1858. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 113–114.
[London]
6 March. [1845] [1]
Thank you dearest Mr Kenyon—they are very fine. The poetry is in them, rather than in Blair. [2] And now I send them back, & Cunningham & Jerrold, with thanks on thanks,—and if you will be kind enough not to insist on my reading the Letters to Travis [3] within the “hour,” they shall wait for the ‘Responsibility,’ [4] & the two go to you together.
And as to the tiring, it has not been much, & the happy day was well worth being tired for. It is better to be tired with pleasure than with frost; & if I have the last fatigue too, why it is March, & it is the hour of my martyrdom always. But I am not ill—only uncomfortable.
Ah—the “relenting”!—it is rather a bad sign I am afraid,—notwithstanding the subtlety of your consolations—but I stroke down my philosophy, to make it shine, like a cat’s back in the dark. The argument from more deserving poets who prosper less, is not very comforting——is it? I trow not–
But as to the review—be sure, be very sure that it is not Mr Browning’s. How you could think even, of Mr Browning, surprises me. Now as for me, I know as well as he does himself, that he has had nothing to do with it–
I should rather suspect Mr Westwood the author of some fugitive poems who writes to me sometimes—& the suspicion having occurred to me, I have written to put the question directly. [5] You shall hear, if I hear in reply.
May God bless you always. I have heard from dear Miss Mitford.
Ever affectionately yours
EBB.
Publication: LEBB, I, 245–246.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by further discussion of the authorship of a favourable review in The Metropolitan Magazine (March 1845).
2. Perhaps a reference to a new edition (1845) of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres by Hugh Blair.
3. Doubtless the Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis In Answer to his Defence of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, I John V. 7 (1790) by Richard Porson.
4. We have been unable to identify the title referred to by EBB.
___________________
