The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ God bless you, dear—dearest—

      Ever I am yours—

      The book does not come—so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead, and comes again on Friday he says, and Saturday seems to be clear still.

      R.B. to E.B.B.

      Just arrived!—(mind, the silent writing overflows the page, and laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)—But your note arrived earlier—more of that, when I write after this dreadful dispatching-business that falls on me—friend A. and B. and C. must get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!—

      Could you think that that untoward letter lived one moment after it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor letter,—yet I should have been vexed and offended then to be told I could love you better than I did already. 'Live and learn!' Live and love you—dearest, as loves you

      R.B.

      You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they are so, by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'—see! (Can you give me Horne's address—I would send then.)

      E.B.B. to R.B.

      Thursday Evening.

       [Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]

      I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this—or 'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr. Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what contradiction!) the British Quarterly has been abusing me so at large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very particular friend indeed,—of someone who positively never reviewed before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are friends 'with a difference.' Not that you are to fancy me pained—oh no!—merely surprised. I was prepared for anything almost from the quarter in question, but scarcely for being hung 'to the crows' so publicly ... though within the bounds of legitimate criticisms, mind. But oh—the creatures of your sex are not always magnanimous—that is true. And to put you between me and all ... the thought of you ... in a great eclipse of the world ... that is happy ... only, too happy for such as I am; as my own heart warns me hour by hour.

      'Serve me right'—I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the probability of it: but 'serve me right' quite clearly. And yet—but no more 'and yets' about it. 'And yets' fray the silk.

      I see how the 'turret' stands in the new reading, triumphing over the 'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number—there are lights enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by. One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach it—but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one exception I am quite sure that people who shall complain of darkness are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your writings—but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from that cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,' you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!—'Let them rave.' You will live when all those are under the willows. In the meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your poetry—as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the creature, and you than yours. Yes—you than yours.... (I did not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the 'bona verba,' and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as you are better than yours; even when so much yours as your own

      E.B.B.

      May I see the first act first? Let me!—And you walk?

      Mr. Horne's address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.

      There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes to-morrow, Friday, and therefore—!—and if Saturday should become impracticable, I will write again.

      R.B. to E.B.B.

      Sunday Evening.

       [Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]

      When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge—penetration, intuition—somehow I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to me. Dearest, I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was my star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I do feel, with you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree with that power of yours—that you might easily make one so happy and yet go on writing 'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'—but—how can I, dearest, leave my heart's treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the traces of you ... will it do—tell me—to trust all that as a light effort, an easy matter?

      Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to crown you—there is queenliness in that, too!

      Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of yourself! It is all me you help, me you do good to ... and I take it all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had every love-luxury, I now find out ... where is the proper, rationally to-be-expected—'lovers' quarrel'? Here, as you will find! 'Iræ; amantium'.... I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be reintegratio amoris—and to get back into a thing, one must needs get for СКАЧАТЬ