Correspondence

1029.  EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 112–113.

[London]

Oct. 20. 1842–

Dear Mr Haydon,

I have sent the sonnet to the Athenæum & whenever it appears, will do myself the pleasure of forwarding the paper to you– [1] In the meanwhile I hasten to thank you for your very interesting letter–

 

“Blessings be on them & eternal praise,

The poets!” [2]

I like to hear of them– And you who are a practical poet, speak of them with love as the Italians say– Keats was indeed a fine genius,—too finely tuned for the gross dampness of our atmosphere, the instrument breaking with its own music. As singers sing themselves out of breath, he sang himself out of life—interrupting with death, the perfection & unity of his cadence!– You wd rather have walked in Kilburn meadows with Keats, than in palaces, with princes! [3] And, still more—the sympathy & friendship of the consummate, royal poet of our present day [4] must have been well worth to you three cheers of the world, cheering for what it knows not—very well worth its patronage & purple & pence! Whatever may have been the afflictions you speak of,—and trial & struggle come naturally to genius,—I may congratulate you on your destiny. You made me smile with your theory about the Athenæum. The truth is, that the Athenæum gives all the enthusiasm it has to spare for Art, away from Poetry & Painting to music, [5]  .. & that moreover, a certain person who writes for it, has a theory too, which he is bound to support under the flashing eyes of all the geniuses of the age, .. viz—that England is worn out & fit for nothing in the world [6] while the world lasts, except paying taxes & travelling thirty miles an hour on the railroad. Yet I think they will admit my sonnet—I do think they will.

If you had not my volume called the Seraphim (though the ‘Seraphim’ is almost the worst poem in it) & if you cared to have it, I wd ask your acceptance of it. But what am I writing, in the dread presence of Wordsworth?–

Believe me, sincerely yours

Elizabeth B Barrett,

Dr Mitford remains much in the same state—with occasional rallyings.

Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 4–6.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. It was printed in the issue of 29 October.

2. Wordsworth, “Personal Talk” (1807), IV, lines 9 and 11.

3. Haydon, recording the death of Keats in his diary entry for 29 March 1821, called to mind the poet’s recitation of his “Ode to a Nightingale” while he and Haydon were “walking along the Kilburn meadows” (Pope, II, 318).

4. i.e., Wordsworth.

5. See letter 829, note 15.

6. Probably EBB refers to Darley’s comments on the state of English literature (see letter 927).

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