523. EBB to Thomas Noon Talfourd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 170–171.
74 Gloucester Place.
January 21st 1836.
Sir,
I have been a long time in thanking you for your gratifying present of the Ion. [1] The delay was, in the first place, caused by my not being in London for many weeks after it was placed in Mr Valpy’s hands for me; not then, & not since, by any want of appreciation on my part, either of the work or of its writer’s flattering attention towards me. Suffer me Sir, to thank you now for both: and when I have done so, let me thank you again & with a deeper emphasis, altho’ with an humble English voice, for the present which you have made to English literature,—for the character of that present,—for the position assumed by your tragedy, hostile, in its nobleness, to the wingless footless creeping genius of the age—‘dust doth it eat’ [2] — Surely English voices should thank you for not sitting in the seat of the Utilitarians,—for proving to your countrymen, by the Greek water in your chalice, how the old Greek fountains, tho’ hewn out of the natural rock by unclean hands, bore waters more like in taste & colour to the pure ones of the four Edenic rivers, than an English Benthamite [3] can show in all his cisterns of lead;—for proving that poetry has one face with ideal virtue—the shadow & similitude of the virtue lost in Eden, which visits the souls of fallen men “in thoughts from the visions of the night”. [4]
Should a critic say of your work (he may say it) that it is characterized rather by the high tone of sentiment pervading it, than by its abstract poetry,—Poetry herself may answer that such blame is praise. But there are not unfrequent passages admirable for their abstract poetry. Dare I observe that the most perceptible defect appears to me to arise from a redundancy in the language? May I observe besides that the power of concentrating thought in poetry, is a more essential one, than as it is generally estimated? May this not be paused over & considered .. whether the great distinction between poets & poetical writers be not referable to the presence or absence of such power? And is not a cause of our poetical degeneracy involved in it?
When you say
“Play not the spendthrift with a great despair,
But use it nobly”— [5]
you prove, Sir, that you have the power, & can “use it nobly”. So did the ancient Greeks! So did the ancient English—the old dramatists!—— The modernness of the extant Musæus is detected in his wordiness: [6] and we, in our day, may sigh many sighs to match the expletives on all sides of us! The poetry of the author of Ion has no communion with vulgar expletives: but I venture to refer him,—among other frequent instances of redundancy,—to his simile of the burning pine [7] —where the imagination is spread over too wide a surface; and the grasp of the reader’s mind upon a fine figure, becomes necessarily a good deal slackened, by the branching diction with wh. the figure is enlarged.
Is this great presumption? Yet how can an humble individual better show her sense of an undeserved honor, than by being sincere?
She remains, Sir,
with much respect,
your obliged servant
E B Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Iowa. EBB’s draft of this letter is at ABL.
1. This volume, inscribed by Talfourd, formed lot 1131 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2243).
2. Cf. Genesis, 3:14.
3. Adherent of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), Utilitarian philosopher, author of Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), who sought the greatest good for the greatest number.
4. Job, 4:13.
5. Act I, sc. 1 of Ion, slightly misquoted.
6. Musæus Grammaticus (fl, ca, 6th century A.D.), author of the romantic poem Hero and Leander.
7. A passage in act II, sc. 3, commencing: “How it stood / One glorious moment, fringed and wreathed with fire / Which show’d the inward graces of its shape, / Uncumber’d now …”
___________________
