Correspondence

1578.5.  John Kenyon to EBB

Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 8.

[Southsea]

[25 March 1844]

I never liked that last Stanza if I may dare to say so. It has always seemed to me unpoetically preceptive—something of the rod and ferule in it. If truest truth be fairest beauty—it is so from the necessity of things—the Poet would feel and in his capacity of poet love it and clutch at it as being both true and beautiful—and would resent—I think—the being told that it was his duty and that therefore he must do it. Do keep your grand lyric as lyrical as you can.

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam Jungere si velit– I forget & you know the rest.

Address: Miss Barrett / No 50 Wimpole Str / London.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

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