SD1191.1. Sara Coleridge to Unidentified Correspondent
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 7.
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[May 1843] [1]
<***> should it be granted, is “too likely to terminate in constant Invalidism”—with nine children around her sick bed. Dora and her housemates are residing for a time at Curwen’s Island.
I have just received the last Quarterly which is most amusing in its cool tergiversations—if we may be allowed to personalize the Review, & give it a back to turn upon Puseyites, and a face to present to ‘Tennyson and his admirers.[’] This change has been effected by the slipping of Mr Croker from out of the Poetical department into the Divinity—or Rituality—to the extrusion of Sewell altogether—a change I think from less bad to worse—for what feeling person does not suffer more in seeing Divinity Crokerized than Poetry? It is a more serious affair. Not that the Article in question though sneered at by men on all sides—(for the Writer seems to be on no side at all)—is to my mind devoid of sense. It contains some good hits on detached points—facts are brought forward which the man of principles may make use of. Some one said that the writer has no notion when his argument tells more for his adversary than himself—but this, as he is of no certain side, nor has any settled principle to defend, can be no inconvenience to his indefinite cause. I am half promised a letter from Mr Wordsworth about my Essay—upon which I will just add that I do not expect (which perhaps I need hardly say)—nor indeed am cruel enough even to wish that you should read it—you who “left polemic folios in the dust” even when you lived in the country—<and I have not ruffled your mind, I dare say, against one of the Tracts for the Issues.> [2] But I wish that some, not one of your blessed ones are shut out from my Kingdom of Heaven. It is my creed—a Catholic creed I think it is, that all who love God and seek to please him, not only will but must be, and in great measure are blest. Indeed the difficulty is not about them—but about those who do not, and, as it would seem, cannot love God or please Him. So that all comes back to the question—never to be solved, respecting the origin of evil, which was since the world began. I do not however ask you to turn your attention—and devote your energies to the solution of it, but merely, if you have accompanied my rambling pen thus far to excuse the trouble I have given you [3] & believe me
very sincerely yours
Sara Coleridge
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Dated by the appearance of Croker’s article, “Rubrics and Ritual,” in The Quarterly Review, May 1843, 232–290.
2. An afterthought inserted between lines.
3. This fragment, in EBB’s possession when she left Wimpole Street, was probably addressed to John Kenyon.
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