SD1232. John Kenyon to Henry Crabb Robinson

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 334 (in part).

40. York Terrace

Aug. 14: 1845

… I had bought the Prospective or rather written to have it sent to E.B.B. when I was in Hampshire. It is a most favorable praise, but not I think more than she deserves– Faults she has in abundance—but She is a Poet– Other folk’s verses—that clever and accomplished Mrs Nortons for example—after E B B-s sound like well written or well rhymed rhetoric (philosophy if you will) but not poetry—that poetry at least which touches the inner being—and makes [us] respond from the depths of our moral or spiritual nature. or even the depths (tho’ not so deep as the other) of our merely intellectual nature– It is this stirring both of the intellect and the imagination, or moral being as in your two (of the Moderns) Wordsworth & Goethe, which makes great Poets.– But this is old prosing …

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Dr. Williams’s Library.

___________________