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

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: mêdep? 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 I ever write to you again--I mean, if you wish it--it may be in the other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,--you might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet--which I guessed at once--and of course--
I have no joy in this contract to-day! It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.
Ever faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 1: 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. _Prom._ 741).]

_R.B. to E.B.B._
Hatcham, Tuesday. [Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
Dear Miss Barrett,--People would hardly ever tell falsehoods