391. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 272–273.
Hope End.
Wednesday. [15 December 1830] [1]
My dearest friend,
If it had not been for Annie, who asked me to wait one day longer, that my parcel might take under its cover some letters from her, I would have sent the right number of the Christian Examiner yesterday. It is right in more ways than one—by my saying which, you will guess that I have read the short but satisfactory review of your work. [2] But indeed without my saying anything, you would guess that I could not have helped cutting the leaves for that purpose, even at the risk of being turned, like some Heroine of Ovid’s, into a crow, for peeping!–
Thank you for sending me your epitaph on Payne Knight. Among your other guesses you must have anticipated my liking it very much, & if you did, were quite as right as the Christian Examiner. It has a great deal of point & cleverness—& I like it even better now than I did on reading it for the first time. Do you know I am far more inclined to criticize the epistolary winding up of what you sent (though it may wind you up into a passion to hear me say so) than the epigramatic prolegomena? I hope there is no harm in wishing that your style on this one occasion had resembled Foster’s! Did you ever read any part of his Essays? [3] They are powerful & original but I did not speak of their writer on those accounts. I spoke of him, because if he had had the writing of the two sentences which compose your letter (which I assure you I do not wish) each of them would have filled a sheet as large as this!—— Talking of the style of letters, Papa had an anonymous one yesterday, very calligraphical & orthographical, to inform him that he was surrounded by a “sett of roges”, & that there was one man among them who was “a roge impartikler”—& that they were all “a gloring” in the discharge of a certain workman, who, being of “a gode carickter”, should have been “inkuridged” instead of discharged. Papa suspects the workman with the “gode carickter”, of “inkuridging” the writing of this letter. He cannot write himself. Annie is in high spirits, & not complaining of headache,—and her cough is much better. Give my love to Mrs Boyd. I might go on writing, but perhaps, as I have nothing particular to say, you might not like to go on reading– “So,” as Papa’s correspondent says, “no more at present from”
Yours ever affectionately
E B Barrett.
Thursday Morning. [16 December 1830]
Since finishing my letter, I have heard (thro’ a letter from Miss Clarke,) that a gentleman whose name is unnamed, accidentally mentioned to her, your father, as an intimate friend of his, the cleverest & most agreeable man he ever knew, & the certain author of Junius’s letters. [4] I have besides heard that Annie & I are going to Malvern on Saturday, which of course I, for one, am very sorry for. She wal[t]zed herself last night into a headache—but it soon seemed to go off.
And now I will put a second finis to this scribble, which does not seem to have quite taken your hints of brevity.
Address, on integral page: H. S. Boyd Esqr
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 111–113.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the reference to Miss Graham-Clarke’s letter.
2. We have been unable to locate this review.
3. Essays, in a Series of Letters to a Friend (1805) by John Foster (1770–1843).
4. Bummy sent EBB a message in her letter to Henrietta, 14 December: “Tell her I have met with a Gentleman who accidentally mentioned her dear Mr. Boyd’s Father with whom he was very intimiate & spoke of him as the dearest & most agreeable Man he ever met & gave him the full credit of being the Author of Junius’s letters” (SD733). The identity of Junius, whose political essays appeared in 1769–72, has never been established with any certainty, although it led to intense speculation, and at least forty putative authors were proposed.
___________________
