937. EBB to James Russell Lowell [1]
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 298.
50 Wimpole Street– (London).
March 31st 1842.
Sir,
I beg you at last to receive my very earnest thanks for the volume of graceful poetry which I received from you some months ago [2] through the hands of our mutual friend Mr Kenyon. I felt obliged to you & gratified by such a mark of your attention both as a poet & an American—& if I did not say so directly, circumstances have had more to do with that negligence than any degree of insensibility could. Will you try to believe this? There is a natural bloom upon the poems, a one-heartedness with nature, which it is very pleasant to me to recognize. I hope—if you will not scorn the hoping of the stranger whom you first honored .. I hope that you will write on, & not suffer your “ year’s life” to be only one year’s life.
And I remain, Sir,
your obliged
Elizabeth B Barrett–
Address: James Russell Lowell Esqr / Boston.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. For details of EBB’s friendship with Lowell, see the biographical sketch, pp. 373-374.
2. A Year’s Life (1841).
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