E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday.
[Post-mark, January 10, 1846.]

Kindest and dearest you are!—that is 'my secret' and for the others, I leave them to you!—only it is no secret that I should and must be glad to have the words you sent with the book,—which I should have seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on—it is the stamp on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said rightly as about the 'intellectuality,' and how you stand first by the brain,—which is as true as truth can be. Then, I shall have 'Pauline' in a day or two—yes, I shall and must, and will.

The 'Ballad Poems and Fancies,' the article calling itself by that name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley's, and is one of his very best papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about his writings in general, with a grace and savoir faire nevertheless, and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says of 'many-sidedness' seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That, he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of principle—yet 'many-sidedness' is certainly no word for him. The effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather bends to a phase of humanity and literature than contains it—than comprehends it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things: universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is different altogether ... as different as a willow-tree from a church tower.

Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you—which is too much, perhaps. Shall I tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me—the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy ... and only I know what was behind—the long wilderness without the blossoming rose ... and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve—not you—but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say?—Shall I thank you or God? Both,—indeed—and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may ... and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.

Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a thought of any others—that is all I could ask you with any disquiet as to the granting of it—May God bless you!—

Your

Ba.

But you have the review now—surely?

The Morning Chronicle attributes the authorship of 'Modern Poets' (our article) to Lord John Manners—so I hear this morning. I have not yet looked at the paper myself. The Athenæum, still abominably dumb!—