ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT (continued 9)

Like to the cloud upon the hill We are a moment seen Or the shadow of the windmill-sail Across yon sunny slope of green.

New or not, and I don't remember it elsewhere, it is just and beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying is not faster! Then the 'Three Knights' has beautiful things, with more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show—for his character is a vague grand massiveness,—like Stonehenge—or at least, if 'towers and battlements he sees' they are 'bosomed high' in dusky clouds ... it is a 'passion-created imagery' which has no clear outline. In this ballad of the 'Knights,' and in the Monk's too, we may look at things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and mates not with his kind afterwards, 'While, holding beards, they dance in pairs—and that is all excellent and reminds one of those fine sylvan festivals, 'in Orion.' But now tell me if you like altogether 'Ben Capstan' and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about fairies:—Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' with its subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse ... 'machina intersit' ... Grandmama Grey!—to say nothing of the 'small dog' that isn't the 'small boy.' Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and earnestly. No one has admired more than I the 'Death of Marlowe,' scenes in 'Cosmo,' and 'Orion' in much of it. But now tell me if you can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No one, at present in the world.

Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now is only as good as the worst before, and I can't hear from you, until Monday ... Monday! Did you think of that—you who took the credit of acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I shall have to wait ... till what o'clock on Monday, tempted in the meanwhile to fall into controversy against the 'new moons and sabbath days' and the pausing of the post in consequence.

You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about you—you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters seemed nearer to me, long ... long ... and in spite of the postmark, than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to think of having to wait so many hours before the 'candid' closing letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. 'People say,' I used to think, 'that women always know, and certainly I do not know, and therefore ... therefore.'—The logic crushed on like Juggernaut's car. But in the letters it was different—the dear letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for ever and answer them after a fashion ... that, I felt from the beginning. But you—!

Monday.—Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my letter! Yet you look askance at me over 'newt and toad,' and praise so the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same head. And you really like that? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the night cap and all? and 'shoetye and blue sky?' and is it really wrong of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole, ... not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical, and in the grotesque—but here there is a want of life and consistency, as it seems to me!—the elf is no elf and speaks no elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch, ... this, ... for supernatural music. So I fancy at least—but I will try the poem again presently. You must be right—unless it should be your over-goodness opposed to my over-badness—I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as Mr. Forster did his last Examiner in, when he gave the all-hail to Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no!—not such as Mr. Forster's. Your soul does not enter into his secret—There can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word—he who knows—or ought to know!—And now let us agree and admire the bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert's unfilled grave—

The long beard fell like snow into the grave With solemn grace

A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for the fairies.

I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon—Miss Martineau's two volumes—and Mr. Bailey sends his 'Festus,' very kindly, ... and 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' from America from a Mrs. or a Miss Fuller—how I hate those 'Women of England,' 'Women and their Mission' and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such expositions of rights and wrongs.

Your letter would be worth them all, if you were less you! I mean, just this letter, ... all alive as it is with crawling buzzing wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures ... as all alive as your own pedant's book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs too—particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one hand to the other. But for the toad!—why, at the end of the row of narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly. That he 'wore a jewel in his head' I doubted nothing at all. You must see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs, deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his toad's head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment, poisoned as by one of the Medici.

Oh—and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my sisters in a rat's nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was, the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet no, not much. My aversion proper ... call it horror rather ... was for the silent, cold, clinging, gliding bat; and even now, I think, I could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing—the wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night those bats come sailing ... without a sound—and go ... you cannot guess where!—fade with the night-blackness!

You have not been well—which is my first thought if not my first word. Do walk, and do not work; and think ... what I could be thinking of, if I did not think of you ... dear—dearest! 'As the doves fly to the windows,' so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty, as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up straight to God ... nothing, no one, used to intercept me—now there is you—only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you know at all what I am,—and what I should be but for you.

So ... love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the lizards! love me as you love the efts—and I will believe in you as you believe ... in Ælian—Will that do?

Your own—

Say how you are when you write—and write.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday Morning.

I this minute receive the Review—a poor business, truly! Is there a reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical High-place to hold forth?—I have only glanced over the article however. Well, one day I am to write of you, dearest, and it must come to something rather better than that!

I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest. I am trusting to hear from you—

Your R.B.

And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in the New Quarterly 'Mr. Browning' figures pleasantly as 'one without any sympathy for a human being!'—Then, for newts and efts at all events!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday Night. [Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]

But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one's supposed tether without danger—there is the distance so palpably between the most audacious step there, and the next ... which is nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even, might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended there, just there ... and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid speaking irrevocable words—and when, as to me, those words are intensely true, doom-words—think, dearest! Because, as I told you once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect respect in it, the full belief ... (I shall get presently to poor Robert's very avowal of 'owing you all esteem'!). It is on that I build, and am secure—for how should I know, of myself, how to serve you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were loathing at your heart, and if so many 'noes' made a 'yes,' and 'one refusal no rebuff' and all that horrible bestiality which stout gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, 'The toast be dear woman!' Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,—I do believe,—now, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love, and least able to imagine what I should do without it,—I cannot but believe, I say, that had you given me once a 'refusal'—clearly derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by any step of mine; I should, believing you, have never again renewed directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to you ... but from the outside, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I should have acted thus under any circumstances, how could I but redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish—you know, and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for the cause, though not the manner—but could I do other than keep 'farther from you' than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and then, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It was the plainness of that which determined me to wait and be patient and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could not have been most rich, too, then—in what would seem little only to me, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud beyond measure—happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see you simply, speak with you and be spoken to—what am I more than others? Don't think this mock humility—it is not—you take me in your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you might—if not now, at some future time—give other than this, the true reason, for that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate drawing closer—I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.

Wednesday.—You are entirely right about those poems of Horne's—I spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of originality in men—the other way of safe copying precedents being so safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in the form ... reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think—and a common mistake, too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women, and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing for children and miss them and the others too,—with that detestable irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club—keep us from all that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all events—the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then, what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, so! Not altogether,—for first it was but the stranger's welcome I gave, the right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once admitted within the door. And then—when I know what Horne thinks of—you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune ... I could not begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends—he has such very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and none, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed—truth remains the truth—so, at least, I excuse myself ... and quite as much for what I say now as for what was said then! 'King John' is very fine and full of purpose; 'The Noble Heart,' sadly faint and uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to resist—a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced to complete another fashioned morality—a segment of a circle of larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. 'Bear patiently all injuries—revenge in no case'—that is plain. 'Take what you conceive to be God's part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here'—that is plain, too,—but, call Otto's act no wrong, or being one, not such as should be avenged—and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is a 'recreant'—just what needs the slight punishment of instant death to the remarker—and ... where is the way? What is clear?

—Not my letter! which goes on and on—'dear letters'—sweetest? because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own—I have not half said what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, 'at a cock-crow from the Grange.'—Ever your own.

Last night, I received a copy of the New Quarterly—now here is popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last—and in three other articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing, they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and with me I don't know how many poetical crétins are praised as noticeably—and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the richest style of scavengering—only Carlyle! And I love him enough not to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into his.

All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my Ba.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]

But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read them—of you, I mean of course,—though I quite understand that it is doing no manner of good to go back so to 'Paracelsus,' heading the article 'Paracelsus and other poems,' as if the other poems could not front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. 'Paracelsus' is a great work and will live, but the way to do you good with the stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying 'Look here.' What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the Retrospective Review? And then, no attempt at analytical criticism—or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice: and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your great world—the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical sectarianism, in another place—yours!

For me, it is all quite kind enough—only I object, on my own part also, to being reviewed in the 'Seraphim,' when my better books are nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know,—but let them be my faults! When I wrote the 'Romaunt of Margret,' I had not read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till the collected works appeared ... favente Moxon, ... I was ignorant of his best early productions; and not even for the rhythmetical form of my 'Vision of the Poets,' was I indebted to the 'Two Voices,'—three pages of my 'Vision' having been written several years ago—at the beginning of my illness—and thrown aside, and taken up again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there's no use talking! In a solitary review which noticed my 'Essay on Mind,' somebody wrote ... 'this young lady imitates Darwin'—and I never could read Darwin, ... was stopped always on the second page of the 'Loves of the Plants' when I tried to read him to 'justify myself in having an opinion'—the repulsion was too strong. Yet the 'young lady imitated Darwin' of course, as the infallible critic said so.

And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the 'many others,' whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The 'three poets in three distant ages born' may well stare amazed!

After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on your review in a passion—because pray mark that the ink has over-run some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of an inkstand, it would not have been precisely there. It is the second book spoilt by me within these two days—and my fingers were so dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty enough to befit a poetess—as black 'as bard beseemed'—and he took the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.

How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very very earliest?—and how is it that I did not hear from you last night again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you hate writing to me?

At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the ink—I did it 'in a pet,' he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new book—certainly I ought—only it is not worth doing justice for—and I shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must forgive me as magnanimously as you can.

'Omne ignotum pro magnifico'—do you think so? I hope not indeed! vo quietando—and everything else that I ought to do—except of course, that thinking of you which is so difficult.

May God bless you. Till to-morrow!

Your own always.

Mr. Kenyon refers to 'Festus'—of which I had said that the fine things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Morning. [Post-mark, January 9, 1846.]

You never think, ever dearest, that I 'repent'—why what a word to use! You never could think such a word for a moment! If you were to leave me even,—to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do it,—I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I 'repent' ... regret anything ... be sorry for having known you and loved you ... no! Which I say simply to prove that, in no extreme case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be different.

Not out of 'generosity' certainly, but from the veriest selfishness, I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than another woman might have been.

Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions—do I not vex you by them, you whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world, and because your happiness is so precious a thing.

Cloth of frieze, be not too bold, Though thou'rt matched with cloth of gold!

—that, beloved, was written for me. And you, if you would make me happy, always will look at yourself from my ground and by my light, as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that if I were vacillating, I should not be so weak as to tease you with the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction or wish of retraction,—because I belong to you by gift and ownership, and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of yours,—it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over and over have you replied to them,—as yesterday!—and now, do not speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for particular application,—only to be ready for application. I love you from the deepest of my nature—the whole world is nothing to me beside you—and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible. 'How dreadful is this place.'

To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for to-day,—it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word. It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves) under the same aspect and colour—and it is certainly true that I have a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects as we have never looked at together. I know you so well (yes, I boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also the idola of all things as they are in your eyes—so that never, scarcely, I am curious,—never anxious, to learn what your opinions may be. Now, have I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to know you.

More than enough! You have 'left undone'—do you say? On the contrary, you have done too much,—you are too much. My cup,—which used to hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the absinthus,—has overflowed all this wine: and that makes me look out for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out your hand for them.

Say how you are—and do take care and exercise—and write to me, dearest!

Ever your own—

Ba.

How right you are about 'Ben Capstan,'—and the illustration by the yellow clay. That is precisely what I meant,—said with more precision than I could say it. Art without an ideal is neither nature nor art. The question involves the whole difference between Madame Tussaud and Phidias.

I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe's book—and I see that the deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever produceable by the dedication, is cut down and away—perhaps in this particular copy only!

Tuesday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you! Try to let it be long to you—will you? My consistency is wonderful.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Morning.

As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review—indeed it was foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?—You shall not send it back—but on your table I shall find and take it next Tuesday—c'est convenu! The other precious volume has not yet come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!

I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a scale for the Review's sake; and just now—there is no denying it, and spite of all I have been incredulous about—it does seem that the fact is achieved and that I do love you, plainly, surely, more than ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why, the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?—in the heart's heart.

Rest—dearest—bless you—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]

Kindest and dearest you are!—that is 'my secret' and for the others, I leave them to you!—only it is no secret that I should and must be glad to have the words you sent with the book,—which I should have seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on—it is the stamp on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the brain,—which is as true as truth can be. Then, I shall have 'Pauline' in a day or two—yes, I shall and must, and will.

The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley's, and is one of his very best papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about his writings in general, with a grace and savoir faire nevertheless, and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says of 'many-sidedness' seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That, he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of principle—yet 'many-sidedness' is certainly no word for him. The effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather bends to a phase of humanity and literature than contains it—than comprehends it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things: universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is different altogether ... as different as a willow-tree from a church tower.

Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you—which is too much, perhaps. Shall I tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me—the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy ... and only I know what was behind—the long wilderness without the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve—not you—but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say?—Shall I thank you or God? Both,—indeed—and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.

Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a thought of any others—that is all I could ask you with any disquiet as to the granting of it—May God bless you!—

Your

Ba.

But you have the review now—surely?

The Morning Chronicle attributes the authorship of 'Modern Poets' (our article) to Lord John Manners—so I hear this morning. I have not yet looked at the paper myself. The Athenæum, still abominably dumb!—

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]

This is no letter—love,—I make haste to tell you—to-morrow I will write. For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an old, old friend he is, beside—so—you must understand my defection, when only this scrap reaches you to-night! Ah, love,—you are my unutterable blessing,—I discover you, more of you, day by day,—hour by hour, I do think!—I am entirely yours,—one gratitude, all my soul becomes when I see you over me as now—God bless my dear, dearest.

My 'Act Fourth' is done—but too roughly this time! I will tell you—

One kiss more, dearest!

Thanks for the Review.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, January 12, 1846.]

I have no words for you, my dearest,—I shall never have.

You are mine, I am yours. Now, here is one sign of what I said ... that I must love you more than at first ... a little sign, and to be looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows can only be little, so very little now—and as the fine French Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined stages by millionths, so—! At first I only thought of being happy in you,—in your happiness: now I most think of you in the dark hours that must come—I shall grow old with you, and die with you—as far as I can look into the night I see the light with me. And surely with that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed sense of security to the sunny middle of the day. I am in the full sunshine now; and after, all seems cared for,—is it too homely an illustration if I say the day's visit is not crossed by uncertainties as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?—Now Keats speaks of 'Beauty, that must die—and Joy whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding farewell!' And who spoke of—looking up into the eyes and asking 'And how long will you love us'?—There is a Beauty that will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will love for ever!

And I—am to love no longer than I can. Well, dear—and when I can no longer—you will not blame me? You will do only as ever, kindly and justly; hardly more. I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my fancy to such an experiment, and consider how that is to happen, and what measures ought to be taken in the emergency—because in the 'universality of my sympathies' I certainly number a very lively one with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis. There is no doubt I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more fortunate human being. And I hope that because such a calamity does not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no humanity can be altogether exempt—just as God bids us ask for the continuance of the 'daily bread'!—'battle, murder and sudden death' lie behind doubtless. I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we bestow in another's case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our own, ... that I only contemplate the possibility you make me recognize, with pity, and fear ... no anger at all; and imprecations of vengeance, for what? Observe, I only speak of cases possible; of sudden impotency of mind; that is possible—there are other ways of 'changing,' 'ceasing to love' &c. which it is safest not to think of nor believe in. A man may never leave his writing desk without seeing safe in one corner of it the folded slip which directs the disposal of his papers in the event of his reason suddenly leaving him—or he may never go out into the street without a card in his pocket to signify his address to those who may have to pick him up in an apoplectic fit—but if he once begins to fear he is growing a glass bottle, and, so, liable to be smashed,—do you see? And now, love, dear heart of my heart, my own, only Ba—see no more—see what I am, what God in his constant mercy ordinarily grants to those who have, as I, received already so much; much, past expression! It is but—if you will so please—at worst, forestalling the one or two years, for my sake; but you will be as sure of me one day as I can be now of myself—and why not now be sure? See, love—a year is gone by—we were in one relation when you wrote at the end of a letter 'Do not say I do not tire you' (by writing)—'I am sure I do.' A year has gone by—Did you tire me then? Now, you tell me what is told; for my sake, sweet, let the few years go by; we are married, and my arms are round you, and my face touches yours, and I am asking you, 'Were you not to me, in that dim beginning of 1846, a joy behind all joys, a life added to and transforming mine, the good I choose from all the possible gifts of God on this earth, for which I seemed to have lived; which accepting, I thankfully step aside and let the rest get what they can; what, it is very likely, they esteem more—for why should my eye be evil because God's is good; why should I grudge that, giving them, I do believe, infinitely less, he gives them a content in the inferior good and belief in its worth? I should have wished that further concession, that illusion as I believe it, for their sakes—but I cannot undervalue my own treasure and so scant the only tribute of mere gratitude which is in my power to pay. Hear this said now before the few years; and believe in it now for then, dearest!

Must you see 'Pauline'? At least then let me wait a few days; to correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the history of it; what is necessary you should know before you see it. That article I suppose to be by Heraud—about two thirds—and the rest, or a little less, by that Mr. Powell—whose unimaginable, impudent vulgar stupidity you get some inkling of in the 'Story from Boccaccio'—of which the words quoted were his, I am sure—as sure as that he knows not whether Boccaccio lived before or after Shakspeare, whether Florence or Rome be the more northern city,—one word of Italian in general, or letter of Boccaccio's in particular. When I took pity on him once on a time and helped his verses into a sort of grammar and sense, I did not think he was a buyer of other men's verses, to be printed as his own; thus he bought two modernisations of Chaucer—'Ugolino' and another story from Leigh Hunt—and one, 'Sir Thopas' from Horne, and printed them as his own, as I learned only last week. He paid me extravagant court and, seeing no harm in the mere folly of the man, I was on good terms with him, till ten months ago he grossly insulted a friend of mine who had written an article for the Review—(which is as good as his, he being a large proprietor of the delectable property, and influencing the voices of his co-mates in council)—well, he insulted my friend, who had written that article at my special solicitation, and did all he could to avoid paying the price of it—Why?—Because the poor creature had actually taken the article to the Editor as one by his friend Serjeant Talfourd contributed for pure love of him, Powell the aforesaid,—cutting, in consequence, no inglorious figure in the eyes of Printer and Publisher! Now I was away all this time in Italy or he would never have ventured on such a piece of childish impertinence. And my friend being a true gentleman, and quite unused to this sort of 'practice,' in the American sense, held his peace and went without his 'honorarium.' But on my return, I enquired, and made him make a proper application, which Mr. Powell treated with all the insolence in the world—because, as the event showed, the having to write a cheque for 'the Author of the Article'—that author's name not being Talfourd's ... there was certain disgrace! Since then (ten months ago) I have never seen him—and he accuses himself, observe, of 'sucking my plots while I drink his tea'—one as much as the other! And now why do I tell you this, all of it? Ah,—now you shall hear! Because, it has often been in my mind to ask you what you know of this Mr. Powell, or ever knew. For he, (being profoundly versed in every sort of untruth, as every fresh experience shows me, and the rest of his acquaintance) he told me long ago, 'he used to correspond with you, and that he quarrelled with you'—which I supposed to mean that he began by sending you his books (as with one and everybody) and that, in return to your note of acknowledgment, he had chosen to write again, and perhaps, again—is it so? Do not write one word in answer to me—the name of such a miserable nullity, and husk of a man, ought not to have a place in your letters—and that way he would get near to me again; near indeed this time!—So tell me, in a word—or do not tell me.

How I never say what I sit down to say! How saying the little makes me want to say the more! How the least of little things, once taken up as a thing to be imparted to you, seems to need explanations and commentaries; all is of importance to me—every breath you breathe, every little fact (like this) you are to know!

I was out last night—to see the rest of Frank Talfourd's theatricals; and met Dickens and his set—so my evenings go away! If I do not bring the Act you must forgive me—yet I shall, I think; the roughness matters little in this stage. Chorley says very truly that a tragedy implies as much power kept back as brought out—very true that is. I do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied—as was to be but expected—with the effect of this last—the shelve of the hill, whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away—not come to a stop like your horse against a church wall. It is all in long speeches—the action, proper, is in them—they are no descriptions, or amplifications—but here, in a drama of this kind, all the events, (and interest), take place in the minds of the actors ... somewhat like 'Paracelsus' in that respect. You know, or don't know, that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt, spasmodic writing—they will find some fault with this, of course.

How you know Chorley! That is precisely the man, that willow blowing now here now there—precisely! I wish he minded the Athenæum, its silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I—but he goes on painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me, I feel confident, that he has no part nor lot in the matter: I have two kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday. See the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt; and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to prove my belief in that same! For myself—if I have vanity which such Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who praised Mr. Mackay's own, own 'Dead Pan,' quite his own, the other day?—By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the gentleman had written a certain 'Song of the Bell' ... 'singularly like Schiller's; considering that Mr. M. had never seen it!' I am told he writes for the Athenæum, but don't know. Would that sort of praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue—which Forster, deep in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about—as pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last? You shall see they will not notice—unless a fresh publication alters the circumstances—until some seven or eight months—as before; and then they will notice, and praise, and tell anybody who cares to enquire, 'So we noticed the work.' So do not you go expecting justice or injustice till I tell you. It answers me to be found writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game, when that game is only 'Thimble-rig' and for prizes of gingerbread-nuts—Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke does shift the pea, and so did from the beginning—as Charles Lamb's pleasant sobriquet (Mr. Bilk, he would have it) testifies. Still he behaved kindly to that poor Frances Brown—let us forget him.

And now, my Audience, my crown-bearer, my path-preparer—I am with you again and out of them all—there, here, in my arms, is my proved palpable success! My life, my poetry, gained nothing, oh no!—but this found them, and blessed them. On Tuesday I shall see you, dearest—am much better; well to-day—are you well—or 'scarcely to be called an invalid'? Oh, when I have you, am by you—

Bless you, dearest—And be very sure you have your wish about the length of the week—still Tuesday must come! And with it your own, happy, grateful

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Night. [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]

Ah Mr. Kenyon!—how he vexed me to-day. To keep away all the ten days before, and to come just at the wrong time after all! It was better for you, I suppose—believe—to go with him down-stairs—yes, it certainly was better: it was disagreeable enough to be very wise! Yet I, being addicted to every sort of superstition turning to melancholy, did hate so breaking off in the middle of that black thread ... (do you remember what we were talking of when they opened the door?) that I was on the point of saying 'Stay one moment,' which I should have repented afterwards for the best of good reasons. Oh, I should have liked to have 'fastened off' that black thread, and taken one stitch with a blue or a green one!

You do not remember what we were talking of? what you, rather, were talking of? And what I remember, at least, because it is exactly the most unkind and hard thing you ever said to me—ever dearest, so I remember it by that sign! That you should say such a thing to me—! think what it was, for indeed I will not write it down here—it would be worse than Mr. Powell! Only the foolishness of it (I mean, the foolishness of it alone) saves it, smooths it to a degree!—the foolishness being the same as if you asked a man where he would walk when he lost his head. Why, if you had asked St. Denis beforehand, he would have thought it a foolish question.

And you!—you, who talk so finely of never, never doubting; of being such an example in the way of believing and trusting—it appears, after all, that you have an imagination apprehensive (or comprehensive) of 'glass bottles' like other sublunary creatures, and worse than some of them. For mark, that I never went any farther than to the stone-wall hypothesis of your forgetting me!—I always stopped there—and never climbed, to the top of it over the broken-bottle fortification, to see which way you meant to walk afterwards. And you, to ask me so coolly—think what you asked me. That you should have the heart to ask such a question!

And the reason—! and it could seem a reasonable matter of doubt to you whether I would go to the south for my health's sake!—And I answered quite a common 'no' I believe—for you bewildered me for the moment—and I have had tears in my eyes two or three times since, just through thinking back of it all ... of your asking me such questions. Now did I not tell you when I first knew you, that I was leaning out of the window? True, that was—I was tired of living ... unaffectedly tired. All I cared to live for was to do better some of the work which, after all, was out of myself, and which I had to reach across to do. But I told you. Then, last year, for duty's sake I would have consented to go to Italy! but if you really fancy that I would have struggled in the face of all that difficulty—or struggled, indeed, anywise, to compass such an object as that—except for the motive of your caring for it and me—why you know nothing of me after all—nothing! And now, take away the motive, and I am where I was—leaning out of the window again. To put it in plainer words (as you really require information), I should let them do what they liked to me till I was dead—only I wouldn't go to Italy—if anybody proposed Italy out of contradiction. In the meantime I do entreat you never to talk of such a thing to me any more.

You know, if you were to leave me by your choice and for your happiness, it would be another thing. It would be very lawful to talk of that.

And observe! I perfectly understand that you did not think of doubting me—so to speak! But you thought, all the same, that if such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.

Well—I am not quarrelling—I am uneasy about your head rather. That pain in it—what can it mean? I do beseech you to think of me just so much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then not to walk at all until Friday is not taking exercise, nor the thing required. Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid. I do beseech you, dearest! And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you, besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to him for a very little time—just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast somewhere. Will you consider, and do what is right, for me? I do not propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at which you might reasonably hesitate. And—did you ever try smoking as a remedy? If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do you good, I have been thinking. Or without the smoking, to breathe where tobacco is burnt,—that calms the nervous system in a wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was tranquillized in one half hour by a pinch of tobacco being burnt in a shovel near me. Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?

Wednesday.—For 'Pauline'—when I had named it to you I was on the point of sending for the book to the booksellers—then suddenly I thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very much would dislike my reading it. See now! Many readers have done virtuously, but I, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpassed them all!—And now, because I may, I 'must read it':—and as there are misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday? Do not send—bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.

Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been worse—that, you confess!—and what if it should be the crossing of my bad star? You of the 'Crown' and the 'Lyre,' to seek influences from the 'chair of Cassiopeia'! I hope she will forgive me for using her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professorship of poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election. You know, the qualification, there, is,—not to be a poet.

How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of them) were out of spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley!—and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who will say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk down-stairs together?

Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself!—

E.B.B.

Say particularly how you are—now do not omit it. And will you have Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this moment I dare not, because they are reading them here.

Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'—which is quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!

But for the man!—To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of Commonplaces, such as he is!—I have seen his name in the Athenæum attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,—more than usually fugitive—but I never heard before that his hand was in the prose department.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]

Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I well knew and felt the price I was about to pay—but the thought did occur that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was that of his own arrival—and that he would not know how very soon, alas, I should be obliged to go—so ... to save you any least embarrassment in the world, I got—just that shake of the hand, just that look—and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after all? So I said to myself all the way home.

When I am away from you—a crowd of things press on me for utterance—'I will say them, not write them,' I think:—when I see you—all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,—'they can be written, at all events'—I think that too. So, feeling so much, I say so little!

I have just returned from Town and write for the Post—but you mean to write, I trust.

That was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!

How are you?—tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!

Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.

I am wholly your

R.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, January 15, 1846.]

Dearest, dearer to my heart minute by minute, I had no wish to give you pain, God knows. No one can more readily consent to let a few years more or less of life go out of account,—be lost—but as I sate by you, you so full of the truest life, for this world as for the next,—and was struck by the possibility, all that might happen were I away, in the case of your continuing to acquiesce—dearest, it is horrible—could not but speak. If in drawing you, all of you, closer to my heart, I hurt you whom I would—outlive ... yes,—cannot speak here—forgive me, Ba.

My Ba, you are to consider now for me. Your health, your strength, it is all wonderful; that is not my dream, you know—but what all see. Now, steadily care for us both—take time, take counsel if you choose; but at the end tell me what you will do for your part—thinking of me as utterly devoted, soul and body, to you, living wholly in your life, seeing good and ill only as you see,—being yours as your hand is,—or as your Flush, rather. Then I will, on my side, prepare. When I say 'take counsel'—I reserve my last right, the man's right of first speech. I stipulate, too, and require to say my own speech in my own words or by letter—remember! But this living without you is too tormenting now. So begin thinking,—as for Spring, as for a New Year, as for a new life.

I went no farther than the door with Mr. Kenyon. He must see the truth; and—you heard the playful words which had a meaning all the same.

No more of this; only, think of it for me, love!

One of these days I shall write a long letter—on the omitted matters, unanswered questions, in your past letters. The present joy still makes me ungrateful to the previous one; but I remember. We are to live together one day, love!

Will you let Mr. Poe's book lie on the table on Monday, if you please, that I may read what he does say, with my own eyes? That I meant to ask, too!

How too, too kind you are—how you care for so little that affects me! I am very much better—I went out yesterday, as you found: to-day I shall walk, beside seeing Chorley. And certainly, certainly I would go away for a week, if so I might escape being ill (and away from you) a fortnight; but I am not ill—and will care, as you bid me, beloved! So, you will send, and take all trouble; and all about that crazy Review! Now, you should not!—I will consider about your goodness. I hardly know if I care to read that kind of book just now.

Will you, and must you have 'Pauline'? If I could pray you to revoke that decision! For it is altogether foolish and not boylike—and I shall, I confess, hate the notion of running over it—yet commented it must be; more than mere correction! I was unluckily precocious—but I had rather you saw real infantine efforts (verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this ambiguous, feverish—Why not wait? When you speak of the 'Bookseller'—I smile, in glorious security—having a whole bale of sheets at the house-top. He never knew my name even!—and I withdrew these after a very little time.

And now—here is a vexation. May I be with you (for this once) next Monday, at two instead of three o'clock? Forster's business with the new Paper obliges him, he says, to restrict his choice of days to Monday next—and give up my part of Monday I will never for fifty Forsters—now, sweet, mind that! Monday is no common day, but leads to a Saturday—and if, as I ask, I get leave to call at 2—and to stay till 3-1/2—though I then lose nearly half an hour—yet all will be comparatively well. If there is any difficulty—one word and I re-appoint our party, his and mine, for the day the paper breaks down—not so long to wait, it strikes me!

Now, bless you, my precious Ba—I am your own—

—Your own R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Morning. [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it seems to me—now what I am going to say may take its place among the paradoxes,—that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only long one came last, and I was quite contented that the 'old friend' should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a crown—and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of precedents.

Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that 'Mr. Browning would soon go away'—in reply to an observation of his, that 'he would not stay as I had company'; and altogether it was better,—the lamp made it look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and leave me under such an impression—'mens conscia recti' too!!—

And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather is as 'miraculous' as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!—How the world has changed since then! To me, I mean.

Did I say that ever ... that 'I knew you must be tired?' And it was not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?

Thursday night.—I have begun on another sheet—I could not write here what was in my heart—yet I send you this paper besides to show how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a female friend of mine and broke the thread—the visible thread, that is.

And now, even now, at this safe eight o'clock, I could not be safe from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and sit by me—and when my letter was come—'why wouldn't I read it? What wonderful politeness on my part.' She would not and could not consent to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire rather.

No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the Regent, ... (didn't he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put down to-night in her 'private diary.' I kept the letter in my hand and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not all, however, happily for me! Or my friend would have seen in my eyes what they did not see.

May God bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the verses at six years old—or see the drawings either? I am reasonable, you observe! Only, 'Pauline,' I must have some day—why not without the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a little—if you promise at last to let me see the book, which I will not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the day—some day. Am I not generous? And I was 'precocious' too, and used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby ... only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I used to write of virtue with a large 'V,' and 'Oh Muse' with a harp, and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called 'an epic'—and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we used to act in the nursery. There was a French 'hexameter' tragedy on the subject of Regulus—but I cannot even smile to think of it now, there are so many grave memories—which time has made grave—hung around it. How I remember sitting in 'my house under the sideboard,' in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning

Que suis je? autrefois un général Remain: Maintenant esclave de Carthage je souffre en vain.

Poor Regulus!—Can't you conceive how fine it must have been altogether? And these were my 'maturer works,' you are to understand, ... and 'the moon was bright at ten o'clock at night' years before. As to the gods and goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a fashion, as some greater philosophers have done—and went out one day with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of general scepticism, ... and though I went on saying 'the Lord's prayer' at nights and mornings, and the 'Bless all my kind friends' afterwards, by the childish custom ... yet I ended this liturgy with a supplication which I found in 'King's Memoirs' and which took my fancy and met my general views exactly.... 'O God, if there be a God, save my soul if I have a soul.' Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say ... 'Don't read Gibbon's history—it's not a proper book. Don't read "Tom Jones"—and none of the books on this side, mind!' So I was very obedient and never touched the books on that side, and only read instead Tom Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,' and Hume's 'Essays,' and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft ... books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, and which were not 'on that side' certainly, but which did as well.

How I am writing!—And what are the questions you did not answer? I shall remember them by the answers I suppose—but your letters always have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.

But this is the end indeed.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Night. [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Ever dearest—how you can write touching things to me; and how my whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from God and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only, it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was 'horrible,' it was what you supposed, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we will not talk of it any more.

Friday morning.—For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and I hope we both are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers, and that from the moment of a suspicion entering one mind, we should be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by letter through the ordinary channel. I mean, that letters of yours, addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed—if not opened. Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing—on these grounds it is advisable. What should I do if I did not see you nor hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your happiness? What should I do for a month even? And then, I might be thrown out of the window or its equivalent—I look back shuddering to the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never offended as I have offended ... years ago which seem as present as to-day. She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that consent was obtained—and at a word she gave up all—at a word. In fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the time—a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday. Yet how she was made to suffer. Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because she had seemed to feel a little. I told you, I think, that there was an obliquity—an eccentricity, or something beyond—on one class of subjects. I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now! she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit. Arabel thought I was dead.

I have tried to forget it all—but now I must remember—and throughout our intercourse I have remembered. It is necessary to remember so much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I would conceal nothing from you. Do you remember, besides, that there can be no faltering on my 'part,' and that, if I should remain well, which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you please to have it done. But there is time for considering!

Only ... as you speak of 'counsel,' I will take courage to tell you that my sisters know, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago—she saw that I was affected from some cause—and I told her. We are as safe with both of them as possible ... and they thoroughly understand that if there should be any change it would not be your fault.... I made them understand that thoroughly. From themselves I have received nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness for me to fail in it now. My brothers, it is quite necessary not to draw into a dangerous responsibility. I have felt that from the beginning, and shall continue to feel it—though I hear and can observe that they are full of suspicions and conjectures, which are never unkindly expressed. I told you once that we held hands the faster in this house for the weight over our heads. But the absolute knowledge would be dangerous for my brothers: with my sisters it is different, and I could not continue to conceal from them what they had under their eyes; and then, Henrietta is in a like position. It was not wrong of me to let them know it?—no?

Yet of what consequence is all this to the other side of the question? What, if you should give pain and disappointment where you owe such pure gratitude. But we need not talk of these things now. Only you have more to consider than I, I imagine, while the future comes on.

Dearest, let me have my way in one thing: let me see you on Tuesday instead of on Monday—on Tuesday at the old hour. Be reasonable and consider. Tuesday is almost as near as the day before it; and on Monday, I shall be hurried at first, lest Papa should be still in the house, (no harm, but an excuse for nervousness: and I can't quote a noble Roman as you can, to the praise of my conscience!) and you will be hurried at last, lest you should not be in time for Mr. Forster. On the other hand, I will not let you be rude to the Daily News, ... no, nor to the Examiner. Come on Tuesday, then, instead of Monday, and let us have the usual hours in a peaceable way,—and if there is no obstacle,—that is, if Mr. Kenyon or some equivalent authority should not take note of your being here on Tuesday, why you can come again on the Saturday afterwards—I do not see the difficulty. Are we agreed? On Tuesday, at three o'clock. Consider, besides, that the Monday arrangement would hurry you in every manner, and leave you fagged for the evening—no, I will not hear of it. Not on my account, not on yours!

Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?

My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for your sake:—that resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect to you. No 'counsel' could make the difference of a grain of dust in the balance. It is so, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me, it would be better for you I believe—and I should be only where I was before. While you do not change, I look to you for my first affections and my first duty—and nothing but your bidding me, could make me look away.

In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not talk to him. No—he does not 'see how it is.' He may have passing thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce—even an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.

It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world were away—even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.

And so, once more—may God bless you!

I am wholly yours—

Tuesday, remember! And say that you agree.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the forb—no, unforbidden shelf—wherein Voltaire pleases to say that 'si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer'? I feel, after reading these letters,—as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or hearing from you,—that if marriage did not exist, I should infallibly invent it. I should say, no words, no feelings even, do justice to the whole conviction and religion of my soul—and though they may be suffered to represent some one minute's phase of it, yet, in their very fulness and passion they do injustice to the unrepresented, other minute's, depth and breadth of love ... which let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way—let me have the plain palpable power of this; the assured time for this ... something of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the illustration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story must be listened to now, and the 'rights of it,'—dearest, the love unspoken now you are to hear 'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth ... at the hour of death, and'—

If I did not know this was so,—nothing would have been said, or sought for. Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for, and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and, seen now, nothing.

I will care for it no more, dearest—I am wedded to you now. I believe no human being could love you more—that thought consoles me for my own imperfection—for when that does strike me, as so often it will, I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask 'What if it were a claim then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for what were in you—do you like that way!'—And I do not, Ba—you, even, might not—when people everyday buy improveable ground, and eligible sites for building, and don't want every inch filled up, covered over, done to their hands! So take me, and make me what you can and will—and though never to be more yours, yet more like you, I may and must be—Yes, indeed—best, only love!

And am I not grateful to your sisters—entirely grateful for that crowning comfort; it is 'miraculous,' too, if you please—for you shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or new times—but they do not see me, know me—and must moreover be jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple—yet instead of 'rapidly levelling eager eyes'—they are indulgent? Then—shall I wish capriciously they were not your sisters, not so near you, that there might be a kind of grace in loving them for it'—but what grace can there be when ... yes, I will tell you—no, I will not—it is foolish!—and it is not foolish in me to love the table and chairs and vases in your room.

Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a word against the arrangement—and Saturday promised, too—but though all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet—but this is wrong—on Tuesday it shall be, then,—thank you, dearest! you let me keep up the old proper form, do you not?—I shall continue to thank, and be gratified &c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion! And so, now, for your kind considerateness thank you ... that I say, which, God knows, could not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good, 'you are repaid'—

To-morrow I will write, and answer more. I am pretty well, and will go out to-day—to-night. My Act is done, and copied—I will bring it. Do you see the Athenæum? By Chorley surely—and kind and satisfactory. I did not expect any notice for a long time—all that about the 'mist,' 'unchanged manner' and the like is politic concession to the Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain, yet he does not. But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand—the long extracts answer every purpose—

There is all to say yet—to-morrow!

And ever, ever your own; God bless you!

R.

Admire the clean paper.... I did not notice that I have been writing in a desk where a candle fell! See the bottoms of the other pages!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Evening. [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the letter—but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in enough of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in your assurance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word—I fully believe in it,—of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt to speak. And for 'waiting'; 'not hurrying',—I leave all with you henceforth—all you say is most wise, most convincing.

On the saddest part of all,—silence. You understand, and I can understand through you. Do you know, that I never used to dream unless indisposed, and rarely then—(of late I dream of you, but quite of late)—and those nightmare dreams have invariably been of one sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the last)—and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate, desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a madman—and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some bloodvessel was to break)—he, once at a dinner party at which I was present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in order)—brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ... purely to 'show off' in the eyes of his guests ... (all males, law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too, left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to 'just say a word and return'—and no sooner was his back to the door than the biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark 'what a fortunate thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife—not one of the women who would resist—that is, attempt to resist—and so exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!' I said it was, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women, without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give him his desert, I thought—'Oh, indeed?' No—this man was not to be opposed—wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what kind argument would do—and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently we went up-stairs—there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at the tea-table—and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand in his, our friend—disposed to be very good-natured of course. I listened arrectis auribus, and in a minute he said he did not know somebody I mentioned. I told him, that I easily conceived—such a person would never condescend to know him, &c., and treated him to every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text—and at the end marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in unfeigned wonder, 'What can have possessed you, my dear B?'—All which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog. All this is quite irrelevant to the case—indeed, I write to get rid of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves. Trees live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law—but with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why declare that 'the Lord is holy, just and good' unless there is recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to which the subsequent assertion is referable? 'You know what holiness is, what it is to be good? Then, He is that'—not, 'that is so—because he is that'; though, of course, when once the converse is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical purposes. All God's urgency, so to speak, is on the justice of his judgments, rightness of his rule: yet why? one might ask—if one does believe that the rule is his; why ask further?—Because, his is a 'reasonable service,' once for all.

Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail, under any circumstances—(and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul could bring the flesh to perform)—in that case, you will not come to me with a shadow past hope of chasing.

The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary contrast with those here—you allude to them—if I went with this letter downstairs and said simply 'I want this taken to the direction to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?' my father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful absurdities about his 'wanting a walk,' 'just having been wishing to go out' &c. At night he sits studying my works—illustrating them (I will bring you drawings to make you laugh)—and yesterday I picked up a crumpled bit of paper ... 'his notion of what a criticism on this last number ought to be,—none, that have appeared, satisfying him!'—So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as much more as must of necessity be.

Once more, understand all this ... for the clock scares me of a sudden—I meant to say more—far more.

But may God bless you ever—my own dearest, my Ba—

I am wholly your R.

(Tuesday)

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

Your letter came just after the hope of one had past—the latest Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly came the knock—the postman redivivus—just when it seemed so beyond hoping for—it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post at nearly eight—suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was I not glad, do you think?

And you call the Athenæum 'kind and satisfactory'? Well—I was angry instead. To make us wait so long for an 'article' like that, was not over-kind certainly, nor was it 'satisfactory' to class your peculiar qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar. It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with them. For what is said of 'mist' I have no patience because I who know when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to make the general observation stronger. And then 'mist' is an infamous word for your kind of obscurity. You never are misty, not even in 'Sordello'—never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines, always—and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a 'mist,' when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me angry.

But the suggested virtue of 'self-renunciation' only made me smile, because it is simply nonsense ... nonsense which proves itself to be nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself—that is the new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in 'self-renunciation' in that very relation—or rather, to hint the virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What atheists these critics are after all—and how the old heathens understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may take shame to ourselves, looking back.

Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm, the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked down-stairs into the drawing-room—walked, mind! Before, I was carried by one of my brothers,—even to the last autumn-day when I went out—I never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides—it was a feat worthy of the day—and I surprised them all as much as if I had walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said that he was 'so glad to see me'!

Well!—setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this morning after an uncomfortable feverish night—not very unwell, mind, nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence—and I tell you, only to show how susceptible I really am still, though 'scarcely an invalid,' say the complimenters.

What a way I am from your letter—that letter—or seem to be rather—for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing distrustedly of other things. So you are 'grateful' to my sisters ... you! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such extravagances as words like these imply—and there are far worse words than these, in the letter ... such as I need not put my finger on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours, and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion. Observe!—certainly I should not choose to have a 'claim,' see! Only, what I object to, in 'illusions,' 'miracles,' and things of that sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the sun to stand still, it was not for a year even!—Ungrateful, I am!

And 'pretty well' means 'not well' I am afraid—or I should be gladder still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what 'pretty well' means, and if your mother is better—or I may have a letter to-morrow—dearest! May God bless you!

To-morrow too, at half past three o'clock, how joyful I shall be that my 'kind considerateness' decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!

Your own

Ba.

A hundred letters I have, by this last, ... to set against Napoleon's Hundred Days—did you know that?

So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from the damp—the fog, you see!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday Morning. [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into which some of the phrases might be construed—you would forgive me, indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact remains—that it would be the one trial I know I should not be able to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'—intolerable—not to be written of, even my mind refuses to form a clear conception of them.

My own loved letter is come—and the news; of which the reassuring postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not to be grateful for that; nor that you do 'eat your dinner'? Indeed you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on 'the stairs'—stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou indeed!) all, with their picturesque accidents, of landing-places, and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'—and above all, landing-places—they are my heart's delight—I would come upon you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges' Palace at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was banished for an 'enormous dig (intacco) into the public treasure'—another for ... what you are not to know because his friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it—underneath the 'giants' on their stands, and in the midst of the cortile the bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.