You are very strange in what you say about my reading your poetry—as if it were not my peculiar gladness and glory!—my own, which no man can take from me. And not you, indeed! Yet I am not likely to mistake your poetry for the flower of your nature, knowing what that flower is, knowing something of what that flower is without a name, and feeling something of the mystical perfume of it. When I said, or when others said for me, that my poetry was the flower of me, was it praise, did you think, or blame? might it not stand for a sarcasm? It might,—if it were not true, miserably true after a fashion.
Yet something of the sort is true, of course, with all poets who write directly from their personal experience and emotions—their ideal rises to the surface and floats like the bell of the waterlily. The roots and the muddy water are subaudita, you know—as surely there, as the flower.
But you ... you have the superabundant mental life and individuality which admits of shifting a personality and speaking the truth still. That is the highest faculty, the strongest and rarest, which exercises itself in Art,—we are all agreed there is none so great faculty as the dramatic. Several times you have hinted to me that I made you careless for the drama, and it has puzzled me to fancy how it could be, when I understand myself so clearly both the difficulty and the glory of dramatic art. Yet I am conscious of wishing you to take the other crown besides—and after having made your own creatures speak in clear human voices, to speak yourself out of that personality which God made, and with the voice which He tuned into such power and sweetness of speech. I do not think that, with all that music in you, only your own personality should be dumb, nor that having thought so much and deeply on life and its ends, you should not teach what you have learnt, in the directest and most impressive way, the mask thrown off however moist with the breath. And it is not, I believe, by the dramatic medium, that poets teach most impressively—I have seemed to observe that! ... it is too difficult for the common reader to analyse, and to discern between the vivid and the earnest. Also he is apt to understand better always, when he sees the lips move. Now, here is yourself, with your wonderful faculty!—it is wondered at and recognised on all sides where there are eyes to see—it is called wonderful and admirable! Yet, with an inferior power, you might have taken yourself closer to the hearts and lives of men, and made yourself dearer, though being less great. Therefore I do want you to do this with your surpassing power—it will be so easy to you to speak, and so noble, when spoken.
Not that I usen’t to fancy I could see you and know you, in a reflex image, in your creations! I used, you remember. How these broken lights and forms look strange and unlike now to me, when I stand by the complete idea. Yes, now I feel that no one can know you worthily by those poems. Only ... I guessed a little. Now let us have your own voice speaking of yourself—if the voice may not hurt the speaker—which is my fear.
Evening.—Thank you, dearest dearest! I have your parcel—I have your letters ... three letters to-day, it is certainly feast day with me. Thank you my own dearest. The drawings I had just fixed in my mind, courageously to ask for, because as you meant me to keep them I did not see why I should throw away a fortune—and they return to me with interest ... I observe these new vivid sketches! Some day I shall put them into a book, as you should have done. Then for the Roman ode, and all the rest, thank you, thank you. I looked here and looked there, though, for a letter—I could not find it at first, and was just saying to myself quite articulately ‘What wickedness’! ... meaning that it was wickedness in you to send me a parcel without a word, ... when I came upon the folded paper. For I looked inside the books, be sure. I did not toss them away....
There’s the gratitude of the world, you see! and of womankind in particular! there’s the malign spirit of the genus coffee-cup-throw-arum! Talking of which coffee-cups, you dare me to it. Which is imprudent, to say the least of it. I heard once of her most gracious Majesty’s throwing a tea-cup,—whereupon Albertus Magnus, who is no conjurer, could find nothing better to do than to walk out of the room in solemn silence. If I had been he, I should have tied the royal hands, I think; for when women get to be warlike after that demonstrative fashion, it seems to me to be allowable to teach them that they are not the strongest. I say it, never thinking of my ‘licence to’ throw coffee-cups—which you granted, knowing very well what I know intimately, ... that ... that....
I have a theory about you. Was ever anybody in the world, ... a woman at least, ... angry with you? If anyone ever tried, did she not fail in the first breath of the trying?—go out to curse like the prophet, and bless instead? Tell me if anyone was ever angry with you? It is impossible, I know perfectly. Therefore, as to the coffee-cup license, ... the divine Achilles, invulnerable all but the heel, might as well have said to his dearest foe ‘Draw out your sword, O Diomede, and strike me across the head, prick me in the forehead, slash me over the ears, ...’ and that stand for a proof of courage!
What stuff I do write, to be sure. I was out to-day walking, with Arabel and Flush, and rested at the bookseller’s; but as I went farther than the other day, I let Stormie carry me up-stairs, ... it is such a long way! Say how you are, dearest—you do not! Shall you walk so fast when you walk with me under the trees? I shall not let you—I shall hang back, as Flush does, when he won’t go with a string. Ah—little (altogether) you know perhaps what a hard Degree that B:A: is, to take— —the BA which is not a Bachelor’s.
No, no, for the rest. It was not any Brown on earth, but the only Browning of the great genius, who was shown up as intimate friend to the Miss Cokers and elect husband of that cloud, Miss Campbell the ‘great heiress’—all in proportion, observe! But I do entreat you not to say a word to Dr. White or another. Why should you? It is mere nonsense,—so do let it evaporate quietly. Why, with all my doubts for which you have blamed me, ... at the thickest and saddest of the doubting, it never was what people could say of you that could move me. And this is so foolish, and unbelieved even by the very persons who say it, perhaps! Let it pass away with other dust, in the wind. It is not worth the watering.
May God bless you! This is my last letter ... already! I had another criticism to-day from America, in a book called ‘Thoughts on the Poets,’ which is written by a Mr. Tuckermann, and selects its poets on the most singular principle ... or rather on none at all ... beginning with Petrarch, ending with Bryant, receiving Tennyson, Procter, Hunt, and your Ba ... and not a word of you! Stupid book—Petrarch and Alfieri are the only foreign poets admitted—criticisms, swept back to the desk from the magazines, I dare say. Very kind to me—you shall see if you like.