EBB'S COMMENTS ON CRITICS

"I have sometimes thought that it would be a curious & instructive process, as illustrative of the wisdom & apprehension of critics, if anyone would collect the critical soliloquies of every age touching its own literature, (as far as such may be extant) and confer them with the literary product of the said ages.... Sydney, who in the noble 'discourse on Poetry,' gives such singular evidence of being stone-critic-blind to the gods who moved around him. As far as I can remember, he saw even Shakespeare but indifferently. Oh-it was in his eyes, quite an unillumed [sic] age, that period of Elizabeth which we see full of suns! and few can see what is close to the eyes though they run their heads against it: the denial of contemporary genius is the rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest, till there is a rush of wings,-and lo! They are flown. Of the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better than might be expected of their badness-only the fact of their influence is no less undeniable than the reason they should not be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the world over. But the influence is for today, for this hour-not for tomorrow & the day after-unless indeed as you say, the poet do himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning, 17 February 1845

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