Thank you for the books, and especially for the editio rarissima, which I should as soon have thought of your trusting to me as of your admitting me to stand with gloves on within a yard of Baxter. This extraordinary confidence shall not be abused.

I thank you besides for your kind inquiries about my health. Dr. Chambers did not think me worse yesterday, notwithstanding the last cold days, which have occasioned some uncomfortable sensations, and he still thinks I shall be better in the summer season. In the meantime he has ordered me to take ice—out of sympathy with nature, I suppose; and not to speak a word, out of contradiction to my particular, human, feminine nature.

Whereupon I revenge myself, you see, by talking all this nonsense upon paper, and making you the victim.

To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands have been performed to the letter, and that one Greek motto (from 'Orpheus') is given to the first part of 'The Seraphim,' and another from Chrysostom to the second.

Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see you very soon. Give my very kind remembrance to Miss Holmes, and believe me,

Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

I saw Mr. Kenyon yesterday. He has a book just coming out.^[35] I should like you to read it. If you would, you would thank me for saying so.

Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and shall) thank Miss Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social barbarians, to my mind—that is, we know how to read and write and think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think. Life has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap. And that I can see in the books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some accounts.

Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but the recollection of the scores a little ghastly for the occasion, perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and I know.

Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot be so selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural beauty and the good sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise? That, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

My dear Mr. Kenyon,—I am so sorry to hear of your going, and I not able to say 'good-bye' to you, that—I am not writing this note on that account.

It is a begging note, and now I am wondering to myself whether you will think me very childish or womanish, or silly enough to be both together (I know your thoughts upon certain parallel subjects), if I go on to do my begging fully. I hear that you are going to Mr. Wordsworth's—to Rydal Mount—and I want you to ask for yourself, and then to send to me in a letter—by the post, I mean, two cuttings out of the garden—of myrtle or geranium; I care very little which, or what else. Only I say 'myrtle' because it is less given to die and I say two to be sure of my chances of saving one. Will you? You would please me very much by doing it; and certainly not dis please me by refusing to do it. Your broadest 'no' would not sound half so strange to me as my 'little crooked thing' does to you; but you see everybody in the world is fanciful about something, and why not E.B.B.?

Dear Mr. Kenyon, I have a book of yours—M. Rio's. If you want it before you go, just write in two words, 'Send it,' or I shall infer from your silence that I may keep it until you come back. No necessity for answering this otherwise. Is it as bad as asking for autographs, or worse? At any rate, believe me in earnest this time—besides being, with every wish for your enjoyment of mountains and lakes and 'cherry trees,'

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

My dear friend,—I am rather better than otherwise within the last few days, but fear that nothing will make me essentially so except the invisible sun. I am, however, a little better, and God's will is always done in mercy.

As to the poems, do forgive me, dear Mr. Boyd; and refrain from executing your cruel threat of suffering 'the desire of reading them to pass away.'

I have not one sheet of them; and papa—and, to say the truth, I myself—would so very much prefer your reading the preface first, that you must try to indulge us in our phantasy. The book Mr. Bentley half promises to finish the printing of this week. At any rate it is likely to be all done in the next: and you may depend upon having a copy as soon as I have power over one.

With kind regards to Miss Holmes,

Believe me, your affectionate friend,
E.B.B.

Thank you for your inquiry, my dear friend. I had begun to fancy that between Saunders and Otley and the 'Seraphim' I had fallen to the ground of your disfavour. But I do trust to be able to send you a copy before next Sunday.

I am thrown back a little just now by having caught a very bad cold, which has of course affected my cough. The worst seems, however, to be past, and Dr. Chambers told me yesterday that he expected to see me in two days nearly as well as before this casualty. And I have been, thank God, pretty well lately; and although when the stethoscope was applied three weeks ago, it did not speak very satisfactorily of the state of the lungs, yet Dr. Chambers seems to be hopeful still, and to talk of the wonders which the summer sunshine (when it does come) may be the means of doing for me. And people say that I look rather better than worse, even now.

Did you hear of an autograph of Shakespeare's being sold lately for a very large sum (I think it was above a hundred pounds) on the credit of its being the only genuine autograph extant? Is yours quite safe? And are you so, in your opinion of its veritableness?

I have just finished a very long barbarous ballad for Miss Mitford and the Finden's tableaux of this year. The title is 'The Romaunt of the Page,'^[37] and the subject not of my own choosing.

I believe that you will certainly have 'The Seraphim' this week. Do macadamise the frown from your brow in order to receive them.

Give my love to Miss Holmes.

Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Mr. Boyd,—Papa is scarcely inclined, nor am I for myself, to send my book or books to the East Indies. Let them alone, poor things, until they can walk about a little! and then it will be time enough for them to 'learn to fly.'

I am so sorry that Emily Harding saw Arabel and went away without this note, which I have been meaning to write to you for several days, and have been so absorbed and drawn away (all except my thoughts) by other things necessary to be done, that I was forced to defer it. My ballad,^[38] containing a ladye dressed up like a page and galloping off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise you, went to Miss Mitford this morning. But I augur from its length that she will not be able to receive it into Finden.

Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your being in the act of going through my 'Seraphim' for the second time. For the feeling of interest in me which brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my dear friend. What your opinion is, and will be, I am prepared to hear with a good deal of awe. You will certainly not approve of the poem.

There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do not keep back one rough word, for friendship's sake, but be as honest as—you could not help being, without this request.

If I should live, I shall write (I believe) better poems than 'The Seraphim;' which belief will help me to survive the condemnation heavy upon your lips.

Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication, English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson, though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only 'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.

Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems which have proved the most popular among its authoress's complete works, except 'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems were 'The Poet's Vow,' 'Isobel's Child,' 'The Romaunt of Margret,' 'My Doves,' and 'The Sea-mew.' The volume did not suffice to win any wide reputation for Miss Barrett, and no second edition was called for; on the other hand, it was received with more than civility, with genuine cordiality, by several among the reviewers, though they did not fail to note its obvious defects. The 'Athenaeum'^[39] began its review with the following declaration:

The 'Examiner,'^[40] after quoting at length from the preface and 'The Seraphim,' continued:

The 'Atlas,'^[41] another paper whose literary judgments were highly esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder, and dwelt more on the faults of the volume, but added nevertheless that 'there are occasional passages of great beauty, and full of deep poetical feeling. In 'The Romaunt of Margret' it detected the influence of Tennyson—a suggestion which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly; and it concluded with the declaration that the authoress 'possesses a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in this volume, a work of considerable merit.'

Such were the principal voices among the critical world when Miss Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she might well be satisfied with them. Two years later, the 'Quarterly Review'^[42] included her name in a review of 'Modern English Poetesses,' along with Caroline Norton, 'V.,' and others whose names are even less remembered to-day. But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically. He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests warmly against her 'reckless repetition of the name of God'—a charge which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final syllable—'kissed,' 'bowed,' and the like—and her fondness for the adverb 'very;' both of which mannerisms he charges to the example of Tennyson. He condemns the 'Prometheus,' though recognising it as 'a remarkable performance for a young lady.' He criticises the subject of 'The Seraphim,' 'from which Milton would have shrunk;' but adds, 'We give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and striking in expression.' He sums up as follows:

So much for the reception of 'The Seraphim' volume by the outside world. The letters show how it appeared to the authoress herself.

The first of them deserves a word of special notice, because it is likewise the first in these volumes addressed to Miss Mary Russell Mitford, whose name holds a high and honourable place in the roll of Miss Barrett's friends. Her own account of the beginning of the friendship should be quoted in any record of Mrs. Browning's life.

Miss Barrett's letters show how warmly she returned this feeling of friendship, which lasted until Miss Mitford's death in 1855. Of the earlier letters many must have disappeared: for it is evident from Miss Mitford's just quoted words, and also from many references in her published correspondence, that they were in constant communication during these years of Miss Barrett's life in London. After her marriage, however, the extant letters are far more frequent, and will be found to fill a considerable place in the later pages of this work.

We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa and I and all of us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both gladdening and surprising—and the one the more for being the other also. Oh! it was so kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us!

As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and Mr. Kenyon are indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism over it—before it went to you—and so if you did not find as many obscurities as he did in it, the reason is—his merit and not mine. But don't believe him—no!—don't believe even Mr. Kenyon—whenever he says that I am perversely obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not perversely—that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods. Because, indeed, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition....

I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was not permitted to get out of bed, and was haunted with leeches and blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call here, and to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of a return; but Mr. Kenyon's opinion turned the balance. I was very sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her note expressive of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice (except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.

Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either. It is well that, in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our dependence upon God.

I feel as if I had not said half, and they have come to ask me if I have not said all! My beloved friend, may you be happy in all ways!

Do write whenever you wish to talk and have no one to talk to nearer you than I am! Indeed, I did not forget Dr. Mitford when I wrote those words, although they look like it.

Your gratefully affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Friend,—Do not think me depraved in ingratitude for not sooner thanking you for the pleasure, made so much greater by the surprise, which your note of judgment gave me. The truth is that I have been very unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the painful physical feeling went away to make room for the pleasurable moral one—and this I fancied it would do every hour, so that I might be able to tell you at ease all that was in my thoughts. The fancy was a vain one. The pain grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been here for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it bore all Jupiter's ambrosial curls; and is to be here again to-day, but with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch as the leeches last night did their duty, and I feel much better—God be thanked for the relief. But I am not yet as well as before this attack, and am still confined to my bed—and so you must rather imagine than read what I thought and felt in reading your wonderful note. Of course it pleased me very much, very very much—and, I dare say, would have made me vain by this time, if it had not been for the opportune pain and the sight of Dr. Chambers's face.

I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman before I read your suggestion. I knew that her kind feeling for me would interest her in the sight of it.

Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd! May all my critics be gentle after the pattern of your gentleness!

Believe me, affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Friend,—I send you a number of the 'Atlas' which you may keep. It is a favorable criticism, certainly—but I confess this of my vanity, that it has not altogether pleased me. You see what it is to be spoilt.

As to the 'Athenaeum,' although I am not conscious of the quaintness and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought and feeling) to have studied 'attitudes,' yet the critic was quite right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for the liberal praise he has otherwise given me. Upon the whole, I like his review better than even the 'Examiner,' notwithstanding my being perfectly satisfied with that.

Thank you for the question about my health. I am very tolerably well—for me: and am said to look better. At the same time I am aware of being always on the verge of an increase of illness—I mean, in a very excitable state—with a pulse that flies off at a word and is only to be caught by digitalis. But I am better—for the present—while the sun shines.

Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall hold in memory, and use whenever I am not particularly obstinate, in all my SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!

You will smile at that, and so do I.

Arabel is walking in the Zoological Gardens with the Cliffes—but I think you will see her before long.

Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

Don't let me forget to mention the Essays^[47]. You shall have yours—and Miss Bordman hers—and the delay has not arisen from either forgetfulness or indifference on my part—although I never deny that I don't like giving the Essay to anybody because I don't like it. Now that sounds just like 'a woman's reason,' but it isn't, albeit so reasonable! I meant to say 'because I don't like the ESSAY.'

My dear Friend,—Notwithstanding this silence so ungrateful in appearance, I thank you at last, and very sincerely, for your kind letter. It made me laugh, and amused me—and gratified me besides. Certainly your 'quality of mercy is not strained.'

My reason for not writing more immediately is that Arabel has meant, day after day, to go to you, and has had a separate disappointment for every day. She says now, 'Indeed, I hope to see Mr. Boyd to-morrow.' But I say that I will not keep this answer of mine to run the risk of another day's contingencies, and that it shall go, whether she does or not.

I am better a great deal than I was last week, and have been allowed by Dr. Chambers to come downstairs again, and occupy my old place on the sofa. My health remains, however, in what I cannot help considering myself, and in what, I believe, Dr. Chambers considers, a very precarious state, and my weakness increases, of course, under the remedies which successive attacks render necessary. Dr. Chambers deserves my confidence—and besides the skill with which he has met the different modifications of the complaint, I am grateful to him for a feeling and a sympathy which are certainly rare in such of his profession as have their attention diverted, as his must be, by an immense practice, to fifty objects in a day. But, notwithstanding all, one breath of the east wind undoes whatever he labours to do. It is well to look up and remember that in the eternal reality these second causes are no causes at all.

Don't leave this note about for Arabel to see. I am anxious not to alarm her, or any one of my family: and it may please God to make me as well and strong again as ever. And, indeed, I am twice as well this week as I was last.

Your affectionate friend, dear Mr. Boyd,
E.B. BARRETT.

I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr. Chorley, editor of the 'Athenaeum,'^[48] which speaks huge praises of my poems. If he were to say a tithe of them in print, it would be nine times above my expectation!

My dear Friend,—I begged your servant to wait—how long ago I am afraid to think—but certainly I must not make this note very long. I did intend to write to you to-day in any case. Since Saturday I have had my thanks ready at the end of my fingers waiting to slide along to the nib of my pen. Thank you for all your kindness and criticism, which is kindness too—thank you at last. Would that I deserved the praises as well as I do most of the findings-fault—and there is no time now to say more of them. Yet I believe I have something to say, and will find a time to say it in.

Dr. Chambers has just been here, and does not think me quite as well as usual. The truth is that I was rather excited and tired yesterday by rather too much talking and hearing talking, and suffer for it to-day in my pulse. But I am better on the whole.

Mr. Cross,^[49] the great lion, the insect-making lion, came yesterday with Mr. Kenyon, and afterwards Lady Dacre. She is kind and gentle in her manner. She told me that she had 'placed my book in the hands of Mr. Bobus Smith, the brother of Sidney Smith, and the best judge in England,' and that it was to be returned to her on Tuesday. If I should hear the 'judgment,' I will tell you, whether you care to hear it or not. There is no other review, as far as I am aware.

Give my love to Miss Bordman. When is she coming to see me?

The thunder did not do me any harm.

Your affectionate friend, in great haste, although your servant is not likely to think so, E.B.B.

My dear Friend,—You must let me feel my thanks to you, even when I do not say them. I have put up your various notes together, and perhaps they may do me as much good hereafter, as they have already, for the most part, given me pleasure.

The 'burden pure have been' certainly was a misprint, as certainly 'nor man nor nature satisfy'^[50] is ungrammatical. But I am not so sure about the passage in Isobel:

I am not used to tears at nights Instead of slumber—nor to prayer.

Now I think that the passage may imply a repetition of the words with which it begins, after 'nor'—thus—'nor am I used to prayer,' &c. Either you or I may be right about it, and either 'or' or 'nor' may be grammatical. At least, so I pray.^[51]

You did not answer one question. Do you consider that 'apolyptic' stands without excuse?^[52]

I never read Greek to any person except yourself and Mr. MacSwiney, my brother's tutor. To him I read longer than a few weeks, but then it was rather guessing and stammering and tottering through parts of Homer and extracts from Xenophon than reading. You would not have called it reading if you had heard it.

I studied hard by myself afterwards, and the kindness with which afterwards still you assisted me, if yourself remembers gladly I remember gratefully and gladly.

I have just been told that your servant was desired by you not to wait a minute.

The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think there is the least probability of my going before the end of next week, if then. You shall hear.

Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take digitalis again, which makes me feel weak; but still I am better, I think.

In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett's health had become so great that her doctor advised removal to a warmer climate for the winter. Torquay was the place selected, and thither she went in the autumn, accompanied by her brother Edward, her favourite companion from childhood. Other members of the family, including Mr. Barrett, joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able to live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to stay during the summers as well as the winters of the next three years. Letters from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford's correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now ripening into a close literary intimacy. A story relating to Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter, the hero of so many racy anecdotes, is contained in a letter of Miss Barrett's which must have been written about Christmas of either 1838 or 1839:—

'He [the bishop] was, however, at church on Christmas Day, and upon Mr. Elliot's being mercifully inclined to omit the Athanasian Creed, prompted him most episcopally from the pew with a "whereas;" and further on in the Creed, when the benign reader substituted the word condemnation for the terrible one—"Damnation!" exclaimed the bishop. The effect must have been rather startling.'

A slight acquaintance with the words of the Athanasian Creed will suggest that the story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction, however, the story may be added to the many others on record with respect to 'Henry of Exeter.'

The following letter is shown, by the similarity of its contents to the one which succeeds it, to belong to November 1839, when Miss Barrett was entering on her second winter in Torquay.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Henrietta shall not write to-day, whatever she may wish to do. I felt, in reading your unreproaching letter to her, as self-reproachful as anybody could with a great deal of innocence (in the way of the world) to fall back upon. I felt sorry, very sorry, not to have written something to you something sooner, which was a possible thing—although, since the day of my receiving your welcome letter, I have written scarcely at all, nor that little without much exertion. Had it been with me as usual, be sure that you should not have had any silence to complain of. Henrietta knew I wished to write, and felt, I suppose, unwilling to take my place when my filling it myself before long appeared possible. A long story—and not as entertaining as Mother Hubbard. But I would rather tire you than leave you under any wrong impression, where my regard and thankfulness to you, dearest Mrs. Martin, are concerned.

To reply to your kind anxiety about me, I may call myself decidedly better than I have been. Since October I I have not been out of bed—except just for an hour a day, when I am lifted to the sofa with the bare permission of my physician—who tells me that it is so much easier to make me worse than better, that he dares not permit anything like exposure or further exertion. I like him (Dr. Scully) very much, and although he evidently thinks my case in the highest degree precarious, yet knowing how much I bore last winter and understanding from him that the worst tubercular symptoms have not actually appeared, I am willing to think it may be God's will to keep me here still longer. I would willingly stay, if it were only for the sake of that tender affection of my beloved family which it so deeply affects me to consider. Dearest papa is with us now—to my great comfort and joy: and looking very well!—and astonishing everybody with his eternal youthfulness! Bro and Henrietta and Arabel besides, I can count as companions—and then there is dear Bummy! We are fixed at Torquay for the winter—that is, until the end of May: and after that, if I have any will or power and am alive to exercise either, I do trust and hope to go away. The death of my kind friend Dr. Bury was, as you suppose, a great grief and shock to me. How could it be otherwise, after his daily kindness to me for a year? And then his young wife and child—and the rapidity (a three weeks' illness) with which he was hurried away from the energies and toils and honors of professional life to the stillness of that death!

Don't fancy me worse than I am—or that this bed-keeping is the result of a gradual sinking. It is not so. A feverish attack prostrated me on October 2—and such will leave their effects—and Dr. Scully is so afraid of leading me into danger by saying, 'You may get up and dress as usual' that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he left me in this durance vile for a great part of the winter. I am decidedly better than I was a month ago, really and truly.

May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin! My best and kindest regards to Mr. Martin. Henrietta desires me to promise for her a letter to Colwall soon; but I think that one from Colwall should come first. May God bless you! Bro's fancy just now is painting in water colours and he performs many sketches. Do you ever in your dreams of universal benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?

—found guilty of egotism and stupidity 'by this sign' and at once!

If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence which has not been intended, there will be another reason for being thankful to you, in addition to the many. To do myself justice, one of my earliest impulses on seeing my beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness with which you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt. But she had promised, she said, to write herself, and moreover she and only she was to send you the ballad—in expectation of your dread judgment upon which I delayed my own writing. It came in the first letter we received in our new house, on the first of last October. An hour after reading it, I was upon my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that bed have never even been lifted since—to these last days of November—except for one hour a day to the sofa at two yards' distance. I am very much better now, and have been so for some time; but my physician is so persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do me harm than good, that he will neither permit any present attempt at further exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for him to permit it. Under the circumstances it has of course been more difficult than usual for me to write. Pray believe, my dear and kind friend, in the face of all circumstances and appearances, that I never forget you, nor am reluctant (oh, how could that be?) to write to you; and that you shall often have to pay 'a penny for my thoughts' under the new Postage Act—if it be in God's wisdom and mercy to spare me through the winter. Under the new act I shall not mind writing ten words and then stopping. As it is, they would scarcely be worth eleven pennies.

Thank you again and again for your praise of the ballad, which both delighted and surprised me ... as I had scarcely hoped that you might like it at all. Think of Mr. Tilt's never sending me a proof sheet. The consequences are rather deplorable, and, if they had occurred to you, might have suggested a deep melancholy for life. In my case, I, who am, you know, hardened to sins of carelessness, simply look aghast at the misprints and mispunctuations coming in as a flood, and sweeping away meanings and melodies together. The annual itself is more splendid than usual, and its vignettes have illustrated my story—angels, devils and all—most beautifully. Miss Mitford's tales (in prose) have suffered besides by reason of Mr. Tilt—but are attractive and graphic notwithstanding—and Mr. Horne has supplied a dramatic poem of great power and beauty.

How I rejoice with you in the glorious revelation (about to be) of Gregory's second volume! The 'De Virginitate' poem will, in its new purple and fine linen, be more dazzling than ever.

Do you know that George is barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple—is? I have seen him gazetted.

My dearest papa is with me now, making me very happy of course. I have much reason to be happy—more to be grateful—yet am more obedient to the former than to the latter impulse. May the Giver of good give gratitude with as full a hand! May He bless you—and bring us together again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit! again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!

Your ever affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

Do write—when you are able and least disinclined. Do you approve of Prince Albert or not?^[53]

My ever dear Friend,—It was very pleasant to me to see your seal upon a letter once more; and although the letter itself left me with a mournful impression of your having passed some time so much less happily than I would wish and pray for you, yet there remains the pleasant thought to me still that you have not altogether forgotten me. Do receive the expression of my most affectionate sympathy under this and every circumstance—and I fear that the shock to your nerves and spirits could not be a light one, however impressed you might be and must be with the surety and verity of God's love working in all His will. Poor poor Patience! Coming to be so happy with you, with that joyous smile I thought so pretty! Do you not remember my telling you so? Well—it is well and better for her; happier for her, if God in Christ Jesus have received her, than her hopes were of the holiday time with you. The holiday is for ever now....

I heard from Nelly Bordman only a few days before receiving your letter, and so far from preparing me for all this sadness and gloom, she pleased me with her account of you whom she had lately seen—dwelling upon your retrograde passage into youth, and the delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still more youthful, fair, and gay monstrum amandum, some prodigy of intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long? She didn't tell me that, thinking of course that I knew something more about you than I do. Yes indeed; you do treat me very shabbily. I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many hills and woods should interpose between us—that I should be lying here, fast bound by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a forest, and that you, who used to be such a doughty knight, should not take the trouble of cutting through even a hazel tree with your good sword, to find out what had become of me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last, whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have taken a house there and have carried your books there, and wear Hampstead grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did at Athens) to prove yourself of the soil.

All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and indeed I am pretty well just now—quite, however, confined to the bed—except when lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise while they make it; even then apt to faint. Bad symptoms too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be blistered every few days—but I am free from any attack just now, and am a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There has been a consultation between an Exeter physician and my own, and they agree exactly, both hoping that with care I shall pass the winter, and rally in the spring, both hoping that I may be able to go about again with some comfort and independence, although I never can be fit again for anything like exertion....

Do you know, did you ever hear anything of Mr. Horne who wrote 'Cosmo de Medici,' and the 'Death of Marlowe,' and is now desecrating his powers (I beg your pardon) by writing the life of Napoleon? By the way, he is the author of a dramatic sketch in the last Finden.

He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day, and has written to me so kindly (offering, although I never saw him in my life, to cater for me in literature, and send me down anything likely to interest me in the periodicals), that I cannot but think his amiability and genius do honor to one another.

Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in the infant schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the death of a saint, as he had lived a saintly life, about three weeks ago. It affected me a good deal. But he was always so associated in my thoughts more with heaven than earth, that scarcely a transition seems to have passed upon his locality. 'Present with the Lord' is true of him now; even as 'having his conversation in heaven' was formerly. There is little difference.

May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear friend! In the meantime do not forget me.

I never can forget you.

Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.

My ever dear Friend,—I must write to you, although it is so very long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me. But you say to Arabel in speaking of me that I 'used to care for what is poetical;' therefore, perhaps you say to yourself sometimes that I used to care for you! I am anxious to vindicate my identity to you, in that respect above all.

It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you. I admit the pause on my own part, while I charge you with another. But your silence has embraced more pleasantness and less suffering to you than mine has to me, and I thank God for a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard for you causes me to share directly....

I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I did last. I was very ill early in April at the time of our becoming conscious to our great affliction—so ill as to believe it utterly improbable, speaking humanly, that I ever should be any better. I am, however, a very great deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however slowly, and do hope for the best—'the best' meaning one sight more of London. In the meantime I have not yet been able to leave my bed.

To prove to you that I who 'used to care' for poetry do so still, and that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an 'Athenaeum' shall be sent to you containing a poem on the subject of the removal of Napoleon's ashes.^[54] It is a fitter subject for you than for me. Napoleon is no idol of mine. I never made a 'setting sun' of him. But my physician suggested the subject as a noble one and then there was something suggestive in the consideration that the 'Bellerophon' lay on those very bay-waters opposite to my bed.

Another poem (which you won't like, I dare say) is called 'The Lay of the Rose,'^[55] and appeared lately in a magazine. Arabel is going to write it out for you, she desires me to tell you with her best love. Indeed, I have written lately (as far as manuscript goes) a good deal, only on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.

Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn't he? I lie here, weaving a great many schemes. I am seldom at a loss for thread.

Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything besides hearing the clocks strike and bells ring. My beloved papa is with me still. There are so many mercies close around me (and his presence is far from the least), that God's Being seems proved to me, demonstrated to me, by His manifested love. May His blessing in the full lovingness rest upon you always! Never fancy I can forget or think of you coldly.

Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

The above letter was written only three days before the tragedy which utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett's life for a time, and cast a deep shadow over it which never wholly passed away—the death of her brother Edward through drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had gone for a sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering in appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay; but it was not until three days later that final confirmation of the disaster was obtained by the discovery of the bodies. What this blow meant to the bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how deeply it struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he had come to the place where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay was thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if even the sound of the sea became a horror to her.

One natural consequence of this terrible sorrow is a long break in her correspondence. It is not until the beginning of 1841 that she seems to have resumed the thread of her life and to have returned to her literary occupations. Her health had inevitably suffered under the shock, and in the autumn of 1840 Miss Mitford speaks of not daring to expect more than a few months of lingering life. But when things were at the worst, she began unexpectedly to take a turn for the better. Through the winter she slowly gathered strength, and with strength the desire to escape from Torquay, with its dreadful associations, and to return to London. Meanwhile her correspondence with her friends revived, and with Horne in particular she was engaged during 1841 in an active interchange of views with regard to two literary projects. Indeed, it was only the return to work that enabled her to struggle against the numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her. Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to Mrs. Martin: 'For my own part and experience—I do not say it as a phrase or in exaggeration, but from very clear and positive conviction—I do believe that I should be mad at this moment, if I had not forced back—dammed out—the current of rushing recollections by work, work, work.' One of the projects in which she was concerned was 'Chaucer Modernised,' a scheme for reviving interest in the father of English poetry, suggested in the first instance by Wordsworth, but committed to the care of Horne, as editor, for execution. According to the scheme as originally planned, all the principal poets of the day were to be invited to share the task of transmuting Chaucer into modern language. Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and others actually executed some portions of the work; Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would lend a hand with some of the later parts. Horne invited Miss Barrett to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of 'Queen Annelida and False Arcite' and 'The Complaint of Annelida,'^[56] she also advised generally on the work of the other writers during its progress through the press. The other literary project was for a lyrical drama, to be written in collaboration with Horne. It was to be called 'Psyché Apocalypté,' and was to be a drama on the Greek model, treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.

The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence with Horne, will make the modern reader accept with equanimity the fact that it never progressed beyond the initial stage of drafting the plot. It is allegorical, philosophical, fantastic, unreal—everything which was calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss Barrett's style and to intensify her faults. Fortunately her removal from Torquay to London interrupted the execution of the scheme. It was never seriously taken up again, and, though never explicitly abandoned, died a natural death from inanition, somewhat to the relief of Miss Barrett, who had come to recognise its impracticability.

Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has been published elsewhere, very few letters are left from this period; but those which here follow serve to bridge over the interval until the departure from Torquay, which closes one well-marked period in the life of the poetess.

My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,—I should have written to you without this last proof of your remembrance—this cape, which, warm and pretty as it is, I value so much more as the work of your hands and gift of your affection towards me. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank you too for all the rest—for all your sympathy and love. And do believe that although grief had so changed me from myself and warped me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking forwards with pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full amends are made in the looking back with a pleasure more true because more tender than any old retrospections. Do give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I could not have said even if I had seen him.

Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again? Don't think we do not think of the hope you left us. Because we do indeed.

A note from papa has brought the comforting news that my dear, dear Stormie is in England again, in London, and looking perfectly well. It is a mercy which makes me very thankful, and would make me joyful if anything could. But the meanings of some words change as we live on. Papa's note is hurried. It was a sixty-day passage, and that is all he tells me. Yes—there is something besides about Sette and Occy being either unknown or misknown, through the fault of their growing. Papa is not near returning, I think. He has so much to do and see, and so much cause to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged him not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased. And the accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying, I thank God....

There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless, Dr. Scully has said, a few minutes since, that I am as well as he could hope, considering the season.

May God bless you ever!

Your gratefully attached
BA.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Have you thought 'The dream has come true'? I mean the dream of the flowers which you pulled for me and I wouldn't look at, even? I fear you must have thought that the dream about my ingratitude has come true.

And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has not. I have not forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately through all the silence, or longed less for the letters I did not ask for. But the truth is, my faculties seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when the spring is broken. My spring is broken, and a separate exertion is necessary for the lifting up of each—and then it falls down again. I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now. Nevertheless, I don't give up much to the pernicious languor—the tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey—I don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of certain negligences—for instance, of this toward you.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, our sympathy, in the anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the rejoicing for its happy issue. Do say when you write (I take for granted, you see, that you will write) how Mrs. B—— is now—besides the intelligence more nearly touching me, of your own and Mr. Martin's health and spirits. May God bless you both!

Ah! but you did not come: I was disappointed!

And Mrs. Hanford! Do you know, I tremble in my reveries sometimes, lest you should think it, guess it to be half unkind in me not to have made an exertion to see Mrs. Hanford. It was not from want of interest in her—least of all from want of love to you. But I have not stirred from my bed yet. But, to be honest, that was not the reason—I did not feel as if I could, without a painful effort, which, on the other hand, could not, I was conscious, result in the slightest shade of satisfaction to her, receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard for you to fancy even how I shrink away from the very thought of seeing a human face—except those immediately belonging to me in love or relationship—(yours does, you know)—and a stranger's might be easier to look at than one long known....

For my own part, my dearest Mrs. Martin, my heart has been lightened lately by kind, honest Dr. Scully (who would never give an opinion just to please me), saying that I am 'quite right' to mean to go to London, and shall probably be fit for the journey early in June. He says that I may pass the winter there moreover, and with impunity—that wherever I am it will probably be necessary for me to remain shut up during the cold weather, and that under such circumstances it is quite possible to warm a London room to as safe a condition as a room here. So my heart is lightened of the fear of opposition: and the only means of regaining whatever portion of earthly happiness is not irremediably lost to me by the Divine decree, I am free to use. In the meantime, it really does seem to me that I make some progress in health—if the word in my lips be not a mockery. Oh, I fancy I shall be strengthened to get home!

Your remarks on Chaucer pleased me very much. I am glad you liked what I did—or tried to do—and as to the criticisms, you were right—and they sha'n't be unattended to if the opportunity of correction be given to me.

Ever your affectionate
BA.

My very dear Friend,—I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty and anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my last earthly wishes cling, and I delayed writing to you to be able to say I am going to London. I may say so now—as far as the human may say 'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains uncertain—more so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it. But I must. I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the only earthly daylight I see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family. Enough has been done and suffered for me. I thank God I am going home at last.

How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear friend, to ask me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling while I read that part of your letter, and laid it down and suffered the vision to arise of your little room and your great Gregory and your dear self scolding me softly as in the happy olden times for not reading slow enough. Well—we do not know what may happen! I may (even that is probable) read to you again. But now—ah, my dear friend—if you could imagine me such as I am!—you would not think I could visit you! Yet I am wonderfully better this summer; and if I can but reach home and bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than anything—I know it will! And if it does not, it will be well even so.

I shall tell them to send you the 'Athenaeum' of last week, where I have a 'House of Clouds,'^[57] which papa likes so much that he would wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock in one room—that's another objection. How are your clocks? Do they go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?

I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still being so, do give her (and yourself too) Arabel's love and mine. I wish I heard of you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you!

Your ever affectionate friend,
E.B.B.

Thank you, my ever dear friend, with almost my last breath at Torquay, for your kindness about the Gregory, besides the kind note itself. It is, however, too late. We go, or mean at present to go, to-morrow; and the carriage which is to waft us through the air upon a thousand springs has actually arrived. You are not to think severely upon Dr. Scully's candour with me as to the danger of the journey. He does think it 'likely to do me harm;' therefore, you know, he was justified by his medical responsibility in laying before me all possible consequences. I have considered them all, and dare them gladly and gratefully. Papa's domestic comfort is broken up by the separation in his family, and the associations of this place lie upon me, struggle as I may, like the oppression of a perpetual night-mare. It is an instinct of self-preservation which impels me to escape—or to try to escape. And In God's mercy—though God forbid that I should deny either His mercy or His justice, if He should deny me—we may be together in Wimpole Street in a few days. Nelly Bordman has kindly written to me Mr. Jago's favourable opinion of the patent carriages, and his conviction of my accomplishing the journey without inconvenience.

May God bless you, my dear dear friend! Give my love to dearest Annie! Perhaps, if I am ever really in Wimpole Street, safe enough for Greek, you will trust the poems to me which you mention. I care as much for poetry as ever, and could not more.

Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually achieved, and Miss Barrett returned to her father's house in London, from which she was never to be absent for more than a few hours at a time until the day, five years later, when she finally left it to join her husband, Robert Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to her room for the greater part of each year, and unable to see any but a few intimate friends. Still, she regained some sort of strength, especially during the warmth of the summer months, and was able to throw herself with real interest into literary work. In a life such as this there are few outward events to record, and its story is best told in Miss Barrett's own letters, which, for the most part, need little comment. The letters of the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842 are almost entirely written to Mr. Boyd, and the main subject of them is the series of papers on the Greek Christian poets and the English poets which, at the suggestion of Mr. Dilke, then editor of the 'Athenaeum,' she contributed to that periodical. Of the composition of original poetry we hear less at this time.

My very dear Friend,—I thank you for the letter and books which crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read—I have read them again: for I remember reading them under your star (or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, on the other hand, may remember of me, that I never could concede to you much admiration for your Gregory as a poet—not even to his grand work 'De Virginitate.' He is one of those writers, of whom there are instances in our own times, who are only poetical in prose.

The passage imitative of Chryses I cannot think much of. Try to be forgiving. It is toasted dry between the two fires of the Scriptures and Homer, and is as stiff as any dry toast out of the simile. To be sincere, I like dry toast better.

The Hymns and Prayers I very much prefer; and although I remembered a good deal about them, it has given me a pleasure you will approve of to go through them in this edition. The one which I like best, which I like far best, which I think worth all the rest ('De Virginitate' and all put together), is the second upon page 292, beginning 'Soi charis.' It is very fine, I think, written out of the heart and for the heart, warm with a natural heat, and not toasted dry and brown and stiff at a fire by any means.

Dear Mr. Boyd, I coveted Arabel's walk to you the other day. I shall often covet my neighbour's walks, I believe, although (and may God be praised for it!) I am more happy—that is, nearing to the feeling of happiness now—than a month since I could believe possible to a heart so bruised and crushed as mine has [been] be at home is a blessing and a relief beyond what these words can say.

But, dear Mr. Boyd, you said something in a note to Arabel some little time ago, which I will ask of your kindness to avoid saying again. I have been through the whole summer very much better; and even if it were not so I should dread being annoyed by more medical speculations. Pray do not suggest any. I am not in a state to admit of experiments, and my case is a very clear and simple one. I have not one symptom like those of my old illness; and after more than fifteen years' absolute suspension of them, their recurrence is scarcely probable. My case is very clear: not tubercular consumption, not what is called a 'decline,' but an affection of the lungs which leans towards it. You know a blood-vessel broke three years ago, and I never quite got over it. Mr. Jago, not having seen me, could scarcely be justified in a conjecture of the sort, when the opinions of four able physicians, two of them particularly experienced in diseases of the chest, and the other two the most eminent of the faculty in the east and west of England, were decided and contrary, while coincident with each other. Besides, you see, I am becoming better—and I could not desire more than that. Dear Mr. Boyd, do not write a word about it any more, either to me or others. I am sure you would not willingly disturb me. Nelly Bordman is good and dear, but I can't let her prescribe for me anything except her own affection.

I hope Arabel expressed for me my thankful sense of Mrs. Smith's kind intention. But, indeed, although I would see you, dear Mr. Boyd, gladly, or an angel or a fairy or any very particular friend, I am not fit either in body or spirit for general society. I can't see people, and if I could it would be very bad for me. Is Mrs. Smith writing? Are you writing? Part of me is worn out; but the poetical part—that is, the love of poetry—is growing in me as freshly and strongly as if it were watered every day. Did anybody ever love it and stop in the middle? I wonder if anybody ever did?...

Believe me your affectionate
E.B.B.

My dear Friend,—I should not have been half as idle about transcribing these translations^[58] if I had fancied you could care so much to have them as Arabel tells me you do. They are recommended to your mercy, O Greek Daniel! The last sounds in my ears most like English poetry; but I assure you I took the least pains with it. The second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does not) equal it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to the Greek. I praised that Greek poem above all of Gregory's, for the reason that it has unity and completeness, for which, to speak generally, you may search the streets and squares and alleys of Nazianzum in vain. Tell me what you think of my part.

Ever affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Have you a Plotinus, and would you trust him to me in that case? Oh no, you do not tempt me with your musical clocks. My time goes to the best music when I read or write; and whatever money I can spend upon my own pleasures flows away in books.

Miss Barrett, inferring Mr. Westwood from the handwriting, begs his acceptance of the unworthy little book^[60] he does her the honour of desiring to see.

It is more unworthy than he could have expected when he expressed that desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal reasons—except for the traces of dear affections, since rudely wounded, and of that love of poetry which began with her sooner than so soon, and must last as long as life does, without being subject to the changes of life. Little more, therefore, can remain for such a volume than to be humble and shrink from circulation. Yet Mr. Westwood's kind words win it to his hands. Will he receive at the same moment the expression of touched and gratified feelings with which Miss Barrett read what he wrote on the subject of her later volumes, still very imperfect, although more mature and true to the truth within? Indeed she is thankful for what he said so kindly in his note to her.

My dear Friend,—I have done your bidding and sent the translations to the 'Athenaeum,' attaching to them an infamous prefatory note which says all sorts of harm of Gregory's poetry. You will be very angry with it and me.

And you may be angry for another reason—that in the midst of my true thankfulness for the emendations you sent me, I ventured to reject one or two of them. You are right, probably, and I wrong; but still, I thought within myself with a womanly obstinacy not altogether peculiar to me,—'If he and I were to talk together about them, he would kindly give up the point to me—so that, now we cannot talk together, I might as well take it.' Well, you will see what I have done. Try not to be angry with me. You shall have the 'Athenaeum' as soon as possible.

My dear Mr. Boyd, you know how I disbelieved the probability of these papers being accepted. You will comprehend my surprise on receiving last night a very courteous: note from the editor, which I would send to you if it were legible to anybody except people used to learn reading from the pyramids. He wishes me to contribute to the 'Athenaeum' some prose papers in the form of reviews—'the review being a mere form, and the book a mere text.' He is not very clear—but I fancy that a few translations of excerpta, with a prose analysis and synthesis of the original author's genius, might suit his purpose. Now suppose I took up some of the early Christian Greek poets, and wrote a few continuous papers so?^[61] Give me your advice, my dear friend! I think of Synesius, for one. Suppose you send me a list of the names which occur to you! Will you advise me? Will you write directly? Will you make allowance for my teazing you? Will you lend me your little Synesius, and Clarke's book? I mean the one commenced by Dr. Clarke and continued by his son. Above all things, however, I want the advice.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

My dear Friend,—Thank you, thank you, for your kind suggestion and advice altogether. I had just (when your note arrived) finished two hymns of Synesius, one being the seventh and the other the ninth. Oh! I do remember that you performed upon the latter, and my modesty should have certainly bid me 'avaunt' from it. Nevertheless, it is so fine, so prominent in the first class of Synesius's beauties, that I took courage and dismissed my scruples, and have produced a version which I have not compared to yours at all hitherto, but which probably is much rougher and rather closer, winning in faith what it loses in elegance. 'Elegance' isn't a word for me, you know, generally speaking. The barbarians herd with me, 'by two and three.'

I had a letter to-day from Mr. Dilke, who agrees to everything, closes with the idea about 'Christian Greek poets' (only begging me to keep away from theology), and suggesting a subsequent reviewal of English poetical literature, from Chaucer down to our times.^[62] Well, but the Greek poets. With all your kindness, I have scarcely sufficient materials for a full and minute survey of them. I have won a sight of the 'Poetae Christiani,' but the price is ruinous—fourteen guineas, and then the work consists almost entirely of Latin poets, deducting Gregory and Nonnus, and John Damascenus, and a cento from Homer by somebody or other. Turning the leaves rapidly, I do not see much else; and you know I may get a separate copy of John Dam., and have access to the rest. Try to turn in your head what I should do. Greg. Nyssen did not write poems, did he? Have I a chance of seeing your copy of Mr. Clarke's book? It would be useful in the matters of chronology.

I humbly beg your pardon, and Gregory's, for the insolence of my note. It was as brief as it could be, and did not admit of any extended reference and admiration to his qualities as an orator. But whoever read it to you should have explained that when I wrote 'He was an orator,' the word orator was marked emphatically, so as to appear printed in capital letters of emphasis. Do not say 'you chose,' 'you chose.' I didn't and don't choose to be obstinate, indeed; but I can't see the sense of that 'heavenly soul.'

Ever your grateful and affectionate
E.B.B.

I shall have room for praising Gregory in these papers.

My dear Friend,—You must be thinking, if you are not a St. Boyd for good temper, that among the Gregorys and Synesiuses I have forgotten everything about you. No; indeed it has not been so. I have never stopped being grateful to you for your kind notes, and the two last pieces of Gregory, although I did not say an overt 'Thank you;' but I have been very very busy besides, and thus I answered to myself for your being kind enough to pardon a silence which was compelled rather than voluntary.

Do you ever observe that as vexations don't come alone, occupations don't, and that, if you happen to be engaged upon one particular thing, it is the signal for your being waylaid by bundles of letters desiring immediate answers, and proof sheets or manuscript works whose writers request your opinion while their 'printer waits'? The old saints are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have been busy upon busy.

The first part of my story about the Greek poets went to the 'Athenaeum' some days ago, but, although graciously received by the editor, it won't appear this week, or I should have had a proof sheet (which was promised to me) before now. I must contrive to include all I have to say on the subject in three parts. They will admit, they tell me, a fourth if I please, but evidently they would prefer as much brevity as I could vouchsafe. Only two poets are in the first notice, and twenty remain—and neither of the two is Gregory.

Will you let me see that volume of Gregory which contains the 'Christus Patiens'? Send it by any boy on the heath, and I will remunerate him for the walk and the burden, and thank you besides. Oh, don't be afraid! I am not going to charge it upon Gregory, but on the younger Apollinaris, whose claim is stronger, and I rather wish to refresh my recollection of the height and breadth of that tragic misdemeanour.

It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain, and equally so that I continue most decidedly better, notwithstanding the winter. I feel, too—I do hope not ungratefully—the blessing granted to me in the possibility of literary occupation,—which is at once occupation and distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher) calls literature a 'fireproof pleasure.' How truly! How deeply I have felt that truth!

May God bless you, dear Mr. Boyd. I don't despair of looking in your face one day yet before my last.

Ever your affectionate and obliged
E.B.B.

Arabel's love.

My ever very dear Friend,—Do receive the assurance that whether I leave out the right word or put in the wrong one, you never can be other to me than just that while I live, and why not after I have ceased to live? And now—what have I done in the meantime, to be called 'Miss Barrett'? 'I pause for a reply.'

Of course it gives me very great pleasure to hear you speak so kindly of my first paper. Some bona avis as good as a nightingale must have shaken its wings over me as I began it; and if it will but sit on the same spray while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly four-fold. The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was so fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to my writing case with both its hands), that I would not do any writing, even as little as this note, until it was quite gone out of sight. You know it is possible that he, the editor, may not please to have the fourth paper; but even in that case, it is better for the 'Remarks' to remain fragmentary, than be compressed till they are as dry as a hortus siccus of poets.

Certainly you do and must praise my number one too much. Number one (that's myself) thinks so. I do really; and the supererogatory virtue of kindness may be acknowledged out of the pale of the Romish Church.

In regard to Gregory and Synesius, you will see presently that I have not wronged them altogether.

As you have ordered the 'Athenaeums,' I will not send one to-morrow so as to repeat my ill fortune of being too late. But tell me if you would like to have any from me, and how many.

It was very kind in you to pat Flush's^[63] head in defiance of danger and from pure regard for me. I kissed his head where you had patted it; which association of approximations I consider as an imitation of shaking hands with you and as the next best thing to it. You understand—don't you?—that Flush is my constant companion, my friend, my amusement, lying with his head on one page of my folios while I read the other. (Not your folios—I respect your books, be sure.) Oh, I dare say, if the truth were known, Flush understands Greek excellently well.

I hope you are right in thinking that we shall meet again. Once I wished not to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.

Be it all as God wills.

Believe me, your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

My very dear Friend,—I am quite angry with myself for forgetting your questions when I answered your letter.

Could you really imagine that I have not looked into the Greek tragedians for years, with my true love for Greek poetry? That is asking a question, you will say, and not answering it. Well, then, I answer by a 'Yes' the one you put to me. I had two volumes of Euripides with me in Devonshire, and have read him as well as Aeschylus and Sophocles—that is from them—both before and since I went there. You know I have gone through every line of the three tragedians long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive reading.

You know also that I had at different times read different dialogues of Plato; but when three years ago, and a few months previous to my leaving home, I became possessed of a complete edition of his works, edited by Bekker, why then I began with the first volume and went through the whole of his writings, both those I knew and those I did not know, one after another: and have at this time read, not only all that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those dialogues and epistles which pass falsely under his name—everything except two books I think, or three, of the treatise 'De Legibus,' which I shall finish in a week or two, as soon as I can take breath from Mr. Dilke.

Now the questions are answered.

Ever your affectionate and grateful friend,
E.B.B.

My very dear Friend,—I did not know until to-day whether the paper would appear on Saturday or not; but as I have now received the proof sheets, there can be no doubt of it. I have been and am hurried and hunted almost into a corner through the pressing for the fourth paper, and the difficulty about books. You will forgive a very short note to night.

I have read of Aristotle only his Poetics, his Ethics, and his work upon Rhetoric, but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I finish Plato's last page. Aristophanes I took with me into Devonshire; and after all, I do not know much more of him than three or four of his plays may stand for. Next week, my very dear friend, I shall be at your commands, and sit in spirit at your footstool, to hear and answer anything you may care to ask me—but oh! what have I done that you should talk to me about 'venturing,' or 'liberty,' or anything of that kind?

From your affectionate and grateful catechumen,
E.B.B.

My very dear Friend,—I received your long letter and receive your short one, and thank you for the pleasure of both. Of course I am very very glad of your approval in the matter of the papers, and your kindness could not have wished to give me more satisfaction than it gave actually. Mr. Kenyon tells me that Mr. Burgess^[64] has been reading and commending the papers, and has brought me from him a newly discovered scene of the 'Bacchae' of Euripides, edited by Mr. Burgess himself for the 'Gentlemen's Magazine,' and of which he considers that the 'Planctus Mariae,' at least the passage I extracted from it, is an imitation. Should you care to see it? Say 'Yes,'—and I will send it to you.

Do you think it was wrong to make eternity feminine? I knew that the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined that the English personification should be so. Am I wrong in this? Will you consider the subject again?

Ah, yes! That was a mistake of mine about putting Constantine for Constantius. I wrote from memory, and the memory betrayed me. But say nothing about it. Nobody will find it out. I send you Silentiarius and some poems of Pisida in the same volume. Even if you had not asked for them, I should have asked you to look at some passages which are fine in both. It appears to me that Silentiarius writes difficult Greek, overlaying his description with a multitude of architectural and other far fetched words! Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other causes, particularly in the 'Hexaëmeron,' which is not in the book I send you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish giants), which you may see if you please. I will send a coach and six with it if you please.

John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge of to you. You lent me the book with his poems, you know. He is a great favorite of mine in all ways. I very much admire his poetry.

Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe that the book I send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places, unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked to compare judgments with you.

Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.

My very dear Friend,—... As to your kind desire to hear whatever in the way of favorable remark I have gathered together for fruit of my papers, I put on a veil and tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well done, although 'labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of the subject;' that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the warmheartedness common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [sic] read them 'with great pleasure' unconsciously of the author; and that Mr. Home the poet and Mr. Browning the poet were not behind in approbation. Mr. Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists; and of Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss Mitford and Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly cultivated women, are not Grecians, and therefore judge the papers simply as English compositions.

The single unfavorable opinion is Mr. Hunter's, who thinks that the criticisms are not given with either sufficient seriousness or diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of effort through the whole. Many more persons may say so whose voices I do not hear. I am glad that yours, my dear indulgent friend, is not one of them.

Believe me, your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My very dear Friend,—Have you thought all unkindness out of my silence? Yet the inference is not a true one, however it may look in logic.

You do not like Silentiarius very much (that is my inference), since you have kept him so short a time. And I quite agree with you that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory Nazianzen, however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his versification. My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two of each of them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the very first class of the productions of the Christian centuries. Synesius and John of Euchaita! I shall always think of those two together—not by their similarity, but their dignity.

I return you the books you lent me with true thanks, and also those which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your hands for me. I thank you for them, and you must be good enough to thank her. They were of use, although of a rather sublime indifference for poets generally....

I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you asked for, and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the English Poets, under the pretence of a review of 'The Book of the Poets,' a bookseller's selection published lately. I begin from Langland, of Piers Plowman and the Malvern Hills. The first paper went to the editor last week, and I have heard nothing as to whether it will appear on Saturday or not, and perhaps if it does you won't care to have it sent to you. Tell me if you do or don't. I have suffered unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty of east winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better, in that. Flushie means to bark the next time he sees you in revenge for what you say of him.

Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as

Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.

My very dear Friend,—I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know of the publication of my 'English Poets,' because I did not know myself when the publication was to take place, and I hope you will forgive the innocent crime and accept the first number going to you with this note. I warn you that there will be two numbers more at least. Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible magnanimity of reading them through.

And now I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, papa having given me an Aeolian harp for the purpose. Do you know the music of an Aeolian harp, and that nothing below the spherical harmonies is so sweet and soft and mournfully wild? The amusing part of it is (after the poetical) that Flushie is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes it as very hard that I should say 'beautiful' to anything except his ears!

Arabel talks of going to see you; but if you are sensible to this intense and most overcoming heat, you will pardon her staying away for the present.

We have heard to-day that Annie proposes to publish her Miscellany by subscription; and although I know it to be the only way, compatible with publication at all, to avoid a pecuniary loss, yet the custom is so entirely abandoned except in the case of persons of a lower condition of life than your daughter, that I am sorry to think of the observations it may excite. The whole scheme has appeared to me from the beginning most foolish, and if you knew what I know of the state and fortune of our ephemeral literature, you would use what influence you have with her to induce her to condemn her 'contributions' to the adorning of a private annual rather than the purpose in unhappy question. I wish I dared to appeal through my true love for her to her own good sense once more.

My very dear friend's affectionate and grateful
E.B.B.

If you do read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech you, your full and free opinion of them.

My very dear Friend,—I thank you gratefully for your two notes, with their united kindness and candour—the latter still rarer than the former, if less 'sweet upon the tongue.' Sir William Alexander's tragedy (that is the right name, I think, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling) you will not find mentioned among my dramatic notices, because I was much pressed for room, and had to treat the whole subject as briefly as possible, striking off, like the Roman, only the heads of the flowers, and I did not, besides, receive your injunction until my third paper on the dramatists was finished and in the press. When you read it you will find some notice of that tragedy by Marlowe, the first knowledge of which I owe to you, my dear Mr. Boyd, as how much besides? And then comes the fourth paper, and I tremble to anticipate the possible—nay, the very probable—scolding I may have from you, upon my various heresies as to Dryden and Pope and Queen Anne's versificators. In the meantime you have breathing time, for Mr. Dilke, although very gracious and courteous to my offence of extending the two papers he asked for into four,^[65] yet could find no room in the 'Athenaeum' last week for me, and only hopes for it this week. And after this week comes the British Association business, which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of the reader,' whereas I say (at least think) that it will help him quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that you like at least the second article. That is encouragement to me.

Flushie did not seem to think the harp alive when it was taken out of the window and laid close to him. He examined it particularly, and is a philosophical dog. But I am sure that at first and while it was playing he thought so.

In the same way he can't bear me to look into a glass, because he thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking glass, and he is jealous of its being so close to me. He used to tremble and bark at it, but now he is silently jealous, and contents himself with squeezing close, close to me and kissing me expressively.

My very dear friend's ever gratefully affectionate
E.B.B.

My dear Mr. Kenyon,—Having missed my pleasure to-day by a coincidence worse for me than for you, I must, tired as I am to-night, tell you—ready for to-morrow's return of the books—what I have waited three whole days hoping to tell you by word of mouth. But mind, before I begin, I don't do so out of despair ever to see you again, because I trust steadfastly to your kindness to come again when you are not 'languid' and I am alone as usual; only that I dare not keep back from you any longer the following message of Miss Mitford. She says: 'Won't he take us in his way to Torquay? or from Torquay? Beg him to do so—and of all love, to tell us when.' Afterwards, again: 'I think my father is better. Tell Mr. Kenyon what I say, and stand my friend with him and beg him to come.'

Which I do in the most effectual way—in her own words.

She is much pleased by means of your introduction. 'Tell dear Mr. Kenyon how very very much I like Mrs. Leslie. She seems all that is good and kind, and to add great intelligence and agreeableness to these prime qualities.'

Now I have done with being a messenger of the gods, and verily my caduceus is trembling in my hand.

O Mr. Kenyon! what have you done? You will know the interpretation of the reproach, your conscience holding the key of the cypher.

In the meantime I ought to be thanking you for your great kindness about this divine Tennyson.^[66] Beautiful! beautiful! After all, it is a noble thing to be a poet. But notwithstanding the poetry of the novelties—and you will observe that his two preceding volumes (only one of which I had seen before, having inquired for the other vainly) are included in these two—nothing appears to me quite equal to 'Oenone,' and perhaps a few besides of my ancient favorites. That is not said in disparagement of the last, but in admiration of the first. There is, in fact, more thought—more bare brave working of the intellect—in the latter poems, even if we miss something of the high ideality, and the music that goes with it, of the older ones. Only I am always inclined to believe that philosophic thinking, like music, is involved, however occultly, in high ideality of any kind.

You have not a key to the cypher of this at least, and I am so tired that one word seems tumbling over another all the way.

Ever affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

You will let me keep your beautiful ballad and the gods^[67] a little longer.

My very dear Friend,—I have made you wait a long time for the 'North American Review,' because when your request came it was no longer within my reach, and because since then I have not been so well as usual from a sweep of the wing of the prevailing epidemic. Now, however, I am better than I was even before the attack, only wishing that it were possible to hook-and-eye on another summer to the hem of the garment of this last sunny one. At the end of such a double summer, to measure things humanly, I might be able to go to see you at Hampstead. Nevertheless, winters and adversities are more fit for us than a constant sun.

I suppose, dear Mr. Boyd, you want only to have this review read to you, and not written. Because it isn't out of laziness that I send the book to you; and Arabel would copy whatever you please willingly, provided you wished it. Keep the book as long as you please. I have put a paper mark and a pencil mark at the page and paragraph where I am taken up. It seems to me that the condemnation of 'The Seraphim' is not too hard. The poem wants unity.

As to your 'words of fire' about Wordsworth, if I had but a cataract at command I would try to quench them. His powers should not be judged of by my extracts or by anybody's extracts from his last-published volume.^[68] Do you remember his grand ode upon Childhood—worth, to my apprehension, just twenty of Dryden's 'St. Cecilia's Day'—his sonnet upon Westminster Bridge, his lyric on a lark, in which the lark's music swells and exults, and the many noble and glorious passages of his 'Excursion'? You must not indeed blame me for estimating Wordsworth at his height, and on the other side I readily confess to you that he is occasionally, and not unfrequently, heavy and dull, and that Coleridge had an intenser genius. Tell me if you know anything of Tennyson. He has just published two volumes of poetry, one of which is a republication, but both full of inspiration.

Ever my very dear friend's affectionate and grateful
E.B.B.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Waiting first for you to write to me, and then waiting that I might write to you cheerfully, has ended by making so long a silence that I am almost ashamed to break it. And perhaps, even if I were not ashamed, you would be angry—perhaps you are angry, and don't much care now whether or not you ever hear from me again. Still I must write, and I must moreover ask you to write to me again; and I must in particular assure you that I have continued to love you sincerely, notwithstanding all the silence which might seem to say the contrary. What I should like best just now is to have a letter speaking comfortable details of your being comparatively well again; yet I hope on without it that you really are so much better as to be next to quite well. It was with great concern that I heard of the indisposition which hung about you, dearest Mrs. Martin, so long—I who had congratulated myself when I saw you last on the promise of good health in your countenance. May God bless you, and keep you better! And may you take care of yourself, and remember how many love you in the world, from dear Mr. Martin down to—E.B.B.

Well, now I must look around me and consider what there is to tell you. But I have been uneasy in various ways, sometimes by reason and sometimes by fantasy; and even now, although my dear old friend Dr. Scully is something better, he lies, I fear, in a very precarious state, while dearest Miss Mitford's letters from the deathbed of her father make my heart ache as surely almost as the post comes. There is nothing more various in character, nothing which distinguishes one human being from another more strikingly, than the expression of feeling, the manner in which it influences the outward man. If I were in her circumstances, I should sit paralysed—it would be impossible to me to write or to cry. And she, who loves and feels with the intensity of a nature warm in everything, seems to turn to sympathy by the very instinct of grief, and sits at the deathbed of her last relative, writing there, in letter after letter, every symptom, physical or moral—even to the very words of the raving of a delirium, and those, heart-breaking words! I could not write such letters; but I know she feels as deeply as any mourner in the world can. And all this reminds me of what you once asked me about the inscriptions in Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?...

And now you will kindly like to have a word said about myself, and it need not be otherwise than a word to give your kindness pleasure. The long splendid summer, exhausting as the heat was to me sometimes, did me essential good, and left me walking about the room and equal to going downstairs (which I achieved four or five times), and even to going out in the chair, without suffering afterwards. And, best of all, the spitting of blood (I must tell you), which more or less kept by me continually, stopped quite some six weeks ago, and I have thus more reasonable hopes of being really and essentially better than I could have with such a symptom loitering behind accidental improvements. Weak enough, and with a sort of pulse which is not excellent, I certainly remain; but still, if I escape any decided attack this winter—and I am in garrison now—there are expectations of further good for next summer, and I may recover some moderate degree of health and strength again, and be able to do good instead of receiving it only.

I write under the eyes of Wordsworth. Not Wordsworth's living eyes, although the actual living poet had the infinite kindness to ask Mr. Kenyon twice last summer when he was in London, if he might not come to see me. Mr. Kenyon said 'No'—I couldn't have said 'No' to Wordsworth, though I had never gone to sleep again afterwards. But this Wordsworth who looks on me now is Wordsworth in a picture. Mr. Haydon the artist, with the utmost kindness, has sent me the portrait he was painting of the great poet—an unfinished portrait—and I am to keep it until he wants to finish it. Such a head! such majesty! and the poet stands musing upon Helvellyn! And all that—poet, Helvellyn, and all—is in my room!^[69]

Give my kind love to Mr. Martin—our kind love, indeed, to both of you—and believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,

Your ever affectionate BA.

Is there any hope for us of you before the winter ends? Do consider.

My very dear Friend,—I have put off from day to day sending you these volumes, and in the meantime I have had a letter from the great poet! Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to Mr. Haydon, and that Mr. Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth? The result was that Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me. King John's barons were never better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.^[70]

But I won't tell you any more about it until you have read the poems which I send you. Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet written on Westminster Bridge, vol. iii. page 78. Then take from the sixth volume, page 152, the passage beginning 'Within the soul' down to page 153 at 'despair,' and again at page 155 beginning with

down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me further by reading, out of the second volume, the two poems called 'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page 172 and page 161. I will not ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound' in the same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet, with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be candid. Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,

Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My very dear Friend,—You will think me in a discontented state of mind when I knit my brows like a 'sleeve of care' over your kind praises. But the truth is, I won't be praised for being liberal in Calvinism and love of Byron. I liberal in commending Byron! Take out my heart and try it! look at it and compare it with yours; and answer and tell me if I do not love and admire Byron more warmly than you yourself do. I suspect it indeed. Why, I am always reproached for my love to Byron. Why, people say to me, 'You, who overpraise Byron!' Why, when I was a little girl (and, whatever you may think, my tendency is not to cast off my old loves!) I used to think seriously of dressing up like a boy and running away to be Lord Byron's page. And I to be praised now for being 'liberal' in admitting the merit of his poetry! I!

As for the Calvinism, I don't choose to be liberal there either. I don't call myself a Calvinist. I hang suspended between the two doctrines, and hide my eyes in God's love from the sights which other people say they see. I believe simply that the saved are saved by grace, and that they shall hereafter know it fully; and that the lost are lost by their choice and free will—by choosing to sin and die; and I believe absolutely that the deepest damned of all the lost will not dare to whisper to the nearest devil that reproach of Martha: 'If the Lord had been near me, I had not died.' But of the means of the working of God's grace, and of the time of the formation of the Divine counsels, I know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to guess nothing; and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the world, their tendency is almost always towards a confusion of His eternal nature with the human conditions of ours; and to an oblivion of the fact that with Him there can be no after nor before.

At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine any more the brickbats of controversy—there is more than enough to think of in truths clearly revealed; more than enough for the exercise of the intellect and affections and adorations. I would rather not suffer myself to be disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely that I should ever be informed. And although you tell me that your system of investigation is different from some others, answer me with your accustomed candour, and admit, my very dear friend, that this argument does not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word^[71] be 'fore-know' or 'publicly favor,' room for a stormy controversy yet remains. I went through the Romans with you partially, and wholly by myself, by your desire, and in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and Adam Clarke, and yourself I believe, as to the Jews and Gentiles. Neither could I conceive that a particular part of the epistle represents an actual dialogue between a Jew and Gentile, since the form of question and answer appears to me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was learned in rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit common to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant through God in Christ Jesus. These are my impressions. Yours are different. And since we should not probably persuade each other, and since we are both of us fond of and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in, religious and otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless contention? 'What!' you would say (by the time we had quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk without being excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray do lower your voice—it goes through my head!' In another ten minutes: 'I could scarcely have believed you to be so obstinate.' In another: 'Your prejudices are insurmountable, and your reason most womanly—you are degenerated to the last degree.' In another—why, then you would turn me and Flush out of the room and so finish the controversy victoriously.

Was I wrong too, dearest Mr. Boyd, in sending the poems to the 'Athenaeum'? Well, I meant to be right. I fancied that you would rather they were sent; and as your name was not attached, there could be no harm in leaving them to the editor's disposal. They are not inserted, as I anticipated. The religious character was a sufficient objection—their character of prayer. Mr. Dilke begged me once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with the secular character of the journal!

Ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Tell me how you like the sonnet; but you won't (I prophesy) like it. Keep the 'Athenaeum.'

My very dear Friend,—I am afraid that you will infer from my silence that you have affronted me into ill temper by your parody upon my sonnet. Yet 'lucus a non lucendo' were a truer derivation. I laughed and thanked you over the parody, and put off writing to you until I had the headache, which forced me to put it off again....

May God bless you, my dear Mr. Boyd. Mr. Savage Landor once said that anybody who could write a parody deserved to be shot; but as he has written one himself since saying so, he has probably changed his mind. Arabel sends her love.

Ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My very dear Friend,—My surprise was inexpressible at your utterance of the name. What! Ossian superior as a poet to Homer! Mr. Boyd saying so! Mr. Boyd treading down the neck of Aeschylus while he praises Ossian! The fact appears to me that anomalous thing among believers—a miracle without an occasion.

I confess I never, never should have guessed the name; not though I had guessed to Doomsday. In the first place I do not believe in Ossian, and having partially examined the testimony (for I don't pretend to any exact learning about it) I consider him as the poetical lay figure upon which Mr. Macpherson dared to cast his personality. There is a sort of phraseology, nay, an identity of occasional phrases, from the antique—but that these so-called Ossianic poems were ever discovered and translated as they stand in their present form, I believe in no wise. As Dr. Johnson wrote to Macpherson, so I would say, 'Mr. Macpherson, I thought you an impostor, and think so still.'

It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian, and I never did much delight in him, as that fact proves. Since your letter came I have taken him up again, and have just finished 'Carthon.' There are beautiful passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think, 'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm of these things is the only charm of all the poems. There is a sound of wild vague music in a monotone—nothing is articulate, nothing individual, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold they grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer's grand breathing personalities, with Aeschylus's—nay, but I cannot bear upon my lips or finger the charge of the blasphemy of such comparing, even for religion's sake....

I had another letter from America a few days since, from an American poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine, and asked for contributions from my pen. The Americans are as good-natured to me as if they took me for the high Radical I am, you know.

You won't be angry with me for my obliquity (as you will consider it) about Ossian. You know I always talk sincerely to you, and you have not made me afraid of telling you the truth—that is, my truth, the truth of my belief and opinions.

I do not defend much in the 'Idiot Boy.' Wordsworth is a great poet, but he does not always write equally.

And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest between Ossian and Homer. I fashion it in this way: Homer sometimes nods, but Ossian makes his readers nod.

Ever your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Did I tell you that I had been reading through a manuscript translation of the 'Gorgias' of Plato, by Mr. Hyman of Oxford, who is a stepson of Mr. Haydon's the artist? It is an excellent translation with learned notes, but it is not elegant. He means to try the public upon it, but, as I have intimated to him, the Christians of the present day are not civilised enough for Plato.

Arabel's love.

My very dear Friend,—The image you particularly admire in Ossian, I admire with you, although I am not sure that I have not seen it or its like somewhere in a classical poet, Greek or Latin. Perhaps Lord Byron remembered it when in the 'Siege of Corinth' he said of his Francesca's uplifted arm, 'You might have seen the moon shine through.' It reminds me also that Maclise the artist, a man of poetical imagination, gives such a transparency to the ghost of Banquo in his picture of Macbeth's banquet, that we can discern through it the lights of the festival. That is good poetry for a painter, is it not?

I send you the magazines which I have just received from America, and which contain, one of them, 'The Cry of the Human,' and the other, four of my sonnets. My correspondent tells me that the 'Cry' is considered there one of the most successful of my poems, but you probably will not think so. Tell me exactly what you do think. At page 343 of 'Graham's Magazine,' Editor's Table, is a review of me, which, however extravagant in its appreciation, will give your kindness pleasure. I confess to a good deal of pleasure myself from these American courtesies, expressed not merely in the magazines, but in the newspapers; a heap of which has been sent to me by my correspondent—the 'New York Tribune,' 'The Union,' 'The Union Flag,' &c.—all scattered over with extracts from my books and benignant words about their writer. Among the extracts is the whole of the review of Wordsworth from the London 'Athenaeum,' an unconscious compliment, as they do not guess at the authorship, and one which you won't thank them for. Keep the magazines, as I have duplicates.

Dearest Mr. Boyd, since you admit that I am not prejudiced about Ossian, I take courage to tell you what I am thinking of.

I am thinking (this is said in a whisper, and in confidence—of two kinds), I am thinking that you don't admire him quite as much as you did three weeks ago.

Ever most affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Arabel not being here, I send her love without asking for it.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Thank you for your letter and for dear Mr. Martin's thought of writing one! Ah! I thought he would not write, but not for the reason you say; it was something more palpable and less romantic! Well, I will not grumble any more about not having my letter, since you are coming, and since you seem, my dear Mrs. Martin, something in better spirits than your note from Southampton bore token of. Madeira is the Promised Land, you know; and you should hope hopefully for your invalid from his pilgrimage there. You should hope with those who hope, my dearest Mrs. Martin....

Our 'event' just now is a new purchase of a 'Holy Family,' supposed to be by Andrea del Sarto. It has displaced the Glover over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room, and dear Stormie and Alfred nearly broke their backs in carrying it upstairs for me to see before the placing. It is probably a fine picture, and I seem to see my way through the dark of my ignorance, to admire the grouping and colouring, whatever doubt as to the expression and divinity may occur otherwise. Well, you will judge. I won't tell you how I think of it. And you won't care if I do. There is also a new very pretty landscape piece, and you may imagine the local politics of the arrangement and hanging, with their talk and consultation; while I, on the storey higher, have my arranging to manage of my pretty new books and my three hyacinths, and a pot of primroses which dear Mr. Kenyon had the good nature to carry himself through the streets to our door. But all the flowers forswear me, and die either suddenly or gradually as soon as they become aware of the want of fresh air and light in my room. Talking of air and light, what exquisite weather this is! What a summer in winter! It is the fourth day since I have had the fire wrung from me by the heat of temperature, and I sit here very warm indeed, notwithstanding that bare grate. Nay, yesterday I had the door thrown open for above an hour, and was warm still! You need not ask, you see, how I am.

Tell me, have you read Mr. Dickens's 'America;' and what is your thought of it like? If I were an American, it would make me rabid, and certain of the free citizens are furious, I understand, while others 'speak peace and ensue it,' admire as much of the book as deserves any sort of admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the prejudices of the party with whom the writer 'fell in,' and not to a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions. I admire Mr. Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love the Americans—I cannot possibly admire or love this book. Does Mr. Martin? Do you?

Henrietta would send her love to you if I could hear her voice nearer than I do actually, as she sings to the guitar downstairs. And her love is not the only one to be sent. Give mine to dear Mr. Martin, though he can't make up his mind to the bore of writing to me. And remember us all, both of you, as we do you.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate BA.

You make us out, my dear Mr. Martin, to be such perfect parallel lines that I should be half afraid of completing the definition by our never meeting, if it were not for what you say afterwards, of the coming to London, and of promising to come and see Flush. If you should be travelling while I am writing, it was only what happened to me when I wrote not long ago to dearest Mrs. Martin, and everybody in this house cried out against the fatuity of the coincidence. As if I could know that she was travelling, when nobody told me, and I wasn't a witch! If the same thing happens to-day, believe in the innocence of my ignorance. I shall be consoled if it does—for certain reasons. But for none in the world can I help thanking you for your letter, which gave me so much pleasure from the first sight of the handwriting to the thought of the kindness spent upon me in it, that after all I cannot thank you as I would.

Yet I won't let you fancy me of such an irrational state of simplicity as not to be fully aware that you, with your 'nature of the fields and forests,' look down disdainfully and with an inward heat of glorying, upon me who have all my pastime in books—dead and seethed. Perhaps, if it were a little warmer, I might even grant that you are right in your pride. As it is, I grumble feebly to myself something about the definition of nature, and how we in the town (which 'God made' just as He made your hedges) have our share of nature too; and then I have secret thoughts of the state of the thermometer, and wonder how people can breathe out of doors. In the meantime, Flush, who is a better philosopher, pushes deep into my furs, and goes to sleep. Perhaps I should fear the omen for my correspondent.

Oh yes! That picture in 'Boz' is beautiful. For my own part, and by a natural womanly contradiction, I have never cared so much in my life for flowers as since being shut out from gardens—unless, indeed, in the happy days of old when I had a garden of my own, and cut it out into a great Hector of Troy, in relievo, with a high heroic box nose and shoeties of columbine.^[72] But that was long ago. Now I count the buds of my primrose with a new kind of interest, and you never saw such a primrose! I begin to believe in Ovid, and look for a metamorphosis. The leaves are turning white and springing up as high as corn. Want of air, and of sun, I suppose. I should be loth to think it—want of friendship to me!

Do you know that the royal Boz lives close to us, three doors from Mr. Kenyon in Harley Place? The new numbers appear to me admirable, and full of life and blood—whatever we may say to the thick rouging and extravagance of gesture. There is a beauty, a tenderness, too, in the organ scene, which is worthy of the gilliflowers. But my admiration for 'Boz' fell from its 'sticking place,' I confess, a good furlong, when I read Victor Hugo; and my creed is, that, not in his tenderness, which is as much his own as his humour, but in his serious powerful Jew-trial scenes, he has followed Hugo closely, and never scarcely looked away from 'Les Trois Jours d'un Condamné.'

If you should not be on the road, I hope you won't be very long before you are, and that dearest Mrs. Martin will put off building her greenhouse—you see I believe she will build it—until she gets home again.

How kind of you and of her to have poor old Mrs. Barker at Colwall!

Do believe me, both of you, with love from all of us,

Very affectionately yours,
BA.

Thank you, my very dear friend, I am as well as the east wind will suffer me to be; and that, indeed, is not very well, my heart being fuller of all manner of evil than is necessary to its humanity. But the wind is changed, and the frost is gone, and it is not quite out of my fancy yet that I may see you next summer. You and summer are not out of the question yet. Therefore, you see, I cannot be very deep in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom that I have just finished a poem of some five hundred lines in stanzas, called 'The Lost Bower,'^[73] and about nothing at all in particular.

As to Arabel, she is not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in the frost—when we brambles are brown with their inward death—and she is of them, dear thing. You are not a bramble, though, and I hope that when you talk of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer to your sensation, and not to your health. Remember also, dearest Mr. Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had. Take away the last ten days and a few besides, and call the whole summer rather than winter. Ought we to complain, really? Really, no.

I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the ast, though my hand shakes so that nobody will read it.

You can't abide my 'Cry of the Human,' and four sonnets. They have none of them found favor in your eyes.

In or out of favor,

Ever your affectionate E.B.B.

Do you think that next summer you might, could, or would walk across the park to see me—supposing always that I fail in my aspiration to go and see you? I only ask by way of hypothesis. Consider and revolve it so. We live on the verge of the town rather than in it, and our noises are cousins to silence; and you should pass into a room where the silence is most absolute. Flush's breathing is my loudest sound, and then the watch's tickings, and then my own heart when it beats too turbulently. Judge of the quiet and the solitude!

My very dear Friend,—The earth turns round, to be sure, and we turn with it, but I never anticipated the day and the hour for you to turn round and be guilty of high treason to our Greeks. I cry 'Ai! ai!' as if I were a chorus, and all vainly. For, you see, arguing about it will only convince you of my obstinacy, and not a bit of Homer's supremacy. Ossian has wrapt you in a cloud, a fog, a true Scotch mist. You have caught cold in the critical faculty, perhaps. At any rate, I can't see a bit more of your reasonableness than I can see of Fingal. Sic transit! Homer like the darkened half of the moon in eclipse! You have spoilt for me now the finest image in your Ossian-Macpherson.

My dearest Mr. Boyd, you will find as few believers in the genuineness of these volumes among the most accomplished antiquarians in poetry as in the genuineness of Chatterton's Rowley, and of Ireland's Shakespeare. The latter impostures boasted of disciples in the first instance, but the discipleship perished by degrees, and the place thereof, during this present 1843, knows it no more. So has it been with the belief in Macpherson's Ossian. Of those who believed in the poems at the first sight of them, who kept his creed to the end? And speaking so, I speak of Macpherson's contemporaries whom you respect.

I do not consider Walter Scott a great poet, but he was highly accomplished in matters of poetical antiquarianism, and is certainly citable as an authority on this question.

Try not to be displeased with me. I cannot conceal from you that my astonishment is profound and unutterable at your new religion—your new faith in this pseud-Ossian—and your desecration, in his service, of the old Hellenic altars. And by the way, my own figure reminds me to inquire of you whether you are not sometimes struck with a want in him—a want very grave in poetry, and very strange in antique poetry—the want of devotional feeling and conscience of God. Observe, that all antique poets rejoice greatly and abundantly in their divine mythology; and that if this Ossian be both antique and godless, he is an exception, a discrepancy, a monster in the history of letters and experience of humanity. As such I leave him.

Oh, how angry you will be with me. But you seemed tolerably prepared in your last letter for my being in a passion.... Ever affectionately yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Why should I be angry with Flush? He does not believe in Ossian. Oh, I assure you he doesn't.

The following letter was called forth by a criticism of Mr. Kenyon's on Miss Barrett's poem, The Dead Pan, which he had seen in manuscript; but it also meets some criticisms which others had made upon her last volume (see above, p. 65).

My very dear Cousin,—Your kindness having touched me much, and your good opinion, whether literary or otherwise, being of great price to me, it is even with tears in my eyes that I begin to write to you upon a difference between us. And what am I to say? To admit, of course, in the first place, the injuriousness to the 'popularity,' of the scriptural tone. But am I to sacrifice a principle to popularity? Would you advise me to do so? Should I be more worthy of your kindness by doing so? and could you (apart from the kindness) call my refusal to do so either perverseness or obstinacy? Even if you could, I hope you will try a little to be patient with me, and to forgive, at least, what you find it impossible to approve.

My dear cousin, if you had not reminded me of Wordsworth's exclamation—

and if he had never made it, I do think that its significance would have occurred to me, by a sort of instinct, in connection with this discussion. Certainly I would rather be a pagan whose religion was actual, earnest, continual—for week days, work days, and song days—than I would be a Christian who, from whatever motive, shrank from hearing or uttering the name of Christ out of a 'church.' I am no fanatic, but I like truth and earnestness in all things, and I cannot choose but believe that such a Christian shows but ill beside such a pagan. What pagan poet ever thought of casting his gods out of his poetry? In what pagan poem do they not shine and thunder? And if I—to approach the point in question—if I, writing a poem the end of which is the extolment of what I consider to be Christian truth over the pagan myths shrank even there from naming the name of my God lest it should not meet the sympathies of some readers, or lest it should offend the delicacies of other readers, or lest, generally, it should be unfit for the purposes of poetry in what more forcible manner than by that act (I appeal to Philip against Philip) can I controvert my own poem, or secure to myself and my argument a logical and unanswerable shame? If Christ's name is improperly spoken in that poem, then indeed is Schiller right, and the true gods of poetry are to be sighed for mournfully. For be sure that Burns was right, and that a poet without devotion is below his own order, and that poetry without religion will gradually lose its elevation. And then, my dear friend, we do not live among dreams. The Christian religion is true or it is not, and if it is true it offers the highest and purest objects of contemplation. And the poetical faculty, which expresses the highest moods of the mind, passes naturally to the highest objects. Who can separate these things? Did Dante? Did Tasso? Did Petrarch? Did Calderon? Did Chaucer? Did the poets of our best British days? Did any one of these shrink from speaking out Divine names when the occasion came? Chaucer, with all his jubilee of spirit and resounding laughter, had the name of Jesus Christ and God as frequently to familiarity on his lips as a child has its father's name. You say 'our religion is not vital—not week-day—enough.' Forgive me, but that is a confession of a wrong, not an argument. And if a poet be a poet, it is his business to work for the elevation and purification of the public mind, rather than for his own popularity! while if he be not a poet, no sacrifice of self-respect will make amends for a defective faculty, nor ought to make amends.

My conviction is that the poetry of Christianity will one day be developed greatly and nobly, and that in the meantime we are wrong, poetically as morally, in desiring to restrain it. No, I never felt repelled by any Christian phraseology in Cowper—although he is not a favorite poet of mine from other causes—nor in Southey, nor even in James Montgomery, nor in Wordsworth where he writes 'ecclesiastically,' nor in Christopher North, nor in Chateaubriand, nor in Lamartine.

It is but two days ago since I had a letter—and not from a fanatic—to reproach my poetry for not being Christian enough, and this is not the first instance, nor the second, of my receiving such a reproach. I tell you this to open to you the possibility of another side to the question, which makes, you see, a triangle of it!

Can you bear with such a long answer to your letter, and forbear calling it a 'preachment'? There may be such a thing as an awkward and untimely introduction of religion, I know, and I have possibly been occasionally guilty in this way. But for my principle I must contend, for it is a poetical principle and more, and an entire sincerity in respect to it is what I owe to you and to myself. Try to forgive me, dear Mr. Kenyon. I would propitiate your indulgence for me by a libation of your own eau de Cologne poured out at your feet! It is excellent eau de Cologne, and you are very kind to me, but, notwithstanding all, there is a foreboding within me that my 'conventicleisms' will be inodorous in your nostrils.

[Incomplete.]

My very dear Cousin,—I have read your letter again and again, and feel your kindness fully and earnestly. You have advised me about the poem,^[74] entering into the questions referring to it with the warmth rather of the author of it than the critic of it, and this I am sensible of as absolutely as anyone can be. At the same time, I have a strong perception rather than opinion about the poem, and also, if you would not think it too serious a word to use in such a place, I have a conscience about it. It was not written in a desultory fragmentary way, the last stanzas thrown in, as they might be thrown out, but with a design, which leans its whole burden on the last stanzas. In fact, the last stanzas were in my mind to say, and all the others presented the mere avenue to the end of saying them. Therefore I cannot throw them out—I cannot yield to the temptation even of pleasing you by doing so; I make a compromise with myself, and do not throw them out, and do not print the poem. Now say nothing against this, my dear cousin, because I am obstinate, as you know, as you have good evidence for knowing. I will not either alter or print it. Then you have your manuscript copy, which you can cut into any shape you please as long as you keep it out of print; and seeing that the poem really does belong to you, having had its origin in your paraphrase of Schiller's stanzas, I see a great deal of poetical justice in the manuscript copyright remaining in your hands. For the rest I shall have quite enough to print and to be responsible for without it, and I am quite satisfied to let it be silent for a few years until either I or you (as may be the case even with me!) shall have revised our judgments in relation to it.

This being settled, you must suffer me to explain (for mere personal reasons, and not for the good of the poem) that no mortal priest (of St. Peter's or otherwise) is referred to in a particular stanza, but the Saviour Himself. Who is 'the High Priest of our profession,' and the only 'priest' recognised in the New Testament. In the same way the altar candles are altogether spiritual, or they could not be supposed, even by the most amazing poetical exaggeration, to 'light the earth and skies.' I explain this, only that I may not appear to you to have compromised the principle of the poem, by compromising any truth (such in my eyes) for the sake of a poetical effect.

And now I will not say any more. I know that you will be inclined to cry, 'Print it in any case,' but I will entreat of your kindness, which I have so much right to trust in while entreating, not to say one such word. Be kind, and let me follow my own way silently. I have not, indeed, like a spoilt child in a fret, thrown the poem up because I would not alter it, though you have done much to spoil me. I act advisedly, and have made up my mind as to what is the wisest and best thing to do, and personally the pleasantest to myself, after a good deal of serious reflection. 'Pan is dead,' and so best, for the present at least.

I shall take your advice about the preface in every respect, and thanks for the letter and Taylor's memoirs.

Miss Mitford talks of coming to town for a day, and of bringing Flush with her, as soon as the weather settles, and to-day looks so like it that I have mused this morning on the possibility of breaking my prison doors and getting into the next room. Only there is a forbidding north wind, they say.

Don't be vexed with me, dear Mr. Kenyon. You know there are obstinacies in the world as well as mortalities, and thereto appertaining. And then you will perceive through all mine, that it is difficult for me to act against your judgment so far as to put my own tenacity into print.

Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

It is to the honour of America that it recognised from the first the genius of Miss Barrett; and for a large part of her life some of the closest of her personal and literary connections were with Americans. The same is true in both respects of Robert Browning. As appears from some letters printed farther on in these volumes, at a time when the sale of his poems in England was almost infinitesimal, they were known and highly prized in the United States. Expressions of Mrs. Browning's sympathy with America and of gratitude for the kindly feelings of Americans recur frequently in the letters, and it is probable that there are still extant in the States many letters written to friends and correspondents there. Only three or four such have been made available for the present collection; and of these the first follows here in its place in the chronological sequence. It was written to Mr. Cornelius Mathews, then editor of 'Graham's Magazine,' who had invited Miss Barrett to send contributions to his periodical. The warm expression in it of sympathy with the poetry of Robert Browning, whom she did not yet know personally, is especially interesting to readers of this later day, who, like the spectators at a Greek tragedy, watch the development of a drama of which the dénouement is already known to them.

My dear Mr. Mathews,—In replying to your kind letter I send some more verse for Graham's, praying such demi-semi-gods as preside over contributors to magazines that I may not appear over-loquacious to my editor. Of course it is not intended to thrust three or four poems into one number. My pluralities go to you simply to 'bide your time,' and be used one by one as the opportunity is presented. In the meanwhile you have received, I hope, a short letter written to explain my unwillingness to apply, as you desired me at first, to Wiley and Putnam—an unwillingness justified by what you told me afterwards. I did not apply, nor have I applied, and I would rather not apply at all. Perhaps I shall hear from them presently. The pamphlet on International Copyright is welcome at a distance, but it has not come near me yet; and for all your kindness in relation to the prospective gift of your works I thank you again and earnestly. You are kind to me in many ways, and I would willingly know as much of your intellectual habits as you teach me of your genial feelings. This 'Pathfinder' (what an excellent name for an American journal!) I also owe to you, with the summing up of your performances in it, and with a notice of Mr. Browning's 'Blot on the Scutcheon,' which would make one poet furious (the 'infelix Talfourd') and another a little melancholy—namely, Mr. Browning himself. There is truth on both sides, but it seems to me hard truth on Browning. I do assure you I never saw him in my life—do not know him even by correspondence—and yet, whether through fellow-feeling for Eleusinian mysteries, or whether through the more generous motive of appreciation of his powers, I am very sensitive to the thousand and one stripes with which the assembly of critics doth expound its vocation over him, and the 'Athenaeum,' for instance, made me quite cross and misanthropical last week.^[75] The truth is—and the world should know the truth—it is easier to find a more faultless writer than a poet of equal genius. Don't let us fall into the category of the sons of Noah. Noah was once drunk, indeed, but once he built the ark. Talking of poets, would your 'Graham's Miscellany' care at all to have occasional poetical contributions from Mr. Horne? I am in correspondence with him, and I think I could manage an arrangement upon the same terms as my engagement rests on, if you please and your friends please, that is, and without formality, if it should give you any pleasure. He is a writer of great power, I think. And this reminds me that you may be looking all the while for the 'Athenaeum's' reply to your friend's proposition—of which I lost no time in apprising the editor, Mr. Dilke, and here are some of his words: 'An American friend who had been long in England, and often conversed with me on the subject, resolved on his return to establish such a correspondence. In all things worth knowing—all reviews of good books' (which 'are published first or simultaneously,' says Mr. Dilke, 'in London'), 'he was anticipated, and after some months he was driven of necessity to geological surveys, centenary celebrations, progress of railroads, manufactures, &c., and thus the prospect was abandoned altogether.' Having made this experiment, Mr. Dilke is unwilling to risk another. Neither must we blame him for the reserve. When the international copyright shall at once protect the national meum and tuum in literature and give it additional fullness and value, we shall cease to say insolently to you that what we want of your books we will get without your help, but as it is, the Mr. Dilkes of us have nothing much more courteous to do. I wish I could have been of any use to your friend—I have done what I could. In regard to critical papers of mine, I would willingly give myself up to you, seeing your good nature; but it is the truth that I never published any prose papers at all except the series on the Greek Christian poets and the other series on the English poets in the 'Athenaeum' of last year, and both of which you have probably seen. Afterwards I threw up my brief and went back to my poetry, in which I feel that I must do whatever I am equal to doing at all. That life is short and art long appears to us more true than usual when we lie all day long on a sofa and are as frightened of the east wind as if it were a tiger. Life is not only short, but uncertain, and art is not only long, but absorbing. What have I to do with writing 'scandal' (as Mr. Jones would say) upon my neighbour's work, when I have not finished my own? So I threw up my brief into Mr. Dilke's hands, and went back to my verses. Whenever I print another volume you shall have it, if Messrs. Wiley and Putnam will convey it to you. How can I send you, by the way, anything I may have to send you? Why will you not, as a nation, embrace our great penny post scheme, and hold our envelopes in all acceptation? You do not know—cannot guess—what a wonderful liberty our Rowland Hill has given to British spirits, and how we 'flash a thought' instead of 'wafting' it from our extreme south to our extreme north, paying 'a penny for our thought' and for the electricity included. I recommend you our penny postage as the most successful revolution since the 'glorious three days' of Paris.

And so, you made merry with my scorn of my 'Prometheus.' Believe me—believe me absolutely—I did not strike that others might spare, but from an earnest remorse. When you know me better, you will know, I hope, that I am true, whether right or wrong, and you know already that I am right in this thing, the only merit of the translation being its closeness. Can I be of any use to you, dear Mr. Mathews? When I can, make use of me. You surprise and disappoint me in your sketch of the Boston poet, for the letter he wrote to me struck me as frank and honest. I wonder if he made any use of the verses I sent him; and I wonder what I sent him—for I never made a note of it, through negligence, and have quite forgotten. Are you acquainted with Mrs. Sigourney? She has offended us much by her exposition of Mrs. Southey's letter, and I must say not without cause. I rejoice in the progress of 'Wakondah,' wishing the influences of mountain and river to be great over him and in him. And so I will say the 'God bless you' your kindness cares to hear, and remain,

Sincerely and thankfully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

(Endorsed in another hand)
E.B. Barrett, London, received May 12, 1843,
4 poems, previously furnished to Graham's Magazine, $50.

My dear Cousin,—Here is my copyright for you, and you will see that I have put 'word' instead of 'sound,' as certainly the proper 'word.' Do let me thank you once more for all the trouble and interest you have taken with me and in me. Observe besides that I have altered the title according to your unconscious suggestion, and made it 'The Dead Pan,' which is a far better name, I think, than the repetition of the refrain.

But I spoil my exemplary docility so far, by confessing that I don't like 'scornful children' half—no, not half so well as my 'railing children,' although, to be sure, you proved to me that the last was nigh upon nonsense. You proved it—that is, you almost proved it, for don't we say—at least, mightn't we say—'the thunder was silent'? 'thunder' involving the idea of noise, as much as 'railing children' do. Consider this—I give it up to you.^[76]

I am ashamed to have kept Carlyle so long, but I quite failed in trying to read him at my "usual pace—he won't be read quick. After all, and full of beauty and truth as that book is, and strongly as it takes hold of my sympathies, there is nothing new in it—not even a new Carlyleism, which I do not say by way of blaming the book, because the author of it might use words like the apostle's: 'To write the same things unto you, to me indeed is not grievous, and to you it is safe.' The world being blind and deaf and rather stupid, requires a reiteration of certain uncongenial truths....

Thank you for the address.
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

I observe that the most questionable rhymes are not objected to by Mr. Merivale; also—but this letter is too long already.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—If you promised (which you did), I ought to have promised—and therefore we may ask each other's pardon....

How is the dog? and how does dear Mr. Martin find himself in Arcadia? Do we all stand in his recollection like a species of fog, or a concentrated essence of brick wall? How I wish—and since I said it aloud to you I have often wished it over in a whisper—that you would put away your romance, or cut it in two, and spend six months of the year in London with us! Miss Mitford believes that wishes, if wished hard enough, realise themselves, but my experience has taught me a less cheerful creed. Only if wishes do realise themselves!

Miss Mitford is at Bath, where she has spent one week and is about to spend two, and then goes on her way into Devonshire. She amused me so the other day by desiring me to look at the date of Mr. Landor's poems in their first edition, because she was sure that it must be fifty years since, and she finds him at this 1843, the very Lothario of Bath, enchanting the wives, making jealous the husbands, and 'enjoying,' altogether, the worst of reputations. I suggested that if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long as he proved himself enchanting, it would do no manner of good in the way of practical ethics; and that, besides, for her to travel round the world to investigate gentlemen's ages was invidious, and might be alarming as to the safe inscrutability of ladies' ages. She is delighted with the scenery of Bath, which certainly, take it altogether, marble and mountains, is the most beautiful town I ever looked upon. Cheltenham, I think, is a mere commonplace to it, although the avenues are beautiful, to be sure....

Mrs. Southey complains that she has lost half her income by her marriage, and her friend Mr. Landor is anxious to persuade, by the means of intermediate friends, Sir Robert Peel to grant her a pension. She is said to be in London now, and has at least left Keswick for ever. It is not likely that Wordsworth should come here this year, which I am sorry for now, although I should certainly be sorry if he did come. A happy state of contradiction, not confined either to that particular movement or no-movement, inasmuch as I was gratified by his sending me the poem you saw, and yet read it with such extreme pain as to incapacitate me from judging of it. Such stuff we are made of!

This is a long letter—and you are tired, I feel by instinct!

May God bless you, my dearest Mrs. Martin. Give my love to Mr. Martin, and think of me as

Your very affectionate,
BA.

Henry and Daisy have been to see the lying in state, as lying stark and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of Sussex. It was a fine sight, they say.

My very dear Friend,—I thank you much for the copies of your 'Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.' The papers reached my hands quite safely and so missed setting the world on fire; and I shall be as wary of them evermore (be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them to Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I was likely to 'object' to your doing so? She will laugh. I laughed, albeit in no smiling mood; for I have been transmigrating from one room to another, and your packet found me half tired and half excited, and whole grave. But I could not choose but laugh at your Oxford charge; and when I had counted your great guns and javelin points and other military appurtenances of the Punic war, I said to myself—or to Flush, 'Well, Mr. Boyd will soon be back again with the dissenters.' Upon which I think Flush said, 'That's a comfort.'

Mary's direction is, 111 London Road, Brighton. You ought to send the verses to her yourself, if you mean to please her entirely: and I cannot agree with you that there is the slightest danger in sending them by the post. Letters are never opened, unless you tempt the flesh by putting sovereigns, or shillings, or other metallic substances inside the envelope; and if the devil entered into me causing me to write a libel against the Queen, I would send it by the post fearlessly from John o' Groat's to Land's End inclusive.

One of your best puns, if not the best,

lies in an octosyllabic couplet; and what business has that in your heroic libel?

The 'pearl' of maidens sends her love to you.

Your very affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My very dear Friend,—I hear with wonder from Arabel of your repudiation of my word 'octosyllabic' for the two lines in your controversial poem. Certainly, if you count the syllables on your fingers, there are ten syllables in each line: of that I am perfectly aware; but the lines are none the less belonging to the species of versification called octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth syllable instead of the tenth, and that that single circumstance determines the class of verse—that they are in fact octosyllabic verses with triple rhymes?

Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does he manage them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing the final accent and rhyme on the tenth, thus:

Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse, there are always nine syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable, thus:

('Hudibras.')

Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse (precisely the present case) there must always be ten syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable; thus from 'Hudibras' again:

You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the same structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics, and made use of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas yours, to be rendered of the heroic structure, should run thus:

I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part of little consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake made in cold blood and under corrupt influences from Lake-mists, why I was determined to make the matter clear to you. And as to the influences, if I were guilty of this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would not be guilty in me. I think of him now, exactly as I thought of him during the first years of my friendship for you, only with an equal admiration. He was a great poet to me always, and always, while I have a soul for poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice, but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius. There is scarcely anything newer in my estimation of Wordsworth than in the colour of my eyes!

Perhaps I was wrong in saying 'a pun.' But I thought I apprehended a double sense in your application of the term 'Apostolical succession' to Oxford's 'breeding' and 'hatching,' words which imply succession in a way unecclesiastical.

After all which quarrelling, I am delighted to have to talk of your coming nearer to me—within reach—almost within my reach. Now if I am able to go in a carriage at all this summer, it will be hard but that I manage to get across the park and serenade you in Greek under your window.

Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My very dear Friend,—Yes, you have surprised me!

I always have thought of you, and I always think and say, that you are truthful and candid in a supreme degree, and therefore it is not your candour about Wordsworth which surprises me.

He had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace Darling when it first appeared; and with a curious mixture of feelings (for I was much gratified by his attention in sending it) I yet read it with so much pain from the nature of the subject, that my judgment was scarcely free to consider the poetry—I could scarcely determine to myself what I thought of it from feeling too much.

But I do confess to you, my dear friend, that I suspect—through the mist of my sensations—the poem in question to be very inferior to his former poems; I confess that the impression left on my mind is, of its decided inferiority, and I have heard that the poet's friends and critics (all except one) are mourning over its appearance; sighing inwardly, 'Wordsworth is old.'

One thing is clear to me, however, and over that I rejoice and triumph greatly. If you can esteem this poem of 'Grace Darling,' you must be susceptible to the grandeur and beauty of the poems which preceded it; and the cause of your past reluctance to recognise the poet's power must be, as I have always suspected, from your having given a very partial attention and consideration to his poetry. You were partial in your attention I, perhaps, was injudicious in my extracts; but with your truth and his genius, I cannot doubt but that the time will come for your mutual amity. Oh that I could stand as a herald of peace, with my wool-twisted fillet! I do not understand the Greek metres as well as you do, but I understand Wordsworth's genius better, and do you forgive that it should console me.

I will ask about his collegian extraction. Such a question never occurred to me. Apollo taught him under the laurels, while all the Muses looked through the boughs.

Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT,

Oh, yes, it delights me that you should be nearer. Of course you know that Wordsworth is Laureate.^[77]

Thank you, my dear cousin, for all your kindness to me. There is ivy enough for a thyrsus, and I almost feel ready to enact a sort of Bacchus triumphalis 'for jollitie,' as I see it already planted, and looking in at me through the window. I never thought to see such a sight as that in my London room, and am overwhelmed with my own glory.

And then Mr. Browning's note! Unless you say 'nay' to me, I shall keep this note, which has pleased me so much, yet not more than it ought. Now, I forgive Mr. Merivale for his hard thoughts of my easy rhymes. But all this pleasure, my dear Mr. Kenyon, I owe to you, and shall remember that I do.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

... I thank you for your part in the gaining of my bed, dearest Mrs. Martin, most earnestly; and am quite ready to believe that it was gained by wishdom, which believing is wisdom! No, you would certainly never recognise my prison if you were to see it. The bed, like a sofa and no Bed; the large table placed out in the room, towards the wardrobe end of it; the sofa rolled where a sofa should be rolled—opposite the arm-chair: the drawers crowned with a coronal of shelves fashioned by Sette and Co. (of papered deal and crimson merino) to carry my books; the washing table opposite turned into a cabinet with another coronal of shelves; and Chaucer's and Homer's busts in guard over these two departments of English and Greek poetry; three more busts consecrating the wardrobe which there was no annihilating; and the window—oh, I must take a new paragraph for the window, I am out of breath.

In the window is fixed a deep box full of soil, where are springing up my scarlet runners, nasturtiums, and convolvuluses, although they were disturbed a few days ago by the revolutionary insertion among them of a great ivy root with trailing branches so long and wide that the top tendrils are fastened to Henrietta's window of the higher storey, while the lower ones cover all my panes. It is Mr. Kenyon's gift. He makes the like to flourish out of mere flowerpots, and embower his balconies and windows, and why shouldn't this flourish with me? But certainly—there is no shutting my eyes to the fact that it does droop a little. Papa prophesies hard things against it every morning, 'Why, Ba, it looks worse and worse,' and everybody preaches despondency. I, however, persist in being sanguine, looking out for new shoots, and making a sure pleasure in the meanwhile by listening to the sound of the leaves against the pane, as the wind lifts them and lets them fall. Well, what do you think of my ivy? Ask Mr. Martin, if he isn't jealous already.

Have you read 'The Neighbours,' Mary Howitt's translation of Frederica Bremer's Swedish? Yes, perhaps. Have you read 'The Home,' fresh from the same springs? Do, if you have not. It has not only charmed me, but made me happier and better: it is fuller of Christianity than the most orthodox controversy in Christendom; and represents to my perception or imagination a perfect and beautiful embodiment of Christian outward life from the inward, purely and tenderly. At the same time, I should tell you that Sette says, 'I might have liked it ten years ago, but it is too young and silly to give me any pleasure now.' For me, however, it is not too young, and perhaps it won't be for you and Mr. Martin. As to Sette, he is among the patriarchs, to say nothing of the lawyers—and there we leave him....

Ever your affectionate
BA.

My dear Cousin,—... I send you my friend Mr. Horne's new epic,^[78] and beg you, if you have an opportunity, to drop it at Mr. Eagles' feet, so that he may pick it up and look at it. I have not gone through it (I have another copy), but it appears to me to be full of fine things. As to the author's fantasy of selling it for a farthing, I do not enter into the secret of it—unless, indeed, he should intend a sarcasm on the age's generous patronage of poetry, which is possible.

Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon, for the Camden Society books, and also for these which I return; and also for the hope of seeing you, which I kept through yesterday. I honor Mrs. Coleridge for the readiness of reasoning and integrity in reasoning, for the learning, energy, and impartiality which she has brought to her purpose, and I agree with her in many of her objects; and disagree, by opposing her opponents with a fuller front than she is always inclined to do. In truth, I can never see anything in these sacramental ordinances except a prospective sign in one (Baptism), and a memorial sign in the other, the Lord's Supper, and could not recognise either under any modification as a peculiar instrument of grace, mystery, or the like. The tendencies we have towards making mysteries of God's simplicities are as marked and sure as our missing the actual mystery upon occasion. God's love is the true mystery, and the sacraments are only too simple for us to understand. So you see I have read the book in spite of prophecies. After all I should like to cut it in two—it would be better for being shorter—and it might be clearer also. There is, in fact, some dullness and perplexity—a few passages which are, to my impression, contradictory of the general purpose—something which is not generous, about nonconformity—and what I cannot help considering a superfluous tenderness for Puseyism. Moreover she is certainly wrong in imagining that the ante-Nicene fathers did not as a body teach regeneration by baptism—even Gregory Nazianzen, the most spiritual of many, did, and in the fourth century. But, after all, as a work of theological controversy it is very un-bitter and well-poised, gentle, and modest, and as the work of a woman you must admire it and we be proud of it—that remains certain at last.

Poor Mr. Haydon! I am so sorry for his reverse in the cartoons.^[79] It is a thunderbolt to him. I wonder, in the pauses of my regret, whether Mr. Selous is your friend—whether 'Boadicea visiting the Druids,' suggested by you, I think, as a subject, is this victorious 'Boadicea' down for a hundred pound prize? You will tell me when you come.

I have just heard an uncertain rumour of the arrival of your brother. If it is not all air, I congratulate you heartily upon a happiness only not past my appreciation.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

I send the copy of 'Orion' for yourself, which you asked for. It is in the fourth edition.

Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind sign of interest in the questioning note, although I will not praise the stenography of it. I shall be as brief to-day as you, not quite out of revenge, but because I have been writing to George and am the less prone to activities from having caught cold in an inscrutable manner, and being stiff and sore from head to foot and inclined to be a little feverish and irritable of nerves. No, it is not of the slightest consequence; I tell you the truth. But I would have written to you the day before yesterday if it had not been for this something between cramp and rheumatism, which was rather unbearable at first, but yesterday was better, and is to-day better than better, and to-morrow will leave me quite well, if I may prophesy. I only mention it lest you should have upbraided me for not answering your note in a moment, as it deserved to be answered. So don't put any nonsense into Georgie's head—forgive me for beseeching you! I have been very well—downstairs seven or eight times; lying on the floor in Papa's room; meditating the chair, which would have amounted to more than a meditation except for this little contrariety. In a day or two more, if this cool warmth perseveres in serving me, and no Ariel refills me 'with aches,' I shall fulfil your kind wishes perhaps and be out—and so, no more about me!...

Oh, I do believe you think me a Cockney—a metropolitan barbarian! But I persist in seeing no merit and no superior innocence in being shut up even in precincts of rose-trees, away from those great sources of human sympathy and occasions of mental elevation and instruction without which many natures grow narrow, many others gloomy, and perhaps, if the truth were known, very few prosper entirely, lit is not that I, who have always lived a good deal in solitude and live in it still more now, and love the country even painfully in my recollections of it, would decry either one or the other—solitude is most effective in a contrast, and if you do not break the bark you cannot bud the tree, and, in short (not to be in long), I could write a dissertation, which I will spare you, 'about it and about it.' ...

Tell George to lend you—nay, I think I will be generous and let him give you, although the author gave me the book—the copy of the new epic, 'Orion,' which he has with him. You have probably observed the advertisement, and are properly instructed that Mr. Horne the poet, who has sold three editions already at a farthing a copy, and is selling a fourth at a shilling, and is about to sell a fifth at half a crown (on the precise principle of the aërial machine—launching himself into popularity by a first impulse on the people), is my unknown friend, with whom I have corresponded these four years without having seen his face. Do you remember the beech leaves sent to me from Epping Forest? Yes, you must. Well, the sender is the poet, and the poem I think a very noble one, and I want you to think so too. So hereby I empower you to take it away from George and keep it for my sake—if you will!

Dear Mr. Martin was so kind as to come and see me as you commanded, and I must tell you that I thought him looking so better than well that I was more than commonly glad to see him. Give my love to him, and join me in as much metropolitan missionary zeal as will bring you both to London for six months of the year. Oh, I wish you would come! Not that it is necessary for you, but that it will be so good for us.

My ivy is growing, and I have green blinds, against which there is an outcry. They say that I do it out of envy, and for the equalisation of complexions.

Ever your affectionate,
BA.

Dear Mr. Westwood,—I thank you very much for the kindness of your questioning, and am able to answer that notwithstanding the, as it seems to you, fatal significance of a woman's silence, I am alive enough to be sincerely grateful for any degree of interest spent upon me. As to Flush, he should thank you too, but at the present moment he is quite absorbed in finding a cool place in this room to lie down in, having sacrificed his usual favorite place at my feet, his head upon them, oppressed by the torrid necessity of a thermometer above 70. To Flopsy's acquaintance he would aspire gladly, only hoping that Flopsy does not 'delight to bark and bite,' like dogs in general, because if he does Flush would as soon be acquainted with a cat, he says, for he does not pretend to be a hero. Poor Flush! 'the bright summer days on which I am ever likely to take him out for a ramble over hill and meadow' are never likely to shine! But he follows, or rather leaps into my wheeled chair, and forswears merrier company even now, to be near me. I am a good deal better, it is right to say, and look forward to a possible prospect of being better still, though I may be shut out from climbing the Brocken otherwise than in a vision.

You will see by the length of the 'Legend'^[80] which I send to you (in its only printed form) why I do not send it to you in manuscript. Keep the book as long as you please. My new volume is not yet in the press, but I am writing more and more in a view to it, pleased with the thought that some kind hands are already stretched out in welcome and acceptance of what it may become. Not as idle as I appear, I have also been writing some fugitive verses for American magazines. This is my confession. Forgive its tediousness, and believe me thankfully and very sincerely yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Dear Mr. Westwood,—Your letter comes to remind me how much I ought to be ashamed of myself.... I received the book in all safety, and read your kind words about my 'Rosary' with more grateful satisfaction than appears from the evidence. It is great pleasure to me to have written for such readers, and it is great hope to me to be able to write for them. The transcription of the 'Rosary' is a compliment which I never anticipated, or you should have had the manuscript copy you asked for, although I have not a perfect one in my hands. The poem is full of faults, as, indeed, all my poems appear to myself to be when I look back upon them instead of looking down. I hope to be worthier in poetry some day of the generous appreciation which you and your friends have paid me in advance.

Tennyson is a great poet, I think, and Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus,' has to my mind very noble capabilities. Do you know Mr. Horne's 'Orion,' the poem published for a farthing, to the wonder of booksellers and bookbuyers who could not understand 'the speculation in its eyes?' There are very fine things in this poem, and altogether I recommend it to your attention. But what is 'wanting' in Tennyson? He can think, he can feel, and his language is highly expressive, characteristic, and harmonious. I am very fond of Tennyson. He makes me thrill sometimes to the end of my fingers, as only a true great poet can.

You praise me kindly, and if, indeed, the considerations you speak of could be true of me, I am not one who could lament having 'learnt in suffering what I taught in song.' In any case, working for the future and counting gladly on those who are likely to consider any work of mine acceptable to themselves, I shall be very sure not to forget my friends at Enfield.

Dear Mr. Westwood, I remain sincerely yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... I have had a great gratification within this week or two in receiving a letter—nay, two letters—from Miss Martineau, one of the last strangers in the world from whom I had any right to expect a kindness. Yet most kind, most touching in kindness, were both of these letters, so much so that I was not far from crying for pleasure as I read them. She is very hopelessly ill, you are probably aware, at Tynemouth in Northumberland, suffering agonies from internal cancer, and conquering occasional repose by the strength of opium, but 'almost forgetting' (to use her own words) 'to wish for health, in the intense enjoyment of pleasures independent of the body.' She sent me a little work of hers called 'Traditions of Palestine.' Her friends had hoped by the stationary character of some symptoms that the disease was suspended, but lately it is said to be gaining ground, and the serenity and elevation of her mind are more and more triumphantly evident as the bodily pangs thicken....

And now I am going to tell you what will surprise you, if you do not know it already. Stormie and Georgie are passing George's vacation on the Rhine. You are certainly surprised if you did not know it. Papa signed and sealed them away on the ground of its being good and refreshing for both of them, and I was even mixed up a little with the diplomacy of it, until I found they were going, and then it was a hard, terrible struggle with me to be calm and see them go. But that was childish, and when I had heard from them at Ostend I grew more satisfied again, and attained to think less of the fatal influences of my star. They went away in great spirits, Stormie 'quite elated,' to use his own words, and then at the end of the six weeks they must be at home at Sessions; and no possible way of passing the interim could be pleasanter and better and more exhilarating for themselves. The plan was to go from Ostend by railroad to Brussels and Cologne, then to pass down the Rhine to Switzerland, spend a few days at Geneva, and a week in Paris as they return. The only fear is that Stormie won't go to Paris. We have too many friends there—a strange obstacle.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, I am doing something more than writing you a letter, I think.

May God bless you all with the most enduring consolations! Give my love to Mr. Martin, and believe also, both of you, in my sympathy. I am glad that your poor Fanny should be so supported. May God bless her and all of you!

Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
BA.

I am very well for me, and was out in the chair yesterday.

My very dear Friend,—I ask you humbly not to fancy me in a passion whenever I happen to be silent. For a woman to be silent is ominous, I know, but it need not be significant of anything quite so terrible as ill-humour. And yet it always happens so; if I do not write I am sure to be cross in your opinion. You set me down directly as 'hurt,' which means irritable; or 'offended,' which means sulky; your ideal of me having, in fact, 'its finger in its eye' all day long.

I, on the contrary, humbled as I was by your hard criticism of my soft rhymes about Flush,^[81] waited for Arabel to carry a message for me, begging to know whether you would care at all to see my 'Cry of the Children'^[82] before I sent it to you. But Arabel went without telling me that she was going: twice she went to St. John's Wood and made no sign; and now I find myself thrown on my own resources. Will you see the 'Cry of the Human'^[83] or not? It will not please you, probably. It wants melody. The versification is eccentric to the ear, and the subject (the factory miseries) is scarcely an agreeable one to the fancy. Perhaps altogether you had better not see it, because I know you think me to be deteriorating, and I don't want you to have further hypothetical evidence of so false an opinion. Humbled as I am, I say 'so false an opinion.' Frankly, if not humbly, I believe myself to have gained power since the time of the publication of the 'Seraphim,' and lost nothing except happiness. Frankly, if not humbly!

With regard to the 'House of Clouds'^[84] I disagree both with you and Miss Mitford, thinking it, comparatively with my other poems, neither so bad nor so good as you two account it. It has certainly been singled out for great praise both at home and abroad, and only the other day Mr. Horne wrote to me to reproach me for not having mentioned it to him, because he came upon it accidentally and considered it 'one of my best productions.' Mr. Kenyon holds the same opinion. As for Flush's verses, they are what I call cobweb verses, thin and light enough; and Arabel was mistaken in telling you that Miss Mitford gave the prize to them. Her words were, 'They are as tender and true as anything you ever wrote, but nothing is equal to the "House of Clouds."' Those were her words, or to that effect, and I refer to them to you, not for the sake of Flush's verses, which really do not appear even to myself, their writer, worth a defence, but for the sake of your judgment of her accuracy in judging.

Lately I have received two letters from the profoundest woman thinker in England, Miss Martineau—letters which touched me deeply while they gave me pleasure I did not expect.

My poor Flush has fallen into tribulation. Think of Catiline, the great savage Cuba bloodhound belonging to this house, attempting last night to worry him just as the first Catiline did Cicero. Flush was rescued, but not before he had been wounded severely: and this morning he is on three legs and in great depression of spirits. My poor, poor Flushie! He lies on my sofa and looks up to me with most pathetic eyes.

Where is Annie? If I send my love to her, will it ever be found again?

Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful
E.B.B.

My own dear Friend,—I should have written instantly to explain myself out of appearances which did me injustice, only I have been in such distress as to have no courage for writing. Flush was stolen away, and for three days I could neither sleep nor eat, nor do anything much more rational than cry. Confiteor tibi, oh reverend father. And if you call me very silly, I am so used to the reproach throughout the week as to be hardened to the point of vanity. The worst of it is, now, that there will be no need of more 'Houses of Clouds' to prove to you the deterioration of my faculties. Q.E.D.

In my own defence, I really believe that my distress arose somewhat less from the mere separation from dear little Flushie than from the consideration of how he was breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel world. Formerly, when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed he has passed the night in moaning piteously, and often he has refused to eat from a strange hand. And then he loves me, heart to heart; there was no exaggeration in my verses about him, if there was no poetry. And when I heard that he cried in the street and then vanished, there was little wonder that I, on my part, should cry in the house.

With great difficulty we hunted the dog-banditti into their caves of the city, and bribed them into giving back their victim. Money was the least thing to think of in such case; I would have given a thousand pounds if I had had them in my hand. The audacity of the wretched men was marvellous. They said that they had been 'about stealing Flush these two years,' and warned us plainly to take care of him for the future.

The joy of the meeting between Flush and me would be a good subject for a Greek ode—I recommend it to you. It might take rank next to the epical parting of Hector and Andromache. He dashed up the stairs into my room and into my arms, where I hugged him and kissed him, black as he was—black as if imbued in a distillation of St. Giles's. Ah, I can break jests about it now, you see. Well, to go back to the explanations I promised to give you, I must tell you that Arabel perfectly forgot to say a word to me about 'Blackwood' and your wish that I should send the magazine. It was only after I heard that you had procured it yourself, and after I mentioned this to her, that she remembered her omission all at once. Therefore I am quite vexed and disappointed, I beg you to believe—I, who have pleasure in giving you any printed verses of mine that you care to have. Never mind! I may print another volume before long, and lay it at your feet. In the meantime, you endure my 'Cry of the Children' better than I had anticipated—just because I never anticipated your being able to read it to the end, and was over-delicate of placing it in your hands on that very account. My dearest Mr. Boyd, you are right in your complaint against the rhythm. The first stanza came into my head in a hurricane, and I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it—that is the whole mystery of the iniquity. If you look Mr. Lucas from head to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his person. The whole crime of the versification belongs to me. So blame me, and by no means another poet, and I will humbly confess that I deserve to be blamed in some measure. There is a roughness, my own ear being witness, and I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your castigation, kissing the last as if it were Flush.

A report runs in London that Mr. Boyd says of Elizabeth Barrett: 'She is a person of the most perverted judgment in England.' Now, if this be true, I shall not mend my evil position in your opinion, my very dear friend, by confessing that I differ with you, the more the longer I live, on the ground of what you call 'jumping lines.' I am speaking not of particular cases, but of the principle, the general principle, of these cases, and the tenacity of my judgment does not arise from the teaching of 'Mr. Lucas,' but from the deeper study of the old master-poets—English poets—those of the Elizabeth and James ages, before the corruption of French rhythms stole in with Waller and Denham, and was acclimated into a national inodorousness by Dryden and Pope. We differ so much upon this subject that we must proceed by agreeing to differ, and end, perhaps, by finding it agreeable to differ; there can be no possible use in an argument. Only you must be upright in justice, and find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me. So far from having read him more within these three years, I have read him less, and have taken no new review, I do assure you, of his position and character as a poet, and these facts are testified unto by the other fact that my poetry, neither in its best features nor its worst, is adjusted after the fashion of his school.

But I am writing too much; you will have no patience with me. 'The Excursion' is accused of being lengthy, and so you will tell me that I convict myself of plagiarism, currente calamo.

I have just finished a poem of some eight hundred lines, called 'The Vision of Poets,'^[85] philosophical, allegorical—anything but popular. It is in stanzas, every one an octosyllabic triplet, which you will think odd, and I have not sanguinity enough to defend.

May God bless you, my dearest Mr. Boyd! Yes, I heard—I was glad to hear—of your having resumed that which used to be so great a pleasure to you—Miss Marcus's society. I remain,

Affectionately and gratefully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My love to dear Annie.

You are probably right in respect to Tennyson, for whom, with all my admiration of him, I would willingly secure more exaltation and a broader clasping of truth. Still, it is not possible to have so much beauty without a certain portion of truth, the position of the Utilitarians being true in the inverse. But I think as I did of 'uses' and 'responsibilities,' and do hold that the poet is a preacher and must look to his doctrine.

Perhaps Mr. Tennyson will grow more solemn, like the sun, as his day goes on. In the meantime we have the noble 'Two Voices,' and, among other grand intimations of a teaching power, certain stanzas to J.K. (I think the initials are) on the death of his brother,^[86] which very deeply affected me.

Take away the last stanzas, which should be applied more definitely to the body, or cut away altogether as a lie against eternal verity, and the poem stands as one of the finest of monodies. The nature of human grief never surely was more tenderly intimated or touched—it brought tears to my eyes. Do read it. He is not a Christian poet, up to this time, but let us listen and hear his next songs. He is one of God's singers, whether he knows it or does not know it.

I am thinking, lifting up my pen, what I can write to you which is likely to be interesting to you. After all I come to chaos and silence, and even old night—it is growing so dark. I live in London, to be sure, and except for the glory of it I might live in a desert, so profound is my solitude and so complete my isolation from things and persons without. I lie all day, and day after day, on the sofa, and my windows do not even look into the street. To abuse myself with a vain deceit of rural life I have had ivy planted in a box, and it has flourished and spread over one window, and strikes against the glass with a little stroke from the thicker leaves when the wind blows at all briskly. Then I think of forests and groves; it is my triumph when the leaves strike the window pane, and this is not a sound like a lament. Books and thoughts and dreams (almost too consciously dreamed, however, for me—the illusion of them has almost passed) and domestic tenderness can and ought to leave nobody lamenting. Also God's wisdom, deeply steeped in His love, is as far as we can stretch out our hands.

Dear Mr. Westwood,—You think me, perhaps, and not without apparent reason, ungrateful and insensible to your letter, but indeed I am neither one nor the other, and I am writing now to try and prove it to you. I was much touched by some tones of kindness in the letter, and it was welcome altogether, and I did not need the 'owl' which came after to waken me, because I was wide awake enough from the first moment; and now I see that you have been telling your beads, while I seemed to be telling nothing, in that dread silence of mine. May all true saints of poetry be propitious to the wearer of the 'Rosary.'

In answer to a question which you put to me long ago on the subject of books of theology, I will confess to you that, although I have read rather widely the divinity of the Greek Fathers, Gregory, Chrysostom, and so forth, and have of course informed myself in the works generally of our old English divines, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and so forth, I am not by any means a frequent reader of books of theology as such, and as the men of our times have made them. I have looked into the 'Tracts' from curiosity and to hear what the world was talking of, and I was disappointed even in the degree of intellectual power displayed in them. From motives of a desire of theological instruction I very seldom read any book except God's own. The minds of persons are differently constituted; and it is no praise to mine to admit that I am apt to receive less of what is called edification from human discourses on divine subjects, than disturbance and hindrance. I read the Scriptures every day, and in as simple a spirit as I can; thinking as little as possible of the controversies engendered in that great sunshine, and as much as possible of the heat and glory belonging to it. It is a sure fact in my eyes that we do not require so much more knowledge, as a stronger apprehension, by the faith and affections, of what we already know.

You will be sorry to hear that Mr. Tennyson is not well, although his friends talk of nervousness, and do not fear much ultimate mischief....^[87]

It is such a lovely May day, that I am afraid of breaking the spell by writing down Christmas wishes.

Very faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT.

If you do find the paper I was invited to write upon Wordsworth^[88], you will see to which class of your admiring or abhorring friends I belong. Perhaps you will cry out quickly, 'To the blind admirers, certes.' And I have a high admiration of Wordsworth. His spirit has worked a good work, and has freed into the capacity of work other noble spirits. He took the initiative in a great poetic movement, and is not only to be praised for what he has done, but for what he has helped his age to do. For the rest, Byron has more passion and intensity, Shelley more fancy and music, Coleridge could see further into the unseen, and not one of those poets has insulted his own genius by the production of whole poems, such as I could name of Wordsworth's, the vulgarity of which is childish, and the childishness vulgar. Still, the wings of his genius are wide enough to cast a shadow over its feet, and our gratitude should be stronger than our critical acumen. Yes, I will be a blind admirer of Wordsworth's. I will shut my eyes and be blind. Better so, than see too well for the thankfulness which is his due from me....

Yes, I mean to print as much as I can find and make room for, 'Brown Rosary' and all. I am glad you liked 'Napoleon,'^[89] but I shall be more glad if you decide when you see this new book that I have made some general progress in strength and expression. Sometimes I rise into hoping that I may have done so, or may do so still more.

The poet's work is no light work. His wheat will not grow without labour any more than other kinds of wheat, and the sweat of the spirit's brow is wrung by a yet harder necessity. And, thinking so, I am inclined to a little regret that you should have hastened your book even for the sake of a sentiment. Now you will be angry with me....

There are certain difficulties in the way of the critic unprofessional, as I know by experience. Our most sweet voices are scarcely admissible among the most sour ones of the regular brotherhood....

Harriet Martineau is quite well,'trudging miles together in the snow,' when the snow was, and in great spirits. Wordsworth is to be in London in the spring. Tennyson is dancing the polka and smoking cloud upon cloud at Cheltenham. Robert Browning is meditating a new poem, and an excursion on the Continent. Miss Mitford came to spend a day with me some ten days ago; sprinkled, as to the soul, with meadow dews. Am I at the end of my account? I think so.

Did you read 'Blackwood'? and in that case have you had deep delight in an exquisite paper by the Opium-eater, which my heart trembled through from end to end? What a poet that man is! how he vivifies words, or deepens them, and gives them profound significance....

I understand that poor Hood is supposed to be dying, really dying, at last. Sydney Smith's last laugh mixes with his, or nearly so. But Hood had a deeper heart, in one sense, than Sydney Smith, and is the material of a greater man.

And what are you doing? Writing—reading—or musing of either? Are you a reviewer-man—in opposition to the writer? Once, reviewing was my besetting sin, but now it is only my frailty. Now that I lie here at the mercy of every reviewer, I save myself by an instinct of self-preservation from that 'gnawing tooth' (as Homer and Aeschylus did rightly call it), and spring forward into definite work and thought. Else, I should perish. Do you understand that? If you are a reviewer-man you will, and if not, you must set it down among those mysteries of mine which people talk of as profane.

May God bless you, &c. &c.
ELIZABETH BARRETT.

You know as well as I do how the plague of rhymers, and of bad rhymes, is upon the land, and it was only three weeks ago that, at a 'Literary Institute' at Brighton, I heard of the Reverend somebody Stoddart gravely proposing 'Poetry for the Million' to his audience; he assuring them that 'poets made a mystery of their art,' but that in fact nothing except an English grammar, and a rhyming dictionary, and some instruction about counting on the fingers, was necessary in order to make a poet of any man!

This is a fact. And to this extent has the art, once called divine, been desecrated among the educated classes of our country.

Very sincerely yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT.

Besides the poems, to which reference has been made in the above letters, Miss Barrett was engaged, during the year 1843, in co-operating with her friend Mr. Home in the production of his great critical enterprise, 'The New Spirit of the Age.' In this the much daring author undertook no less a task than that of passing a sober and serious judgment on his principal living comrades in the world of letters. Not unnaturally he ended by bringing a hornets' nest about his ears—alike of those who thought they should have been mentioned and were not, and of those who were mentioned but in terms which did not satisfy the good opinion of themselves with which Providence had been pleased to gift them. The volumes appeared under Home's name alone, and he took the whole responsibility; but he invited assistance from others, and in particular used the collaboration of Miss Barrett to no small extent. She did not indeed contribute any complete essay to his work; but she expressed her opinion, when invited, on several writers, in a series of elaborate letters, which were subsequently worked up by Home into his own criticisms.^[90] The secret of her cooperation was carefully kept, and she does not appear to have suffered any of the evil consequences of his indiscretions, real or imagined. Another contribution from her consisted of the suggestion of mottoes appropriate to each writer noticed at length; and in this work she had an unknown collaborator in the person of Robert Browning. So ends the somewhat uneventful year of 1843.

The year 1844 marks an important epoch in the life of Mrs. Browning. It was in this year that, as a result of the publication of her two volumes of 'Poems,' she won her general and popular recognition as a poetess whose rank was with the foremost of living writers. It was six years since she had published a volume of verse; and in the meanwhile she had been gaining strength and literary experience. She had tried her wings in the pages of popular periodicals. She had profited by the criticisms on her earlier work, and by intercourse with men of letters; and though her defects in literary art were by no means purged away, yet the flights of her inspiration were stronger and more assured. The result is that, although the volumes of 1844 do not contain absolutely her best work—no one with the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' in his mind can affirm so much as that—they contain that which has been most generally popular, and which won her the position which for the rest of her life she held in popular estimation among the leaders of English poetry.

The principal poem in these two volumes is the 'Drama of Exile.' Of the genesis of this work, Miss Barrett gives the following account in a letter to Home, dated December 28 1843:

At one time it was intended to use its name as the title to the two volumes; but this design was abandoned, and they appeared under the simple description of 'Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.' The 'Vision of Poets' comes next in length to the 'Drama'; and among the shorter pieces were several which rank among her best work, 'The Cry of the Children,' 'Wine of Cyprus,' 'The Dead Pan,' 'Bertha in the Lane,' 'Crowned and Buried,' 'The Mourning Mother,' and 'The Sleep,' together with such popular favourites as 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' 'The Romaunt of the Page,' and 'The Rhyme of the Duchess May.' Since the publication of 'The Seraphim' volume, the new era of poetry had developed itself to a notable extent. Tennyson had published the best of his earlier verse, 'Locksley Hall,' 'Ulysses,' the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'The Lotus Eaters,' 'A Dream of Fair Women,' and many more; Browning had issued his wonderful series of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' including 'Pippa Passes,' 'King Victor and King Charles,' 'Dramatic Lyrics,' 'The Return of the Druses,' and 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon'; and it was among company such as this that Miss Barrett, by general consent, now took her place.

Thank you again and again, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your flowers, and the verses which gave them another perfume. The 'incense of the heart' lost not a grain of its perfume in coming so far, and not a leaf of the flowers was ruffled, and to see such gorgeous colours all on a sudden at Christmas time was like seeing a vision, and almost made Flush and me rub our eyes. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin; how kind of you! The grace of the verses and the brightness of the flowers were too much for me altogether. And when George exclaimed, 'Why, she has certainly laid bare her greenhouse,' I had not a word to say in justification of myself for being the cause of it.

Papa admired the branch of Australian origin so much that he walked all over the house with it. Beautiful it is indeed; but my eyes turn back to the camellias. I do believe that I like to look at a camellia better than at a rose; and then these have a double association....

I meant to write a long letter to you to-day, but Mr. Kenyon has been to see me and cut my time short before post time. You remember, perhaps, how his brother married a German, and, after an exile of many years in Germany, returned last summer to England to settle. Well, he can't bear us any longer! His wife is growing paler and paler with the pressure of English social habits, or rather unsocial habits; and he himself is a German at heart; and besides, being a man of a singularly generous nature, and accustomed to give away in handfuls of silver and gold one-third of every year's income, he dislikes the social obligation of spending it here. So they are going back. Poor Mr. Kenyon! I am full of sympathy with him. This returning to England was a dream of all last year to him. He gave up his house to the new comers, and bought a new one; and talked of the brightness secured to his latter years by the presence of his only remaining near relative; and I see that, for all his effort towards a bright view of the matter, he is disappointed—very. Should you suppose that four hundred pounds in Vienna go as far as a thousand in England? I should never have fancied it.

You shall hear from me, my dearest Mrs. Martin, in another few days; and I send this as it is, just because I am benighted by the post hour, and do not like to pass your kindness with even one day's apparent neglect.

May God bless you and dear Mr. Martin. The kindest wishes for the long slope of coming year, and for the many, I trust, beyond it, belong to you from the deepest of our hearts.

But shall you not be coming—setting out—very soon, before I can write again?

Your affectionate
BA.

I am so sorry, dear Mr. Kenyon, to hear—which I did, last night, for the first time—of your being unwell. I had hoped that to-day would bring a better account, but your note, with its next week prospect, is disappointing. The 'ignominy' would have been very preferable—to us, at least, particularly as it need not have lasted beyond to-day, dear Georgie being quite recovered, and at his law again, and no more symptoms of small-pox in anybody. We should all be well, if it were not for me and my cough, which is better, but I am not quite well, nor have yet been out.

A letter came to me from dear Miss Mitford a few days since, which I had hoped to talk to you about. Some of the subject of it is Mr. Kenyon's 'only fault,' which ought, of course, to be a large one to weigh against the multitudinous ones of other people, but which seems to be: 'He has the habit of walking in without giving notice. He thinks it saves trouble, whereas in a small family, and at a distance from a town, the effect is that one takes care to be provided for the whole time that one expects him, and then, by some exquisite ill luck, on the only day when one's larder is empty, in he comes!' And so, if you have not written to interrupt her in this process of indefinite expectation, the 'only fault' will, in her eyes, grow, as it ought, as large as fifty others.

I do hope, dear Mr. Kenyon, soon to hear that you are better—and well—and that your course of prophecy may not run smooth all through next week.

Very truly yours,
E. BARRETT.

I return Mr. Burges's criticism, which I omitted to talk to you of this morning, but which interested me much in the reading. Do let him understand how obliged to him I am for permitting me to look, for a moment, according to his view of the question. Perhaps my poetical sense is not convinced all through, and certainly my critical sense is not worth convincing, but I am delighted to be able to call by the name of Aeschylus, under the authority of Mr. Burges, those noble electrical lines (electrical for double reasons) which had struck me twenty times as Aeschylean, when I read them among the recognised fragments of Sophocles. You hear Aeschylus's footsteps and voice in the lines. No other of the gods could tread so heavily, or speak so like thundering.

I wrote all this to begin with, hesitating how else to begin. My very dear and kind friend, you understand—do you not?—through an expression which, whether written or spoken, must remain imperfect, to what deep, full feeling of gratitude your kindness has moved me.^[92] The good you have done me, and just at the moment when I should have failed altogether without it, and in more than one way, and in a deeper than the obvious degree—all this I know better than you do, and I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart. I shall never forget it, as long as I live to remember anything. The book may fail signally after all—that is another question; but I shall not fail, to begin with, and that I owe to you, for I was falling to pieces in nerves and spirits when you came to help me. I had only enough instinct left to be ashamed, a little, afterwards, of having sent you, in company, too, with Miss Martineau's heroic cheerfulness, that note of weak because unavailing complaint. It was a long compressed feeling breaking suddenly into words. Forgive and forget that I ever so troubled you—no, 'troubled' is not the word for your kindness!—and remember, as I shall do, the great good you have done me.

May God bless you, my dear cousin.

Affectionately yours always,
E.B.B.

This note is not to be answered.

I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not seem much to arrange. The type and size of Tennyson's books seem, upon examination, to suit my purpose excellently.

No, you never sent me back Miss Martineau's letter, my dear cousin; but you will be sure, or rather Mr. Crabb Robinson will, to find it in some too safe a place; and then I shall have it. In the meantime here are the other letters back again. You will think that I was keeping them for a deposit, a security, till I 'had my ain again,' but I have only been idle and busy together. They are the most interesting that can be, and have quite delighted me. By the way, I, who saw nothing to object to in the 'Life in the Sick Room,' object very much to her argument in behalf of it—an argument certainly founded on a miserable misapprehension of the special doctrine referred to in her letter. There is nothing so elevating and ennobling to the nature and mind of man as the view which represents it raised into communion with God Himself, by the justification and purification of God Himself. Plato's dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine when it walked highest, and won for him the title of 'Divine.' That it is vulgarised sometimes by narrow-minded teachers in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might be an argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, poetry, and music!

On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the Education question; in which all my friends the Dissenters did appear to me so painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong at once.

And Southey's letters! I did quite delight in them! They are more personal than any I ever saw of his; and have more warm every-day life in them.

The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to my life) never 'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I was bid; and was going to put Gabriel's speech,^[93] only—with the pen in my hand to do it—I found that the angel was a little too exclamatory altogether, and that he had cried out, 'O ruined earth!' and 'O miserable angel!' just before, approaching to the habit of a mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise; taking care of your full stop after 'despair.' Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon.

Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a note to Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for his courtesy about Leigh Hunt's poems; and following your counsel in every point. 'Only last night,' you will say! But I have had such a headache—and some very painful vexation in the prospect of my maid's leaving me, who has been with me throughout my illness; so that I am much attached to her, with the best reasons for being so, while the idea of a stranger is scarcely tolerable to me under my actual circumstances.

The 'Palm Leaves'^[94] are full of strong thought and good thought—thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare and cold—somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East, surely, surely!

May the change of air be rapid in doing you good—the weather seems to be softening on purpose for you. May God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon; I never can thank you enough. When you return I shall be rustling my 'proofs' about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.

Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—I heard that once I wrote three times too long a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is scarcely the way to make up for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you can, for every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you. Hence these faults—not quite tears—in spite of my penitence and the quotation.

At last my book is in the press. My great poem (in the modest comparative sense), my 'Masque of Exile' (as I call it at last^[95]), consists of some nineteen hundred or two thousand lines, and I call it 'Masque of Exile' because it refers to Lucifer's exile, and to that other mystical exile of the Divine Being which was the means of the return homewards of my Adam and Eve. After the exultation of boldness of composition, I fell into one of my deepest fits of despondency, and at last, at the end of most painful vacillations, determined not to print it. Never was a manuscript so near the fire as my 'Masque' was. I had not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody. In the midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident, and asked about my poem. I told him that I had given it up, despairing of my republic. In the kindest way he took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home and read it, and tell me his impression. 'You know,' he said, 'I have a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry, but then I have another prejudice for you, and one may neutralise the other.' The next day I had a letter from him with the returned manuscript—a letter which I was absolutely certain, before I opened it, would counsel against the publication. On the contrary! His impression is clearly in favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to anything I ever did before—more sustained, and fuller in power. So my nerves are braced, and I grow a man again; and the manuscript, as I told you, is in the press. Moreover, you will be surprised to hear that I think of bringing out two volumes of poems instead of one, by advice of Mr. Moxon, the publisher. Also, the Americans have commanded an American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little before or simultaneously with the English one, and provided with a separate preface for themselves.

There now! I have told you all this, knowing your kindness, and that you will care to hear of it.

It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear Annie's illness, and I do hope, both for your sake and for all our sakes, that we may have better news of her before long.

But I don't mean to fall into another scrape to-day by writing too much. May God bless you, my very dear friend!

I am ever your affectionate
E.B.B.

My very dear Friend,—Your kind letter I was delighted to receive. You mistake a good deal the capacities in judgment of 'the man.'^[96] The 'man' is highly refined in his tastes, and leaning to the classical (I was going to say to your classical, only suddenly I thought of Ossian) a good deal more than I do. He has written satires in the manner of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and deservedly. If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of his judgments, it would have been because of his confessed indisposition towards subjects religious and ways mystical, and his occasional insufficient indulgence for rhymes and rhythms which he calls 'Barrettian.' But these things render his favourable inclination towards my 'Drama of Exile' still more encouraging (as you will see) to my hopes for it.

Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to think of what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems in their two-volume development, may finally be. I am afraid of you. You will tell me the truth as it appears to you—upon that I may rely; and I should not wish you to suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is that I have made progress since 'The Seraphim,' only it is too possible (as I confess to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.

You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture, with Octavius—Occy, as we call him. He is very much obliged to you, and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o'clock. Friday is mentioned because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry's. Otherwise he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd. I am ever

Your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

... Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that article leans somewhere—I, who am reproached with trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with insufficient reason.

Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.^[97] My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will bring with it, happily, literary association in others.... Still, I am not a great letter writer, and I don't write 'elegant Latin verses,' as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark for seven years by any manner of means. By the way, a barrister said to my barrister brother the other day, 'I suppose your sister is dead?' 'Dead?' said he, a little struck; 'dead?' 'Why, yes. After Mr. Home's account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.'

ELIZABETH BARRETT.

Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of Miss Barrett's best known and most quoted poems.

Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk with Cyprus. Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am sorry for him. I suppose Jupiter had it instead, just then—Hebe pouring it, and Juno's ox-eyes bellowing their splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken metaphor, for the sake of Aeschylus's genius, and my own particular intoxication.

Indeed, there never was, in modern days, such wine. Flush, to whom I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it was supernatural, and ran away. I have an idea that if he had drunk that drop, he would have talked afterwards—either Greek or English.

Never was such wine! The very taste of ideal nectar, only stiller, from keeping. If the bubbles of eternity were on it, we should run away, perhaps, like Flush.

Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from you? Is it right of me? are you not too kind in sending it? and should you be allowed to be too kind? In any case, you must, not think of sending me more than you have already sent. It is more than enough, and I am not less than very much obliged to you.

I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I only hope that critics may say of the rest that it smells of Greek wine. Dearest Mr. Boyd's

Ever affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Mr. Westwood,—I have certainly and considerably increased the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few days. But after all I am not dead, not even at heart, so as to be insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon very fair authority, neither is the book dead yet. It has turned the corner of the felo de se, and if it is to die, it will be by the critics. The mystery of the long delay, it would not be very easy for me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr. Moxon says: 'I suppose Miss Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication;' and I say: 'I suppose Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.' There may be a little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day beyond the hour, or when 'copy' has put out new buds in my hands as I passed it to the printer's. Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the fault of Mr. Moxon's not being in a hurry, than in the excessive virtue of my patience, or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.

My very dear Friend,—Have you expected to hear from me? and are you vexed with me? I am a little ambitious of the first item—yet hopeful of an escape from the last. If you did but know how I am pressed for time, and how I have too much to do every day, you would forgive me for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead of mountain,^[98] and I had neglected laying my gratitude at your feet. Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that my first volume consisted of only 208 pages, and my second of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon uttered a cry of reprehension, and wished to tear me to pieces by his printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus. Perhaps you might have heard my head moaning all the way to St. John's Wood! He wanted to tear away several poems from the end of the second volume, and tie them on to the end of the first! I could not and would not hear of this, because I had set my mind on having 'Dead Pan' to conclude with. So there was nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which was lying by me, and I did so by writing, i.e. composing, one hundred and forty lines last Saturday!^[99] I seemed to be in a dream all day! Long lines too—with fifteen syllables in each! I see you shake your head all this way off. Moreover it is a 'romance of the age,' treating of railroads, routes, and all manner of 'temporalities,' and in so radical a temper that I expect to be reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round. By the way, did I tell you of the good news I had from America the third of this month? The 'Drama of Exile' is in the hands of a New York publisher; and having been submitted to various chief critics of the country on its way, was praised loudly and extravagantly. This was, however, by a private reading only. A bookseller at Philadelphia had announced it for publication—he intended to take it up when the English edition reached America; but upon its being represented to him that the New York publisher had proof sheets direct from the author and would give copy money, he abandoned his intention to the other. I confess I feel very much pleased at the kind spirit—the spirit of eager kindness indeed—with which the Americans receive my poetry. It is not wrong to be pleased, I hope. In this country there may be mortifications waiting for me; quite enough to keep my modesty in a state of cultivation. I do not know. I hope the work will be out this week, and then! Did I explain to you that what 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship' was wanted for was to increase the size of the first volume, so as to restore the equilibrium of volumes, without dislocating 'Pan'? Oh, how anxious I shall be to hear your opinion! If you tell me that I have lost my intellects, what in the world shall I do then—what shall I do? My Americans—that is, my Americans who were in at the private reading, and perhaps I myself—are of opinion that I have made great progress since 'The Seraphim.' It seems to me that I have more reach, whether in thought or language. But then, to you it may appear quite otherwise, and I shall be very melancholy if it does. Only you must tell me the precise truth; and I trust to you that you will let me have it in its integrity.

All the life and strength which are in me, seem to have passed into my poetry. It is my pou sto—not to move the world; but to live on in.

I must not forget to tell you that there is a poem towards the end of the second volume, called 'Cyprus Wine,' which I have done myself the honor and pleasure of associating with your name. I thought that you would not be displeased by it, as a proof of grateful regard from me.

Talking of wines, the Mountain has its attraction, but certainly is not to be compared to the Cyprus. You will see how I have praised the latter. Well, now I must say 'good-bye,' which you will praise me for!

Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate
E.B.B.

P.S.—Nota bene—I wish to forewarn you that I have cut away in the text none of my vowels by apostrophes. When I say 'To efface,' wanting two-syllable measure, I do not write 'T' efface' as in the old fashion, but 'To efface' full length. This is the style of the day. Also you will find me a little lax perhaps in metre—a freedom which is the result not of carelessness, but of conviction, and indeed of much patient study of the great Fathers of English poetry—not meaning Mr. Pope. Be as patient with me as you can. You shall have the volumes as soon as they are ready.

My very dear Friend,—I cannot be certain, from my recollections, whether I did or did not write to you before, as you suggest; but as you never received the letter and I was in a continual press of different thoughts, the probability is that I did not write. The Cyprus wine in the second vial I certainly did receive; and was grateful to you with the whole force of the aroma of it. And now I will tell you an anecdote.

In the excess of my filial tenderness, I poured out a glass for papa, and offered it to him with my right hand.

'What is this?' said he.

'Taste it,' said I as laconically, but with more emphasis.

He raised it to his lips; and, after a moment, recoiled, with such a face as sinned against Adam's image, and with a shudder of deep disgust.

'Why,' he said, 'what most beastly and nauseous thing is this? Oh,' he said, 'what detestable drug is this? Oh, oh,' he said, 'I shall never, never, get this horrible taste out of my mouth.'

I explained with the proper degree of dignity that 'it was Greek wine, Cyprus wine, and of very great value.'

He retorted with acrimony, that 'it might be Greek, twice over; but that it was exceedingly beastly.'

I resumed, with persuasive argument, that 'it could scarcely be beastly, inasmuch as the taste reminded one of oranges and orange flower together, to say nothing of the honey of Mount Hymettus.'

He took me up with stringent logic, 'that any wine must positively be beastly, which, pretending to be wine, tasted sweet as honey, and that it was beastly on my own showing!' I send you this report as an evidence of a curious opinion. But drinkers of port wine cannot be expected to judge of nectar—and I hold your 'Cyprus' to be pure nectar.

I shall have pleasure in doing what you ask me to do—that is, I will—if you promise never to call me Miss Barrett again. You have often quite vexed me by it. There is Ba—Elizabeth—Elzbeth—Ellie—any modification of my name you may call me by—but I won't be called Miss Barrett by you. Do you understand? Arabel means to carry your copy of my book to you. And I beg you not to fancy that I shall be impatient for you to read the two volumes through. If you ever read them through, it will be a sufficient compliment, and indeed I do not expect that you ever will.

May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.

I remain,

Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

The date of this last letter marks, as nearly as need be, the date of publication of Miss Barrett's volumes. The letters which follow deal mainly with their reception, first at the hand of friends, and then by the regular critics. The general verdict of the latter was extremely complimentary. Mr. Chorley, in the 'Athenaeum,'^[100] described the volumes as 'extraordinary,' adding that 'between her [Miss Barrett's] poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there is all the difference which exists between the putting-on of "singing robes" for altar service, and the taking up lute or harp to enchant an indulgent circle of friends and kindred.' In the 'Examiner,'^[101] John Forster declared that 'Miss Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high and fine order as regards the first requisites of her art—imagination and expression.... She is a most remarkable writer, and her volumes contain not a little which the lovers of poetry will never willingly let die,' a phrase then not quite so hackneyed as it has since become. The 'Atlas'^[102] asserted that 'the present volumes show extraordinary powers, and, abating the failings of which all the followers of Tennyson are guilty, extraordinary genius.' More influential even than these, 'Blackwood'^[103] paid her the compliment of a whole article, criticising her faults frankly, but declaring that 'her poetical merits infinitively outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound, unsullied, and without a flaw.' All agreed in assigning her a high, or the highest, place among the poetesses of England; but, as Miss Barrett herself pointed out, this, in itself, was no great praise.^[104]

With regard to individual poems, the critics did not take kindly to the 'Drama of Exile,' and 'Blackwood' in particular criticised it at considerable length, calling it 'the least successful of her works.' The subject, while half challenging comparison with Milton, lends itself only too readily to fancifulness and unreality, which were among the most besetting sins of Miss Barrett's genius. The minor poems were incomparably more popular, and the favourite of all was that masterpiece of rhetorical sentimentality, 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' It must have been a little mortifying to the authoress to find this piece, a large part of which had been dashed off at a single heat in order to supply the printers' needs, preferred to others on which she had employed all the labour of her deliberate art; but with the general tone of all the critics she had every reason to be as content as her letters show her to have been. Only two criticisms rankled: the one that she was a follower of Tennyson, the other that her rhymes were slovenly and careless. And these appeared, in varying shapes, in nearly all the reviews.

The former of these allegations is of little weight. Whatever qualities Miss Barrett may have shared with Tennyson, her substantial independence is unquestionable. It is a case rather of coincidence than imitation; or if imitation, it is of a slight and unconscious kind. The second criticism deserves fuller notice, because it is constantly repeated to this day. The following letters show how strongly Miss Barrett protested against it. As she told Horne,^[105] with reference to this very subject:

That her rhymes were inexact, especially in such poems as 'The Dead Pan,' she did not deny; but her defence was that the inexactness was due to a deliberate attempt to widen the artistic capabilities of the English language. Partly, perhaps, as a result of her acquaintance with Italian literature, she had a marked fondness for disyllabic rhymes; and since pure rhymes of this kind are not plentiful in English, she tried the experiment of using assonances instead. Hence such rhymes as silence and islands, vision and procession, panther and saunter, examples which could be indefinitely multiplied if need were. Now it may be that a writer with a very sensitive ear would not have attempted such an experiment, and it is a fact that public taste has not approved it; but the experiment itself is as legitimate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters and hendecasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and whether approved or not it should be criticised as an experiment, not as mere carelessness. That Mrs. Browning's ear was quite-capable of discerning true rhymes is shown by the fact that she tacitly abandoned her experiment in assonances. Not only in the pure and high art of the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' but even in 'Casa Guidi Windows,' the rhetorical and sometimes colloquial tone of which might have been thought to lend itself to such devices, imperfect rhymes occur but rarely not exceeding the limits allowed to himself by every poet who has rhymed given and heaven; and the roll of those who have not done so must be small indeed.

The point has seemed worth dwelling on, because it touches a commonplace of criticism as regards Mrs. Browning; but we may now make way for her own comments on her critics and friends.

My very dear Friend,—I must thank you for the great kindness with which you have responded to a natural expression of feeling on my part, and for all the pleasure of finding you pleased with the inscription of 'Cyprus Wine.' Your note has given me much true pleasure. Yes; if my verses survive me, I should wish them to relate the fact of my being your debtor for many happy hours.

And now I must explain to you that most of the 'incorrectnesses' you speak of may be 'incorrectnesses,' but are not negligences. I have a theory about double rhymes for which—I shall be attacked by the critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at least analogy. In fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes than any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems not comic. Now, of double rhymes in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are aware how few there are, and yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making a rhythm various and vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the public. And do you tell me, you who object to the use of a different vowel in a double rhyme, why you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from anybody) 'given' to 'heaven,' when you object to my rhyming 'remember' and 'chamber'? The analogy surely is all on my side, and I believe that the spirit of the English language is also.

I write all this because you will find many other sins of the sort, besides those in the 'Cyprus Wine;' and because I wish you to consider the subject as a point for consideration seriously, and not to blame me as a writer of careless verses. If I deal too much in licences, it is not because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom's sake. It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously; and I stand up for my conscience only.

I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to be candid to the end.

I know (although you don't say so) you object to that line. Yet consider its structure. Does not the final 'y' of 'tawny' suppose an apostrophe and apocope? Do you not run 'tawny as' into two syllables naturally? I want you to see my principle.

With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes seventeen syllables into his lines.

I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me arrogant in writing freely to you.

Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.

Always your affectionate and grateful
ELIBET.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—I must thank you for the great great pleasure with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome, as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so 'rudis atque incomposita' to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I wrote to you yesterday, to beg you to be patient and considerate.

But you are always given to surprise me with abundant kindness—with supererogatory kindness. I believe in that, certainly.

I am very very glad that you think me stronger and more perspicuous. For the perspicuity, I have struggled hard....

Your affectionate and grateful
ELZBETH.

... Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, I angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No indeed, indeed, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the 'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama' is worth two or three 'Seraphims'—my own belief, you know, which is worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and having such a natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly to you, that I have a far more modest value for 'The Seraphim' than your kindness suggests, and that I have seemed to myself to have a clear insight into the fact that that poem was only borne up by the minor poems published with it, from immediate destruction. There is a want of unity in it which vexes me to think of, and the other faults magnify themselves day by day, more and more, in my eyes. Therefore it is not that I care more for the 'Drama,' but I care less for 'The Seraphim.' Both poems fall short of my aspiration and desire, but the 'Drama' seems to me fuller, freer and stronger, and worth the other three times over. If it has anything new, I think it must be something new into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely and from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem with so much sense of pleasure in the composition, and so rapidly, with continuous flow—from fifty to a hundred lines a day, and quite in a glow of pleasure and impulse all through. Still, you have not been used to see me in blank verse, and there may be something in that. That the poem is full of faults and imperfections I do not in the least doubt. I have vibrated between exultations and despondencies in the correcting and printing of it, though the composition went smoothly to an end, and I am prepared to receive the bastinado to the critical degree, I do assure you. The few opinions I have yet had are all to the effect that my advance on the former publication is very great and obvious, but then I am aware that people who thought exactly the contrary would be naturally backward in giving me their opinion.... Indeed, I thank you most earnestly. Truth and kindness, how rarely do they come together! I am very grateful to you. It is curious that 'Duchess May' is not a favorite of mine, and that I have sighed one or two secret wishes towards its extirpation, but other writers besides yourself have singled it out for praise in private letters to me. There has been no printed review yet, I believe; and when I think of them, I try to think of something else, for with no private friends among the critical body (not that I should desire to owe security in such a matter to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking forward to be reviewed. Never mind, the ultimate prosperity of the book lies far above the critics, and can neither be mended nor made nor unmade by them.

I return Mr. Chorley's^[106] note, my dear cousin, with thankful thoughts of him—as of you. I wish I could persuade you of the rightness of my view about 'Essays on Mind' and such things, and how the difference between them and my present poems is not merely the difference between two schools, as you seemed to intimate yesterday, nor even the difference between immaturity and maturity; but that it is the difference between the dead and the living, between a copy and an individuality, between what is myself and what is not myself. To you who have a personal interest and—may I say? affection for me, the girl's exercise assumes a factitious value, but to the public the matter is otherwise and ought to be otherwise. And for the 'psychological' side of the question, do observe that I have not reputation enough to suggest a curiosity about my legends. Instead of your 'legendary lore,' it would be just a legendary bore. Now you understand what I mean. I do not underrate Pope nor his school, but I do disesteem everything which, bearing the shape of a book, is not the true expression of a mind, and I know and feel (and so do you) that a girl's exercise written when all the experience lay in books, and the mind was suited rather for intelligence than production, lying like an infant's face with an undeveloped expression, must be valueless in itself, and if offered to the public directly or indirectly as a work of mine, highly injurious to me. Why, of the 'Prometheus' volume, even, you know what I think and desire. 'The Seraphim,' with all its feebleness and shortcomings and obscurities, yet is the first utterance of my own individuality, and therefore the only volume except the last which is not a disadvantage to me to have thought of, and happily for me, the early books, never having been advertised, nor reviewed, except by accident, once or twice, are as safe from the public as manuscript.

Oh, I shudder to think of the lines which might have been 'nicked in,' and all through Mr. Chorley's good nature. As if I had not sins enough to ruin me in the new poems, without reviving juvenile ones, sinned when I knew no better. Perhaps you would like to have the series of epic poems which I wrote from nine years old to eleven. They might illustrate some doctrine of innate ideas, and enrich (to that end) the myths of metaphysicians.

And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius Keats, who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of juvenile versifiers, was an individual man from the beginning, and spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar murmur of antique echoes.^[107] Leigh Hunt calls him 'the young poet' very rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,

E.B.B.

Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?

Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall; only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the way altogether, by Stormie's and Henry's plan of going to Egypt. Ah, now you are surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent two days beyond my time—yes, and they have gone, it is no vague speculation. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that, a little time back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and began to employ it in his favourite 'Via Lactea' of speculations. It has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with regard to the last, papa has yielded. And Henry goes too. This was all arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and although resigned now to their having their way in it, and their pleasure, which is better than their way, still I feel I have entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again till they return....

And now to thank you, my ever-dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind and welcome letter from the Lakes. I knew quite at the first page, and long before you said a word specifically, that dear Mr. Martin was better, and think that such a scene, even from under an umbrella, must have done good to the soul and body of both of you. I wish I could have looked through your eyes for once. But I suppose that neither through yours, nor through my own, am I ever likely to behold that sight. In the meantime it is with considerable satisfaction that I hear of your failure of Wordsworth, which was my salvation in a very awful sense. Why, if you had done such a thing, you would have put me to the shame of too much honor. The speculation consoles me entirely for your loss in respect to Rydal Hall and its poet. By the way, I heard the other day that Rogers, who was intending to visit him, said, 'It is a bad time of year for it. The god is on his pedestal; and can only give gestures to his worshippers, and no conversation to his friends.' ...

Although you did not find a letter from me on your return to Colwall, I do hope that you found me—viz. my book, which Mr. Burden took charge of, and promised to deliver or see delivered. When you have read it, do let me hear your own and Mr. Martin's true impression; and whether you think it worse or better than 'The Seraphim.' The only review which has yet appeared or had time to appear has been a very kind and cordial one in the 'Athenaeum.' ...

Your ever affectionate
BA.

My dear Mr. Westwood,—I send you the manuscript you ask for, and also my certificate that, although I certainly was once a little girl, yet I never in my life had fair hair, or received lessons when you mention. I think a cousin of mine, now dead, may have done it. The 'Barrett Barrett' seems to specify my family. I have a little cousin with bright fair hair at this moment who is an Elizabeth Barrett (the subject of my 'Portrait'^[108]), but then she is a 'Georgiana' besides, and your friend must refer to times past. My hair is very dark indeed, and always was, as long as I remember, and also I have a friend who makes serious affidavit that I have never changed (except by being rather taller) since I was a year old. Altogether, you cannot make a case of identity out, and I am forced to give up the glory of being so long remembered for my cleverness.

You do wrong in supposing me inclined to underrate Mr. Melville's power. He is inclined to High-Churchism, and to such doctrines as apostolical succession, and I, who, am a Dissenter, and a believer in a universal Christianity, recoil from the exclusive doctrine.

But then, that is not depreciatory of his power and eloquence—surely not.

E.B.

Dear Mr. Chorley,—Kindnesses are more frequent things with me than gladnesses, but I thank you earnestly for both in the letter I have this moment received.^[109] You have given me a quick sudden pleasure which goes deeper (I am very sure) than self-love, for it must be something better than vanity that brings the tears so near the eyes. I thank you, dear Mr. Chorley.

After all, we are not quite strangers. I have had some early encouragement and direction from you, and much earlier (and later) literary pleasures from such of your writings as did not refer to me. I have studied 'Music and Manners'^[110] under you, and found an excuse for my love of romance-reading from your grateful fancy. Then, as dear Miss Mitford's friend, you could not help being (however against your will!) a little my acquaintance; and this she daringly promised to make you in reality some day, till I took the fervour for prophecy.

Altogether I am justified, while I thank you as a stranger, to say one more word as a friend, and that shall be the best word—'May God bless you!' The trials with which He tries us all are different, but our faces may be turned towards the end in cheerfulness, for 'to the end He has loved us.' I remain,

Very faithfully, your obliged
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

You may trust me with the secret of your kindness to me. It shall not go farther.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—I thank you for the Cyprus, and also for a still sweeter amreeta—your praise. Certainly to be praised as you praise me might well be supposed likely to turn a sager head than mine, but I feel that (with all my sensitive and grateful appreciation of such words) I am removed rather below than above the ordinary temptations of vanity. Poetry is to me rather a passion than an ambition, and the gadfly which drives me along that road pricks deeper than an expectation of fame could do.

Moreover, there will be plenty of counter-irritation to prevent me from growing feverish under your praises. And as a beginning, I hear that the 'John Bull' newspaper has cut me up with sanguinary gashes, for the edification of its Sabbath readers. I have not seen it yet, but I hear so. The 'Drama' is the particular victim. Do not send for the paper. I will let you have it, if you should wish for it.

One thing is left to me to say. Arabel told you of a letter I had received from a professional critic, and I am sorry that she should have told you so without binding you to secrecy on the point at the same time. In fact, the writer of the letter begged me not to speak of it, and I took an engagement to him not to speak of it. Now it would be very unpleasant to me, and dishonorable to me, if, after entering into this engagement, the circumstance of the letter should come to be talked about. Of course you will understand that I do not object to your having been informed of the thing, only Arabel should have remembered to ask you not to mention again the name of the critic who wrote to me.

May God bless you, my very dear friend. I drink thoughts of you in Cyprus every day.

Your ever affectionate
ELIBET.

There is no review in the 'Examiner' yet, nor any continuation in the 'Athenaeum.'^[111]

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I will not lose a post in assuring you that I was not silent because of any disappointment from your previous letter. I could only feel the kindness of that letter, and this was certainly the chief and uppermost feeling at the time of reading it, and since. Your preference of 'The Seraphim' one other person besides yourself has acknowledged to me in the same manner, and although I myself—perhaps from the natural leaning to last works, and perhaps from a wise recognition of the complete failure of the poem called 'The Seraphim '—do disagree with you, yet I can easily forgive you for such a thought, and believe that you see sufficient grounds for entertaining it. More and more I congratulate myself (at any rate) for the decision I came to at the last moment, and in the face of some persuasions, to call the book 'Poems,' instead of trusting its responsibility to the 'Drama,' by such a title as 'A Drama of Exile, and Poems.' It is plain, as I anticipated, that for one person who is ever so little pleased with the 'Drama,' fifty at least will like the smaller poems. And perhaps they are right. The longer sustaining of a subject requires, of course, more power, and I may have failed in it altogether.

Yes, I think I may say that I am satisfied so far with the aspect of things in relation to the book. You see there has scarcely been time yet to give any except a sanguine or despondent judgment—I mean, there is scarcely room yet for forming a very rational inference of what will ultimately be, without the presentiments of hope or fear. The book came out too late in August for any chance of a mention in the September magazines, and at the dead time of year, when the very critics were thinking more of holiday innocence than of their carnivorous instincts. This will not hurt it ultimately, although it might have hurt a novel. The regular critics will come back to it; and in the meantime the newspaper critics are noticing it all round, with more or less admissions to its advantage. The 'Atlas' is the best of the newspapers for literary notices; and it spoke graciously on the whole; though I do protest against being violently attached to a 'school.' I have faults enough, I know; but it is just to say that they are at least my own. Well, then! It is true that the 'Westminster Review' says briefly what is great praise, and promises to take the earliest opportunity of reviewing me 'at large.' So that with regard to the critics, there seems to be a good prospect. Then I have had some very pleasant private letters—one from Carlyle; an oath from Miss Martineau to give her whole mind to the work and tell me her free and full opinion, which I have not received yet; an assurance from an acquaintance of Mrs. Jameson that she was much pleased. But the letter which pleased me most was addressed to me by a professional critic, personally unknown to me, who wrote to say that he had traced me up, step by step, ever since I began to print, and that my last volumes were so much better than any preceding them, and were such living books, that they restored to him the impulses of his youth and constrained him to thank me for the pleasant emotions they had excited. I cannot say the name of the writer of this letter, because he asked me not to do so, but of course it was very pleasant to read. Now you will not call me vain for speaking of this. I would not speak of it; only I want (you see) to prove to you how faithfully and gratefully I have a trust in your kindness and sympathy. It is certainly the best kindness to speak the truth to me. I have written those poems as well as I could, and I hope to write others better. I have not reached my own ideal; and I cannot expect to have satisfied other people's expectation. But it is (as I sometimes say) the least ignoble part of me, that I love poetry better than I love my own successes in it.

I am glad that you like 'The Lost Bower.' The scene of that poem is the wood above the garden at Hope End.

It is very true, my dearest Mrs. Martin, all that you say about the voyage to Alexandria. And I do not feel the anxiety I thought I should. In fact, I am surprised to feel so little anxiety. Still, when they are at home again, I shall be happier than I am now, that I feel strongly besides.

What I missed most in your first letter was what I do not miss in the second, the good news of dear Mr. Martin. Both he and you are very vainglorious, I suppose, about O'Connell; but although I was delighted on every account at his late victory,^[112] or rather at the late victory of justice and constitutional law, he never was a hero of mine and is not likely to become one. If he had been (by the way) a hero of mine, I should have been quite ashamed of him for being so unequal to his grand position as was demonstrated by the speech from the balcony. Such poetry in the position, and such prose in the speech! He has not the stuff in him of which heroes are made. There is a thread of cotton everywhere crossing the silk....

With our united love to both of you,
Ever, dearest Mrs. Martin, most affectionately yours,
BA.

My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... Did I tell you that Miss Martineau had promised and vowed to me to tell me the whole truth with respect to the poems? Her letter did not come until a few days ago, and for a full month after the publication; and I was so fearful of the probable sentence that my hands shook as they broke the seal. But such a pleasant letter! I have been overjoyed with it. She says that her 'predominant impression is of the originality'—very pleasant to hear. I must not forget, however, to say that she complains of 'want of variety' in the general effect of the drama, and that she 'likes Lucifer less than anything in the two volumes.' You see how you have high backers. Still she talks of 'immense advances,' which consoles me again. In fact, there is scarcely a word to require consolation in her letter, and what did not please me least—nay, to do myself justice, what put all the rest out of my head for some minutes with joy—is the account she gives of herself. For she is better and likely still to be better; she has recovered appetite and sleep, and lost the most threatening symptoms of disease; she has been out for the first time for four years and a half, lying on the grass flat, she says, with my books open beside her day after day. (That does sound vain of me, but I cannot resist the temptation of writing it!) And the means—the means! Such means you would never divine! It is mesmerism. She is thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and the progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear. Now, what do you both think? Consider what a case it is! No case of a weak-minded woman and a nervous affection; but of the most manlike woman in the three kingdoms—in the best sense of man—a woman gifted with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic, a woman of sensibility and of imagination certainly, but apt to carry her reason unbent wherever she sets her foot; given to utilitarian philosophy and the habit of logical analysis; and suffering under a disease which has induced change of structure and yielded to no tried remedy! Is it not wonderful, and past expectation? She suggests that I should try the means—but I understand that in cases like mine the remedy has done harm instead of good, by over-exciting the system. But her experience will settle the question of the reality of magnetism with a whole generation of infidels. For my own part, I have long been a believer, in spite of papa. Then I have had very kind letters from Mrs. Jameson, the 'Ennuyée'^[113] and from Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and some less famous persons. And a poet with a Welsh name wrote to me yesterday to say that he was writing a poem 'similar to my "Drama of Exile,"' and begged me to subscribe to it. Now I tell you all this to make you smile, and because some of it will interest you more gravely. It will prove to dear unjust Mr. Martin that I do not distrust your sympathy. How could he think so of me? I am half vexed that he should think so. Indeed—indeed I am not so morbidly vain. Why, if you had told me that the books were without any sort of value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship? I really believe it would have been my predominant feeling. But you proved your truth without trying me so hardly; I had both truth and praise from you, and surely quite enough, and more than enough, as many would think, of the latter.

My dearest papa left us this morning to go for a few days into Cornwall for the purpose of examining a quarry in which he has bought or is about to buy shares, and he means to strike on for the Land's End and to see Falmouth before he returns. It depresses me to think of his being away; his presence or the sense of his nearness having so much cheering and soothing influence with me; but it will be an excellent change for him, even if he does not, as he expects, dig an immense fortune out of the quarries....

Your affectionate and ever obliged
BA.

My dear Mr. Mathews,—I have just received your note, which, on the principle of single sighs or breaths being wafted from Indies to the poles, arrived quite safely, and I was very glad to have it. I shall fall into monotony if I go on to talk of my continued warm sense of your wonderful kindness to me, a stranger according to the manner of men; and, indeed, I have just this moment been writing a note to a friend two streets away, and calling it 'wonderful kindness.' I cannot, however, of course, allow you to run the tether of your impulse and furnish me with the reviews of my books and other things you speak of at your own expense, and I should prefer, if you would have the goodness to give the necessary direction to Messrs. Putnam & Co., that they should send what would interest me to see, together with a note of the pecuniary debt to themselves. I shall like to see the reviews, of course; and that you should have taken the first word of American judgment into your own mouth is a pleasant thought to me, and leaves me grateful. In England I have no reason so far to be otherwise than well pleased. There has not, indeed, been much yet besides newspaper criticisms—except 'Ainsworth's Magazine,' which is benignant!—there has not been time. The monthly reviews give themselves 'pause' in such matters to set the plumes of their dignity, and I am rather glad than otherwise not to have the first fruits of their haste. The 'Atlas,' the best newspaper for literary reviews, excepting always the 'Examiner,' who does not speak yet, is generous to me, and I have reason to be satisfied with others. And our most influential quarterly (after the 'Edinburgh' and right 'Quarterly'), the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with passing words of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt are all redolent of it, and no one can read our old poets without perceiving the leaning of our Saxon to that species of coalition. Then I have had letters of great kindness from 'Spirits of the Age,' whose praises are so many crowns, and altogether am far from being out of spirits about the prospect of my work. I am glad, however, that I gave the name of 'Poems' to the work instead of admitting the 'Drama of Exile' into the title-page and increasing its responsibility; for one person who likes the 'Drama,' ten like the other poems. Both Carlyle and Miss Martineau select as favorite 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which amuses and surprises me somewhat. In that poem I had endeavoured to throw conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce) into the fire of poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things. Well, I shall soon hear what you like best—and worst. I wonder if you have been very carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of your hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk. Still, I am sure I shall have to think most, ever as now, of your kindness; and truth must be sacred to all of us, whether we have to suffer or be glad by it. As for Mr. Horne, I cannot answer for what he has received or not received. I had one note from him on silver paper (fear of postage having reduced him to a transparency) from Germany, and that is all, and I did not think him in good spirits in what he said of himself. I will tell him what you have the goodness to say, and something, too, on my own part. He has had a hard time of it with his 'Spirit of the Age;' the attacks on the book here being bitter in the extreme. Your 'Democratic' does not comfort him for the rest, by the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,' and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the American poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write more and must not.

Most faithfully yours,
E.B.B.

Am I the first with the great and good news for America and England that Harriet Martineau is better and likely to be better? She told me so herself, and attributes the change to the agency of mesmerism.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—... As to 'The Lost Bower,' I am penitent about having caused you so much disturbance. I sometimes fancy that a little varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect. But I do not question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on others. Many lines in 'Isobel's Child' are very slovenly and weak from a multitude of causes. I hope you will like 'The Lost Bower' better when you try it again than you did at first, though I do not, of course, expect that you will not see much to cry out against. The subject of the poem was an actual fact of my childhood.

Oh, and I think I told you, when giving you the history of 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' that I wrote the thirteen last pages of it in one day. I ought to have said nineteen pages instead. But don't tell anybody; only keep the circumstance in your mind when you need it and see the faults. Nobody knows of it except you and Mr. Kenyon and my own family for the reason I told you. I sent off that poem to the press piece-meal, as I never in my life did before with any poem. And since I wrote to you I have heard of Mr. Eagles, one of the first writers in 'Blackwood' and a man of very refined taste, adding another name to the many of those who have preferred it to anything in the two volumes. He says that he has read it at least six times aloud to various persons, and calls it a 'beautiful sui generis drama.' On which Mr. Kenyon observes that I am 'ruined for life, and shall be sure never to take pains with any poem again.'

The American edition (did Arabel tell you?) was to be out in New York a week ago, and was to consist of fifteen hundred copies in two volumes, as in England.

She sends you the verses and asks you to make allowances for the delay in doing so. I cannot help believing that if you were better read in Wordsworth you would appreciate him better. Ever since I knew what poetry is, I have believed in him as a great poet, and I do not understand how reasonably there can be a doubt of it. Will you remember that nearly all the first minds of the age have admitted his power (without going to intrinsic evidence), and then say that he can be a mere Grub Street writer? It is not that he is only or chiefly admired by the profanum vulgus, that he is a mere popular and fashionable poet, but that men of genius in this and other countries unite in confessing his genius. And is not this a significant circumstance—significant, at least?...

Believe me, yourself, your affectionate and grateful
ELIBET B.B.

How kind you are, far too kind, about the Cyprus wine; I thank you very much.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—... Well, papa came back from Cornwall just as I came back to my own room, and he was as pleased with his quarry as I was to have the sight again of his face. During his absence, Henrietta had a little polka (which did not bring the house down on its knees), and I had a transparent blind put up in my open window. There is a castle in the blind, and a castle gate-way, and two walks, and several peasants, and groves of trees which rise in excellent harmony with the fall of my green damask curtains—new, since you saw me last. Papa insults me with the analogy of a back window in a confectioner's shop, but is obviously moved when the sunshine lights up the castle, notwithstanding. And Mr. Kenyon and everybody in the house grow ecstatic rather than otherwise, as they stand in contemplation before it, and tell me (what is obvious without their evidence) that the effect is beautiful, and that the whole room catches a light from it. Well, and then Mr. Kenyon has given me a new table, with a rail round it to consecrate it from Flush's paws, and large enough to hold all my varieties of vanities.

I had another letter from Miss Martineau the other day, and she says she has a 'hat of her own, a parasol of her own,' and that she can 'walk a mile with ease.' What do miracles mean? Miracle or not, however, one thing is certain—it is very joyful; and her own sensations on being removed suddenly from the verge of the prospect of a most painful death—a most painful and lingering death—must be strange and overwhelming.

I hope I may hear soon from you that you had much pleasure at Clifton, and some benefit in the air and change, and that dear Mr. Martin and yourself are both as well as possible. Do you take in 'Punch'? If not, you ought. Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the other day that we should be more willing 'to take our politics' from 'Punch' than from any other of the newspaper oracles. 'Punch' is very generous, and I like him for everything, except for his rough treatment of Louis Philippe, whom I believe to be a great man—for a king. And then, it is well worth fourpence to laugh once a week. I do recommend 'Punch' to you.^[114] Douglas Jerrold is the editor, I fancy, and he has a troop of 'wits,' such as Planché, Titmarsh, and the author of 'Little Peddlington,' to support him....

Now I have written enough to tire you, I am sure. May God bless you both! Did you read 'Coningsby,' that very able book, without character, story, or specific teaching? It is well worth reading, and worth wondering over. D'Israeli, who is a man of genius, has written, nevertheless, books which will live longer, and move deeper. But everybody should read 'Coningsby.' It is a sign of the times. Believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,

Your very affectionate
BA.

Thank you, my dearest cousin, for your kind little note, which I run the chance of answering by that Wednesday's post you think you may wait for. So (via your table) I set about writing to you, and the first word, of course, must be an expression of my contentment with the 'Examiner' review. Indeed, I am more than contented—delighted with it. I had some dread, vaguely fashioned, about the 'Examiner'; the very delay looked ominous. And then, I thought to myself, though I did not say, that if Mr. Forster praised the verses on Flush to you, it was just because he had no sympathy for anything else. But it is all the contrary, you see, and I am the more pleased for the want of previous expectation; and I must add that if you were so kind as to be glad of being associated with me by Mr. Forster's reference, I was so human as to be very very glad of being associated with you by the same. Also you shall criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you like—mind, I don't think it all so rough as the extracts appear to be, and some variety is attained by that playing at ball with the pause, which causes the apparent roughness—still you shall criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you like. I have a great fancy for writing some day a longer poem of a like class—a poem comprehending the aspect and manners of modern life, and flinching at nothing of the conventional. I think it might be done with good effect. You said once that Tennyson had done it in 'Locksley Hall,' and I half agreed with you. But looking at 'Locksley Hall' again, I find that not much has been done in that way, noble and passionate and full as the poem is in other ways. But there is no story, no manners, no modern allusion, except in the grand general adjuration to the 'Mother-age,' and no approach to the treatment of a conventionality. But Crabbe, as you say, has done it, and Campbell in his 'Theodore' in a few touches was near to do it; but Hayley clearly apprehends the species of poem in his 'Triumphs of Temper' and 'Triumphs of Music,' and so did Miss Seward, who called it the 'poetical novel.' Now I do think that a true poetical novel—modern, and on the level of the manners of the day—might be as good a poem as any other, and much more popular besides. Do you not think so?

I had a letter from dear Miss Mitford this morning, with yours, but I can find nothing in it that you will care to hear again. She complains of the vagueness of 'Coningsby,' and praises the French writers—a sympathy between us, that last, which we wear hidden in our sleeves for the sake of propriety. Not a word of coming to London, though I asked. Neither have I heard again from Miss Martineau....

Ever most affectionately and gratefully yours,
E.B.B.

... Not a word more have I heard from Miss Martineau; and shall not soon, perhaps, as she is commanded not to write, not to read—to do nothing, in fact, except the getting better. I am not, I confess, quite satisfied myself. But she herself appears to be so altogether, and she speaks of 'symptoms having given way,' implying a structural change. Yes, I use the common phrase in respect to mesmerism, and think 'there is something in it.' Only I think, besides, that, if something, there must be a great deal in it. Clairvoyance has precisely the same evidence as the phenomenon of the trance has, and scientific and philosophical minds are recognising all the phenomena as facts on all sides of us. Mr. Kenyon's is the best distinction, and the immense quantity of humbug which embroiders the truth over and over, and round and round, makes it needful: 'I believe in mesmerism, but not in mesmerists.'

We have had no other letter from our Egyptians, but can wait a little longer without losing our patience.

The blind rises in favour, and the ivy would not fall, if it would but live. Alas! I am going to try guano as a last resource. You see, in painting the windows, papa was forced to have it taken down, and the ivy that grows on ruins and oaks is not usually taken down 'for the nonce.' I think I shall have a myrtle grove in two or three large pots inside the window. I have a mind to try it.

I heard twice from dear Mr. Kenyon at Dover, where he was detained by the weather, but not since his entrance into France. Which is grand enough word for the French Majesty itself—'entrance into France.' By the way, I do hope you have some sympathy with me in my respect for the King of the French—that right kingly king, Louis Philippe. If France had borne more liberty, he would not have withheld it, and, for the rest, and in all truly royal qualities, he is the noblest king, according to my idea, in Europe—the most royal king in the encouragement of art and literature, and in the honoring of artists and men of letters. Let a young unknown writer accomplish a successful tragedy, and the next day he sits at the king's table—not in a metaphor, but face to face. See how different the matter is in our court, where the artists are shown up the back stairs, and where no poet (even by the back stairs) can penetrate, unless so fortunate as to be a banker also. What is the use of kings and queens in these days, except to encourage arts and letters? Really I cannot see. Anybody can hunt an otter out of a box—who has nerve enough.

I had a letter from America to-day, and heard that my book was not published there until the fifth of this October. Still, a few copies had preceded the publication, and made way among the critics, and several reviews were in the course of germinating very greenly. Yes, I was delighted with the 'Examiner,' and all the more so from having interpreted the long delay of the notice, the gloomiest manner possible. My friends try to persuade me that the book is making some impression, and I am willing enough to be convinced. Thank you for all your kind sympathy, my dear friend.

Now, do write to me soon again! Have you read Dr. Arnold's Life? I have not, but am very anxious to do so, from the admirable extracts in the 'Examiner' of last Saturday, and also from what I hear of it in other quarters. That Dr. Arnold must have been a man, in the largest and noblest sense. May God bless you, both of you! I think of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, much, and remain

Your very affectionate
BA.

The moral of your letter, my dearest cousin, certainly is that no green herb of a secret will spring up and flourish between you and me.

The loss of Flush was a secret. My aunt's intention of coming to England (for I know not how to explain what she said to you, but by the supposition of an unfulfilled intention!) was a secret. And Mr. Chorley's letter to me was a third secret. All turned into light!

For the last, you may well praise me for discretion. The letter he wrote was pleasanter to me than many of the kindnesses (apart from your own) occasioned by my book—and when you asked me once 'what letters I had received,' if ever a woman deserved to be canonised for her silence, I did! But the effort was necessary—for he particularly desired that I would not mention to 'our common friends' the circumstance of his having written to me; and 'common friends' could only stand for 'Mr. Kenyon and Miss Mitford.' Of course what you tell me, of his liking the poems better still, is delightful to hear; but he reviewed them in the 'Athenaeum' surely! The review we read in the 'Athenaeum' was by his hand—could not be mistaken ...

Well; but Flushie! It is too true that he has been lost—lost and won; and true besides that I was a good deal upset by it meo more; and that I found it hard to eat and sleep as usual while he was in the hands of his enemies. It is a secret too. We would not tell papa of it. Papa would have been angry with the unfortunate person who took Flush out without a chain; and would have kicked against the pricks of the necessary bribing of the thief in order to the getting him back. Therefore we didn't tell papa; and as I had a very bad convenient headache the day my eyes were reddest, I did not see him (except once) till Flush was on the sofa again. As to the thieves, you are very kind to talk daggers at them; and I feel no inclination to say 'Don't.' It is quite too bad and cruel. And think of their exceeding insolence in taking Flush away from this very door, while Arabel was waiting to have the door opened on her return from her walk; and in observing (as they gave him back for six guineas and a half) that they intended to have him again at the earliest opportunity and that then they must have ten guineas! I tell poor Flushie (while he looks very earnestly in my face) that he and I shall be ruined at last, and that I shall have no money to buy him cakes; but the worst is the anxiety! Whether I am particularly silly, or not, I don't know; they say here, that I am; but it seems to me impossible for anybody who really cares for a dog, to think quietly of his being in the hands of those infamous men. And then I know how poor Flushie must feel it. When he was brought home, he began to cry in his manner, whine, as if his heart was full! It was just what I was inclined to do myself—' and thus was Flushie lost and won.'

But we are both recovered now, thank you; and intend to be very prudent for the future. I am delighted to think of your being in England; it is the next best thing to your being in London. In regard to Miss Martineau, I agree with you word for word; but I cannot overcome an additional horror, which you do not express, or feel probably.

There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the 'Edinburgh Review'—by whom? and I have been reading besides the admirable paper by Macaulay in the same number. And now I must be done; having resolved to let you hear without a post's delay. Otherwise I might have American news for you, as I hear that a packet has come in.

My brothers arrived in great spirits at Malta, after a three weeks' voyage from Gibraltar; and must now be in Egypt, I think and trust.

May God bless you, my dear cousin.

Most affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

Well, but am I really so bad? ' Et tu!' Can you call me careless? Remember all the altering of manuscript and proof—and remember how the obscurities used to fly away before your cloud-compelling, when you were the Jove of the criticisms! That the books (I won't call them our books when I am speaking of the faults) are remarkable for defects and superfluities of evil, I can see quite as well as another; but then I won't admit that ' it comes' of my carelessness, and refusing to take pains. On the contrary, my belief is, that very few writers called ' correct ' who have selected classical models to work from, pay more laborious attention than I do habitually to the forms of thought and expression. ' Lady Geraldine ' was an exception in her whole history. If I write fast sometimes (and the historical fact is that what has been written fastest, has pleased most), l am not apt to print without consideration. I appeal to Philip sober, if I am! My dearest cousin, do remember! As to the faults, I do not think of defending them, be very sure. My consolation is, that I may try to do better in time, if I may talk of time. The worst fault of all, as far as expression goes (the adjective-substantives, whether in prose or verse, I cannot make up my mind to consider faulty), is that kind of obscurity which is the same thing with inadequate expression. Be very sure—try to be very sure—that I am not obstinate and self-opiniated beyond measure. To you in case, who have done so much for me, and who think of me so more than kindly, I feel it to be both duty and pleasure to defer and yield. Still, you know, we could not, if we were ten years about it, alter down the poems to the terms of all these reviewers. You would not desire it, if it were possible. I do not remember that you suggested any change in the verse on Aeschylus. The critic^[115] mistakes my allusion, which was to the fact that in the acting of the Eumenides, when the great tragic poet did actually 'frown as the gods did,' women fell down fainting from the benches. I did not refer to the effect of his human countenance 'during composition.' But I am very grateful to the reviewer whoever he may be—very—and with need. See how the 'Sun' shines in response to 'Blackwood' (thank you for sending me that notice), when previously we had had but a wintry rag from the same quarter! No; if I am not spoilt by your kindness, I am not likely to be so by any of these exoteric praises, however beyond what I expected or deserved. And then I am like a bird with one wing broken. Throw it out of the window; and after the first feeling of pleasure in liberty, it falls heavily. I have had moments of great pleasure in hearing whatever good has been thought of the poems; but the feeling of elation is too strong or rather too long for me....

Can it be true that Mr. Newman has at last joined the Church of Rome?^[116] If it is true, it will do much to prove to the most illogical minds the real character of the late movement. It will prove what the point of sight is, as by the drawing of a straight line. Miss Mitford told me that he had lately sent a message to a R. Catholic convert from the English Church, to the effect—'you have done a good deed, but not at a right time.' It can but be a question of time, indeed, to the whole party; at least to such as are logical—and honest.... [Unsigned]

Thank you, my dear dear cousin, for the kind thought of sending me Mr. Eagles's letter, and most for your own note. You know we both saw that he couldn't have written the paper in question; we both were poets and prophets by that sign, but I hope he understands that I shall gratefully remember what his intention was. As to his 'friend' who told him that I had 'imitated Tennyson,' why I can only say and feel that it is very particularly provoking to hear such things said, and that I wish people would find fault with my 'metre' in the place of them. In the matter of 'Geraldine' I shall not be puffed up. I shall take to mind what you suggest. Of course, if you find it hard to read, it must be my fault. And then the fact of there being a story to a poem will give a factitious merit in the eyes of many critics, which could not be an occasion of vainglory to the consciousness of the most vainglorious of writers. You made me smile by your suggestion about the aptitude of critics aforesaid for courting Lady Geraldines. Certes—however it may be—the poem has had more attention than its due. Oh, and I must tell you that I had a letter the other day from Mr. Westwood (one of my correspondents unknown) referring to 'Blackwood,' and observing on the mistake about Goethe. 'Did you not mean "fell" the verb,' he said, 'or do I mistake?' So, you see, some people in the world did actually understand what I meant. I am eager to prove that possibility sometimes.

How full of life of mind Mr. Eagles's letter is. Such letters always bring me to think of Harriet Martineau's pestilent plan of doing to destruction half of the intellectual life of the world, by suppressing every mental breath breathed through the post office. She was not in a state of clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard from her, but you observed what the 'Critic' said of William Howitt's being empowered by her to declare the circumstances of her recovery?

Again and again have I sent for Dr. Arnold's 'Life,' and I do hope to have it to-day. I am certain, by the extracts, besides your opinion, that I shall be delighted with it.

Why shouldn't Miss Martineau's apocalyptic housemaid^[117] tell us whether Flush has a soul, and what is its 'future destination'? As to the fact of his soul, I have long had a strong opinion on it. The 'grand peut-être,' to which 'without revelation' the human argument is reduced, covers dog-nature with the sweep of its fringes.

Did you ever read Bulwer's 'Eva, or the Unhappy Marriage'? That is a sort of poetical novel, with modern manners inclusive. But Bulwer, although a poet in prose, writes all his rhythmetical compositions somewhat prosaically, providing an instance of that curious difference which exists between the poetical writer and the poet. It is easier to give the instance than the reason, but I suppose the cause of the rhythmetical impotence must lie somewhere in the want of the power of concentration. For is it not true that the most prolix poet is capable of briefer expression than the least prolix prose writer, or am I wrong?...

Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.

My dear Mr. Mathews,—I write to tell you—only that there is nothing to tell—only in guard of my gratitude, lest you should come to think all manner of evil of me and of my supposed propensity to let everything pass like Mr. Horne's copies of the American edition of his work, sub silentio. Therefore I must write, and you are to please to understand that I have not up to this moment received either letter or book by the packet of October 10 which was charged, according to your intimation, with so much. I, being quite out of patience and out of breath with expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr. Putnam, and he replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come in, and that his part and lot in her, together with mine, remain at the disposal of the Custom-house officers, and may remain some time longer. So you see how it is. I am waiting—simply waiting, and it is better to let you know that I am not forgetting instead.

In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of the prosperity of my poems in my own country. I am more than satisfied in my most sanguine hope for them, and a little surprised besides. The critics have been good to me. 'Blackwood' and 'Tait' have this month both been generous, and the 'New Monthly' and 'Ainsworth's Magazine' did what they could. Then I have the 'Examiner' in my favor, and such heads and hearts as are better and purer than the purely critical, and I am very glad altogether, and very grateful, and hope to live long enough to acknowledge, if not to justify, much unexpected kindness. Of course, some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, as you will see in 'Blackwood,' but some of it I deserve, even in my own eyes; and all of it I am willing to be patient under. The strange thing is, that without a single personal friend among these critics, they should have expended on me so much 'gentillesse,' and this strangeness I feel very sensitively. Mr. Horne has not returned to England yet, and in a letter which I received from him some fortnight ago he desired to have my book sent to him to Germany, just as if he never meant to return to England again. I answered his sayings, and reiterated, in a way that would make you smile, my information about your having sent the American copies to him. I made my oyez very plain and articulate. He won't say again that he never heard of it—be sure of that. Well, and then Mr. Browning is not in England either, so that whatever you send for him must await his return from the east or the west or the south, wherever he is. The new spirit of the age is a wandering spirit. Mr. Dickens is in Italy. Even Miss Mitford talks of going to France, which is an extreme case for her. Do you never feel inclined to flash across the Atlantic to us, or can you really remain still in one place?

I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr. Mathews, as I may conscientiously do, even before I have looked into or received the 'Democratic Review,' that whatever fault you may find with me, my strongest feeling on reading your article will or must be the sense of your kindness. Of course I do not expect, nor should I wish, that your personal interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy your critical faculty in regard to me. Such an expectation, if I had entertained it, would have been scarcely honorable to either of us, and I may assure you that I never did entertain it. No; be at rest about the article. It is not likely that I shall think it 'inadequate.' And I may as well mention in connection with it that before you spoke of reviewing me I (in my despair of Mr. Horne's absence, and my impotency to assist your book) had thrown into my desk, to watch for some opportunity of publication, a review of your 'Poems on Man,' from my own hand, and that I am still waiting and considering and taking courage before I send it to some current periodical. There is a difficulty—there is a feeling of shyness on my part, because, as I told you, I have no personal friend or introduction among the pressmen or the critics, and because the 'Athenaeum,' which I should otherwise turn to first, has already treated of your work, and would not, of course, consent to reconsider an expressed opinion. Well, I shall do it somewhere. Forgive me the appearance of my impotency under a general aspect.

Ah, you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes of even such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon, who can write sonnets himself. Poetry is in their eyes just a desperate speculation. A poet must have tried his public before he tries the publisher—that is, before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him. But I will make any effort you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you how things are. By the way, if I ever told you that Tennyson was ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is well, again, or was when I last heard of him. I do not know him personally. Also Harriet Martineau can walk five miles a day with ease, and believes in mesmerism with all her strength. Mr. Putnam had the goodness to write and open his reading room to me, who am in prison instead in mine.

May God bless you. Do let me hear from you soon, and believe me ever your friend,

E.B. BARRETT.

My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... To-day I perceive in the 'contents' of the new 'Westminster Review' that my poems are reviewed in it, and I hope that you will both be interested enough in my fortunes to read at the library what may be said of them. Did George tell you that he imagined (as I also did) the 'Blackwood' paper to be by Mr. Phillimore the barrister? Well, Mr. Phillimore denies it altogether, has in fact quarrelled with Christopher North, and writes no more for him, so that I am quite at a loss now where to carry my gratitude.

Do write to me soon. I hear that everybody should read Dr. Arnold's 'Life.' Do you know also 'Eō then,' a work of genius? You have read, perhaps, Hewitt's 'Visits to Remarkable Places' in the first series and second; and Mrs. Jameson's 'Visits and Sketches' and 'Life in Mexico.' Do you know the 'Santa Fé Expedition,' and Custine's 'Russia,' and 'Forest Life' by Mrs. Clavers? You will think that my associative process is in a most disorderly state, by all this running up and down the stairs of all sorts of subjects, in the naming of books. I would write a list, more as a list should be written, if I could see my way better, and this will do for a beginning in any case. You do not like romances, I believe, as I do, and then nearly every romance now-a-days sets about pulling the joints of one's heart and soul out, as a process of course. 'Ellen Middleton' (which I have not read yet) is said to be very painful. Do you know Leigh Hunt's exquisite essays called 'The Indicator and Companion' &c., published by Moxon? I hold them at once in delight and reverence. May God bless you both.

I am ever your affectionate
BA.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I thank you much for your little notes; and you know too well how my sympathy answers you, 'as face to face in a glass,' for me to assure you of it here. Your account of yourselves altogether I take to be satisfactory, because I never expected anybody to gain strength very rapidly while in the actual endurance of hard medical discipline. I am glad you have found out a trustworthy adviser at Dover, but I feel nevertheless that you may both trust and hope in Dr. Bright, of whom I heard the very highest praises the other day....

Now really I don't know why I should fancy you to be so deeply interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail should be necessary. What I do want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience,^[118] for a copy of which, in the last 'Athenaeum,' I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of sending it to you. You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, and beautiful as composition; for the rest, I will not answer. Believing in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary connection between Miss Martineau's cure and the power; and also I am of opinion that unbelievers will not very generally become converts through her representations. There is a tone of exaltation which will be observed upon, and one or two sentences are suggestive to scepticism. I will send it to you when I get the number. I understand that an intimate friend of hers (a lady) travelled down from the south of England to Tynemouth, simply to try to prevent the public exposition, but could not prevail. Mr. Milnes has, besides, been her visitor. He is fully a believer, she says, and affirms to having seen the same phenomena in the East, but regards the whole subject with horror. This still appears to be Mrs. Jameson's feeling, as you know it is mine. Mrs. Jameson came again to this door with a note, and overcoming by kindness, was let in on Saturday last; and sate with me for nearly an hour, and so ran into what my sisters call 'one of my sudden intimacies' that there was an embrace for a farewell. Of course she won my affections through my vanity (Mr. Martin will be sure to say, so I hasten to anticipate him) and by exaggerations about my poetry; but really, and although my heart beat itself almost to pieces for fear of seeing her as she walked upstairs, I do think I should have liked her without the flattery. She is very light—has the lightest of eyes, the lightest of complexions; no eyebrows, and what looked to me like very pale red hair, and thin lips of no colour at all. But with all this indecision of exterior the expression is rather acute than soft; and the conversation in its principal characteristics, analytical and examinative; throwing out no thought which is not as clear as glass—critical, in fact, in somewhat of an austere sense. I use 'austere,' of course, in its intellectual relation, for nothing in the world could be kinder, or more graciously kind, than her whole manner and words were to me. She is coming again in two or three days, she says. Yes, and she said of Miss Martineau's paper in the 'Athenaeum,' that she very much doubted the wisdom of publishing it now; and that for the public's sake, if not for her own, Miss M. should have waited till the excitement of recovered health had a little subsided. She said of mesmerism altogether that she was inclined to believe it, but had not finally made up her convictions. She used words so exactly like some I have used myself that I must repeat them, 'that if there was anything in it, there was so much, it became scarcely possible to limit consequences, and the subject grew awful to contemplate.' ...

On Saturday I had some copies of my American edition, which dazzle the English one; and one or two reviews, transatlantically transcendental in 'oilie flatterie.' And I heard yesterday from the English publisher Moxon, and he was 'happy to tell me that the work was selling very well,' and this without an inquiry on my part. To say the truth, I was afraid to inquire. It is good news altogether. The 'Westminster Review' won't be out till next month.

Wordsworth is so excited about the railroad that his wife persuaded him to go away to recover his serenity, but he has returned raging worse than ever. He says that fifty members of Parliament have promised him their opposition. He is wrong, I think, but I also consider that if the people remembered his genius and his age, and suspended the obnoxious Act for a few years, they would be right....

May God bless you both.

Most affectionately yours,
BA.

I have been thinking of you, my dear Mr. Martin, more and more the colder it has been, and had made up my mind to write to-day, let me feel as dull as I might. So, the vane only turns to you instead of to dearest Mrs. Martin in consequence of your letter—your letter makes that difference. I should have written to Dover in any case....

You are to know that Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience is only peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's, otherwise it exhibits the mere commonplaces of the agency. You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh too. I mean, I seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality of the power, which is in every way most repulsive to me....

Mrs. Martin is surprised at me and others on account of our 'horror.' Surely it is a natural feeling, and she would herself be liable to it if she were more credulous. The agency seems to me like the shaking of the flood-gates placed by the Divine Creator between the unprepared soul and the unseen world. Then—the subjection of the will and vital powers of one individual to those of another, to the extent of the apparent solution of the very identity, is abhorrent from me. And then (as to the expediency of the matter, and to prove how far believers may be carried) there is even now a religious sect at Cheltenham, of persons who call themselves advocates of the 'third revelation,' and profess to receive their system of theology entirely from patients in the sleep.

In the meantime, poor Miss Martineau, as the consequence of her desire to speak the truth as she apprehends it, is overwhelmed with atrocious insults from all quarters. For my own part I would rather fall into the hands of God than of man, and suffer as she did in the body, instead of being the mark of these cruel observations. But she has singular strength of mind, and calmly continues her testimony.

Miss Mitford writes to me: 'Be sure it is all true. I see it every day in my Jane'—her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not, I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl professed, at the third séance, to be able to see behind her.

I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look forward to in the 'Eldon Memoirs' as Pincher's biography. I am only in the first volume. Are English chancellors really made of such stuff? I couldn't have thought it. Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law Lords perhaps.

And, to turn from Tory legislators, I am vainglorious in announcing to you that the Anti-Corn-Law League has taken up my poems on the top of its pikes as antithetic to 'War and Monopoly.' Have I not had a sonnet from Gutter Lane? And has not the journal called the 'League' reviewed me into the third heaven, high up—above the pure ether of the five points? Yes, indeed. Of course I should be a (magna) chartist for evermore, even without the previous predilection.

And what do you and Mrs. Martin say about O'Connell? Did you read last Saturday's 'Examiner'? Tell her that I welcomed her kind letter heartily, and that this is an answer to both of you. My best love to her always. May God bless you, dear Mr. Martin! Probably I have written your patience to an end. If papa or anybody were in the room, I should have a remembrance for you.

I remain, myself,

Affectionately yours,
BA.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Hardly had my letter gone to you yesterday, when your kind present and not et arrived. I thank you for my boots with more than the warmth of the worsted, and feel all their merits to my soul (each sole) while I thank you. A pair of boots or shoes which 'can't be kicked off' is something highly desirable for me, in Wilson's opinion; and this is the first thing which struck her. But the 'great idea' 'à propos des bottes,' which occurred to myself, ought to be unspeakable, like Miss Martineau's great ideas—for I do believe it was—that I needn't have the trouble every morning, now, of putting on my stockings....

My voice is thawing too, with all the rest. If the cold had lasted I should have been dumb in a day or two more, and as it was, I was forced to refuse to see Mrs. Jameson (who had the goodness to come again) because I couldn't speak much above my breath. But I was tolerably well and brave upon the whole. Oh, these murderous English winters. The wonder is, how anybody can live through them....

Did I tell you, or Mr. Martin, that Rogers the poet, at eighty-three or four years of age, bore the bank robbery^[119] with the light-hearted bearing of a man 'young and bold,' went out to dinner two or three times the same week, and said witty things on his own griefs. One of the other partners went to bed instead, and was not likely, I heard, to 'get over it.' I felt quite glad and proud for Rogers. He was in Germany last year, and this summer in Paris; but he first went to see Wordsworth at the Lakes.

It is a fine thing when a light burns so clear down into the socket, isn't it? I, who am not a devout admirer of the 'Pleasures of Memory,' do admire this perpetual youth and untired energy; it is a fine thing to my mind. Then, there are other noble characteristics about this Rogers. A common friend said the other day to Mr. Kenyon, 'Rogers hates me, I know. He is always saying bitter speeches in relation to me, and yesterday he said so and so. But,' he continued, 'if I were in distress, there is one man in the world to whom I would go without doubt and without hesitation, at once, and as to a brother, and that man is Rogers.' Not that I would choose to be obliged to a man who hated me; but it is an illustration of the fact that if Rogers is bitter in his words, which we all know he is, he is always benevolent and generous in his deeds. He makes an epigram on a man, and gives him a thousand pounds; and the deed is the truer expression of his own nature. An uncommon development of character, in any case.

May God bless you both!

Your most affectionate
BA.

I am going to tell you, in an antithesis, of the popularising of my poems. I had a sonnet the other day from Gutter Lane, Cheapside, and I heard that Count d'Orsay had written one of the stanzas of 'Crowned and Buried' at the bottom of an engraving of Napoleon which hangs in his room. Now I allow you to laugh at my vaingloriousness, and then you may pin it to Mrs. Best's satisfaction in the dedication to Dowager Majesty. By the way—no, out of the way—it is whispered that when Queen Victoria goes to Strathfieldsea^[120] (how do you spell it?) she means to visit Miss Mitford, to which rumour Miss Mitford (being that rare creature, a sensible woman) says: 'May God forbid.'

I thank you, my dear cousin, and did so silently the day before yesterday, when you were kind enough to bring me the review and write the good news in pencil. I should be delighted to see you (this is to certify) notwithstanding the frost; only my voice having suffered, and being the ghost of itself, you might find it difficult to hear me without inconvenience. Which is for you to consider, and not for me. And indeed the fog, in addition to the cold, makes it inexpedient for anyone to leave the house except upon business and compulsion.

Oh no—we need not mind any scorn which assails Tennyson and us together. There is a dishonor that does honor—and 'this is of it.' I never heard of Barnes.^[121]

Were you aware that the review you brought was in a newspaper called the 'League,' and laudatory to the utmost extravagance—praising us too for courage in opposing 'war and monopoly'?—the 'corn ships in the offing' being duly named. I have heard that it is probably written by Mr. Cobden himself, who writes for the journal in question, and is an enthusiast in poetry. If I thought so to the point of conviction, do you know, I should be very much pleased? You remember that I am a sort of (magna) chartist—only going a little farther!

Flush was properly ashamed of himself when he came upstairs again for his most ungrateful, inexplicable conduct towards you; and I lectured him well; and upon asking him to 'promise never to behave ill to you again,' he kissed my hands and wagged his tail most emphatically. It altogether amounted to an oath, I think. The truth is that Flush's nervous system rather than his temper was in fault, and that, in that great cloak, he saw you as in a cloudy mystery. And then, when you stumbled over the bell rope, he thought the world was come to an end. He is not accustomed, you see, to the vicissitudes of life. Try to forgive him and me—for his ingratitude seems to 'strike through' to me; and I am not without remorse.

Ever most affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

I inclose Mr. Chorley's note which you left behind you, but which I did not see until just now. You know that I am not ashamed of 'progress.' On the contrary, my only hope is in it. But the question is not there, nor, I think, for the public, except in cases of ripe, established reputations, as I said before.

... With many thanks, cordial and true, I thank you for the pleasure I have enjoyed in connection with these proofs of genius. To be honest, it is my own personal opinion (I give it to you for as much as it is worth—not much!) that many of the subjects of these drawings are unfit for graphic representation. What we can bear to see in the poet's vision, and sustained on the wings of his divine music, we shrink from a little when brought face to face with, as drawn out in black and white. You will understand what I mean. The horror and terror preponderate in the drawings, and what is sublime in the poet is apt to be extravagant in the artist—and this, not from a deficiency of power in the latter, but from a treading on ground forbidden except to the poet's foot. I may be wrong, perhaps—I do not pretend to be right. I only tell you (as you ask for them) what my impressions are.

I need not say that I wish all manner of success to your friend the artist, and laurels of the weight of gold while of the freshness of grass—alas! an impossible vegetable!—fabulous as the Halcyon!

My dearest Mr. Boyd,—I wish I had a note from you to-day—which optative aorist I am not sure of being either grammatical or reasonable! Perhaps you have expected to hear from me with more reason....

I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau's lucid and able style. She is a very admirable woman—and the most logical intellect of the age, for a woman. On this account it is that the men throw stones at her, and that many of her own sex throw dirt; but if I begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth. A righteous indignation fastens on me. I had a note from her the other day, written in a noble spirit, and saying, in reference to the insults lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first for publicity, and ventured it all for the sake of what she considered the truth—she was sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva.

Do you remember who Godiva was—or shall I tell you? Think of it—Godiva of Coventry, and peeping Tom. The worst and basest is, that in this nineteenth century there are thousands of Toms to one.

I think, however, myself, and with all my admiration for Miss Martineau, that her statement and her reasonings on it are not free from vagueness and apparent contradictions. She writes in a state of enthusiasm, and some of her expressions are naturally coloured by her mood of mind and nerve.

May this Christmas give you ease and pleasantness, in various ways, my dearest friend! My Christmas wish for myself is to hear that you are well. I cannot bear to think of you suffering. Are the nights better? May God bless you. Shall you not think it a great thing if the poems go into a second edition within the twelvemonth? I am surprised at your not being satisfied. Consider what poetry is, and that four months have not passed since the publication of mine; and that, where poems have to make their way by force of themselves, and not of name nor of fashion, the first three months cannot present the period of the quickest sale. That must be for afterwards. Think of me on Christmas Day, as of one who gratefully loves you.

ELIBET.

A passing reference in a previous letter (above, p. 217) has told of the beginning of another friendship, which was to hold a large place in Miss Barrett's later life; and the next letter is the first now extant which was written to this new friend, Anna Jameson. Mrs. Jameson had not at this time written the works on sacred art with which her name is now chiefly associated; but she was already engaged in her long struggle to earn her livelihood by her pen. Her first work, 'The Diary of an Ennuyée' (1826), written before her marriage, had attracted considerable attention. Since then she had written her 'Characteristics of Women,' 'Essays on Shakespeare's Female Characters,' 'Visits and Sketches,' and a number of compilations of less importance. Quite recently she had been engaged to write handbooks to the public and private art galleries of London, and had so embarked on the career of art authorship in which her best work was done.

The beginning and end of the following letter are lost. The subject of it is the long and hostile comment which appeared in the 'Athenaeum' for December 28 on Miss Martineau's letters on mesmerism.

... For the 'Athenaeum,' I have always held it as a journal, first—in the very first rank—both in ability and integrity; and knowing Mr. Dilke is the 'Athenaeum,' I could make no mistake in my estimation of himself. I have personal reasons for gratitude to both him and his journal, and I have always felt that it was honorable to me to have them. Also, I do not at all think that because a woman is a woman, she is on that account to be spared the ordinary risks of the arena in literature and philosophy. I think no such thing. Logical chivalry would be still more radically debasing to us than any other. It is not therefore at all as a Harriet Martineau, but as a thinking and feeling Martineau (now don't laugh), that I hold her to have been hardly used in the late controversy. And, if you don't laugh at that, don't be too grave either, with the thought of your own share and position in the matter; because, as must be obvious to everyone (yourself included), you did everything possible to you to prevent the catastrophe, and no man and no friend could have done better. My brother George told me of his conversation with you at Mr. Lough's, but are you not mistaken in fancying that she blames you, that she is cold with you? I really think you must be. Why, if she is displeased with you she must be unjust, and is she ever unjust? I ask you. I should imagine not, but then, with all my insolence of talking of her as my friend, I only admire and love her at a distance, in her books and in her letters, and do not know her face to face, and in living womanhood at all. She wrote to me once, and since we have corresponded; and as in her kindness she has called me her friend, I leap hastily at an unripe fruit, perhaps, and echo back the word. She is your friend in a completer, or, at least, a more ordinary sense; and indeed it is impossible for me to believe without strong evidence that she could cease to be your friend on such grounds as are apparent. Perhaps she does not write because she cannot contain her wrath against Mr. Dilke (which, between ourselves, she cannot, very well), and respects your connection and regard for him. Is not that a 'peradventure' worth considering? I am sure that you have no right to be uneasy in any case.

And now I do not like to send you this letter without telling you my impression about mesmerism, lest I seem reserved and 'afraid of committing myself,' as prudent people are. I will confess, then, that my impression is in favour of the reality of mesmerism to some unknown extent. I particularly dislike believing it, I would rather believe most other things in the world; but the evidence of the 'cloud of witnesses' does thunder and lightning so in my ears and eyes, that I believe, while my blood runs cold. I would not be practised upon—no, not for one of Flushie's ears, and I hate the whole theory. It is hideous to my imagination, especially what is called phrenological mesmerism. After all, however, truth is to be accepted; and testimony, when so various and decisive, is an ascertainer of truth. Now do not tell Mr. Dilke, lest he excommunicate me.

But I will not pity you for the increase of occupation produced by an increase of such comfort as your mother's and sister's presence must give. What it will be for you to have a branch to sun yourself on, after a long flight against the wind!

Dear Mr. Chorley,—I hope it will not be transgressing very much against the etiquette of journalism, or against the individual delicacy which is of more consequence to both of us, if I venture to thank you by one word for the pages which relate to me in your excellent article in the 'New Quarterly.' It is not my habit to thank or to remonstrate with my reviewers, and indeed I believe I may tell you that I never wrote to thank anyone before on these grounds. I could not thank anyone for praising me—I would not thank him for praising me against his conscience; and if he praised me to the measure of his conscience only, I should have little (as far as the praise went) to thank him for. Therefore I do not thank you for the praise in your article, but for the kind cordial spirit which pervades both praise and blame, for the willingness in praising, and for the gentleness in finding fault; for the encouragement without unseemly exaggeration, and for the criticisms without critical scorn. Allow me to thank you for these things and for the pleasure I have received by their means. I am bold to do it, because I hear that you confess the reviewership; and am the bolder, because I recognised your hand in an act of somewhat similar kindness in the 'Athenaeum' at the first appearance of the poems.

While I am writing of the 'New Quarterly,' I take the liberty of making a remark, not of course in relation to myself—I know too well my duty to my judges—but to your view of the Vantage ground of the poetesses of England. It is a strong impression with me that previous to Joanna Baillie there was no such thing in England as a poetess; and that so far from triumphing over the rest of the world in that particular product, we lay until then under the feet of the world. We hear of a Marie in Brittany who sang songs worthy to be mixed with Chaucer's for true poetic sweetness, and in Italy a Vittoria Colonna sang her noble sonnets. But in England, where is our poetess before Joanna Baillie—poetess in the true sense? Lady Winchilsea had an eye, as Wordsworth found out; but the Duchess of Newcastle had more poetry in her—the comparative praise proving the negative position—than Lady Winchilsea. And when you say of the French, that they have only epistolary women and wits, while we have our Lady Mary, why what would Lady Mary be to us but for her letters and her wit? Not a poetess, surely! unless we accept for poetry her graceful vers de société.

Do forgive me if an impulse has carried me too far. It has been long 'a fact,' to my view of the matter, that Joanna Baillie is the first female poet in all senses in England; and I fell with the whole weight of fact and theory against the edge of your article.

I recall myself now to my first intention of being simply, but not silently, grateful to you; and entreating you to pardon this letter too quickly to think it necessary-to answer it....

I remain, very truly yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Dear Mr. Chorley,—You are very good to deign to answer my impertinences, and not to be disgusted by my defamations of 'the grandmothers,' and (to diminish my perversity in your eyes) I am ready to admit at once that we are generally too apt to run into premature classification—the error of all imperfect knowledge; and into unreasonable exclusiveness—the vice of it. We spoil the shining surface of life by our black lines drawn through and through, as if ominously for a game of the fox and goose. For my part, however imperfect my practice may be, I am intimately convinced—and more and more since my long seclusion—that to live in a house with windows on every side, so as to catch both the morning and evening sunshine, is the best and brightest thing we have to do—to say nothing about the justest and wisest. Sympathies are our opportunities of good.

Moreover, I know nothing of your 'sweet mistress Anne.'^[122] I never read a verse of hers. Ignorance goes for much, you see, in all our mal-criticisms, and my ignorance goes to this extent. I cannot write to you of your Anglo-American poetess.

Also, in my sweeping speech about the grandmothers, I should have stopped before such instances as the exquisite ballad of 'Auld Robin Gray,' which is attributed to a woman, and the pathetic 'Ballow my Babe,' which tradition calls 'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' I have certain doubts of my own, indeed, in relation to both origins, and with regard to 'Robin Gray' in particular; but doubts are not worthy stuff enough to be taken into an argument, and certainly, therefore, I should have admitted those two ballads as worthy poems before the Joannan aera.

For what I ventured to say otherwise, would you not consent to join our sympathies, and receive the 'choir' (ah! but you are very cunningly subtle in your distinctions; I am afraid I was too simple for you) as agreeable writers of verses sometimes, leaving the word poet alone? Because, you see, what you call the 'bad dispensation' by no means accounts for the want of the faculty of poetry, strictly so called. England has had many learned women, not merely readers but writers of the learned languages, in Elizabeth's time and afterwards—women of deeper acquirements than are common now in the greater diffusion of letters; and yet where were the poetesses? The divine breath which seemed to come and go, and, ere it went, filled the land with that crowd of true poets whom we call the old dramatists—why did it never pass, even in the lyrical form, over the lips of a woman? How strange! And can we deny that it was so? I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none. It is not in the filial spirit I am deficient, I do assure you—witness my reverent love of the grandfathers!

Seriously, I do not presume to enter into argument with you, and this in relation to a critical paper which I admire in so many ways and am grateful for in some; but is not the poet a different man from the cleverest versifier, and is it not well for the world to be taught the difference? The divineness of poetry is far more to me than either pride of sex or personal pride, and, though willing to acknowledge the lowest breath of the inspiration, I cannot the 'powder and patch.' As powder and patch I may, but not as poetry. And though I in turn may suffer for this myself—though I too (anch' io) may be turned out of 'Arcadia,' and told that I am not a poet, still, I should be content, I hope, that the divineness of poetry be proved in my humanness, rather than lowered to my uses.

But you shall not think me exclusive. Of poor L.E.L., for instance, I could write with more praiseful appreciation than you can. It appears to me that she had the gift—though in certain respects she dishonored the art—and her latter lyrics are, many of them, of great beauty and melody, such as, having once touched the ear of a reader, live on in it. I observe in your 'Life of Mrs. Hemans' (shall I tell you how often I have read those volumes?) she (Mrs. H.) never appears, in any given letter or recorded opinion, to esteem her contemporary. The antagonism lay, probably, in the higher parts of Mrs. Hemans's character and mind, and we are not to wonder at it.

It is very pleasant to me to have your approbation of the sonnets on George Sand, on the points of feeling and lightness, on which all my readers have not absolved me equally, I have reason to know. I am more a latitudinarian in literature than it is generally thought expedient for women to be; and I have that admiration for genius, which dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'immoral sympathy with power;' and if Madame Dudevant^[123] is not the first female genius of any country or age, I really do not know who is. And then she has certain noblenesses—granting all the evil and 'perilous stuff'—noblenesses and royalnesses which make me loyal. Do pardon me for intruding all this on you, though you cannot justify me—you, who are occupied beyond measure, and I, who know it! I have been under the delusion, too, during this writing, of having something like a friend's claim to write and be troublesome. I have lived so near your friends that I keep the odour of them! A mere delusion, alas! my only personal right in respect to you being one that I am not likely to forget or waive—the right of being grateful to you.