204. Edward Moulton-Barrett (brother) to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 208–209.
[London]
Novbr 10th 1824.
My dearest Bazy.
You will no doubt be greatly enraged, and most strongly indignant, that I, I who am always complaining of your idleness, should myself be so heinous an infringer of our epistolary laws. I can assure you it was quite unpremeditated on my part, as a very bad sprain in my thumb totally disabled me from further service with the pen for some time, it is indeed now very stiff, but I could not let another day pass without returning you my most grateful thanks for, your very regular and amusing correspondence. Your poem you say is coming on most rapidly I am delighted to hear it, but those hundred lines; they seem to me something like the hundred heads of the monster Hydra, except that your hundred lines remain the same though every letter from you speaks of the number of lines which you have written, whilst the Hydra by loosing [sic] a head gained two, it seems to me certainly a very extraordinary hundred lines, when I came away you had a hundred lines [1] to complete the poem, and though you have most certainly, got on most surprisingly, you are still in the same place, with a hundred lines before you.
According to your desire I questioned Sam about these nine shillings, which he wanted to pay the hair cutter, and I find, that it is not only for hair cutting, which would be quite impossible, but also for brushes which he has had of him. I have got a very nice addition to your library, not however to be monopolized by you as you must allow many of my books have been, but only to be stuck up in the shelves by way of ornament; so don’t flatter yourself I am going to make you a present of it, as it was given to me by one of my greatest cronies who left it me as a legacy, it is Potter’s Antiquities [2] very handsomely bound in half Russia in two volumes. We have not yet as I expected been examined, but I expect it very soon when you shall know the result. Good bye for the present my dearest Bazy– you shall hear from me again on Sunday.
Ever believe me your affect
Brozy——
Address, on integral page: S. M. Barrett Esqr M.P. / Hope End / Ledbury / Herefordshire.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. Underscored three times. The poem in question was probably An Essay on Mind.
2. John Potter (1674?–1747), Archbishop of Canterbury, published his Archæologiæ Græca: or Antiquities of Greece in 1697–98. The two-volume, 1820 edition, with EBB’s inscription, sold as lot 1016 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1888).
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