625.5. EBB to John Kenyon
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 4.
[London]
[ca. 15 April 1838] [1]
<***> ‘The Whisper’ is full of admiration. Mr Milnes’s poetry belongs to a school—Tennyson’s,—and altho the poetry has sufficient power & originality of nature to be free of any such, yet to that school, only poets can belong,—& I cannot help loving (indeed I never try) the quaint involutions of language into a weird music, & the mystical suggestivness of fancy & thought, which are its main characteristics. <…>
The poems called <…‘>Youth’, ‘The Lay of the humble’, ‘Familiar Love’, ‘The Long ago’ [‘]The curse of Life’ Life in Death, the two sonnets on happiness, & parts of ‘moments’ are what have most pleased me, but not all. These are of exceeding beauty,—& I am sure you will think so.
On the other hand, it appears to me that there is apt to be in the poetry of this volume, rather
<…>
in some of <…> were as more <suitable> for school teaching, than belonging to a school necessarily involves.
I have sometimes thought that if I were Nature & wanted to “make a poet of my own” out of modern materials, I would join together Shelley’s visionariness & Byron’s intensity,—admitting Wordsworth’s magnanimity of simplicity, & Coleridge’s
<…>
Do forgive this long prosing—you must thank your own kindness (after I have thanked it) for the same,—in sending the book to me.
Dear Mr Kenyon, you cannot doubt that Mrs Hedley will be delighted & flattered in receiving your work– And to judge for <***>
Address: John Kenyon Esqr.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Trinity College, Cambridge.
1. EBB mentions having written this letter to Miss Mitford, [16-24 April 1838]. The manuscript is four pages in length, the tops of which have been torn away.
___________________
