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Elizabeth Barrett Browning. John Henry Ingram
Читать онлайн.Название Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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isbn 4064066064952
Автор произведения John Henry Ingram
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
Ah, my gossip! you were older,
And more learned, and a man!—
Yet that shadow—the enfolder
Of your quiet eyelids—ran
Both our spirits to one level;
And I turned from hill and lea
And tho summer-sun's green revel—
To your eyes that could not see!"
Elizabeth Barrett never forgot the advantages she had derived from the patient kindness and profound learning of the blind scholar, nor did he forego friendly correspondence with his apt and able pupil in after years. She deferred often to his opinion, despite her intense independence, and allowed his somewhat eccentric course of reading to influence her own studies. In later life she addressed three sonnets to this
Steadfast friend,
Who never didst my heart or life misknow,
on "His Blindness," "His Death, 1848," and his "Legacies" to her, which last consisted of his
Æschylus,
And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock
Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock
Of stars, whose motion is melodious.
"The books," she says, "were those I used to read from," thus
Assisting my dear teacher's soul to unlock
The darkness of his eyes: now mine they mock,
Blinded in turn, by tears: now murmurous
Sad echoes of my young voice, years agone,
Entoning from these leaves, the Grecian phrase,
Return and choke my utterance.
"All this time," says Elizabeth, "we lived at Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to me except by books and my own thoughts, and it is a beautiful country, and was a retirement happy in many ways. … There I had my fits of Pope and Byron and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and eat and drank Greek and made my head ache with it."
The young girl by practice and increasing intensity of feeling was gradually learning to become a true poet. Most of the events of her life, she said, had passed in her thoughts, and these thoughts she had continuously striven to transmute into poesy. Many youths wrote verses, but with her, "what is less common," as she remarked, "the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me, and from that day poetry has been a distinct object with me—an object to read, think, and live for."
Already as early as 1825, Elizabeth Barrett had contributed fugitive verses to literary publications of the day, but now her ambition prompted her to more daring flights. Her childish lines on The Battle of Marathon can scarcely be taken into account in any chronicle of her literary deeds, but a volume which she published anonymously in 1826 marks a distinct epoch in her career. It was entitled An Essay on Mind and Other Poems, and the leading piece, written in heroic verse, and extending to eighty-eight pages, is produced in view, not without some doubts as to its truth, of the utterly false dictum of Byron, that "ethical poetry is the highest of all poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects is moral truth."
The lines display no originality of thought, are in the see-saw style of the Pope school, and are not very wonderful even for a girl of seventeen, but the Essay is remarkable, as has been pointed out, "for the precocious audacity with which she deals with the greatest names in the whole range of literature and science. Gibbon, Berkeley, Condillac, Plato, Bacon, Bolingbroke, all come in for treatment in the scope of the young girl's argument."
Some of Elizabeth's words in her preface, needlessly long and wordy as it is, offer a much better specimen of her prose than does the Essay on Mind of her poesy, and, as the first known example of her unrhymed writings may be cited from. With youthful modesty she says: "I wish that the sublime circuit of intellect, embraced by the plan of my Poem, had fallen to the lot of a spirit more powerful than mine. I wish it had fallen to the lot of one more familiar with the dwelling-place of mind, who could search her secret chambers, and call forth those that sleep; or of one who could enter into her temples, and cast out the iniquitous who buy and sell, profaning the sanctuary of God; or of one who could try the golden links of that chain which hangs from Heaven to earth, and show that it is not placed there for man to covet for lucre's sake, or for him to weigh his puny strength at one end against Omnipotence at the other; but that it is placed there to join, in mysterious union, the natural and the spiritual, the mortal and the eternal, the creature and the Creator. I wish the subject of my poem had fallen into such hands that the powers of the execution might have equalled the vastness of the design—and the public will wish so too. But as it is—though I desire this field to be more meritoriously occupied by others, I would mitigate the voice of censure for myself. I would endeavour to show that while I may have often erred, I have not clung willingly to error; and that while I may have failed, in representing, I have never ceased to love Truth. If there be much to condemn in the following pages, let my narrow capacity, as opposed to the infinite object it would embrace, be generously considered; if there be anything to approve, I am ready to acknowledge the assistance which my illustrations have received from the exalting nature of their subject—as the waters of Halys acquire a peculiar taste from the soil over which they flow."
Besides the Essay on Mind, preface, analyses, and notes, the little book contained fourteen short pieces pretty equally divided between Byronic and domestic themes. Whilst none of these verses gave cause to believe in the advent of a great poetess, some of them, notably those beginning "Mine is a wayward lay," were skilfully handled and were not barren of felicitous turns of thought.
Reverting to the more personal history of the young poetess, we arrive at what may be deemed the first, and probably the greatest, real trouble she ever had to endure. For some time past Mrs. Barrett had had a continuance of ill-health, and eventually, on the 1st of October 1828, she died, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight. Elizabeth, herself an invalid, was left by her mother's death not only the chief consoler of her widowed father, but, to some extent, the guardian and guide of her seven brothers and sisters.
How Elizabeth managed to bear her grief, or what part she took in household affairs, are mysteries which have not been revealed, but she continued to seek consolation for human trouble, and an outlet for her ambition, for ambitious she was, in beloved Poesy. For a time, apparently, she was sent to France to pursue her studies, and contracted at least one strong friendship there, but neither her words nor works evince that any strong imprint was made on her mind by that stay on French soil.
Storm-clouds were gathering at home, and Elizabeth's influence was wanted to soothe, and her companionship to cheer, her father. As a West Indian proprietor, his chief wealth was, naturally, derived from slave labour. The voice of the British people had gradually been growing louder and stronger against slavery, and finally, guided by Wilberforce and his compatriots, demanded its abolition. Emancipation, after a long and weary fight, was at last obtained, and though still shackled by certain galling restrictions, the fiat went forth that, henceforth, unpaid compulsory labour should cease. Liberty for slaves in many instances meant ruin or, at the best, heavy pecuniary loss for their late owners. On Jamaica the blow fell with peculiar force, and the Barretts naturally felt the shock. Mr. Edward Moulton Barrett's fortune appears to have been very largely affected by Emancipation, and one of the chief results of his diminished income would appear to have been the relinquishment of the Hope End establishment.
The place where so many happy days had been spent, so many fond dreams born and nourished, so many loving ties formed, had to be left. "Do you know the Malvern Hills?—the hills of Piers Plowman's Visions?" wrote Elizabeth in later years; "they seem to me my native hills, for I was an infant when I went first into their neighbourhood, and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful, beautiful hills they are; and yet not for the whole world's beauty would I stand in the sunshine and shadow of them any more. It would be a mockery, like the taking