Correspondence

1114.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 267–269.

[London]

Jany. 5. 1842– [sic, for 1843] [1]

My very dear friend,

My surprise was inexpressible at your utterance of the name. [2] What! Ossian superior as a poet to Homer! Mr Boyd saying so! Mr Boyd treading down the neck of Æschylus while he praises Ossian!– [3] The fact appears to me that anomalous thing among believers .. a miracle without an occasion!

I confess I never, never shd have guessed the name,—not, though I had guessed to Doomsday– In the first place, I do not believe in Ossian—& having partially examined the testimony (for I dont pretend to any exact learning about it) I consider him as the poetical lay figure upon which Mr Macpherson dared to cast his personality. There is a sort of phraseology, nay, an identity of occasional phrases, from the antique—but that these, so called, Ossianic poems were ever discovered & translated as they stand in their present form, I believe in no wise. As Dr Johnson wrote to Macpherson, so I would say—“Mr Macpherson! I thought you an impostor, & I think so still.” [4]

It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian; & I never did much delight in him as that fact proves. Since your letter came I have taken him up again—& have just finished ‘Carthon’– There are beautiful passages in it,—the most beautiful beginning I think “Desolate is the dwelling of Moina”, & the next place being filled by that address to the sun, you magnify, so, with praise. [5] But the charm of these things, is the only charm of all the poems– There is a sound of wild vague music in a monotone!—nothing is articulate—nothing individual, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from these poems,—& they are colourless & bare. Compare them with the old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each! How cold they grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer’s grand breathing personalities—with Æschylus’s … nay, but I cannot bear upon my lips or fingers the charge of the blasphemy of such comparing, even for religion’s sake.

Arabel has written according to your desire, about Mary Hunter [6] —and if she can go to you, you must not fancy that I was not always persuaded of your being pleased with her in certain respects– You could not fail to estimate her quickness of intelligence & affectionateness of character– I was rendered over-cautious perhaps in what I have said on this subject, by the affection I feel towards both of you .. both yourself & her

I had another letter from America a few days since—from an American poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine & asked for contributions from my pen. [7] The Americans are as goodnatured to me as if they took me for the high radical I am, you know.

You wont be angry with me for my obliquity (as you will consider it) about Ossian. You know I always talk sincerely to you, & you have not made me afraid of telling you the truth—that is, my truth—the truth of my belief & opinions.

I do not defend much in the ‘Idiot boy’– [8] Wordsworth is a great poet, but he does not always write equally–

And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest between Ossian & Homer. I [9] fashion it in this way. Homer sometimes nods [10] —but Ossian makes his readers nod.

Ever your affectionate

Elizabeth B Barrett.

Did I tell you that I have been reading through a M∙S. translation of the Gorgias of Plato, by Mr Hyman of Oxford, who is a step-son of Mr Haydon’s the artist? It is an excellent translation with learned notes—but it is not elegant. He means to try the public upon it—but as I have intimated to him, the Christians of the present day are not civilized enough for Plato.

Arabel’s love–

Publication: LEBB, I, 118–119 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Boyd’s riddle, mentioned in letter 1100, 28 December 1842.

2. i.e., the answer to Boyd’s riddle.

3. A legendary character in Gaelic literature, who figures in a series of epic events set in the third century A.D. In 1762, Fingal, a purported translation of a poem in Gaelic by Ossian, was published by James Macpherson (1736–96).

4. Johnson, in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), based his refutation of the authenticity of Macpherson’s publication partly on the fact that neither Macpherson nor any of his champions would produce convincing evidence, such as original manuscripts of Ossian’s alleged works (pp. 190–192). In a letter to Macpherson dated 20 January 1775, Johnson wrote: “I received your foolish and impudent note.... You want me to retract. What shall I retract? I thought your book an imposture from the beginning, I think it upon yet surer reasons an imposture still. For this opinion I give my publick my reasons which I here dare you to refute” (The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R.W. Chapman, 1952, II, 373).

5. EBB refers to the passages in “Carthon” commencing “Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house of her fathers” and “Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light!”

6. i.e., about the possibility of Mary’s becoming Boyd’s companion (see letter 1096).

7. i.e., Lowell (see letter 1088).

8. In Lyrical Ballads (1798).

9. Underscored twice.

10. Horace, Ars Poetica, 358–360.

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