ear
shed. Whatever I may have ever written of the least worth has
represented a conviction in me, something in me felt as a truth. I never
wrote to please any of you, not even to please my own husband. Every
genuine artist in the world (whatever his degree) goes to heaven for
speaking the truth. It is one of the beatitudes of art, and attainable
without putting off the flesh.

To be plain, and not mystical, it is obvious that if I had expected
compliments and caresses from the English press to my 'Poems before
Congress,' the said poems would have been little deserved in England,
and a greater mistake on my part than any committed by the 'Athenaeum,'
which is saying much.

There! I have done. The spark is under my shoe. If in 'losing my temper'
I have 'lost my music,' don't let it be said that I have lost my friend
by my own fault and choice also.

For I would not willingly lose him, though he should be unjust to me
thrice, instead of this once throughout our intercourse. Affectionately
yours, dear Mr. Chorley,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Chorley_

28 Via del Tritone, Rome: May 2, [1860].

My dear Mr. Chorley,--I make haste to answer your letter, and beg you to
do the like in putting out of your life the least touch of pain or
bitterness connected with me. It is true, true, true, that some of my
earliest gladness in literary sympathy and recognition came from you. I
was grateful to you then as a stranger, and I am not likely ever to
forget it as a friend. Believe this of me, as I feel it of _you_.

In the matter of reviews and of my last book, and before leaving the
subject for ever, I want you distinctly to understand that my complaint
related simply to the mistake in facts, and not to any mistake in
opinion. The quality of neither mercy nor justice should be strained in
the honest reviewer by the personal motive; and, because you felt a
regard for me, _that_ was no kind of reason why you should like my book.

In printing the poems, I well knew the storm of execration which would
follow. Your zephyr from the 'Athenaeum' was the first of it, gentle
indeed in comparison with various gusts from other quarters. All fair it
was from your standpoint, to see me as a prophet without a head, or even
as a woman in a shrewish temper, and if my husband had not been
especially pained by my being held up at the end of a fork as the
unnatural she-monster who had 'curse