My dearest Mr. Boyd, you will find as few believers in the genuineness of these volumes among the most accomplished antiquarians in poetry as in the genuineness of Chatterton’s Rowley, and of Ireland’s Shakespeare.  The latter impostures boasted of disciples in the first instance, but the discipleship perished by degrees, and the place thereof, during this present 1843, knows it no more.  So has it been with the belief in Macpherson’s Ossian.  Of those who believed in the poems at the first sight of them, who kept his creed to the end?  And speaking so, I speak of Macpherson’s contemporaries whom you respect.

I do not consider Walter Scott a great poet, but he was highly accomplished in matters of poetical antiquarianism, and is certainly citable as an authority on this question.

Try not to be displeased with me.  I cannot conceal from you that my astonishment is profound and unutterable at your new religion—­your new faith in this pseud-Ossian—­and your desecration, in his service, of the old Hellenic altars.  And by the way, my own figure reminds me to inquire of you whether you are not sometimes struck with a want in him—­a want very grave in poetry, and very strange in antique poetry—­the want of devotional feeling and conscience of God.  Observe, that all antique poets rejoice greatly and abundantly in their divine mythology; and that if this Ossian be both antique and godless, he is an exception, a discrepancy, a monster in the history of letters and experience of humanity.  As such I leave him.

Oh, how angry you will be with me.  But you seemed tolerably prepared in your last letter for my being in a passion....  Ever affectionately yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Why should I be angry with Flush? He does not believe in Ossian.  Oh,
I assure you he doesn’t.

The following letter was called forth by a criticism of Mr. Kenyon’s on Miss Barrett’s poem, The Dead Pan, which he had seen in manuscript; but it also meets some criticisms which others had made upon her last volume (see above, p. 65).

To John Kenyan Wimpole Street:  March 25, 1843.

My very dear Cousin,—­Your kindness having touched me much, and your good opinion, whether literary or otherwise, being of great price to me, it is even with tears in my eyes that I begin to write to you upon a difference between us.  And what am I to say?  To admit, of course, in the first place, the injuriousness to the ‘popularity,’ of the scriptural tone.  But am I to sacrifice a principle to popularity?  Would you advise me to do so?  Should I be more worthy of your kindness by doing so? and could you (apart from the kindness) call my refusal to do so either perverseness or obstinacy?  Even if you could, I hope you will try a little to be patient with me, and to forgive, at least, what you find it impossible to approve.

My dear cousin, if you had not reminded me of Wordsworth’s exclamation—­