1036. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 126–127.
[London]
Monday. Oct. 31. 1842–
My very dear friend,
I have put off from day to day sending you these volumes [1] —and in the meantime, I have had a letter from the great poet! Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to Mr Haydon, & that Mr Haydon sent it to Mr Wordsworth? The result was that Mr Wordsworth wrote to me. King John[’]s barons were never better pleased with their charta [2] than I am with this letter.
But I wont tell you any more about it until you have read the poems which I send you. Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet written on Westminster bridge, volume 3. page 78. Then take from the 6th volume—page 152, the passage beginning “Within the soul” [3] down to page 153 at “despair.”—and again at page 155 beginning with
“I have seen
A curious child” &c–
down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you wd justify me further by reading out, of volume 2d the two poems called Laodamia and Tintern Abbey at page 172 and page 161– I will not ask you to read any more—but I dare say you will rush on of your own accord, in which case there is a fine ode upon the Power of Sound in the same volume. [4] Wordsworth is a philosophical & Christian poet, with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be candid! Nay, I need not say so, because you always are.
As I am
your very affecte
Elizabeth Barrett B–
Address: H S Boyd Esqr
Publication: LEBB, I, 113–115.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. The page references that follow show that EBB was sending Boyd the 6-volume, 1836 edition of Wordsworth’s Poetical Works. This formed lot 1223 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2493).
2. The concessions forced on King John by his nobles were embodied in the Magna Carta of 1215.
3. In “Despondency Corrected,” bk. IV of The Excursion (lines 1058ff).
4. “Stanzas on the Power of Sound,” II, 223–232.
___________________
