"Wednesday.
But some things are indeed said very truly & 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 & 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 & will
live, but the way to do you good with the stiffnecked public (such good
as critics can do in their degree) wd have been to hold fast & 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 & in sentences! Still there are
right things, true things, worthy things, said of you as a poet, though your
poems do not find justice:—& 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 & association, &
none the worse for its being a sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute,
of your poetical sectarianism, in another place——yours!!!"
She is referring to Warburton's review of Browning--in The Review. I believe there is poetical sectarianism. There is good poetry and there is bad poetry. There is classic form and there is rap or should I just be categorical and say crap. Or to be more politically correct: doggerel.
"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:
& 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, & he had not penetrated where I had been living &
sleeping: & in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in London,
nothing cd be found except one slim volume, so that, till the collected works
appeared .. favente Moxon [with the help of Moxon], .. I was ignorant of
his best early productions, & 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
.. & thrown aside, & 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’—&
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–"
The fun part about this objection to being compared with Erasmus Darwin (writer of poems on natural history) is that the review she is referring to was in 1826, twenty years previous. What a long memory she had for criticism!
"And who are Mr Helps & Miss Emma Fisher & 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, & 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—& my fingers were so dabbled in blackness yesterday that to
wring my hands wd only have made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr Kenyon
they looked dirty enough to befit a poetess—as black ‘as bard beseemed’—& he took the review away with him to
read & save it from more harm."
For some reason I always imagine her fingers covered in ink. She must have written at high speed given the volume of letters she produced. But then, she must have been expert at controlling the ink flow. If you look at the scans of her letters she has relatively few ink blots. Browning is far more blotchy with his letters. They may explain why he had his sister write out all of his poems to be sent to the publishers.
"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 & 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 .. & 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 [the unknown is ever magnified]’ ..
do you think so? I hope not indeed! vo guizzando [you darting] .. & everything else that I ought to
do——except of course, that thinking of you which is so difficult.
May God bless you—. Till tomorrow!
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 [lacking]."
She is full of the teaze today. First she accuses him of hating to write to her and she torments him that she has difficulty thinking of him. They are getting along famously.
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