A report runs in London that Mr. Boyd says of Elizabeth Barrett:  ’She is a person of the most perverted judgment in England.’  Now, if this be true, I shall not mend my evil position in your opinion, my very dear friend, by confessing that I differ with you, the more the longer I live, on the ground of what you call ‘jumping lines.’  I am speaking not of particular cases, but of the principle, the general principle, of these cases, and the tenacity of my judgment does not arise from the teaching of ‘Mr. Lucas,’ but from the deeper study of the old master-poets—­English poets—­those of the Elizabeth and James ages, before the corruption of French rhythms stole in with Waller and Denham, and was acclimated into a national inodorousness by Dryden and Pope.  We differ so much upon this subject that we must proceed by agreeing to differ, and end, perhaps, by finding it agreeable to differ; there can be no possible use in an argument.  Only you must be upright in justice, and find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me.  So far from having read him more within these three years, I have read him less, and have taken no new review, I do assure you, of his position and character as a poet, and these facts are testified unto by the other fact that my poetry, neither in its best features nor its worst, is adjusted after the fashion of his school.

But I am writing too much; you will have no patience with me.  ’The Excursion’ is accused of being lengthy, and so you will tell me that I convict myself of plagiarism, currente calamo.

I have just finished a poem of some eight hundred lines, called ’The Vision of Poets,’[85] philosophical, allegorical—­anything but popular.  It is in stanzas, every one an octosyllabic triplet, which you will think odd, and I have not sanguinity enough to defend.

May God bless you, my dearest Mr. Boyd!  Yes, I heard—­I was glad to hear—­of your having resumed that which used to be so great a pleasure to you—­Miss Marcus’s society.  I remain,

Affectionately and gratefully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

My love to dear Annie.

[Footnote 85:  Poetical Works, i. 223.]

To Mr. Westwood October 1843.

You are probably right in respect to Tennyson, for whom, with all my admiration of him, I would willingly secure more exaltation and a broader clasping of truth.  Still, it is not possible to have so much beauty without a certain portion of truth, the position of the Utilitarians being true in the inverse.  But I think as I did of ‘uses’ and ‘responsibilities,’ and do hold that the poet is a preacher and must look to his doctrine.

Perhaps Mr. Tennyson will grow more solemn, like the sun, as his day goes on.  In the meantime we have the noble ‘Two Voices,’ and, among other grand intimations of a teaching power, certain stanzas to J.K.  (I think the initials are) on the death of his brother,[86] which very deeply affected me.