1163.3. John Kenyon to EBB

Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 6.

4 H. P.

Wednesday [March 1843]

Thank you dear Cousin for your sonnets again—I shall—being empowered—like other empowered folk—act according to my own indiscretion. Now another remark occurs to me—you see how insolent your foolish docility makes me. In the two last lines of the Stanza—I cannot recal [sic] the words exactly—about Venus—you make her cease to weep for Adonis–

Now you have not, if I remember, inferred any moral change—any “new birth.” I do not use the phrase irreverently but as expressing my meaning—as to the other deities and you shall not (with my good leave) “shake the disposition” of poor Venus more than of the other Gods & Goddesses. Neither she nor the Eagle under this new dispensation ought to become unloving of Adonis or of Jove–

—Think of our first parents, under their new dispensation, leaving Paradise—“faithful how they stood”– They—hand in hand—thru Eden took their solitary way—how deeply touching– Do you remember the poor degraded Girl in Oliver Twist—“who clung to her Ruffian to the last[”]–

—And does love die—indeed with breath? Or rules he in the realms of Death? But even if you assent to my criticism—do not get rid of the Classical “Ai Adonis[”]—but modify it—as you will know how– Is not all this very impertinent– JK—

Another impertinence—Is transmitted a good word—does it not imply space or time interposed between giver & receiver. We transmit a letter to India—an intimation to posterity– I should say “transfused into one heart”—only that I very much prefer the subjunctive—“Might fuse into one heart”—[“]might pour into one heart”—because it is in the nature of an hypothesis—not of an actual possibility. Excuse my metaphysics—“fuse” is best I think.

Pray send me back Homer, but by Vol: when you have read them.

Address: Miss E. B. Barrett.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

___________________