The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Volume 1 of 2)Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
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The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Volume 1 of 2)
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861 -- Correspondence; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
A letter came to me from dear Miss Mitford a few days since, which
I had hoped to talk to you about. Some of the subject of it is Mr.
Kenyon's '_only fault_,' which ought, of course, to be a large one to
weigh against the multitudinous ones of other people, but which seems
to be: 'He has the habit of walking in without giving notice. He
thinks it saves trouble, whereas in a small family, and at a distance
from a town, the effect is that one takes care to be provided for the
whole time that one expects him, and then, by some exquisite ill luck,
on the only day when one's larder is empty, in he comes!' And so, if
you have not written to interrupt her in this process of indefinite
expectation, the 'only fault' will, in her eyes, grow, as it ought, as
large as fifty others.
I do hope, dear Mr. Kenyon, soon to hear that you are better--and
well--and that your course of prophecy may not run smooth all through
next week.
Very truly yours,
E. BARRETT.
Saturday.
_To John Kenyon_
Saturday night [about March 1844].
I return Mr. Burges's criticism, which I omitted to talk to you of
this morning, but which interested me much in the reading. Do let him
understand how obliged to him I am for permitting me to look, for a
moment, according to his view of the question. Perhaps my poetical
sense is not convinced all through, and certainly my critical sense
is not worth convincing, but I am delighted to be able to call by
the name of Aeschylus, under the authority of Mr. Burges, those noble
electrical lines (electrical for double reasons) which had struck
me twenty times as Aeschylean, when I read them among the recognised
fragments of Sophocles. You hear Aeschylus's footsteps and voice in
the lines. No other of the gods could tread so heavily, or speak so
like thundering.
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