Ever your own, dearest ever—
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, January 22, 1846.]
Ever since I ceased to be with you—ever dearest,—have been with your 'Luria,' if that is ceasing to be with you—which it is, I feel at last. Yet the new act is powerful and subtle, and very affecting, it seems to me, after a grave, suggested pathos; the reasoning is done on every hand with admirable directness and adroitness, and poor Luria's iron baptism under such a bright crossing of swords, most miserably complete. Still ... is he to die so? can you mean it? Oh—indeed I foresaw that—not a guess of mine ever touched such an end—and I can scarcely resign myself to it as a necessity, even now ... I mean, to the act, as Luria's act, whether it is final or not—the act of suicide being so unheroical. But you are a dramatic poet and right perhaps, where, as a didactic poet, you would have been wrong, ... and, after the first shock, I begin to see that your Luria is the man Luria and that his 'sun' lights him so far and not farther than so, and to understand the natural reaction of all that generous trust and hopefulness, what naturally it would be. Also, it is satisfactory that Domizia, having put her woman's part off to the last, should be too late with it—it will be a righteous retribution. I had fancied that her object was to isolate him, ... to make his military glory and national recompense ring hollowly to his ears, and so commend herself, drawing back the veil.
Puccio's scornful working out of the low work, is very finely given, I think, ... and you have 'a cunning right hand,' to lift up Luria higher in the mind of your readers, by the very means used to pull down his fortunes—you show what a man he is by the very talk of his rivals ... by his 'natural godship' over Puccio. Then Husain is nobly characteristic—I like those streaks of Moorish fire in his speeches. 'Why 'twas all fighting' &c. ... that passage perhaps is over-subtle for a Husain—but too nobly right in the abstract to be altered, if it is so or not. Domizia talks philosophically besides, and how eloquently;—and very noble she is where she proclaims
The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
And mingle with his work and claim a share!—
The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
And mingle with his work and claim a share!—
The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
And mingle with his work and claim a share!—
The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
And mingle with his work and claim a share!—
The angel in thee and rejects the sprites
That ineffectual crowd about his strength,
And mingle with his work and claim a share!—