Chapter II: Part 2

Is the poem under your thumb, emerging from it? and in what metre? May I ask such questions?

And does Mr. Carlyle tell you that he has forbidden all 'singing' to this perverse and froward generation, which should work and not sing? And have you told Mr. Carlyle that song is work, and also the condition of work? I am a devout sitter at his feet--and it is an effort to me to think him wrong in anything--and once when he told me to write prose and not verse, I fancied that his opinion was I had mistaken my calling,--a fancy which in infinite kindness and gentleness he stooped immediately to correct. I never shall forget the grace of that kindness--but then! For _him_ to have thought ill of _me_, would not have been strange--I often think ill of myself, as God knows. But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season, the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my thoughts ever since. I do not know him personally at all. But as his disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems, and I heard from him as a consequence. 'Dear and noble' he is indeed--and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You feel it so--do you not? And the 'dear sir' has let him have the 'letter of Cromwell,' I hope; and satisfied 'the obedient servant.' The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the Romans in the farmyard--and it seems all quite natural that it should be so, both to geese and Romans!

But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for reasons which I know and for reasons which I don't know. You will let me be grateful to you,--will you not? You must, if you will or not. And also--I would not wait for more leave--if I could but see your desk--as I do your death's heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.

Ever faithfully yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Wednesday Morning--Spring!
[Post-mark, February 26, 1845.]

Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in Spring I shall see you, surely see you--for when did I once fail to get whatever I had set my heart upon? As I ask myself sometimes, with a strange fear.

I took up this paper to write a great deal--now, I don't think I shall write much--'I shall see you,' I say!

That 'Luria' you enquire about, shall be my last play--for it is but a play, woe's me! I have one done here, 'A Soul's Tragedy,' as it is properly enough called, but _that_ would not do to end with (end I will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello's country, and devotes himself to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows--all in my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan, good true fellow, this one), and Domizia the Lady--loosen all these on dear foolish (ravishing must his folly be), golden-hearted Luria, all these with their worldly-wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways; and, for me, the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with these as with him,--so there can no good come of keeping this wild company any longer, and 'Luria' and the other sadder ruin of one Chiappino--these got rid of, I will do as you bid me, and--say first I have some Romances and Lyrics, all dramatic, to dispatch, and _then_, I shall stoop of a sudden under and out of this dancing ring of men and women hand in hand, and stand still awhile, should my eyes dazzle, and when that's over, they will be gone and you will be there, _pas vrai_? For, as I think I told you, I always shiver involuntarily when I look--no, glance--at this First Poem of mine to be. '_Now_,' I call it, what, upon my soul,--for a solemn matter it is,--what is to be done _now_, believed _now_, so far as it has been revealed to me--solemn words, truly--and to find myself writing them to any one else! Enough now.

I know Tennyson 'face to face,'--no more than that. I know Carlyle and love him--know him so well, that I would have told you he had shaken that grand head of his at 'singing,' so thoroughly does he love and live by it. When I last saw him, a fortnight ago, he turned, from I don't know what other talk, quite abruptly on me with, 'Did you never try to write a _Song_? Of all things in the world, _that_ I should be proudest to do.' Then came his definition of a song--then, with an appealing look to Mrs. C., 'I always say that some day in _spite of nature and my stars_, I shall burst into a song' (he is not mechanically 'musical,' he meant, and the music is the poetry, he holds, and should enwrap the thought as Donne says 'an amber-drop enwraps a bee'), and then he began to recite an old Scotch song, stopping at the first rude couplet, 'The beginning words are merely to set the tune, they tell me'--and then again at the couplet about--or, to the effect that--'give me' (but in broad Scotch) 'give me but my lass, I care not for my cogie.' '_He says_,' quoth Carlyle magisterially, 'that if you allow him the love of his lass, you may take away all else, even his cogie, his cup or can, and he cares not,' just as a professor expounds Lycophron. And just before I left England, six months ago, did not I hear him croon, if not certainly sing, 'Charlie is my darling' ('my _darling_' with an adoring emphasis), and then he stood back, as it were, from the song, to look at it better, and said 'How must that notion of ideal wondrous perfection have impressed itself in this old Jacobite's "young Cavalier"--("They go to save their land, and the _young Cavalier_!!")--when I who care nothing about such a rag of a man, cannot but feel as he felt, in speaking his words after him!' After saying which, he would be sure to counsel everybody to get their heads clear of all singing! Don't let me forget to clap hands, we got the letter, dearly bought as it was by the 'Dear Sirs,' &c., and insignificant scrap as it proved, but still it is got, to my encouragement in diplomacy.

Who told you of my sculls and spider webs--Horne? Last year I petted extraordinarily a fine fellow, (a _garden_ spider--there was the singularity,--the thin clever-even-for-a-spider-sort, and they are _so_ 'spirited and sly,' all of them--this kind makes a long cone of web, with a square chamber of vantage at the end, and there he sits loosely and looks about), a great fellow that housed himself, with real gusto, in the jaws of a great scull, whence he watched me as I wrote, and I remember speaking to Horne about his good points. Phrenologists look gravely at that great scull, by the way, and hope, in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end. He looks quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind. I have no little insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same--portraits obliged to face each other for ever,--prints put together in portfolios. My Polidoro's perfect Andromeda along with 'Boors Carousing,' by Ostade,--where I found her,--my own father's doing, or I would say more.

And when I have said I like 'Pippa' better than anything else I have done yet, I shall have answered all you bade me. And now may _I_ begin questioning? No,--for it is all a pure delight to me, so that you do but write. I never was without good, kind, generous friends and lovers, so they say--so they were and are,--perhaps they came at the wrong time--I never wanted them--though that makes no difference in my gratitude I trust,--but I know myself--surely--and always have done so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, _his_ marginal note that 'the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in a sane human being.' So I never deceived myself much, nor called my feelings for people other than they were. And who has a right to say, if I have not, that I had, but I said that, supernatural or no. Pray tell me, too, of your present doings and projects, and never write yourself 'grateful' to me, who _am_ grateful, very grateful to you,--for none of your words but I take in earnest--and tell me if Spring _be not_ coming, come, and I will take to writing the gravest of letters, because this beginning is for gladness' sake, like Carlyle's song couplet. My head aches a little to-day too, and, as poor dear Kirke White said to the moon, from his heap of mathematical papers,

'I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so--mildly sweet.'

Out on the foolish phrase, but there's hard rhyming without it.

Ever yours faithfully,

ROBERT BROWNING.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.

Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new 'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets. To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow--it feels as cold underfoot--and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart, and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. _That_ is my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the _new style_! A little later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at all. How happy you are, to be able to listen to the 'birds' without the commentary of the east wind, which, like other commentaries, spoils the music. And how happy I am to listen to you, when you write such kind open-hearted letters to me! I am delighted to hear all you say to me of yourself, and 'Luria,' and the spider, and to do him no dishonour in the association, of the great teacher of the age, Carlyle, who is also yours and mine. He fills the office of a poet--does he not?--by analysing humanity back into its elements, to the destruction of the conventions of the hour. That is--strictly speaking--the office of the poet, is it not?--and he discharges it fully, and with a wider intelligibility perhaps as far as the contemporary period is concerned, than if he did forthwith 'burst into a song.'

But how I do wander!--I meant to say, and I will call myself back to say, that spring will really come some day I hope and believe, and the warm settled weather with it, and that then I shall be probably fitter for certain pleasures than I can appear even to myself now.

And, in the meantime, I seem to see 'Luria' instead of you; I have visions and dream dreams. And the 'Soul's Tragedy,' which sounds to me like the step of a ghost of an old Drama! and you are not to think that I blaspheme the Drama, dear Mr. Browning; or that I ever thought of exhorting you to give up the 'solemn robes' and tread of the buskin. It is the theatre which vulgarises these things; the modern theatre in which we see no altar! where the thymelé is replaced by the caprice of a popular actor. And also, I have a fancy that your great dramatic power would work more clearly and audibly in the less definite mould--but you ride your own faculty as Oceanus did his sea-horse, 'directing it by your will'; and woe to the impertinence, which would dare to say 'turn this way' or 'turn from that way'--it should not be _my_ impertinence. Do not think I blaspheme the Drama. I have gone through 'all such reading as should never be read' (that is, by women!), through my love of it on the contrary. And the dramatic faculty is strong in you--and therefore, as 'I speak unto a wise man, judge what I say.'

For myself and my own doings, you shall hear directly what I have been doing, and what I am about to do. Some years ago, as perhaps you may have heard, (but I hope not, for the fewer who hear of it the better)--some years ago, I translated or rather _undid_ into English, the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus. To speak of this production moderately (not modestly), it is the most miserable of all miserable versions of the class. It was completed (in the first place) in thirteen days--the iambics thrown into blank verse, the lyrics into rhymed octosyllabics and the like,--and the whole together as cold as Caucasus, and as flat as the nearest plain. To account for this, the haste may be something; but if my mind had been properly awakened at the time, I might have made still more haste and done it better. Well,--the comfort is, that the little book was unadvertised and unknown, and that most of the copies (through my entreaty of my father) are shut up in the wardrobe of his bedroom. If ever I get well I shall show my joy by making a bonfire of them. In the meantime, the recollection of this sin of mine has been my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst not say I did it'--I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an honest straightforward proof of repentance--was it not? and I have completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If Æschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed according to his claims, but in proportion to my faculty. Whether I shall ever publish or not (remember) remains to be considered--that is a different side of the subject. If I do, it _may_ be in a magazine--or--but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,--not a long poem, but a monologue of Æschylus as he sate a blind exile on the flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before the eagle cracked his great massy skull with a stone.

But my chief _intention_ just now is the writing of a sort of novel-poem--a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,' running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so, meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my intention. It is not mature enough yet to be called a plan. I am waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one, and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties with them in the treatment.

Who told me of your skulls and spiders? Why, couldn't I know it without being told? Did Cornelius Agrippa know nothing without being told? Mr. Horne never spoke it to my ears--(I never saw him face to face in my life, although we have corresponded for long and long), and he never wrote it to my eyes. Perhaps he does not know that I know it. Well, then! if I were to say that _I heard it from you yourself_, how would you answer? _And it was so._ Why, are you not aware that these are the days of mesmerism and clairvoyance? Are you an infidel? I have believed in your skulls for the last year, for my part.

And I have some sympathy in your habit of feeling for chairs and tables. I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude. Other books I used to treat in a like manner--and to talk to the trees and the flowers, was a natural inclination--but between me and that time, the cypresses grow thick and dark.

Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they _do_, are they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them _un_fulfilled? Oh, this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of the window--at least, for me.

Of course you are _self-conscious_--How could you be a poet otherwise? Tell me.

Ever faithfully yours,

E.B.B.

And was the little book written with Mr. Mill, pure metaphysics, or what?

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].

Dear Miss Barrett,--I seem to find of a sudden--surely I knew before--anyhow, I _do_ find now, that with the octaves on octaves of quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this morning, 'just escaping' &c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do! See now, this sad feeling is so strange to me, that I must write it out, _must_, and you might give me great, the greatest pleasure for years and yet find me as passive as a stone used to wine libations, and as ready in expressing my sense of them, but when I am pained, I find the old theory of the uselessness of communicating the circumstances of it, singularly untenable. I have been 'spoiled' in this world--to such an extent, indeed, that I often _reason_ out--make clear to myself--that I might very properly, so far as myself am concerned, take any step that would peril the whole of my future happiness--because the past is gained, secure, and on record; and, though not another of the old days should dawn on me, I shall not have lost my life, no! Out of all which you are--please--to make a sort of sense, if you can, so as to express that I have been deeply struck to find a new real unmistakable sorrow along with these as real but not so new joys you have given me. How strangely this connects itself in my mind with another subject in your note! I looked at that translation for a minute, not longer, years ago, knowing nothing about it or you, and I _only_ looked to see what rendering a passage had received that was often in my thoughts.[1] I forget your version (it was not _yours_, my _'yours' then_; I mean I had no extraordinary interest about it), but the original makes Prometheus (telling over his bestowments towards human happiness) say, as something [Greek: peraiterô tônde], that he stopped mortals [Greek: mê proderkesthai moron--to poion eurôn], asks the Chorus, [Greek: têsde pharmakon nosou]? Whereto he replies, [Greek: tuphlas en autois elpidas katôkisa] (what you hear men dissertate upon by the hour, as proving the immortality of the soul apart from revelation, undying yearnings, restless longings, instinctive desires which, unless to be eventually indulged, it were cruel to plant in us, &c. &c.). But, [Greek: meg' ôphelêma tout' edôrêsô brotois]! concludes the chorus, like a sigh from the admitted Eleusinian Æschylus was! You cannot think how this foolish circumstance struck me this evening, so I thought I would e'en tell you at once and be done with it. Are you not my dear friend already, and shall I not use you? And pray you not to 'lean out of the window' when my own foot is only on the stair; do wait a little for

Yours _ever_,

R.B.

[Footnote 1: The following is the version of the passage in Mrs. Browning's later translation of the 'Prometheus' (II. 247-251 of the original):

_Prom._ I did restrain besides
My mortals from premeditating death.

_Cho._ How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?

_Prom._ I set blind hopes to inhabit in their house.

_Cho._ By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.]

_E.B.B. to R.B._

March 5, 1845.

But I did not mean to strike a 'tragic chord'; indeed I did not! Sometimes one's melancholy will be uppermost and sometimes one's mirth,--the world goes round, you know--and I suppose that in that letter of mine the melancholy took the turn. As to 'escaping with my life,' it was just a phrase--at least it did not signify more than that the sense of mortality, and discomfort of it, is peculiarly strong with me when east winds are blowing and waters freezing. For the rest, I am _essentially better_, and have been for several winters; and I feel as if it were intended for me to live and not die, and I am reconciled to the feeling. Yes! I am satisfied to 'take up' with the blind hopes again, and have them in the house with me, for all that I sit by the window. By the way, did the chorus utter scorn in the [Greek: meg' ôphelêma]. I think not. It is well to fly towards the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of wings against the windowpanes, is it not?

There is an obscurer passage, on which I covet your thoughts, where Prometheus, after the sublime declaration that, with a full knowledge of the penalty reserved for him, he had sinned of free will and choice--goes on to say--or to seem to say--that he had _not_, however, foreseen the extent and detail of the torment, the skiey rocks, and the friendless desolation. See v. 275. The intention of the poet might have been to magnify to his audience the torment of the martyrdom--but the heroism of the martyr diminishes in proportion--and there appears to be a contradiction, and oversight. Or is my view wrong? Tell me. And tell me too, if Æschylus not the divinest of all the divine Greek souls? People say after Quintilian, that he is savage and rude; a sort of poetic Orson, with his locks all wild. But I will not hear it of my master! He is strong as Zeus is--and not as a boxer--and tender as Power itself, which always is tenderest.

But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not to think--whatever I may have written or implied--that I lean either to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through darkness instead of light, and speaks of it wailingly. Now, may God forbid that it should be so with me. I am not desponding by nature, and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily seclusion, I come out with two learnt lessons (as I sometimes say and oftener feel),--the wisdom of cheerfulness--and the duty of social intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in society; it has been a wholesome and not unnatural reaction. And altogether, I may say that the earth looks the brighter to me in proportion to my own deprivations. The laburnum trees and rose trees are plucked up by the roots--but the sunshine is in their places, and the root of the sunshine is above the storms. What we call Life is a condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.

And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to _happiness_, and I feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one. Still, it is obvious too that you have been spared, up to this time, the great natural afflictions, against which we are nearly all called, sooner or later, to struggle and wrestle--or your step would not be 'on the stair' quite so lightly. And so, we turn to you, dear Mr. Browning, for comfort and gentle spiriting! Remember that as you owe your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. And I thank you for some of it already.

Also, writing as from friend to friend--as you say rightly that we are--I ought to confess that of one class of griefs (which has been called too the bitterest), I know as little as you. The cruelty of the world, and the treason of it--the unworthiness of the dearest; of these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions, and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the moralists. People have been kind to _me_, even without understanding me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:--nay, have not the very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world, though I am not of it, as you see. And I have the cream of it in your friendship, and a little more, and I do not envy much the milkers of the cows.

How kind you are!--how kindly and gently you speak to me! Some things you say are very touching, and some, surprising; and although I am aware that you unconsciously exaggerate what I can be to you, yet it is delightful to be broad awake and think of you as my friend.

May God bless you!

Faithfully yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 12, 1845.]

Your letter made me so happy, dear Miss Barrett, that I have kept quiet this while; is it too great a shame if I begin to want more good news of you, and to say so? Because there has been a bitter wind ever since. Will you grant me a great favour? Always when you write, though about your own works, not Greek plays merely, put me in, _always_, a little official bulletin-line that shall say 'I am better' or 'still better,' will you? That is done, then--and now, what do I wish to tell you first? The poem you propose to make, for the times; the fearless fresh living work you describe, is the _only_ Poem to be undertaken now by you or anyone that _is_ a Poet at all; the only reality, only effective piece of service to be rendered God and man; it is what I have been all my life intending to do, and now shall be much, much nearer doing, since you will along with me. And you _can_ do it, I know and am sure--so sure, that I could find in my heart to be jealous of your stopping in the way even to translate the Prometheus; though the accompanying monologue will make amends too. Or shall I set you a task I meant for myself once upon a time?--which, oh, how you would fulfil! Restore the Prometheus [Greek: purphoros] as Shelley did the [Greek: Lyomenos]; when I say 'restore,' I know, or very much fear, that the [Greek: purphoros] was the same with the [Greek: purkaeus] which, by a fragment, we sorrowfully ascertain to have been a Satyric Drama; but surely the capabilities of the subject are much greater than in this, we now wonder at; nay, they include all those of this last--for just see how magnificently the story unrolls itself. The beginning of Jupiter's dynasty, the calm in Heaven after the storm, the ascending--(stop, I will get the book and give the words), [Greek: opôs tachista ton patrôon eis thronon kathezet', euthus daimosin nemei gera alloisin alla--k.t.l.],[1] all the while Prometheus being the first among the first in honour, as [Greek: kaitoi theoisi tois neois toutois gera tis allos, ê 'gô, pantelôs diôrise]?[2] then the one black hand-cloudlet storming the joyous blue and gold everywhere, [Greek: brotôn de tôn talaipôrôn logon ouk eschen oudena],[3] and the design of Zeus to blot out the whole race, and plant a new one. And Prometheus with his grand solitary [Greek: egô d' etolmêsa],[4] and his saving them, as the _first_ good, from annihilation. Then comes the darkening brow of Zeus, and estrangement from the benign circle of grateful gods, and the dissuasion of old confederates, and all the Right that one may fancy in Might, the strongest reasons [Greek: pauesthai tropou philanthrôpou][5] coming from the own mind of the Titan, if you will, and all the while he shall be proceeding steadily in the alleviation of the sufferings of mortals whom, [Greek: nêpious ontas to prin, ennous kai phrenôn epêbolous ethêke],[6] while still, in proportion, shall the doom he is about to draw on himself, manifest itself more and more distinctly, till at the last, he shall achieve the salvation of man, body (by the gift of fire) and soul (by even those [Greek: tuphlai elpides],[7] hopes of immortality), and so having rendered him utterly, according to the mythos here, _independent_ of Jove--for observe, Prometheus in the play never talks of helping mortals more, of fearing for them more, of even benefiting them more by his sufferings. The rest is between Jove and himself; he will reveal the master-secret to Jove when he shall have released him, &c. There is no stipulation that the gifts to mortals shall be continued; indeed, by the fact that it is Prometheus who hangs on Caucasus while 'the ephemerals possess fire,' one sees that somehow mysteriously _they_ are past Jove's harming now. Well, this wholly achieved, the price is as wholly accepted, and off into the darkness passes in calm triumphant grandeur the Titan, with Strength and Violence, and Vulcan's silent and downcast eyes, and then the gold clouds and renewed flushings of felicity shut up the scene again, with Might in his old throne again, yet with a new element of mistrust, and conscious shame, and fear, that writes significantly enough above all the glory and rejoicing that all is not as it was, nor will ever be. Such might be the framework of your Drama, just what cannot help striking one at first glance, and would not such a Drama go well before your translation? Do think of this and tell me--it nearly writes itself. You see, I meant the [Greek: meg' ôphelêma][8] to be a deep great truth; if there were no life beyond this, I think the hope in one would be an incalculable blessing _for_ this life, which is melancholy for one like Æschylus to feel, if he could _only_ hope, because the argument as to the ulterior good of those hopes is cut clean away, and what had he left?

I do not find it take away from my feeling of the magnanimity of Prometheus that he should, in truth, complain (as he does from beginning to end) of what he finds himself suffering. He could have prevented all, and can stop it now--of that he never thinks for a moment. That was the old Greek way--they never let an antagonistic passion neutralise the other which was to influence the man to his praise or blame. A Greek hero fears exceedingly and battles it out, cries out when he is wounded and fights on, does not say his love or hate makes him see no danger or feel no pain. Æschylus from first word to last ([Greek: idesthe me, oia paschô][9] to [Greek: esoras me, hôs ekdika paschô][10]) insists on the unmitigated reality of the punishment which only the sun, and divine ether, and the godhead of his mother can comprehend; still, still that is only what I suppose Æschylus to have done--in your poem you shall make Prometheus our way.

And now enough of Greek, which I am fast forgetting (for I never look at books I loved once)--it was your mention of the translation that brought out the old fast fading outlines of the Poem in my brain--the Greek poem, that is. You think--for I must get to _you_--that I 'unconsciously exaggerate what you are to me.' Now, you don't know what _that_ is, nor can I very well tell you, because the language with which I talk to myself of these matters is spiritual Attic, and 'loves contractions,' as grammarians say; but I read it myself, and well know what it means, that's why I told you I was self-conscious--I meant that I never yet mistook my own feelings, one for another--there! Of what use is talking? Only do you stay here with me in the 'House' these few short years. Do you think I shall see you in two months, three months? I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated it--have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I have done most of what is to be done, _any_ lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me! I don't even care about reading now--the world, and pictures of it, rather than writings about the world! But you must read books in order to get words and forms for 'the public' if you _write_, and _that_ you needs must do, if you fear God. I have no pleasure in writing myself--none, in the mere act--though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other! But I think you like the operation of writing as I should like that of painting or making music, do you not? After all, there is a great delight in the heart of the thing; and use and forethought have made me ready at all times to set to work--but--I don't know why--my heart sinks whenever I open this desk, and rises when I shut it. Yet but for what I have written you would never have heard of me--and _through_ what you have written, not properly _for_ it, I love and wish you well! Now, will you remember what I began my letter by saying--how you have promised to let me know if my wishing takes effect, and if you still continue better? And not even ... (since we are learned in magnanimity) don't even tell me that or anything else, if it teases you,--but wait your own good time, and know me for ... if these words were but my own, and fresh-minted for this moment's use!...

Yours ever faithfully,

R. BROWNING.

[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Prometheus_, 228ff.:

'When at first
He filled his father's throne, he instantly
Made various gifts of glory to the gods.']

[Footnote 2: _Ib._ 439, 440:

'For see--their honours to these new-made gods,
What other gave but I?']

[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 231, 232:

'Alone of men,
Of miserable men, he took no count.']

[Footnote 4: _Ib._ 235: 'But I dared it.']

[Footnote 5: _Ib._ 11: 'Leave off his old trick of loving man.']

[Footnote 6: _Ib._ 443, 444:

'Being fools before,
I made them wise and true in aim of soul.']

[Footnote 7: _Ib._ 250: 'Blind hopes.']

[Footnote 8: _Ib._ 251: 'A great benefit.']

[Footnote 9: _Ib._ 92: 'Behold what I suffer.']

[Footnote 10: _Ib._ 1093: 'Dost see how I suffer this wrong?']

_E.B.B. to R.B._

50 Wimpole Street: March 20, 1845.

Whenever I delay to write to you, dear Mr. Browning, it is not, be sure, that I take my 'own good time,' but submit to my own bad time. It was kind of you to wish to know how I was, and not unkind of me to suspend my answer to your question--for indeed I have not been very well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather! this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be--I only grow weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a corner--and then all this must end! April is coming. There will be both a May and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps, after all, we may. And as to seeing _you_ besides, I observe that you distrust me, and that perhaps you penetrate my morbidity and guess how when the moment comes to see a living human face to which I am not accustomed, I shrink and grow pale in the spirit. Do you? You are learned in human nature, and you know the consequences of leading such a secluded life as mine--notwithstanding all my fine philosophy about social duties and the like--well--if you have such knowledge or if you have it not, I cannot say, but I do say that I will indeed see you when the warm weather has revived me a little, and put the earth 'to rights' again so as to make pleasures of the sort possible. For if you think that I shall not _like_ to see you, you are wrong, for all your learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first--though I am not, in writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely--quivering at a step and breath.

And what you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with _sorrow_, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the country--had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards the ground like an untrained honeysuckle--and but for _one_, in my own house--but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in--and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass. And so time passed, and passed--and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life had given me room and time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was about to leave--that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters of the earth were _names_ to me, that I had beheld no great mountain or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that I labour under signal disadvantages--that I am, in a manner, as a _blind poet_? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness and self-analysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main. But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life and man, for some....

But all grumbling is a vile thing. We should all thank God for our measures of life, and think them enough for each of us. I write so, that you may not mistake what I wrote before in relation to society, although you do not see from my point of view; and that you may understand what I mean fully when I say, that I have lived all my chief _joys_, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone. Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write--it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,--but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition surely--not always--but when the wheel goes round and the procession is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? oh--it must be so. For the rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment; and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took me at the right moment! I have a _seasonable_ humility, I do assure you.

How delightful to talk about oneself; but as you 'tempted me and I did eat,' I entreat your longsuffering of my sin, and ah! if you would but sin back so in turn! You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious harmony ... as in the 'si no, si no' of an Italian duet. I want to see more of men, and you have seen too much, you say. I am in ignorance, and you, in satiety. 'You don't even care about reading now.' Is it possible? And I am as 'fresh' about reading, as ever I was--as long as I keep out of the shadow of the dictionaries and of theological controversies, and the like. Shall I whisper it to you under the memory of the last rose of last summer? _I am very fond of romances_; yes! and I read them not only as some wise people are known to do, for the sake of the eloquence here and the sentiment there, and the graphic intermixtures here and there, but for the story! just as little children would, sitting on their papa's knee. My childish love of a story never wore out with my love of plum cake, and now there is not a hole in it. I make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the romances that other people are kind enough to write--and woe to the miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself--I give you notice,--with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,' with a sort of deprecating reference to the _descriptions_ in the book, just as if I never read a novel--_I!_ I wrote a confession back to him which made him shake his head perhaps, and now I confess to _you_, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not even 'see the better part,' I am so silly.

Ah! you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! _I_, who have just escaped with my life, after treading Milton's ground, you would send me to Æschylus's. No, _I do not dare_. And besides ... I am inclined to think that we want new _forms_, as well as thoughts. The old gods are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds, classical moulds, as they are so improperly called? If it is a necessity of Art to do so, why then those critics are right who hold that Art is exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to _Life_, and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For there is poetry _everywhere_; the 'treasure' (see the old fable) lies all over the field. And then Christianity is a worthy _myth_, and poetically acceptable.

I had much to say to you, or at least something, of the 'blind hopes' &c., but am ashamed to take a step into a new sheet. If you mean 'to travel,' why, I shall have to miss you. Do you really mean it? How is the play going on? and the poem?

May God bless you!

Ever and truly yours,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 31, 1845.]

When you read Don Quixote, my dear romance-reader, do you ever notice that flower of an incident of good fellowship where the friendly Squire of Him of the Moon, or the Looking glasses, (I forget which) passes to Sancho's dry lips, (all under a cork-tree one morning)--a plump wine-skin,--and do you admire dear brave Miguel's knowledge of thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be, fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a deep musing of an hour's length, or thereabouts, and then ... mark ... only _then_, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with ... such a piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and the Teian (if he wasn't a Byzantine monk, alas!) and our Mr. Kenyon's stately self--(since my own especial poet _à moi_, that can do all with anybody, only 'sips like a fly,' she says, and so cares not to compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)--Well, then ... (oh, I must get quick to the sentence's end, and be brief as an oracle-explainer!)--the giver is you and the taker is I, and the letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and the brown study is--how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among men, that have each and all their friend, so they say (... not that I believe all they say--they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,--I once was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion 'Dere Smith,--I calls you "_dere_" ... because you are so in your shop!')--and the great sigh is,--there is no deserving nor being grateful at all,--and the breaking silence is, and the praise is ... ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for you--10 strikes by the clock now--tell me if at 10 this morning you feel any good from my heart's wishes for you--I would give you all you want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid ... and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its owner 'travels' next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port wine--_Dii meliora piis_, and, among them to

Yours every where, and at all times yours

R. BROWNING.

I have all to say yet--next letter. R.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Night.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1845.]

I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the other evening, of Mr. Kenyon--how this wind must hurt you! And yesterday I had occasion to go your way--past, that is, Wimpole Street, the end of it,--and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I came to yours,--much least than less, look up when I did come there. So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the 'Athenæum' last night,--one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it--'to such little purpose' said my friend--'for he is so inoffensive--now, if one were to style _you_ that--' 'Or you'--I said--and so we hugged ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the papers to-day about Maynooth, and a meeting presided over by Lord Mayor Gibbs, and the Reverend Mr. Somebody's speech. And Mrs. Norton has gone and book-made at a great rate about the Prince of Wales, pleasantly putting off till his time all that used of old to be put off till his mother's time;--altogether, I should dearly like to hear from you, but not till the wind goes, and sun comes--because I shall see Mr. Kenyon next week and get him to tell me some more. By the way, do you suppose anybody else looks like him? If you do, the first room full of real London people you go among you will fancy to be lighted up by a saucer of burning salt and spirits of wine in the back ground.

Monday--last night when I could do nothing else I began to write to you, such writing as you have seen--strange! The proper time and season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech--when ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and _that_ is sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and sorrow,--and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But _you_ are the real deep wonder of a creature,--and I sail these paper-boats on you rather impudently. But I always mean to be very grave one day,--when I am in better spirits and can go _fuori di me_.

And one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that all you gain by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done rightly in trusting to your innate ideas--or not rightly in distrusting them, as the case may be. You get, too, a little ... perhaps a considerable, good, in finding the world's accepted _moulds_ everywhere, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal,--but not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to yourself, that's all. Three scratches with a pen,[1] even with this pen,--and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all.

Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett,

R. BROWNING.

[Footnote 1: A rough sketch follows in the original.]

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]