Her conscientiousness.
What you say of a “poet’s duty” no one in the world can feel more deeply, in the verity of it, than myself. If I fail ultimately before the public—that is, before the people—for an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me worth trying for—it will not be because I have shrunk from the amount of labor—where labor could do anything. I have worked at poetry; it has not been with me revery, but art. As the physician and lawyer work at their several professions, so have I, and so do I, apply to mine. And this I say, only to put by any charge of carelessness which may rise up to the verge of your lips or thoughts.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
Her theories regarding imperfect double rhymes.
With reference to the double rhyming, it has appeared to me to be employed with far less variety in our serious poetry than our language would admit of genially, and that the various employment of it would add another string to the lyre of our Terpander. It has appeared to me that the single rhymes, as usually employed, are scarcely as various as they might be, but that of the double rhymes the observation is still truer. A great deal of attention—far more than it would take to rhyme with conventional accuracy—have I given to the subject of rhymes, and have determined in cold blood to hazard some experiments. At the same time I should tell you, that scarcely one of the Pan rhymes [occurring in the poem of ‘The Dead Pan’] might not separately be justified by the analogy of received rhymes, although they have not themselves been received. Perhaps there is not so irregular a rhyme throughout the poem of Pan as the “fellow” and “prunella” of Pope the infallible. I maintain that my “islands” and “silence” is a regular rhyme in comparison.... A reader of Spanish poetry must be aware how soon the ear may be satisfied even by a recurring vowel. I mean to try it. At any rate, there are so few regular double rhymes in the English language that we must either admit some such trial or eschew the double rhymes generally; and I, for one, am very fond of them, and believe them to have a power not yet drawn out to its length, and capable of development, in our lyrical poetry especially.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
Browning’s praise of “The Dead Pan.”