Correspondence

1060.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 170–172.

[London]

Novr 26th 1842–

My very dear friend,

I have sent your verses as you desired me to do, to the editor of the Athenæum,—and yet am quite prepared in my own mind for the probability of their not being inserted. [1] The Athenæum only occasionally receives poetry, & does not profess to do so at all– Therefore you must not be surprised if they neglect yours, more especially as it is of a religious cast. Have I not seen before the second one? & admired to you that idea about the budding of the rod of affliction? [2] I think so: altho’ I will not say that these poems appear to me among the best you have written.

You surprised me very much by withholding your applause from the lines I quoted from Coleridge. His intention was to express the idea solitude wholly,—& by excluding the apparent presence of God, to make it solitude not only to the senses, but to the soul.

 

So lonely ’twas, that God himself

Scarce seemëd there to be. [3]

Never before, to my apprehension, was imaged so intensely, the fulness of desolation & loneliness.

When I spoke of publics, my dearest Mr Boyd, I meant the literary public—the vox populi among critics. That voice cried as loudly against Wordsworth once as it cries loudly for him now .. and as loudly for Byron once as it does against him now: & I hope never to be led by any sort of public, literary or otherwise. I agree with you warmly that the present fashion of decrying Byron as a poet is pitiable or rather contemptible,—and it was but the other day that I expressed a strong disgust to Mr Serjt Talfourd’s, the author of Ion’s, printed disclaimer of any desire to see Manfred’s castle, when he stood at a few yards distance from it among the Alps. [4] You cannot praise Byron as a poet, [5] with warmer words than are always ready for him on my lips: he was a great & wonderful poet—passionate—eloquent—witty—with all powers of swift allusion & sarcasm & satire—full & rapid in the mechanical resources of his art, and capable of a sufficient & brilliant conveyance of philosophic thought & argument. In many, in most of these points he is superior beyond all comparison to Wordsworth—who is not passionate .. nor witty—nor sarcastic .. nor satirical .. nor brilliant .. nor peculiarly flexible & facile in rhyme & rhythm. Still I am not, in my own view, guilty of inconsistency, when I hold that Wordsworth is the greater poet in the proper sense of greatness, the profounder thinker, the nearer to the poetic secrets of nature, more universal, more elevated, more full & consistent in his own poetic individuality, .. & more influential for good upon the literature of his country & age.

The expression you allude to in Coleridge is not quite as you repeat it. It is not “white & red”, but ‘large & red’ or ‘round & red’ [6]  .. I dont exactly remember which. It may be an extravagance,—& I dont pretend to admire it—but it belongs to a poem, which is one of its kind, .. most singular & supreme in dauntless originality & sublime conception .. the work of a soul more intensely poetical (in the appreciation of mind) than either the author of the Excursion or he of Childe Harold.

My very dear friend, if it should please God to permit me once again to go to see you, I shall welcome it as one of the pleasures left to me of many taken. But I would rather read anything with you than the epistle to the Romans, just because it is probable that we might not come precisely to the same results in our review of it. I have been to my own conviction very near death since I saw you last, & have suffered the bitterness of death without attaining to its calm, .. and the effect upon my mind is a complete state of antagonism to anything like religious controversy– I believe that the particular points agitated between Calvinists & Arminians are of no importance, and are not intended to be rendered clear in the present aspect of the church—and that the aspiration of christians shd simply be to love more rather than to learn more. “Knowledge puffeth up” says the apostle—“but Love buildeth up”. [7] We shall be right in loving—& safe in loving Christ—& happy in loving each other,—& glorified in love in Heaven. Into the counsels of God we have no right to enter (it seems to me) as the Calvinists are fond of doing, with definitions & classifications,—nor do the Arminians appear to me justified in much which they assume. In almost every religious controversy, there are two wrong sides,—and one bad spirit which is common to both: and whether we do or not increase our knowledge by controversy, we are sure to diminish our love.

Therefore, if you please my very dear friend, we wont read the Romans until we have done all the other reading & subjects of talk remaining to us to explore. Thank you from my heart for caring to see me again!–

Ever your affecte

Elizabeth B Barrett

You shall hear of the Athenæum.

Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 21 Downshire Hill / Hampstead.

Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 253–255.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library and Cornell University.

1. EBB confirms in letter 1071 that they were not printed.

2. EBB paraphrased this notion in letter 491.

3. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 599–600.

4. See letter 1032.

5. See letter 1050.

6. Neither of the descriptions quoted by EBB occurs in the concordance of Coleridge’s works. She was perhaps thinking of “red round cheeks” in his “Christabel” (line 658).

7. Cf. I Corinthians, 8:1.

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