Correspondence

361.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 225–227.

[Hope End]

Monday [21 December 1829] [1]

My dear friend,

I see that you wish to bribe me into liking the lengthening of your poem. That is not fair! If I were you, I would certainly transpose the fourth & fifth lines; but then certainly I might do wrong. With the transposition, the sense seems to me more consecutive, & the pauses more various & better arranged. The “it” in the fifth line, has an awkwardness to my mind & ear. Might not it’s place be supplied by “me”? [2]

With regard to the two epigrams which you so much pleased me by sending, I like them both,—that is, I like the versification of the first & the point in the second. I like neither of them as well as some epigrams of yours which I have seen or heard. If you have your Greek epitaph on a cat, written out, do send it to me catespeusmenoos. [3] When I was reading to you last, I thought several times of putting you in mind respecting it,—but after all, when the time for doing so, came, I forgot. Pray do not you forget!——

I forgot to tell you in my last note, what I was going to say when the interruption came—I mean, about Miss Smith’s book. [4] I saw it for only five minutes,—and therefore was able to look over, only in a cursory way, the verses on the Malvern accident. There appeared to me certainly & obviously a resemblance between them and your poem on the same subject. [5] I have been told that one of Miss Smith’s poems has the following title,—“On the death of a child—by particular desire”. If this is a fact, I have no “particular desire” to look at Miss Smith’s poems more particularly!——

I have been reading over again Plato’s Phædon,—a daring effort in this snowy weather, considering “the coldness of the style”. The reasoning seems to me very inconsecutive & inconclusive,—<…> [6] built upon ingenious subtle brittle analogies which can have nothing to do with proofs. But the style is a veil of golden tissue, like that which over-hung the countenance of Moore’s Veiled Prophet: [7] and let no one upraise it! The little that Plato has effected, in his endeavour to penetrate spiritual mysteries without the light of “The Spirit”, is a proof à fortiori & à fortissimâ, of the impossibility of any other mind effecting anything, without that Light. Do you recollect the chapters on natural philosophy? How splendid they are!

I have been reading Chrysostom, too. You never called his orations a commentary, that I recollect. I called them so, of course improperly (since you say so) but I do not clearly understand how. The work seems to me as right down a commentary as any that ever was written. Do you observe that the most difficult clause in the most difficult chapter of Romans is not noticed by Chrysostom—“Whom he did predestinate, them he also called.” [8] Chrysostom’s construction of the disputed passages, has too much High Church Arminianism to please me at all,—& is I think less able, less clear, & less satisfactory than Dr Adam Clarke’s.

You cannot expect this to be read to you intelligibly, as it is written so illegibly; and you could not expect it to be written legibly if you knew that it was written half way between the fender & the grate, & within hearing of Arabel’s soliloquies. Unfortunately she has discovered that my room is the warmest in the house; &, not being able to make me talk,—in a true woman’s style she is talking to: herself.

Will you think me very stupid,—for wishing you (by the rule of the season) a great many happy Christmases and New Years,—& for super-adding (by the rule of human selfishness) “at malvern?” Well! you may think me very stupid for doing so——only believe me

Your sincere friend

E B Barrett.

Address, on integral page: H. S. Boyd Esqr / Woodland Lodge / Great Malvern.

Docket, in unidentified hand: Decr 27th 1829.

Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 89–90 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by the docket and EBB’s reference to Christmas.

2. We have not been able to identify this poem.

3. “Swiftly.”

4. Poems on Malvern and Other Subjects (1829) by Elizabeth Smith.

5. “A Day of Pleasure at Malvern” (see letter 253).

6. About half a line obliterated with loops, apparently by EBB.

7. “The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,” Part I of Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817).

8. Romans, 8:30.

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