295. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 126–129.
[Hope End]
[20–21 April 1828] [1]
My dear Sir,
When I adjourned from the kindness of your conversation to the kindness of your letter, I should have instantly written to thank you for both, if you had not given me something to do in the way of reading. I like your article against the Unitarians particularly. [2] The powerful & original argument is put in a striking yet simple point of view: and I am very glad now,—tho’ I was regretting it a fortnight ago,—that no one made any use of your suggestion. No one should have attempted the subject, αντιδου. [3] I earnestly hope your paper may effect the good, which on the mere human ground of reason, you have a right to expect from it. Of the three epigrams which I had not seen before, am I right or not in liking Mr Mape’s best? [4] Right or wrong, I cannot help the preference, tho’ I admire the elegance & ingenuity of them all. What am I to say of the ultimus Romanorum, [5] where you mention my name in so flattering a manner? When you shewed it to me the other day, you surprised me out of my voice: and even if I could have talked quite as fast as usual on the subject, I should have been obliged to have left a great deal unsaid. You certainly have a fault—which I must be the first to forgive!!
It is in general very humbling to be over-praised. But is there not sometimes a pleasure, not only in being overpraised but in knowing ourselves to be overpraised? that is, when we are more anxious about friendship than justice—& are inclined to value the fault of the judgment on account of its discovering the leaning of the feelings? In this way, I hope I may be allowed to be pleased, while I think of all your kind expressions––written & spoken!
My diplomacy is being exercised about the house at Malvern, [6] —& if I were to sacrifice willingly my individual advantage to the public interests, I should do what no politician of this enlightened age would think of doing. After all, my hopes rest on the promising bad accounts of the houses between your’s & Mrs Trant’s. In whatever way the business may be ultimately settled, you will be no prophet—for I think I shall often be at Malvern this summer,—& I am sure I shall never be there without going to see you—the ergo is tremendous! I should not be inconsiderate & unfeeling enough to mention it to you, before you can possibly have recovered [from] the visitation of Wednesday, & that cruel separation between yourself & your dinner which I was the means of effecting. You see what the omen meant!——
I have been reading St Chrysostom in Greek & in your English, [7] sufficiently loudly to startle his “canonized bones”: and if my sending back your Greek copy depend,—as your kindness says it must,—on my having felt no pleasure from what I read, I am afraid you are reduced to receive my thanks instead of the book. Being of a very martial disposition, I have been more particularly delighted (again) with the description of the battle, [8] —tho’ you did not select it for its harmony, & will be shocked at the barbarity of the preference. Preference is not a right word to use. The different characters of the passages prevent the propriety of their comparison; but I meant to say that I was more moved by the battle—that I dwelt upon it longer than on the other passages. Its imitative harmony is electrifying, stunning, & overwhelming! I observe that a very fine expression which I particularly admired in your translation .. “the one wide world of brass & iron” [9] .. is not in the original—& that on the other hand, St Chrysostom’s Homeric metaphor the snowing of arrows is not in your translation. You would not allow your author I suppose to be under obligations to Homer—tho’ he must positively have been thinking of the simile in the 12th Iliad. I wonder you did not translate a part of the 13th chapter, which seems to me to apply the grand battle very admirably, tho’ with a little prolixity. The music of the different passages you have marked, is quite exquisite. I think I liked the 5th chapter. lib. 3. rather the best: its close is so very majestic,—& that exclamation [“]’απαγε της μανιας”! [10] breaks with such a striking effect from the full sonorous sentence immediately preceding. There is a bold & forcible expression in the 4th chapter—lib 3. which I did not recollect in your translation, & looked for in vain: I mean γυμνη τη ψυχη. [11] Your paraphrase appears to my mind less expressive & impressive. [12] Is not the whole passage taken from one in the 11th chapter of the Phædon? I think so: but Plato is certainly tamer: he says αυτη τη ψυχη. [13]
Besides this, I have been reading several parts of your translation, exactly as you desired me to do—slowly, & out loud: and I have admired the particular cadences & the general rhythm, all the way. Can you forgive my insolence if I say tu quoque or rather chrysostomus quoque, [14] —& remark to you a “confusion of metaphor” in the last sentence of the eloquent discourse on prayer—where prayer is described as being implanted in the soul, spreading its luxuriant foliage, & laughing unhurt &c &c? [15] I have observed your orthodoxy about accents. You know Payne Knight [16] was one of the Dissenters from that doctrine—& never printed a line of Greek (did he?) which was guilty of an accent.
I have just heard from Sir U Price. He is full of the subject, as usual: & has been much pleased by receiving the sanction of no less an authority than Hermann’s. The Professor is a correspondent of a correspondent of his; and a Latin letter noticing the work & system, has been communicated to Sir Uvedale by this mutual friend. You may like to see the extract he has transcribed for my gratification– Pricii librum magnâ cum voluptate legi, velimque ei, meo nomine plurimas a te agi gratias. Videtur ille mihi pleraque omnia, non subtiliter tantum, sed etiam vere disputasse, paucaque sunt; in quibus ab illo dissentiam.” [17] The person whom this extract concerns, observes upon it, with his usual vivacity, & anteoctogenarianism—“I never could have expected (nor could you) to see my name in the genitive case with a Latin termination. The nominative therefore (as indeed it afterwards appears in the letter) must be Pricius, & consequently I am exalted to the rank of “the learned in us,” as that scoffer Voltaire, ludicrously calls the erudite.” Here, on the other hand, is a list of objections, to the new system– It was communicated to me by a determined adversary. [18]
1st That it is: Unsupported by ancient authority.
2. Contrary to physical experiment.
3. Defective in explaining many phenomena in pronunciation.
4. Inimical to imitative Harmony.
5. Inimical to variety.
6. Destructive, often, of expression & meaning.
7. Involving the untenable hypothesis of the laws of metre affecting the pre-established sound of words.
Monday morng. I did not receive your letter till last night.
When I had written that, I kept my pen in my hand without moving it, for several minutes,—& now I must write down the question I have been asking myself during my pause—“What can I write?” It is a difficult question to answer—& Davus sum, non Œdipus. [19] I cannot regulate my expressions towards you by any expressions I ever had occasion to use towards any other person—for the course of your conduct towards me, the course of your most persevering & disinterested kindness,—is wholly unexampled & unparalelled in my experience. Would you believe me, if I were to say that,—notwithstanding the gratifying character of your enclosure,—the means by which I came in possession of it, the circumstance of being indebted for it to you, gratified me still more? I dare say you would not: and yet it is the simple truth.
I remain, with much regard,
Gratefully & sincerely yours
E B Barrett.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 31–34 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Boyd wrote in his copy of EBB’s An Essay on Mind (Reconstruction, M40) that she first visited him on 16 April 1828. In this letter she cites “the visitation of Wednesday,” and 16 April fell on a Wednesday in that year. She finished the letter on Monday, presumably the first one after her visit, which would have been 21 April. Conjecture that this letter followed just after the first visit is strengthened by her anticipation of future visits and by her mention of the “omen.” As related in letter 290 to Elizabeth Moulton and Mary Trepsack, Boyd had regarded her carriage accident as a bad omen.
2. We have been unable to trace a copy of this article. According to EBB’s father, it was a pamphlet on the use of Greek by the Unitarians to substantiate their doctrine (see SD658).
3. EBB’s meaning here is not clear. “Antidou” is the aorist imperative of a verb meaning to give in return, to repay, to give for or instead of.
4. This epigram is not amongst the published ones we have found, and we have not been able to identify Mr. Mape.
5. “The last of the Romans.” This was probably the letter Boyd sent to The Classical Journal, in which he spoke of EBB as “a highly-favoured child of the Muses” (see letter 282, note 1).
6. Mrs. Moulton and Miss Trepsack were planning to spend a season in Malvern and a house was being sought for them. EBB hoped it would be close to Boyd’s and thus make it easier for her to visit him.
7. Boyd’s Select Passages of the Writings of St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Basil, published in 1806, with a “considerably enlarged” 3rd edition in 1813.
8. EBB had previously praised this passage from “On the Priesthood” in letter 275. Boyd’s version appeared on pp. 70–74 of the 1813 edition of his Select Passages.
9. In the course of his description of the battle, Boyd wrote: “The brazen arms glitter in the sun, and to his refulgent blaze the helmets and the shields oppose their lustre. The clashing of the spears, and the neighing of the horses, is raised to the canopy of heaven; the bosom of the sea is darkened, no earth appears, but wherever the eye is turned, there is one wide world of brass and iron” (op. cit., pp. 70–71).
10. “Lead away from madness.”
11. “The naked soul.” This passage from “On the Priesthood” appears in MPG, 48, 642.
12. Boyd’s version of the passage speaks of “unclouded intellect, in all the purity of regenerated spirit” (op. cit., p. 56).
13. “The soul itself” (Platonis Philosophi, ed. Henry Stephens, 1781, p. 151).
14. “You also / Chrysostomus also.” Chrysostomus is underscored three times.
15. EBB refers to the conclusion of Boyd’s translation of part of the peroration of Chrysostom’s “Fifth Oration on the Incomprehensible” (op. cit. p. 31). “Laughing unhurt” is a typical Boydian extravagance, not found in the original text.
16. Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824), Price’s friend, author of An Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet (1791) and other works on classical subjects.
17. For a translation of these comments, see letter 294, note 6.
18. i.e., by James Commeline, in letter 278.
19. “I am Davos, not Œdipus” (Terence’s Andria, I, 3).
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