1891. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 171–172.
[London]
Saturday. [26 April 1845] [1]
My dearest cousin
After all I said & you said the other day, about Apuleius, & about what could’nt, should’nt, & mus’nt be done in the matter, I ended by trying the unlawful art of translating this prose into verse, &, one after another, have done all the subjects of the Poniatowsky gems Miss Thompson sent the list of, except two, which I am doing & shall finish anon. [2] In the meantime it comes into my head that it is just as well for you to look over my doings, & judge whether anything in them is to the purpose or at all likely to be acceptable. Especially I am anxious to impress on you that, if I cd think, for a moment, you wd hesitate about rejecting the whole in a body, from any consideration for me, I shd not merely be vexed but pained. Am I not your own cousin, to be ordered about, as you please? And so, take notice, that I will not bear the remotest approach to ceremony in the matter. What is wrong? what is right? what is too much? those are the only considerations.
Apuleius is florid, which favoured the poetical design on his sentences. Indeed he is more florid than I have always liked to make my verses. It is not of course an absolute translation—but as a running commentary on the text, it is sufficiently faithful.
But probably (I say to myself) you do not want so many illustrations—& all too, from one hand.?
The two I do not send, are ‘Psyche contemplating Cupid asleep’, & “Psyche & the Eagle’[’]–
And I wait to hear how Polyphemus is to look—& also Adonis.
The Magazine goes to you with many thanks– The sonnet is full of force & expression,—& I like it as well as ever I did—better even! [3]
Oh—such happy news today! The Statira in at Plymouth, [4] & my brothers quite well—notwithstanding their hundred days on the sea! It makes me happy–
Yours most affectionately
Ba
You shall have your Radical [5] almost immediately. I am ashamed. In such haste!!!
Publication: LEBB, I, 249–250 (as [beginning of April 1845]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by reference to the Statira being “in at Plymouth” which EBB mentions in the following letter to Julia Martin.
2. See letter 1884, as well as Appendix IV.
3. Presumably Kenyon’s “Sonnet On Reading A.F. Rio’s ‘Petite Chouannerie’,” which was published in Hood’s Magazine, April 1845, p. 341. See letter 1859.
4. See letter 1813, note 3.
5. Perhaps Passages in the Life of a Radical (1844) by Samuel Bamford (1788–1872) which EBB mentions to Miss Mitford in letter 1930.
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