The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett | Page 7

so much
beyond the tide-mark of my hopes, the pleasure rounds itself into a
charm, and prevents its own expression. Overjoyed I am with this
cordial sympathy--but it is better, I feel, to try to justify it by future
work than to thank you for it now. I think--if I may dare to name
myself with you in the poetic relation--that we both have high views of
the Art we follow, and stedfast purpose in the pursuit of it, and that we
should not, either of us, be likely to be thrown from the course, by the
casting of any Atalanta-ball of speedy popularity. But I do not know, I
cannot guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard

criticism and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too
often exposed to--or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the
exercise of Art the filling joy of your life. Not that praise must not
always, of necessity, be delightful to the artist, but that it may be
redundant to his content. Do you think so? or not? It appears to me that
poets who, like Keats, are highly susceptible to criticism, must be
jealous, in their own persons, of the future honour of their works.
Because, if a work is worthy, honour must follow it, though the worker
should not live to see that following overtaking. Now, is it not enough
that the work be honoured--enough I mean, for the worker? And is it
not enough to keep down a poet's ordinary wearing anxieties, to think,
that if his work be worthy it will have honour, and, if not, that 'Sparta
must have nobler sons than he'? I am writing nothing applicable, I see,
to anything in question, but when one falls into a favourite train of
thought, one indulges oneself in thinking on. I began in thinking and
wondering what sort of artistic constitution you had, being determined,
as you may observe (with a sarcastic smile at the impertinence), to set
about knowing as much as possible of you immediately. Then you
spoke of your 'gentle audience' (_you began_), and I, who know that
you have not one but many enthusiastic admirers--the 'fit and few' in
the intense meaning--yet not the diffused fame which will come to you
presently, wrote on, down the margin of the subject, till I parted from it
altogether. But, after all, we are on the proper matter of sympathy. And
after all, and after all that has been said and mused upon the 'natural
ills,' the anxiety, and wearing out experienced by the true artist,--is not
the good immeasurably greater than the _evil_? Is it not great good,
and great joy? For my part, I wonder sometimes--I surprise myself
wondering--how without such an object and purpose of life, people find
it worth while to live at all. And, for happiness--why, my only idea of
happiness, as far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, (but I have
been straightened in some respects and in comparison with the majority
of livers!) lies deep in poetry and its associations. And then, the escape
from pangs of heart and bodily weakness--when you throw off
_yourself_--what you feel to be _yourself_--into another atmosphere
and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new,
and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the sun!
Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of depreciating

and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible, certainly--but
reasonable, not at all--and grateful, less than anything!
My faults, my faults--Shall I help you? Ah--you see them too well, I
fear. And do you know that I also have something of your feeling about
'being about to begin,' or I should dare to praise you for having it. But
in you, it is different--it is, in you, a virtue. When Prometheus had
recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io, and declared at
last that he was [Greek: mêdepô en prooimiois],[1] poor Io burst out
crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the 'Bells and
Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may well (to take
'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our hands. Yet I
believe that, whatever you may have done, you will do what is greater.
It is my faith for you.
And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to
promise and vow' for you,--and whether you have held true to early
tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and what
hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!--(if it isn't
proved already).
But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if