I have seen
A curious child, &c.
down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me further by reading, out of the second volume, the two poems called 'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page 172 and page 161. I will not ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound' in the same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet, with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be candid. Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,
Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
To H.S. Boyd
December 4, 1842.
My very dear Friend,—You will think me in a discontented state of mind when I knit my brows like a 'sleeve of care' over your kind praises. But the truth is, I won't be praised for being liberal in Calvinism and love of Byron. I liberal in commending Byron! Take out my heart and try it! look at it and compare it with yours; and answer and tell me if I do not love and admire Byron more warmly than you yourself do. I suspect it indeed. Why, I am always reproached for my love to Byron. Why, people say to me, 'You, who overpraise Byron!' Why, when I was a little girl (and, whatever you may think, my tendency is not to cast off my old loves!) I used to think seriously of dressing up like a boy and running away to be Lord Byron's page. And I to be praised now for being 'liberal' in admitting the merit of his poetry! I!
As for the Calvinism, I don't choose to be liberal there either. I don't call myself a Calvinist. I hang suspended between the two doctrines, and hide my eyes in God's love from the sights which other people say they see. I believe simply that the saved are saved by grace, and that they shall hereafter know it fully; and that the lost are lost by their choice and free will—by choosing to sin and die; and I believe absolutely that the deepest damned of all the lost will not dare to whisper to the nearest devil that reproach of Martha: 'If the Lord had been near me, I had not died.' But of the means of the working of God's grace, and of the time of the formation of the Divine counsels, I know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to guess nothing; and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the world, their tendency is almost always towards a confusion of His eternal nature with the human conditions of ours; and to an oblivion of the fact that with Him there can be no after nor before.
At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine any more the brickbats of controversy—there is more than enough to think of in truths clearly revealed; more than enough for the exercise of the intellect and affections and adorations. I would rather not suffer myself to be disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely that I should ever be informed. And although you tell me that your system of investigation is different from some others, answer me with your accustomed candour, and admit, my very dear friend, that this argument does not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word[[71]] be 'fore-know' or 'publicly favor,' room for a stormy controversy yet remains. I went through the Romans with you partially, and wholly by myself, by your desire, and in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and Adam Clarke, and yourself I believe, as to the Jews and Gentiles. Neither could I conceive that a particular part of the epistle represents an actual dialogue between a Jew and Gentile, since the form of question and answer appears to me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was learned in rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit common to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant through God in Christ Jesus. These are my impressions. Yours are different. And since we should not probably persuade each other, and since we are both of us fond of and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in, religious and otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless contention? 'What!' you would say (by the time we had quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk without being excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray do lower your voice—it goes through my head!' In another ten minutes: 'I could scarcely have believed you to be so obstinate.' In another: 'Your prejudices are insurmountable, and your reason most womanly—you are degenerated to the last degree.' In another—why, then you would turn me and Flush out of the room and so finish the controversy victoriously.
Was I wrong too, dearest Mr. Boyd, in sending the poems to the 'Athenaeum'? Well, I meant to be right. I fancied that you would rather they were sent; and as your name was not attached, there could be no harm in leaving them to the editor's disposal. They are not inserted, as I anticipated. The religious character was a sufficient objection—their character of prayer. Mr. Dilke begged me once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with the secular character of the journal!
Ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.