2218.5. EBB to Henry Crabb Robinson
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 12.
[London]
[ca. 19 February 1846] [1]
Dear Sir,
I am as ashamed as I ought to be, to have been no less careless than usual, in respect to your Percy books—but the missing numbers had withdrawn themselves to the very end of a deep drawer– I send them to you at last with an apology added to the thanks. For the sonnet I thank you also very much. [2] It is strikingly noble .. & when I am told that Blanco White really wrote it, & that it was published in an annual many years ago, it seems wonderful that a man would have died & made such a sign as this .. this only .. & no after & before!– His guardian-angel wrote it for him perhaps—for he had a good, strong, sincere guardian angel, though somewhat of a weak man himself, & shallow-minded.
What you say of Miss Martineau’s letter [3] is just the truth well said. It is a delightful letter indeed, & made me grateful.
As I am to you, for proposing to let me see the rest of the Percy-books. And .. yes .. if you have not changed your mind. I think certainly I should like to see the others, although perfectly agreeing with you –– or for that reason perhaps, .. & because the “succession of disappointments” never unteaches anybody (or scarcely anybody) from the continual hoping. Also, there are beautiful things occasionally, & they are worth looking for, it seems to me, in the multitude of things–
Let me remain, dear sir,
Yours respectfully & truly
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Miami.
1. Dated by reference to Henry Crabb Robinson’s diary entry of 18 February 1846, where he records that he “read this morning a very interesting letter from Harriet Martineau to Miss Barrett, which she sent me” (Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, ed. Edith J. Morley, 1938, p. 657). See also note 3.
2. “Night and Death,” by Joseph Blanco White (1775–1841), Spanish theologian and poet. The sonnet, dedicated to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first appeared in The Bijou (1828).
3. For Harriet Martineau’s letter of 8 February [1846], addressed to EBB from Ambleside, see The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 51–55.
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