etter from the great
poet_! Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to
Mr. Haydon, and that Mr. Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth? The result
was that Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me. King John's barons were never
better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.[70]

But I won't tell you any more about it until you have read the poems
which I send you. Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet
written on Westminster Bridge, vol. iii. page 78. Then take from the
sixth volume, page 152, the passage beginning 'Within the soul' down
to page 153 at 'despair,' and again at page 155 beginning with

I have seen
A curious child, &c.

down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these
passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me
further by reading, out of the _second_ volume, the two poems called
'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page 172 and page 161. I will not
ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own
account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound'
in the same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet,
with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be
candid. Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,

Your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 69: It was this picture that called forth the sonnet, 'On
a Portrait of Wordsworth by B.R. Haydon' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 62),
alluded to in the next letter.]

[Footnote 70: The following is the letter from Wordsworth which gave
such pleasure to Miss Barrett, and which she treasured among her
papers for the rest of her life. Two slips of the pen have been
corrected between brackets.

'Rydal Mount: Oct. 26, '42.

'Dear Miss Barrett,--Through our common friend Mr. Haydon I have
received a sonnet which his portrait of me suggested. I should have
thanked you sooner for that effusion of a feeling towards myself, with
which I am much gratified, but I have been absent from home and much
occupied.

'The conception of your sonnet is in full accordance with the
painter's intended work, and the expression vigorous; yet the word
"ebb," though I do not myself object to it, nor wish to have it
altered, will I fear prove obscure to nine readers out of ten.

"A vision free
And noble, Haydon, hath thine art released."

Owing to the want of inflections in our language the construction here
is obscure.