2232. EBB to Henry Crabb Robinson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 114–115.
50 Wimpole Street
Friday– [March 1846] [1]
I thank you, dear Sir, for your ready kindness about the books, which all my carelessness has not frightened back from its charity.
And will you, while I am addressing myself to you, allow me to explain what I meant by the word ‘shallow-minded’ applied to Blanco White [2] —for I would not have you think that I could presume to deny the claim to respect of a man of ability & sensitive conscience, such as he must be in the eyes of all who can see– There is a proverb you remember to the effect that ‘still water runs deepest’. [3] Now if you objected to that proverb on the ground that a saucerful of water, no deeper than wets the end of your finger, is ‘still’ beside—would it shake the authority of the proverb, do you imagine, with whatever verity of particular truth? And thus in respect to Blanco White– We are not called on to consider him in comparison with the multitude who believe just as they go to sleep, from an animal necessity of mental repose .. they are neither shallow nor deep, these men—they are ‘dust & ashes’ soul & all .. a sprinkle of dust, which the dew of God’s providence just moistens enough to prevent it from being blown away—dry enough, nevertheless, & quite safe from any possible application of proverbs upon “still water”–
To measure Blanco White’s mind therefore with the minds of thinkers, is all that I intended when I called it ‘shallow’—& I cannot help coming back to my word & its meaning, .. for surely he was shallow in the usual acceptation of the term. <His stream made a great noise among the pebbles.> [4] He had a restless intellect, which could not rest in the infinite nor believe what it was impossible for him to measure. What are we to say of a man who passed his whole life & employed the whole activity of his being in trying on his own hand .. (“this little hand”!) a multitude of dogmas, as if he were trying on so many gloves? What is the characteristic of such a man?—who could call him deep & great? Not I, indeed. He had a vast conscientiousness, & a ‘|defect|’, I fancy, of pure reason,—&, so constituted, not even his guardian angel, whom we agree to admire, could give him peace except by opening the grave to him. Poor Blanco White! I covet your esteem sufficiently, dear Sir, to desire you to believe of me that I could not speak with intentional disrespect of such a man,—however obstinately I hold to my epithets .. while I remain
Your sincerely obliged
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett–
Docket, in unidentified hand: March 1846.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Dr. Williams’s Library, London.
1. Date provided by docket.
2. Joseph Blanco White (1775–1841) left the priesthood and Spain in 1810 to come to England where he started a journal called El Español, with the assistance of Lord Holland. It might have been John Hamilton Thom’s 1845 biography, a review of which had appeared just a few months earlier in The Westminster Review (December 1845), that prompted this exchange about the Spanish cleric.
3. Cf. “Altissimaque flumina minimo sono labi”; “The deepest rivers flow with the least sound” (Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander, VII, iv, 13).
4. Passage in angle brackets interpolated between the lines as an afterthought.
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