SD2561. John Blackwood to George Henry Lewes

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 344 (in part).

Edinburgh

March 17/62.

My dear Lewes

As the books are not particularly new now perhaps we had better alter our title again. …

Your remarks induced me to turn to Mrs. Browning’s poems again. I think you rate her much too high. She is surely strained and artificial to a degree. Did I ever tell you how I posed good old Mr. Kenyon who had sent me a poem by her for Maga. I replied that doubtless it was a noble poem but I would not publish what I could not understand but would print the poem if he could explain certain lines which I marked. The old gentleman was floored and agreed with me.

Text: The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight (New Haven, Conn., 1954–78), 4, 22.

___________________