Correspondence

263.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 56–58.

Hope End.

April 23d 1827.

Sir,

You permitted me to answer your letter ‘in my leisure’; & tho’ I have taken that permission most literally, I am neither the less obliged to you for sending me Dr Goodenough’s [1] satisfactory communication, or for your continued kind expressions of interest in myself. It is very good of you still to desire me to visit you. To prove that my inclinations can scarcely be in fault, I will assure you that, tho’ I have relations living at Malvern, [2] —much nearer to us than your residence,—I have not been to see them since last summer; & then only by availing myself of an accidental opportunity. They have been at Malvern nearly three years, but, before last summer, I never went to see them,—an omission they were kind enough to pardon in consideration of my engaged time, & want of conveyance. You must not be harder on me than they are: & indeed, I, who lose the advantage of your conversation have much the worst of the bargain, & much the best reason to complain.

With regard to your questions,—I intend to give up Greek, when I give up poetry: &,—as Porson [3] said on a case equally decided,—“not till then”. Tho’ I never become a critical scholar, I may continue to enjoy that divine poetical literature, for whose sake I encountered the language. In my quotation from the Antigone, is not the prepositive article in the accusative case? And, in the line you refer me to from the beginning of the Œdipus Tyrannus, does not ἐμου,—used with θελοντος,—shew the genitive absolute? [4] The expression equivalent to it in Latin, would be me volente, if I do not mistake. Pray believe that I could not be induced to act so unfairly as to make the answer of another person pass for my own. I have lately been giving some attention to the system of accents.

Bentley’s name should be venerable in our recollections, were it only on account of his research connected with the Digamma: [5] and I certainly could have no intention of using a disrespectful expression, when I felt so much respect. I am sorry to be suspected of feeling differently; &, if I have an opportunity, shall assuredly cancel, or in some way modify, a passage that has exposed my judgment to such an imputation. Only two lines of my Essay refer to Bentley; the second of which can scarcely be objected to, since it comprises his own confession stated in the note. The first line, viz.

 

“And Bentley leaves on stilts the beaten track.” [6]

I am ready to acknowledge, sounds invidious,—& I wish it were away! By Bentley’s “stilts” however, I did not mean to intimate that his reputation as a scholar was supported by undue means. I had been contrasting Genius with Art; I had been lamenting the sufferings of Poetry from Criticism; and my warm feelings against Shakespeare’s Commentators were naturally extended to Bentley,—by having full in my mind, his anti-poetical edition of Milton, which you must admit to be the weakest work in point of criticism he ever gave to the world. [7]

As to the Bishop of Cloyne, if he had not what Pope allows him, “every virtue under Heaven”, he was, at least, an excellent and admirable man! [8] I have a sufficiently high opinion of him to believe, that, could he have lived to observe consequences, he would repent, from his soul, having ever written what involves something more terrible than a reductio ad absurdum. As an Author he is responsible for his works,—&, as a reader, I am not obliged to consider the amiable character of a man, when I have to do with his doctrine. It is impossible to enter on the subject here: I will only say in depreciation of that doctrine:—look at the sceptic Hume, [9] who, by pursuing Berkely’s path, has proved too surely that “it leads but to a precipice.” Locke’s treatise against the ‘Divine Right’ seems to me abundantly clear; [10] but when Berkely has persuaded me to give up the ratio ultima, [11] —the evidence of my senses,—I may give up my ratio altogether, & be quite ‘passive’.

Believe me

Your obliged.

E B Barrett–

Address, on integral page: Hugh S Boyd Esqr / Ruby Cottage / Malvern Wells.

Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 6–8.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Possibly Samuel Goodenough (1743–1827), Bishop of Carlisle and Latin scholar.

2. The Trants.

3. Richard Porson (1759–1808), classical scholar much admired by Boyd.

4. These two words, “my” and “wishing,” appear in lines 11 and 12 of Sophocles’ play.

5. Richard Bentley (1662–1742), classical scholar and author. His projected edition of Homer, restoring the lost digamma, did not reach publication.

6. The next line (101), completing the reference to Bentley, reads “And peeps at glory from some ancient’s back.”

7. Bentley’s edition of Paradise Lost, published in 1732.

8. George Berkeley (1685–1753), Bishop of Cloyne, philosopher. Pope’s comment appears in line 73 of Epilogue to the Satires. Dialogue II (1738).

9. David Hume (1711–76), philosopher and historian, who questioned the validity of miracles in “An Essay on Miracles” (1748).

10. Two Treatises of Government (1690) by John Locke (1632–1704).

11. “Final reason.”

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