Correspondence

556.  EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 222.

74 Gloucester Place

Monday morng. [ca. February 1837] [1]

My dear Lady Margaret,

I send you two magazines & two Athenæums; [2] each of which has something of mine in it. I shall the more care to have your opinion (I mean of the poems—not of the ‘Thoughts’ which is only meant to be nonsense) as I feel that I have written of late more from the impulses of my own mind than I ever did before—& that therefore any judgment upon the writing will be a directer judgment upon the writer. But because I tell you dear Lady Margaret, this feeling of my own,—dont let it prevent your being very sincere & downright in your criticisms.

Your affectionate

E B Barrett.

I am sorry that the Romaunt of Margret has been lent away—but I will try to get it back again, before you quite go away. The island, under the change of Editors, was as you see printed, or rather misprinted sadly, & the initials omitted.

Address, on integral page: The Lady Margaret Cocks.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.

1. Dated by reference to “The Island.”

2. The New Monthly Magazine for October 1836 (“The Poet’s Vow”) and January 1837 (“The Island”), and The Athenæum, 2 and 23 July 1836 (“The Seaside Walk” and “A Thought on Thoughts”).

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