SD1730. John Ruskin to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 366 (in part).

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Saturday Evening, April 22 [–25], 1854.

Dear Miss Mitford,

I have just finished “Atherton,” to my great regret, thinking it one of the sweetest things you have ever written, and receiving from it the same kind of refreshment which I do from lying on the grass in spring. …

April 23rd.—I have had one other feast, however, this Sunday morning in your dear friend’s poems—Elizabeth Browning. I have not had my eyes so often wet for these five years. I had no conception of her power before. I can’t tell you how wonderful I think them. I have been reading the “Valediction,” and the “Years Spinning,” and the “Reed,” and the “Dead Pan,” and the “Dead Baby at Florence,” and the “Caterina to Camoens,” and all for the first time! I only knew her mystical things—younger, I suppose—before.

Tuesday.—I kept this to put another sheet, but can’t keep it longer.

Yours gratefully

J. Ruskin

Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 119–120.

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