in.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)

Mrs. Browning was in the habit of using rather extravagant
language herself: and she has certainly been the victim of
language extravagant enough both in praise (the more
damaging of the two) and blame from others. FitzGerald's
unlucky exaggeration (see Introduction) in one way may be
set off by such opposite assertions as that some of her
poems are "the best of their kind in the English language."
But her letters need cause no such alarums and excursions.
If they are sometimes what is called by youth "Early
Victorian"--"Early Anything," and "Middle Anything" and
"Late Anything," are sure to be found sooner or later by all
wise persons to have their own place in life and history.
And sentimentalism has, in private prose, an infinitely less
provocative character than when it is displayed in published
verse. A distinguished Scotch philosopher of the last
generation laid it down that, in literature, for
demonstrative exhibitions of affection and sorrow "the
occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare." But
letter-writing, though it can be eminently literary, is
always literature with a certain license attached to it:
arising from the fact that it was not--or ought not to have
been--intended for publication. And that naturalness of
which so much has been said is displayed constantly and by
no means disagreeably in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
epistles. In fact, you cannot help liking her the better for
them--which in one way at least is the supreme test. The
following, written soon after her marriage--an elopement of
a kind, but certainly justifiable if ever one was--is a very
pleasant specimen in more ways than one, as regards taste,
temper, and descriptive powers. It also contains no
criticism, which in her case was apt to be extremely
uncertain.

43. TO MRS. MARTIN

(PISA) November 5, (1846)

It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading
your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine,
and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your
claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised you too
entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so much the more
reas