568. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 245–247.
74 Gloucester Place.
Saturday. [mid-May 1837] [1]
My dear Lady Margaret,
I am very much obliged by your kindness in allowing me to read the MS dramatic poems– It seems to me that the character of your writing is not sufficiently concentrated & passionate for tragic poetry—and that the moral beauty of gentle & tender & holy feeling is not eminent enough with glaring light & angular shadow, to constitute of itself the dramatic. Such a moral beauty—& it pervades what you write—is however a better & happier thing than dramatic excellence. You will forgive my saying this much I am sure. I am used you know, to the thunders & lightenings of tragedy, as we see it in Greece—or here in England, in the days of Elizabeth. You will remind me that a Drama is not a tragedy. It is not—but tho’ the action of either is different—their elements of composition appear to me the same—& those are tempestuous.
I am afraid by your little note, & the recommendation to return the MS book quickly to the care of Lord Somers, that I am to be disappointed in my hope of seeing you dear Lady Margaret, this May. Do let me hear what your plans are—if I may ask– Ours are wrapt up in the map of London,—altho’ no house is taken for us yet.
I was thankful for the note from Reigate—& not at all surprised at the verdict about my New Monthly poems. [2] I will try to keep clear of the “abyss”—and yet my character was once given by a foreigner, in an Italian translation of an English word which he dared not pronounce—testa lunga—headlong—a fatal disposition for any one at the verge of an abyss. But I would not indeed be ‘affected’ for the world– I mean I would not appear so– I could not—(to do myself justice) be so actually,—at least not in poetry. Everybody has some kind of nature,—& my creed is, that it comes out in their poetry.
But I spoke of Italian, & must tell you that I have been much pleased lately in reading Lady Dacre’s translations from Petrarch, which she has very kindly sent me. They are elegant & classical,—& she has managed skillfully to double & redouble her rhymes in the manner of her original, & be graceful all the while. I never had an enthusiasm for Petrarch—and the eternal Doubt which hangs around his poetry, as to whether he loved a woman an abstraction or a cloud, seems to me quite enough to convict him of a deficiency in earnestness & intensity. Nevertheless he has written beautifully, if not what is beautiful. Do admit the distinction.
And do read Bulwer’s Athens! [3] It is delightful. No want of earnestness & intensity there. His criticisms on the Greek poets are made with a poet’s soul—and if there is any phrenzy in the book, which may be predicated of it by the cold & the slow, it is a poet’s ‘fine phrenzy’. [4] Bulwer has fire enough to warm any heart frozen by Mitford [5] —which is saying much. If he is not an historian, he is something greater.
I have heard a good deal lately from my friend Mr Kenyon, of Mrs Butler—and I am just about to read her Star of Seville. The “good deal” means much good.
I hope you found Lord Somers very well,—& that this summer will bring happiness to you from man & God. The sight of the green hills & lovely sky is in itself a happy thing—but there is a remarkable expression of the psalmist, & one which has sometimes occurred to me in the midst of the stillness & the glory of creation– “The Lord who made heaven & earth bless thee out of Zion” [6] —showing that the real blessing comes rather from the Church’s Lord than from the Earth’s creator.
I have written a long note in a hurried way. May it be found legible!–
Your Ladyship’s
affectionate & obliged
E B Barrett
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.
1. Dated by reference to the gift of Lady Dacre’s book and EBB’s own reference to May.
2. “The Poet’s Vow” and “The Island,” in the issues of October 1836 and January 1837.
3. Athens, Its Rise and Fall (1837).
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, 1, 12.
5. Miss Mitford’s uncle, William Mitford (1744–1827), historian, whose principal work was The History of Greece in eight volumes (1784–1810). EBB refers to him in line 291 of An Essay on Mind: “And ultra Mitford soar’d to libel Greece!” In a note, EBB acknowledges his “learning and accuracy in detail” but says that “prejudices, arising probably from early habits and associations, have deformed his work.”
6. Psalms, 134:3.
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