SD1199. Sara Coleridge to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 333–334 (in part).
Regent’s Park
1844
My dear Mr. Kenyon, at last I return with thanks the Poems of Miss Barrett, which I now always mention in high terms to any of my acquaintances, when the conversation affords an opportunity. I think my favorites are the “Poet’s Vow,” “A Romance of the Ganges,” “Isobel’s Child” (so like “Christabel” in manner, as mamma and I both thought), “The Island,” “The Deserted Garden,” and “Cowper’s Grave.” But my conception of Miss B——’s poetical merit is formed from lines and stanzas occurring here and there in most of the poems—from the general impression produced by the whole collection, rather than from any number of entire pieces. “The Seraphim” contains very fine passages; and perhaps no other single poem in the volume has impressed me so strongly with the writer’s power; and yet, taken as a whole, with reference not to what others could produce, but with what it ought to be, I confess it does not altogether please me. If there be a subject throughout the range of human thought which demands to be treated (if treated at all as the prominent theme of any metrical composition) with a sober Miltonic majesty of style, rather than with a wild modernism and fantastic rapture, surely that subject is the Crucifixion of a Saviour and the Redemption of a fallen world. Even in that clever translation of the “Prometheus Bound” (for very clever it is), there occur some phrases which want the Hebraic simplicity of the original. “The faded white flower of the Titanic brow”—do you think that quite comes up to the manly broadness and boldness of the Greek Dramatist, or suits the awful circumstances of the Titan fixed upon his rock? There is a flower in both cases, to be sure; but Æschylus meant that the whole outward man of Prometheus would be parched and discolored by the sun’s heat; and this he expressed by a plain but untranslatable Græcism. I think that your cousin should study a noble simplicity, especially as her poetical aims are so high, lest she should be obliged to finish the lofty temples of imagination with brass instead of gold. You see how easy it is to preach even for those who can not practice; but Miss Barrett can practice, and will benefit, I trust, by preaching of more authority than mine, the presumption of which will never reach her ears.
I can not make an end of my preaching, however, without venturing a remark or two on her summary manner of dealing with the Homeric question, and with the opinions of Berkeley. Surely no one who understands what Berkeley’s scheme of Idealism really was would suppose that the poor bishop was bound, in consistency with his metaphysical principles, to let a cart run over him! He tells us plainly that if by material substance he meant only that which is seen and felt, then is he “more sensible of matter’s existence than any other philosopher.” I question whether Miss B—— did not confound Idealism with unreality, as persons new to the subject invariably do. Few metaphysicians would ratify her sentence that Berkeley was “out of his senses;” though none now perhaps believe his system true in fact, or look upon it as other than a platform on which a certain number of pregnant truths were exhibited in a strong point of view. Channing observes how it has influenced the modes of thinking among metaphysicians.
Then, again, Miss B——’s censure of all who believe in the “Homeric speculation” is sweeping indeed. It sweeps away, like chaff before the wind, not only almost all the great scholars and fine critics of learned Germany—not only “the eloquent Villemain,” and numbers of French savans—not only men of genius and learning, such as Wolf and Heyne, and the Italian Vico—but those of the highest poetic feeling, who, both in this and other countries, are converts to the system.
Before I conclude, however, let me add that I do not quarrel with any one for sticking resolutely to the “blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” nor pretend to have formed a decided opinion on this puzzling point upon which great doctors have agreed to differ; though I incline to the belief that, if Homer ever existed, he no more wrote all the books of the “Iliad,” than one Hercules performed the twelve labors ascribed to him. The books, to be sure, are extant, the labors fabulous; but I mean that the one, as the other, may have been a nucleus around whose works those of others were collected, but whose name remained to the whole.
P.S.—Since writing the above, I have again read the “Seraphim,” and am more impressed with its merit than at first. It is full of beauty.
Text: Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge, ed. Edith Coleridge (London, 1873), I, 302–305.
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