1617.7. John Kenyon to EBB
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 8.
[London]
[ca. June 1844]
Dear Coz.
I have gone rapidly thro’ your proof. The more I read of your poem the more I admire & love it–
—My remarks chiefly go to syllables & commas & such small gear—that was our contract, you know.
—But I have made one or two wider comments to which I draw your attention—Yrs always
JK—
p. 83—Bottom. [“]Tho’ the vessel’s prow will quiver”—This seems to me striking—appropriate—and original– I couldn’t fancy what good rhyme you could get to conquer–
—You have come out nobly.
—Is a clear thing & fair
Is a loud thing & bold—
It seems to me that all these lines a little disappoint the ear—for want of another syllable–
—I know that Oh! we live—Oh! we live—has only six syllables—but that I do not heed.
Is a clear thing—and a fair—qu?
88. l. 6
—Rock as softly—for it is all in vain—
—How does the “for” apply here—
—You have before said “lest”—
Rock is forever truely—If it is in vain—why rock ’em—?
I hastily throw out this.
p. 92. I very much doubt the experiment of this compound word on such an awful occasion—They are dangerous—if not absolutely necessary– This is filmy analysis—but the difference between Good & the Best—between Raphael and a good copyist lies in a film—
p. 89—Now I am going to repudiate utterly—after many readings—and taking two opinions on which I rely—the whole of the lyric—beginning as the East Sound blows—I do not ask you to subscribe to my view, but I cannot let it pass as if I liked it. It appears to me my dear Coz—a failure quite– It is meant to be an emphatic curse or threat & if it fail—it fails greatly– There is but one step—you know the rest.
—Do you mean the stress to be laid on the You? This is not the important thing– But yet to me it is important–
—A line continually occurring—should be eminently fit– There is a sort of grotesque childishness in this to me—a sort of fee-fo-fum—an anger insignificantly fierce–
A wind shall smite you—there is no great harm in that—one may bear a pretty strong wind–
—You shall be whitened—a brush would connect that–
—You shall be trod on—as by the Simoom—well if destructively trod on—that is no small matter—but then after the destruction—or pain—if you will—comes the bathos of being what—merely dreadened—more frightened than hurt–
In the next lines my objections become shorter & my friend who bore the first part—as I read it emphatically—were I saw at once repelled by the second–
—You do not mean I apprehend utterly to degrade your Earth Spirits—yet you do– To be spit on is no degradation—when unjustly spit on—as our Saviour was—but to be the Spitter is a great degradation– When Cobbett called Lord Stanley—the Spit—on Stanley—Cobbett’s mob having so treated him—who was the degraded?
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
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