SD803. Mary Russell Mitford to William Harness
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 330 (in part).
Three Mile Cross,
July, 1836.
I think, after all, that you will come round to us in the matter of Miss Barrett. To say nothing of the sweetness and feeling of some of her former poems (the “Stanzas to a Poet’s Child,” for instance, and those called “The Sea Mew,” in Miss Courtenay’s Album), as well as their wonderful clearness and transparency of diction, there is a force, a vigour, and a tension, about the preface to the “Prometheus,” which seems to be unmatched in modern prose. Depend upon it that, putting the learning out of the question, she is a most remarkable young woman. I have her “Essay on Mind” (written before she was seventeen, and published two years after), which, and the notes to it, contain allusions to books, as if known by everybody, which Henry Cary declared to me no young man of his day at Oxford had ever looked into. Then she is such a sweet creature! You must make her acquaintance next winter. Mary and she will delight in each other; and it is the way to please one who loves to please us all—Mr. Kenyon.
I have been reading Charles and Alfred Tennyson’s Poems. Have you read them? If not, do. You will like them, to use Mr. Chorley’s phrase, “in spite of themselves.” Also, I have just had a present of a most exquisite poem, which old Mr. Cary (the translator of Dante and Pindar) thinks more highly of than any poem of the present day—“Sylvia; or, the May Queen,” published in ’27 by George Darley. Did you ever hear of it? I never did until the other day. Mrs. Cary has given it to me. It is exquisite—something between the “Faithful Shepherdess” and the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Would you like to see it? The author is the son of a rich alderman of Dublin, who disinherited him because he would write poetry; and now he supports himself by writing in the magazines.
If “Conti the Discontented” comes in your way, read it. The author is a most admirable young man, a friend of Mrs. Hemans, and about to publish her correspondence and literary life. I had a tremendous job in finding her letters to me—such is the state of my papers.
Yours most sincerely,
M.R.M.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 55–56.
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