Wednesday.
January 7, 1846.
But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read them — of you, I mean of course, — though I quite understand that it is doing no manner of good to go back so to ‘Paracelsus,’ heading the article ‘Paracelsus and other poems,’ as if the other poems could not front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. ‘Paracelsus’ is a great work and will live, but the way to do you good with the stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying ‘Look here.’ What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the Retrospective Review? And then, no attempt at analytical criticism — or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice: and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your great world — the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical sectarianism, in another place — yours!
For me, it is all quite kind enough — only I object, on my own part also, to being reviewed in the ‘Seraphim,’ when my better books are nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know, — but let them be my faults! When I wrote the ‘Romaunt of Margret,’ I had not read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till the collected works appeared . . . favente Moxon, . . . I was ignorant of his best early productions; and not even for the rhythmetical form of my ‘Vision of the Poets,’ was I indebted to the ‘Two Voices,’ — three pages of my ‘Vision’ having been written several years ago — at the beginning of my illness — and thrown aside, and taken up again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there’s no use talking! In a solitary review which noticed my ‘Essay on Mind,’ somebody wrote . . . ‘this young lady imitates Darwin’ — and I never could read Darwin, . . . was stopped always on the second page of the ‘Loves of the Plants’ when I tried to read him to ‘justify myself in having an opinion’ — the repulsion was too strong. Yet the ‘young lady imitated Darwin’ of course, as the infallible critic said so.
And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the ‘many others,’ whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The ‘three poets in three distant ages born’ may well stare amazed!
After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on your review in a passion — because pray mark that the ink has over-run some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of an inkstand, it would not have been precisely there. It is the second book spoilt by me within these two days — and my fingers were so dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty enough to befit a poetess — as black ‘as bard beseemed’ — and he took the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.
How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very very earliest? — and how is it that I did not hear from you last night again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you hate writing to me?
At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the ink — I did it ‘in a pet,’ he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new book — certainly I ought — only it is not worth doing justice for — and I shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must forgive me as magnanimously as you can.
‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico’ — do you think so? I hope not indeed! vo quietando — and everything else that I ought to do — except of course, that thinking of you which is so difficult.
May God bless you. Till to-morrow!
Your own always.
Mr. Kenyon refers to ‘Festus’ — of which I had said that the fine things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.