372. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 242–243.
Hope End.
Friday. [Docket: May 1830]
My dear friend,
I wish to send you the passage from Cyril, which Dr Milner quotes (by a translation) in his End of Controversy; & also to thank you for many happy recollections. I will do the easiest thing first.
Dr Milner omits the former part of that translation which you attacked, & writes thus—“Since Christ himself affirms thus of the bread: This is my body,—who is so daring as to doubt of it? And since he affirms,—This is my blood,—who will deny that it is his blood? At Cana of Galilee, he, by an act of his will, turned water into wine, which resembles blood; and is he not then to be credited when he changes wine into blood? Therefore, full of certainty, let us receive the body & blood of Christ: for, under the form of bread, is given to thee his body, and under the form of wine, his blood.” [1] No mention is made of your remarks, directly or indirectly. If you should like to have the book, you have only to let me know.
And now that I have finished your business, how am I to begin my own? Wont your columns before Carlton Palace, speak for me also? [2] or must I seem to forget myself into their marble? You are aware of my deficiency in the parts of speech; and in that part of speech which is capable of expressing a great deal of gratitude for a great deal of happiness, I am particularly deficient. Forgive my deficiency here, as you have forgiven it in many other things! And let me assure you, that, if my Memory were as good as your’s or Porson’s, the recollection of the last few days could not last longer than it must do now!
Your grateful & attached friend
E B Barrett.
Address, on integral page: H. S Boyd Esqr
Docket, in unidentified hand: May 1830.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 113–114.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. The quotation, from one of the homilies of St. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, occurs in letter 37 in The End of Religious Controversy (1818) by John Milner (1752–1826), Catholic Bishop of Castabala.
2. On p. ix of the preface to Boyd’s Agamemnon, alluding to the inclusion of his translation of two poems of St. Gregory Nazianzen, he said: “If the question be put to them, which was put to the Ionic columns in front of Carlton House—‘What do you do here?’ I fear that the same answer must be given—‘We really do not know’.”
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