[1873.]

Dear Mrs. Kemble,

It is scarce fair to assail you on your return to England with another Letter so close on that to which you have only just answered—you who will answer! I wish you would consider this Letter of mine an Answer (as it really is) to that last of yours; and before long I will write again and call on you then for a Reply.

What inspires me now is, that, about the time you were writing to me about Burns and BÉranger, I was thinking of them ‘which was the Greater Genius?’—I can’t say; but, with all my Admiration for about a Score of the Frenchman’s almost perfect Songs, I would give all of them up for a Score of Burns’ Couplets, Stanzas, or single Lines scattered among those quite imperfect Lyrics of his. BÉranger, no doubt, was The Artist; which still is not the highest Genius—witness Shakespeare, Dante, Æschylus, Calderon, to the contrary. Burns assuredly had more Passion than the Frenchman; which is not Genius either, but a great Part of the Lyric Poet still. What BÉranger might have been, if born and bred among Banks, Braes, and Mountains, I cannot tell: Burns had that advantage over him. And then the Highland Mary to love, amid the heather, as compared to Lise the Grisette in a Parisian Suburb! Some of the old French Virelays and Vaux-de-vire come much nearer the Wild Notes of Burns, and go to one’s heart like his; BÉranger never gets so far as that, I think. One knows he will come round to his pretty refrain with perfect grace; if he were more Inspired he couldn’t.

‘My Love is like the red, red, Rose
That’s newly sprung in June,
My Love is like the Melody
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.’

and he will love his Love,

‘Till a’ the Seas gang Dry’

Yes—Till a’ the Seas gang dry, my Dear. And then comes some weaker stuff about Rocks melting in the Sun. All Imperfect; but that red, red Rose has burned itself into one’s silly Soul in spite of all. Do you know that one of Burns’ few almost perfect stanzas was perfect till he added two Syllables to each alternate Line to fit it to the lovely Music which almost excuses such a dilution of the Verse?

‘Ye Banks and Braes o’ bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom (so fresh) so fair?
Ye little Birds how can ye sing,
And I so (weary) full of care!
Thou’lt break my heart, thou little Bird,
That sings (singest so) upon the Thorn:
Thou minds me of departed days
That never shall return
(Departed never to) return.’

Now I shall tell you two things which my last Quotation has recalled to me.

Some thirty years ago A. Tennyson went over Burns’ Ground in Dumfries. When he was one day by Doon-side—‘I can’t tell how it was, Fitz, but I fell into a Passion of Tears’—And A. T. not given to the melting mood at all.

No. 2. My friend old Childs of the romantic town of Bungay (if you can believe in it!) told me that one day he started outside the Coach in company with a poor Woman who had just lost Husband or Child. She talked of her Loss and Sorrow with some Resignation; till the Coach happened to pull up by a roadside Inn. A ‘little Bird’ was singing somewhere; the poor Woman then broke into Tears, and said—‘I could bear anything but that.’ I dare say she had never even heard of Burns: but he had heard the little Bird that he knew would go to all Hearts in Sorrow.

BÉranger’s Morals are Virtue as compared to what have followed him in France. Yet I am afraid he partly led the way. Burns’ very Passion half excused him; so far from its being Refinement which Burke thought deprived Vice of half its Mischief!

Here is a Sermon for you, you see, which you did not compound for: nor I neither when I began my Letter. But I think I have told you the two Stories aforesaid which will almost deprive my sermon of half its Dulness. And I am now going to transcribe you a Vau-de-vire of old Olivier de Basselin, [23a] which will show you something of that which I miss in BÉranger. But I think I had better write it on a separate Paper. Till which, what think you of these lines of ClÉment Marot on the Death of some French Princess who desired to be buried among the Poor? [23b]

[P.S.—These also must go on the Fly-leaf: being too long, Alexandrine, for these Pages.]

What a Letter! But if you are still at your Vicarage, you can read it in the Intervals of Church. I was surprised at your coming so early from Italy: the famous Holy Week there is now, I suppose, somewhat shorn of its Glory.—If you were not so sincere I should think you were persiflaging me about the Photo, as applied to myself, and yourself. Some years ago I said—and now say—I wanted one of you; and if this letter were not so long, would tell you a little how to sit. Which you would not attend to; but I should be all the same, your long-winded

Friend
E. F.G.