Volume 1 — CHAPTER III (continued 2)

Your ever affectionate ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

To H.S. Boyd

May 18, 1843.

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]

To John Kenyan

May 19, 1843,

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.

To Mrs. Martin

May 26, 1843.

... 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.

To John Kenyan

50 Wimpole Street:

Wednesday, or is it Thursday? [summer 1843].

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.

To John Kenyan

June 30, 1843.

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.

To Mrs. Martin

July 8, 1843.

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.

To Mr. Westwood

50 Wimpole Street: August 1843.

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.

To Mr. Westwood

50 Wimpole Street: September 2, 1843.

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.

To Mrs. Martin

September 4, 1843. Finished September 5.

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.

To H.S. Boyd

September 8, 1843.

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?

May God bless you both!

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

To H.S. Boyd

Monday, September 19, 1843.

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.

To Mr. Westwood

October 1843.

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.

To Mr. Westwood

50 Wimpole Street: December 26, 1843.

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.

To Mr. Westwood

50 Wimpole Street: December 31, 1843.

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.

To Mr. Westwood

[Undated.]

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.