But you shall not think me exclusive.  Of poor L.E.L., for instance, I could write with more praiseful appreciation than you can.  It appears to me that she had the gift—­though in certain respects she dishonored the art—­and her latter lyrics are, many of them, of great beauty and melody, such as, having once touched the ear of a reader, live on in it.  I observe in your ‘Life of Mrs. Hemans’ (shall I tell you how often I have read those volumes?) she (Mrs. H.) never appears, in any given letter or recorded opinion, to esteem her contemporary.  The antagonism lay, probably, in the higher parts of Mrs. Hemans’s character and mind, and we are not to wonder at it.

It is very pleasant to me to have your approbation of the sonnets on George Sand, on the points of feeling and lightness, on which all my readers have not absolved me equally, I have reason to know.  I am more a latitudinarian in literature than it is generally thought expedient for women to be; and I have that admiration for genius, which dear Mr. Kenyon calls my ‘immoral sympathy with power;’ and if Madame Dudevant[123] is not the first female genius of any country or age, I really do not know who is.  And then she has certain noblenesses—­granting all the evil and ’perilous stuff’—­noblenesses and royalnesses which make me loyal.  Do pardon me for intruding all this on you, though you cannot justify me—­you, who are occupied beyond measure, and I, who know it!  I have been under the delusion, too, during this writing, of having something like a friend’s claim to write and be troublesome.  I have lived so near your friends that I keep the odour of them!  A mere delusion, alas! my only personal right in respect to you being one that I am not likely to forget or waive—­the right of being grateful to you.

But so, and looking again at the last words of your letter, I see that you ‘wish,’ in the kindest of words, ‘to do something more for me.’  I hope some day to take this ‘something more’ of your kindness out in the pleasure of personal intercourse; and if, in the meantime, you should consent to flatter my delusion by letting me hear from you now and then, if ever you have a moment to waste and inclination to waste it, why I, on my side, shall always be ready to thank you for the ‘something more’ of kindness, as bound in the duty of gratitude.  In any case I remain

Truly and faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 122:  Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century.  Her elegies on Captain Cook and Major Andre went through several editions, as did her Louisa, a poetical novel, a class of composition in which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself.  Her collected poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott (1810).]

[Footnote 123:  The real name of George Sand.]

To Mr. Chorley [The beginning of this letter is lost] [1845]