354. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 215–217.
Hope End.
Tuesday Evening. [Docket: October 1829]
My dear Mr Boyd,
I return Dr Clarke’s commentary on the Romans,—&, with it, Miss Boyd’s cloak which she was kind enough to lend me & which I am quite ashamed of not having returned before. I calculated upon opportunities which never arrived; & when I lost all patience & was going to send it today, the rain prevented my good intentions. Do tell her this, & give her my best love at the same time.
I admire the 9th hymn of Synesius, & I should think that it must be a very good translation. Some translations are of such a character that you dare say so of them, even without conferring them with their originals. The expression
“Death insatiate
Feeds on the ghostly nations” [1]
is very fine. I do not like in the same degree, or indeed in any degree, “the bleeding wreck of Man’s felicity”. [2] You sometimes abuse confusion in metaphor & confusors of metaphor– “De te (vel de Synesio) fabula narratur!” [3] —— at least in this instance.
Gregory Nazianzen’s address to his soul is beautiful in his Greek & also beautiful in your English; & I particularly admire your translation of his Hymn to the Deity—page 39. [4] It is very beautiful indeed—there is harmony grace & strength & animation in the versification!—— I have read it several times with increased & increasing pleasure. What induced you to divide, & print separate extracts from Gregory’s poem on the vanity of life? [5] Is it not beautiful enough & short enough to bear an in toto translation? The fragment from the lost tragedy attributed to Æschyylus is fine indeed! [6] Is it really attributable to Æschylus?– Is there any internal evidence in the original, to such an effect—or does the attribution rest wholly & solely on the authority of Justin Martyr? I see that you have imitated Collins in the speech of Leolf, page 106, “Soft melting maids &c” [7] –: the four last lines of the speech which are no imitation, are powerful & striking; & I must select another passage (the speech of Leontine at page 111) to be particularly admired. [8]
With regard to your treatise on Geology, [9] I will say nothing about the science of it, for fear you should laugh at me, in which case I could not have even the satisfaction of complaining of your injustice. I assure you I have read it quite thro’, & more than once. The passages which I like best in the way of composition, begin with “Let others trace out blemishes on the face of nature[”] &c to the end—& with “Is it not written as clearly as with a sunbeam”? down to “and God with his own image, crowned the summit of his temple”. [10] This last idea is extremely beautiful & appears to me original. In the opening of the essay, the composition appears to me too evidently laboured; & as if words were employed, not to make sense, but to make sentences. There is however a beautiful & not a verbose passage at the conclusion of the first paragraph, beginning “Then may Sacred & philosophical Truth be united &c”. [11] I enter a solemn & serious protest against the yea at page 6! Let your candour judge whether it has not a ludicrous effect in the following sentence—“the bones of animals have been preserved, which are as small as those of a rat; yea,!! as small as those of a field mouse!!!” [12] I like your yea abstractedly, very much indeed; but I do not like it in company with rats & mice. Its introduction is correct & effective in poetry & in poetical prose,—anywhere where a warm & elevated diction is not out of place. Where a warm & elevated diction is out of place, your “yea” has no business to be,—& I wish you would tell it so.
Your sincere friend
E B Barrett.
Wednesday Morng.
Give my love to Mrs Boyd,—& forgive my impertinence. I intended to send you my elegy on the death of Sir Uvedale Price, [13] & to ask for your criticisms; but I believe it will not be possible for me to copy it out in time. There is no occasion for you to answer this letter, if you feel in the least disinclined to write today. I have not finished the Apologetick.
Thursday: It rained yesterday—& I did not like sending the cloak thro’ the rain, for fear of doing more harm than good, in every way.
Address, on integral page: Hugh Stuart Boyd Esqr
Docket, in unidentified hand: Oct. 1829.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 83–85 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Select Poems of Synesius and Gregory Nazianzen, translated by Hugh Stuart Boyd (1814), p. 1. EBB’s own translation of the same passage (in her words, “closer if less graceful and polished than Mr. Boyd’s”) was included in “Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets,” first published in The Athenæum, February and March, 1842: “Where shepherd-Death did tend and keep / A thousand nations like to sheep.”
2. “There rolls not the unwearied flood of time, / Whose crimson current sweeps the bleeding wreck / Of man’s felicity to darksome death;” (Select Poems, p. 3).
3. “It is of you (or rather of Synesius) that the tale is told” (Horace, Satires, I, i, 70).
4. Gregory’s Address to his Soul (“Pro Sua Anima”) was translated by Boyd on pp. 10–13 of his Select Poems. His translation of the Hymn to the Deity is found on pp. 39–43.
5. 17 lines from the opening of this poem are given on pp. 59–60; another passage of 20 lines, from the conclusion, on pp. 61–62.
6. 13 lines, commencing “Confound not God with man, nor vainly deem / His form is human and of flesh like thine;” (op. cit., p. 69).
7. The imitation of Collins appears to be one of subject, rather than style (cf. Collins’ “A Song from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,” verse 1).
8. Both these speeches occur in an unpublished tragedy by Boyd, “Edwy and Elgiva.” Extracts from it appear in Select Poems, pp. 94–112.
9. Written in 1817, but not published until 1819 in four numbers of Imperial Magazine (cols. 775–780, 849–857, 912–918 and 1031–43). Its object was to harmonize the “phænomena of nature” with “the Sacred Records.”
10. The three passages quoted by EBB are found in cols. 1040 and 1043.
11. Col. 775.
12. Col. 854, note.
13. “To the Memory of Sir Uvedale Price, Bart.” First published in Prometheus Bound (1833), p. 131.
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