617. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 17–19.
74, Gloucester Place,
Monday [March 1838] [1]
I cannot hope, my dearest Miss Mitford, that it may have seemed to you half as long as it has seemed to me since I wrote last to you, and yet it is a month since your delightful letter brought the first pleasure to me at a season of deep sadness. We had heard from the West Indies of the death of poor Papa’s only brother, of one in past times more than an uncle to me, and, notwithstanding all the comfort with which God in his mercy did soften this affliction, it could not but be felt, even as the affection which preceded it had been, and must ever be. Dearest Miss Mitford, the passing away of everything around us would break the hearts of many of us, if we did not know and feel that we are passing too. I long to hear of you, and should have said so before, and have thought day after day I will write to-morrow, and then again, not being very well, I have put it off to some less dull moment for your sake. The turning to spring is always trying, I believe, to affections such as mine, and my strength flags a good deal, and the cough very little; but Dr. Chambers speaks so encouragingly of the probable effect of the coming warm weather, that I take courage and his medicines at the same time, and, “to preserve the harmonies,” [2] and satisfy some curiosity, have been reading Garth’s “Dispensary,” a poem very worthy of its subject. [3] Yes, and, besides, I have been going through heaps of poets (“oh, the profaned name!”) [4] laid up in Dr. Johnson’s warehouses—Duke and Smith, and King and Sprat [5] (never christened in Hippocrene), [6] and Pomfret, with his choice, not mine, and his Pindaric odes, not Pindar’s, in which he exclaims in a rapture—
“Good Heaven would be extremely kind,
Either to strike me dead, or strike me blind,” [7]
when striking him dumb would be more to my mind! By the way, I am not at all sure of that not being as good a line as either of his.
Thank you for your most interesting remarks upon the drama; Victor Hugo’s plays I never read, but will do so. His poems seem to me not very striking, more bare of genius than such of his prose writings, as I have happened to see. And little have I seen of the new school of French literature, and must see and know more of it. De Lamartine’s “Pilgrimage” [8] is the only traveller’s book, except “Sinbad the Sailor,” and “Robinson Crusoe,” that ever pleased me much; and his poetry is holy and beautiful, though deficient, as it appears to me, in concentration of expression and grasp of thought. To speak generally, my abstract idea of a Frenchman is the antithesis of a poet, but pray do not, if the prayer does not come too late, think me quite a bigot. There is nothing, as you say, like the Greeks, our Greeks let them be for the future, and although I can scarcely consent to crowning Philoctetes over all, [9] it would still be more difficult to take a word away from your just praise. The defect of that play is that it is founded upon physical suffering, and its glory is that from the physical suffering is deduced so much moral pathos and purifying energy. The “Œdipus” is wonderful, the sublime truth which pierces through it to your soul like a lightening seems to me to be the humiliating effect of guilt, even when unconsciously incurred. The abasement, the self-abasement, of the proud, high-minded king before the mean, mediocre Creon, not because he is wretched, not because he is blind, but because he is criminal, appears to me a wonderful and most affecting conception. [10] And there is Euripides, with his abandon to the pathetic, and Æschylus who sheds tears like a strong man, and moves you to more because you know that his struggle is to restrain them.
But if the Greeks once begin to be talked of, they will be talked of too much. I should have told you when I wrote last that Mr. Kenyon lent me Mr. Harness’s play, which abounds in gentle and tender touches, and not, I think, might I say so, in much concentration and dramatic power. [11] As to its being a domestic tragedy, I do not object to it on that account, and really believe that I don’t share your preference for imperial tragedies. Do not passion and suffering pervade Nature? Tragedies are everywhere, are they not? Or, at least, their elements are, or is this the pathos of radicalism? My book is almost decided upon being, and thanks for your kind encouragement, dearest Miss Mitford, you, who are always kind. There is a principal poem, called the “Seraphim,” which is rather a dramatic lyric than a lyrical drama, and as long, within twenty or thirty lines, as my translation, “The Prometheus of Æschylus,” and in two parts. I can hardly hope that you will thoroughly like it, but know well that you will try to do so. Other poems, longer or shorter, will make up the volume, not a word of which is yet printed. Would not by E. B. B. stand very well for a name? I have been reading the “Exile,” from Marion Campbell, with much interest and delight; [12] besides, she made me forget Dr. Chambers, and feel how near you were. A pleasant feeling to everybody, but how very pleasant to your affectionate and grateful
E. B. Barrett
P.S.—My kind regards to Dr. Mitford, and Papa’s and my sister’s to you. Our house in Wimpole Street is not yet finished, but we hope to see the beginning of April in it. You must not think I am very bad, only not very brisk, and really feeling more comfortable than I did a fortnight since.
Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 16–19 (as 1837).
1. Dated by the references to EBB’s health, and the impending move to Wimpole Street.
2. Cf. Hazlitt, Table Talk, Essay 22.
3. The Dispensary, a Poem (1699), by Samuel Garth (1661–1719), physician and poet, ridiculed apothecaries and dealt with the first attempts to establish out-patient rooms.
4. Jonson, Poëtaster; or, His Arraignment (1616), IV, 6, 29.
5. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1779–81) included text on Richard Duke (1658–1711), Edmund Smith (1668?–1710), William King (1663–1712) and Thomas Sprat (1636–1713).
6. The fountain on Mt. Helicon that sprang up where the hoof of Pegasus struck the rock. It was sacred to the Muses, and thus signified poetical inspiration.
7. A slight misquotation of lines 10–11 of stanza VI of “Eleazar’s Lamentation Over Jerusalem: Paraphrased Out of Josephus.” This appeared in The Choice: a Poem Written by a Person of Quality (1700) by John Pomfret (1667–1702). Pomfret gave to some of his poems the sub-title “A Pindaric Ode” or “A Pindaric Essay.”
8. Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées et Paysages, pendant un voyage en orient (1835), by Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790–1869). An English translation entitled A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land also appeared in 1835.
9. Sophocles’ Philoctetes deals with the most famous archer of the Trojan War, to whom Hercules gave arrows.
10. At the conclusion of Sophocles’ Œdipus Tyrannos.
11. Welcome and Farewell: a Drama had been published by Miss Mitford’s friend William Harness in 1837, under the pseudonym George Taylor.
12. One of Miss Mitford’s fugitive pieces.
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