907. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 229–231.
[London]
Feb. 4. 1842.
My dear friend,
You must be thinking, if you are not a St. Boyd for good-temper, that among the Gregorys and Synesiuses, I have forgotten everything about you. No—indeed it has not been so. I have never stopped being grateful to you for your kind notes, & the two last pieces of Gregory, although I did not say an overt “Thank you”—but I have been very very busy besides & thus I answered to myself for your being kind enough to pardon a silence which was compelled rather than voluntary.
Do you ever observe, that as vexations dont come alone, occupations dont—and that if you happen to be engaged upon one particular thing, it is the signal for your being way-laid by bundles of letters desiring immediate answers, & proofsheets or ms works whose writers request your opinion while their “printer waits”?– The old saints are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have been busy upon busy.
The first part of my story about the Greek poets, went to the Athenæum some days ago, but, altho’ graciously received by the editor, it wont appear this week or I shd have had a proof sheet (which was promised to me) before now– I must contrive to include all I have to say on the subject in three parts. They will admit, they tell me, a fourth if I please, but evidently they wd prefer as much brevity as I could vouchsafe. [1] Only two poets are in the first notice—and twenty remain,—& neither of the two is Gregory! [2]
Will you let me see that volume of Gregory, which contains the ‘Christus patiens’? Send it by any boy on the heath, [3] & I will remunerate him for the walk & the burden, & thank you besides. Oh dont be afraid! I am not going to charge it upon Gregory but on the younger Apollinaris whose claim is stronger [4] —& I rather wish to refresh my recollection of the height & breadth of that tragic misdemeanor.
It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain—& equally so that I continue most decidedly better notwithstanding the winter. I feel too, I do hope not ungratefully, the blessing granted to me in the possibility of literary occupation .. which is at once occupation & distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher) calls literature a “fire-proof pleasure”! [5] How truly! How deeply I have felt that truth!
May God bless you, dear Mr Boyd! I dont despair of looking in your face one day yet before my last!
Ever your affectionate & obliged
EBB–
Arabel’s love.
Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 21 Downshire Hill / Hampstead.
Publication: LEBB, I, 98–99.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. There were four parts in all.
2. The first paper, in The Athenæum of 26 February 1842 (no. 748, pp. 189–190), dealt with Ezekiel, author of The Exodus from Egypt, and Clemens Alexandrinus. EBB observed that “It has the look of an incongruity, to begin an account of the Greek Christian poets with a Jew”.
3. Downshire Hill, where Boyd lived, bordered Hampstead Heath; it was an easy walk from there, across the Heath, to Wimpole Street.
4. In the second part of “Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets” in The Athenæum of 5 March (no. 749, pp. 210–212), EBB dealt with Apollinaris the Elder, who taught grammar in Loadicæa, and his son, Apollinaris the Younger, poet, rhetorician and philosopher. EBB ascribes to the latter authorship of Christus Patiens.
5. Carlyle, writing in The Foreign Review (no. 9, 1830) about the German novelist and philosopher Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825), said he “was of exemplary, unwearied diligence in his vocation; and so had, at all times, ‘perennial, fire-proof Joys, namely Employments.’”
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