1828. EBB to Allan Park Paton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 50.
50 Wimpole Street
Jan. 29. 1845.
Dear Sir
I beg you to allow me to thank you for the honour you have done me in sending these poems, in which I seem to see the footsteps of no ordinary Faculty. The ‘Strange Fancy’ shows power both of fancy & expression; and the ‘Go on, o poet’, a right sense of the poet’s vocation, .. which is to the pointing finger as well as to the crowning laurel, & to strongheartedness in either relation. I do not like so much the ‘Hurrah for the rain’, on account of the plagiarism on Barry Cornwall’s lyric of ‘Death.’ [1] ‘The anatomical sketch,’ again, shows remarkable vigour. [2]
Altogether I must venture to repeat that the writer of these poems has, to my apprehension, a natural gift, which justifies the most patient cultivation, & is likely to reward the most painful: and I wish to the soil .. beneath the Heather .. as much sunshine & dew as may serve to brighten & refresh into life & observation, every latent seed of beauty, .. & of truth, which is beauty still.
Yours in respect & sympathy
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
Publication: Kind Words From a Sick Room (Greenock, 1891), p. 5.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Presumably EBB refers to Cornwall’s “King Death,” which was published in 1832.
2. “An Anatomical Sketch,” “A Strange Fancy,” “Go on, oh Poet,” and “Hurrah For The Rain” all appeared in the Greenock Advertiser the previous year under the pseudonym “Heather,” hence EBB’s allusion to that name (see letter 1818). Paton’s verses were collected and published in Poems in September 1845.
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