1178. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 10.
[London]
Tuesday. [mid-March 1843] [1]
Thank you, my dear cousin, for Mr Longfellow’s verses [2] —a whole book of which I never saw before, & never liked him so little as in the same– But I suppose verses of this sort are meant to be light & insigni[fi]cative—he speaketh not “as to wise men”– [3]
And now I will not wait any longer to show to you that I have tried to alter the ‘Pan’ according to your very ‘wise’ criticisms– Have I done good or harm, in the manner of the changes? and is the additional stanza right at all? I send it all to you in the rough state, to hear your mind before I copy fairly—for when I set about “correcting,” I am too conscious of doing it often “de profundis” [4] of stupidity & of pulling my verses with me from bad to worse–
Read it at your leisure .. quite .. I entreat of you– I wd not send it if I did not trust that you would–
Affectionately yours
EBB
Address: John Kenyon Esqr / 4 Harley Place.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter and the three following letters to Kenyon most probably fall between no. 1167, with which EBB first sends her manuscripts to him, and no. 1196, in which EBB tells her brother, George, that in regard to “The Dead Pan” she has “come to a prosperous conclusion.”
2. Probably Ballads and Other Poems (1842), which included “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “Excelsior.”
3. Cf. Esther, 1:13.
4. “Out of the depths,” the opening words of Psalm 130.
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