116. EBB to Samuel Moulton-Barrett (uncle)
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 108–109.
[?Hope End]
[ca. 1821] [1]
“Bella horrida bella” [2]
Vir
“And Aaron said ‘let not the anger of my lord wax hot” [3] –
Exodus
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“Woe to thee rash & unrelenting chief
In vain thou heapest ashes on thy head” [4]
for the day of vengeance is arrived, the hour of retribution draweth nigh and as Shakespeare says
“Give passion words—the rage that does not speak
Whispers the o’er fraught heart & bids it break” [5]
Tho I have had ample room & time for reflection I hardly know whether it will be more prudent to vent my anger in empty words or wait till I see you in order that vengeance may take the shape of a box on the ear or a shower bath! Shakespeare exclaims–
“I am not yet so low
But I may reach your eyes” [6] –
However on second thoughts & second thoughts have proved best on many occasions (vide the attack on you) I have at length made up my mind to thunder in your ears cannons charged only with the gunpowder of oratory which may give you the headache for a twelvemonth tho it may not prove the instrument of your death! My dear member of Parliament you are all this time I dare say hanging like Mahomets coffin between Earth & Heaven with astonishment & anxiety [7] – Aristotle comes very near your case in the following passage παντα [8] &c!——
And you really have had the desperate assurance & affrontery not only to insult Derrydown [9] by talking to him about petticoats but moreover to abuse me for not sending the Hereford Paper!——
Monster of iniquity! if I believed you to be half as bad as I dare say you are I should have sent you a paper which is a Tory publication—servile as the dust we tread on—& patronized by my Lord Somers!
Well! I forgive you—I forgive you! only write instantly and thus I take leave of you in the words of Shakespeare– “Come shake hands! I’m sorry I beat thee but mind another time keep a civil tongue in thine head!——[”] [10]
Your dutiful niece
Ba—
Publication: None traced.
Source: EBB’s draft, Folger Shakespeare Library.
1. Conjectural dating based on handwriting and style of expression, and the fact that the letter was written some time after Samuel Moulton-Barrett’s election to Parliament in March 1820.
2. “War dreadful war” (Vergil’s Æneid, VI, 86).
3. Exodus, 32:22.
4. A slight misquotation from Byron’s The Bride of Abydos (1813), II, 651–652.
5. Macbeth, IV, 3, 209–210, also slightly misquoted.
6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III, 2, 297–298, misquoted.
7. Cf. Hudibras, III, ii, 602, by Samuel Butler (1612–80).
8. “All; everything.” The passage EBB had in mind cannot be identified from this one word.
9. Not identified.
10. The Tempest, III, 2, 111–113, misquoted.
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