Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/111

Rh labour—where labour could do anything. I have worked at poetry—it has not been with me reverie, but art. As the physician and lawyer work at their several professions, so have I, and so do I, apply to mine.

" . . . With reference to the double rhyming, it has appeared to me employed with far less variety in our serious poetry than our language would admit of generally, and that the various employment of it would add another string to the lyre of our Terpander. . . . A great deal of attention—far more than it would take to rhyme with conventional accuracy—have I given to the subject of rhymes, and have determined in cold blood to hazard some experiments. . ..

"And now, upon all this—to prove to you that I do not set out on this question with a minority of one—I take the courage and vanity to send to you a note which a poet whom we both admire wrote to a friend of mine, who lent him the manuscript of this very "Pan." Mark! no opinion was asked about the rhymes—the satisfaction was altogether impulsive—from within. Send me the note back, and never tell anybody that I showed it to you—it would appear too vain. Also, I have no right to show it. It was sent to me as likely to please me, and pleased me so much and naturally on various accounts, and not the least from the beauty of the figure used to illustrate my rhymatology, that I begged to be allowed to keep it. So send it back, after reading it confidentially, and pardon me as much as you can of the self-will fostered by it."

After such a response, Horne, as will be readily imagined, dropped the subject of allowable rhymes; but, it is most interesting to learn, the poet whose opinion had proved so satisfactory to Miss Barrett was