237. John Kenyon [1] to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 255–257.
Malvern Wells.
July 12 [1826] [2]
My dear Miss Barrett.
I had scarcely quitted you, when I thought that I had been very injudicious, to say the least, to beg your book– Probably enough, you may not have another in the house.
I am going to London too where I shall have an immediate opportunity of furnishing myself at Duncan’s– I shall therefore redress as much as may be my faux pas by leaving the book for you at Mrs Trants, ere we go on Saturday.
Your work has not afforded solitary pleasure—Mrs Kenyon has shared it with me, and Mr Philipps [3] is making himself acquainted with it.
For myself, claiming a cousin-ship in some degree or other, I have read it with pride as well as pleasure——
Your Essay on Mind is a bold attempt– It is always hard to reconcile didactic with poetic excellence– I say Excellence– The levels are more easily combined—but the lofty points—the real summits always appear to me to spear up in opposite directions.
If this is true even in Ethical didactics, as I think even Pope has proved—it is yet more so I think in Metaphysical– It would be easier to poetize Paley [4] than Condillac [5] –
What however you have boldly attempted, you seem to my judgment to have considerably succeeeded in– I cannot but admire the thought and reading and power you have brought to your task—as well as the clearness & force & fancy with which you have often explained & compressed and illustrated your sometimes reluctant materials.
I could point out many passages that have much pleased me—a great deal in the second book, for instance that treats of the poetical faculty—perhaps more particularly that passage, which may have given you very little trouble, in Page 61 beginning—“Oh breathes there” and ending “and Prostrate Israel[”] [6] &c.– But the smaller pieces, I must confess are my more particular delight.– More or less, all of them– The verses to your Father—the sweet ones to your Brother—those page 123—To Somebody—all these please one both for moral and poetical merit—but I hardly know how to praise sufficiently the “Past”, which combines pensive feeling with originality—the Dream—Every Stanza of it—the ancient Lands—Paradise—the Deluge—all is excellent—and most of all—to my taste I mean—the three Stanzas called “the prayer[”]—which in tenderness of thought—and in expression harmonizing with the thought throughout, seems to me all that one could desire.
I wish you to consider this as the sincere expression of my opinion—as far as it may have any value & not as the mere compliments one makes in return for a book.
Fame, I hope if you should persevere seeking her, will not turn out to you what you have so poetically described her, and what in truth she has turned out to so many–
—But you have plenty of time before you– You have not been long choosing and beginning late– Those who are interested for you have told me that you do not at all times spare yourself enough– Consider that at your time of life, all need not be done in a day– I think myself bound to say this to you, because I am aware that the very thanks I have been giving you for what you have been doing are likely enough to stimulate you to be doing still more—and more than is good for you–
You see I am taking more than a cousin’s liberty—but you are docile—and I knew your Father before he was as old as you now are– Without fixing the degree of relationship I beg leave to subscribe myself–
Your affectate Cousin
John Kenyon.
Mrs Kenyon turns from your book to add her acknowledgment to mine.
Address, on cover sheet: Miss Barrett, / Hope End, / near Ledbury.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. John Kenyon was born in Jamaica, distantly related to the Moulton-Barretts (his great-grandmother was the sister of EBB’s great-grandfather). Although he was an old friend of EBB’s father, he is, strangely, not mentioned in any of EBB’s or other extant family letters prior to this time. Doubtless he sought EBB out after the publication of An Essay on Mind.
2. Year provided by the publication of An Essay on Mind.
3. Caroline Curteis (d. 1835), who married Kenyon on 19 January 1822, was his second wife. Mr. Philipps has not been identified.
4. William Paley (1743–1805), English theologian and philosopher. His best-known work is probably A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794).
5. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–80), French philosopher. He held that it was possible to apply logical reasoning in metaphysics and morals with the same precision as in geometry.
6. Pages 61–63; the beginning phrase is actually “Oh! beats there …”
___________________
