“DEAREST ISA,—­Very gentle my critic is; I am glad I got him out of you.  But tell dear Mr. Trollope he is wrong nevertheless” [here it certainly seems that she supposed the criticism to be mine]; “and that my ‘thought’ was really and decidedly anterior [sic] to my ‘allegory.’  Moreover, it is my thought still.  I meant to say that the poetic organisation implies certain disadvantages; for instance an exaggerated general susceptibility, ...[1] which may be shut up, kept out of the way in every-day life, and must be (or the man is ‘marred’ indeed, made a Rousseau or a Byron of), but which is necessarily, for all that, cultivated in the very cultivation of art itself.  There is an inward reflection and refraction of the heats of life ...[1] doubling pains and pleasures, doubling therefore the motives (passions) of life.  I have said something of this in A.L. [Aurora Leigh].  Also there is a passion for essential truth (as apprehended) and a necessity for speaking it out at all risks, inconvenient to personal peace.  Add to this and much else the loss of the sweet unconscious cool privacy among the ‘reeds’ ...[1] which I for one care so much for—­the loss of the privilege of being glad or sorry, ill or well, without a ‘notice.’  That may have its glory to certain minds.  But most people would be glad to ’stir their tea in silence’ when they are grave, and even to talk nonsense (much too frivolously) when they are merry, without its running the round of the newspapers in two worlds perhaps.  You know I don’t invent, Isa.  In fact, I am sorely tempted to send Mr. Trollope a letter I had this morning, as an illustration of my view, and a reply to his criticism.  Only this letter among many begins with too many fair speeches.  Still it seems written by somebody in earnest and with a liking for me.  Its main object is to complain of the cowardly morality in Pan.  Then a stroke on the poems before Congress.  The writer has heard that I ’had been to Paris, was feted by the Emperor, and had had my head turned by Imperial flatteries,’ in consequence of which I had taken to ‘praise and flatter the tyrant, and try to help his selfish ambition.’  Well! one should laugh and be wise.  But somehow one doesn’t laugh.  A letter beginning, ‘You are a great teacher of truth,’ and ending, ’You are a dishonest wretch,’ makes you cold somehow, and ill disposed towards the satisfactions of literary distinction.  Yes! and be sure, Isa, that the ‘true gods sigh,’ and have reason to sigh, for the cost and pain of it; sigh only ... don’t haggle over the cost; don’t grudge a crazia, but.... sigh, sigh ... while they pay honestly.

“On the other hand, there’s much light talking and congratulation, excellent returns to the pocket from the poem in the Cornhill; pleasant praise from dear Mr. Trollope.... with all drawbacks:  a good opinion from Isa worth its gold—­and Pan laughs.

“But he is a beast up to the waist; yes, Mr. Trollope, a beast.  He is not a true god.