e edge of your article.

I recall myself now to my first intention of being simply, but not
silently, grateful to you; and entreating you to pardon this letter
too quickly to think it necessary-to answer it....

I remain, very truly yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_To Mr. Chorley_
50 Wimpole Street: January 7, 1845.

Dear Mr. Chorley,--You are very good to deign to answer my
impertinences, and not to be disgusted by my defamations of 'the
grandmothers,' and (to diminish my perversity in your eyes) I am ready
to admit at once that we are generally too apt to run into premature
classification--the error of all imperfect knowledge; and into
unreasonable exclusiveness--the vice of it. We spoil the shining
surface of life by our black lines drawn through and through, as
if ominously for a game of the fox and goose. For my part, however
imperfect my practice may be, I am intimately convinced--and more and
more since my long seclusion--that to live in a house with windows on
every side, so as to catch both the morning and evening sunshine, is
the best and brightest thing we have to do--to say nothing about the
justest and wisest. Sympathies are our opportunities of good.

Moreover, I know nothing of your 'sweet mistress Anne.'[122] I never
read a verse of hers. Ignorance goes for much, you see, in all our
mal-criticisms, and my ignorance goes to this extent. I cannot write
to you of your Anglo-American poetess.

Also, in my sweeping speech about the grandmothers, I should have
stopped before such instances as the exquisite ballad of 'Auld Robin
Gray,' which is attributed to a woman, and the pathetic 'Ballow my
Babe,' which tradition calls 'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' I have
certain doubts of my own, indeed, in relation to both origins, and
with regard to 'Robin Gray' in particular; but doubts are not worthy
stuff enough to be taken into an argument, and certainly, therefore,
I should have admitted those two ballads as worthy poems before the
_Joannan aera_.

For what I ventured to say otherwise, would you not consent to
join our sympathies, and receive the 'choir' (ah! but you are very
cunningly subtle in your distinctions; I am afraid I was too simple
for you) as agreeable writers of verses sometimes, leaving the word
_poet_ alone? Because, you see, what you call the 'bad dispensation'
by no means accounts for the want of the faculty of poetry, strictly
so called. England has had many learned women, not merely rea