1570. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 259–260.
[London]
Saturday night [16 March 1844] [1]
I return Mr Burges’s criticism which I omitted to talk to you of, this morning, but which interested me much in the reading. Do let him understand how obliged to him I am for permitting me to look, for a moment, according to his view of the question. Perhaps my poetical sense is not convinced all through; and certainly my critical sense is not worth convincing: but I am delighted to be able to call by the name of Æschylus, under the authority of Mr Burges, those noble electrical lines (electrical for double reasons) which had struck me twenty times as Æschylean, when I read them among the recognized fragments of Sophocles. You hear Æschylus’s footsteps & voice in the lines. No other of the gods cd tread so heavily, or speak so like thundering. [2]
I wrote all this to begin with; hesitating how else to begin. My very dear & kind friend, you understand, .. do you not?, .. through an expression which, whether written or spoken, must remain imperfect, to what a deep full feeling of gratitude, your kindness has moved me?. The good you have done me, & just at the moment when I shd have failed altogether without it, .. & in more than one way, & in a deeper than the obvious degree, all this I know better than you do; & I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart. I never shall forget it, as long as I live to remember anything. The book may fail signally after all, .. that is another question: but I shall not fail, to begin with,—& that I owe to you—for I was falling to pieces in nerves & spirits when you came to help me. I had only enough instinct left to be ashamed, a little, afterwards, of having sent you, in company too with Miss Martineau’s heroic cheerfulness, .. that note of weak because unavailing complaint. It was a long compressed feeling breaking suddenly into words. [3] Forgive & forget that I ever so troubled you .. no, ‘troubled’ is not the word for your kindness!—and remember, as I shall do, the great good you have done me.
May God bless you my dear cousin!
Affectionately yours always
EBB
This note is not to be answered–
I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not seem much to arrange. The type & size of Tennyson’s books, seem, upon examination, to suit my purpose excellently. [4]
Publication: LEBB, I, 168–169.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Date provided by letter 1568, with which EBB sent Miss Martineau’s letter, and by no. 1572 to Moxon.
2. George Burges (1786?–1864), a classical scholar who was said to speak Greek “like a native” (DNB), had published a number of translations of the ancient authors. The criticism to which EBB refers apparently had to do with Sophocles, but we are unable to identify it further.
3. See EBB’s more detailed comment in letter 1576.
4. However, in letter 1572 to Moxon, EBB expressed a preference for the type used for Milnes’s Palm Leaves.
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