The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett | Page 9

say
with some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I hope sometimes,
though phrenologists will have it that I cannot, and am doing better
with this darling 'Luria'--so safe in my head, and a tiny slip of paper I
cover with my thumb!
Then you inquire about my 'sensitiveness to criticism,' and I shall be
glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a course
you might else not understand. I shall live always--that is for me--I am
living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a thorough
conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every
drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered--that is
for me, and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature
would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of course I must, if for merely
scientific purposes, know all about this 1845, its ways and doings, and
something I do know, as that for a dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow
them in the garden here, I might demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent
Garden Market,--and that for a dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I
may challenge as many plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen
pages of verse, brought to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do
congregate, ought to bring me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold
currency, seeing the other traders pouch their winnings, as I do see.
Well, when they won't pay me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my
poems, I may, if I please, say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties
'decamp to the crows,' in Greek phrase, and yet go very lighthearted
back to a garden-full of rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they
had bought my greens I should have been able to buy the last number

of Punch, and go through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the
blind clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they
had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud
of this and the other 'favourable critique,' and--at least so folks hold--I
should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds, whereas--but you
see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in the interest of the
market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper, 'It's nothing to you,
critics, hucksters, all of you, if I have this garden and this conscience--I
might go die at Rome, or take to gin and the newspaper, for what you
would care!' So I don't quite lay open my resources to everybody. But it
does so happen, that I have met with much more than I could have
expected in this matter of kindly and prompt recognition. I never
wanted a real set of good hearty praisers--and no bad reviewers--I am
quite content with my share. No--what I laughed at in my 'gentle
audience' is a sad trick the real admirers have of admiring at the wrong
place--enough to make an apostle swear. That does make me
savage--never the other kind of people; why, think now--take your own
'Drama of Exile' and let me send it to the first twenty men and women
that shall knock at your door to-day and after--of whom the first five
are the Postman, the seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the
Butcher for orders, and the Tax-gatherer--will you let me, by Cornelius
Agrippa's assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and
report on, this 'Drama'--and, when I have put these faithful reports into
fair English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as,
the general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to
affirm. But then--once again, I get these people together and give them
your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the
Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats,
one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red
collar,--that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into
vogue, and so on with the rest--and won't you just wish for your
Spectators and Observers and Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Hebdomadal
Mercuries back again! You see the inference--I do sincerely esteem it a
perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so
well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to
'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite inexplicable to
me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the Quarterly and does as

they bid him, with the most solemn face in the world--out goes this, in
goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!
Out comes the sun, in comes the Times