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

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 and eleven strikes (it _does_) already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should 'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt--nor will you henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me for yours ever faithfully,
R. BROWNING.
I don't dare--yet I will--ask can you read this? Because I could write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as