284. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 106–110.
Hope End.
March 3d 1828.
Dear Sir,
Your reproach made me smile—& makes me promise that if you will forgive my having remained so δηρον [1] in formality, you shall never be ‘frozen again.’ I like good epigrams,—& I particularly like two of yours—not the first, in spite of my sincere condolence with you & the Lincoln Cathedral! It seems to me to want unity: it looks too many ways: and I admire an epigrammatic squint as little as I do a physical one. But there is a great deal of point in the direction of your artillery against Bishop Tomline, [2] —whose family is not of our acquaintance & shall not hear any report thro’ my means: such treachery would be an ungrateful return to you for trusting & amusing & pleasing me at the same time! I am delighted with the ingenuity of the Greek epigram—& I am glad to understand from it, that Lempriere has Professor Anthon’s νεαροι λογοι, [3] —of which, having some imperfect humanity about him, he certainly stood in need.
Poor Bothe & Schütz! & the ῾οι περι in Germany! the magnanimi & the sagacessimi as they call each other, [4] after the manner of modest critics! After all I recollect an excellent “German sausage” in a note to your Agamemnon—and not a word against Schütz there, [5] tho’, in the letter before me, you cut him up as unmercifully as he could have cut up Æschylus! I know Mr Knibb has not Blomfield’s edition, which I will get from London by the first opportunity; and, in the meantime, wont you allow me to make use of Bothe? I hope you will! When I am able to discharge him I will do so effectually, by remembering as little as possible of the “abomination” & as much as possible of the “execration”—& by settling the former, ponderefixa suo (like Lucan’s oak) [6] in the dustiest corner of my bookcase.
I have reconsidered Io [7] —& attentively considered your pathetic “Ιω Ιω,” without being in the least inclined to acknowledge your right to an Io triumphe! and yet I quite agree with you in admiring the night visions, the geographical descriptions, & several other passages full of animation & power. I can do this with perfect truth, as I read the scene in an unconnected state: but I cannot help continuing to think that when a mind, winged by the noble preceding scenes, lights upon the place of the gadfly, there is something comparatively low & terrest[r]ial in its sensations. If you tell me that this scene is on a level in sublimity with the preceding scenes, I shall only be astonished; but if you allow it to be a tone lower in moral elevation, you must also allow that it occasions a corresponding change of feeling in the mind of the reader,—in which case he must feel, as in all cases of suddenly suspended enthusiasm——that he is fastened to a dead weight. I appeal against you, to the character of the very passages you select. Can you actually attend to geographical descriptions & to one eyed one toothed hags with your head & heart full of Prometheus? As to the Phorcides, there is surely a long story about them in Hesiod. [8] I have not the Theogony in my possession & therefore cannot speak decidedly, but I have some uncertain recollections on the subject which you will know more about than I do. And even if these favorite κυκνομορφοι of yours, (how do you understand that expression? Bothe says cygneocolore, which I think it cant be!) even if these κυκνομορφοι μονοδοντες [9] had not been noticed by Hesiod, I should rather have heard nothing of them anywhere, than have heard of them in the Prometheus!
Before I leave their neighbourhood, I must venture to tell you that, in a note to your Agamemnon,—page 18,—I suspect an inadvertency, which I forgot to mention before. The corrupted line, upon which you exercise your critical acumen, is not (at least, according to Bothe) in a speech of Prometheus, but of Oceanus. Atlas was brother to Prometheus, but Typhon, I believe, was brother to Oceanus. And therefore tho’ there seems to be no consequent reason for rejecting your critical emendation (the word κασις [10] doing equally well in Oceanus’s mouth) yet your commentary upon it, beginning “When Prometheus’ &c &c” becomes inapplicable. Bothe reads πασ᾽ος αντεστη θεοις. [11] Do you object to this?—
You have given a beautiful translation of the most beautiful & original passage in Virgil’s poetry,—the episode of Eurydice: [12] but you never mention him, & I wonder if you feel as coldly, respecting him, as I do. I have tried hard to like olives & the Æneid upon principle,—and I could succeed on neither point against nature. That is to say I could not turn Scaligeric or Mantuamaniacal in any degree,—but I am far from being insensible to his elegance, his purity of feeling, & majestic diction. Critics who think it necessary to compare Virgil & Homer (they may as well compare the mouse with the mountain!) after delivering up the praise of judgement to Virgil, are graciously pleased to leave the fire with Homer: as if Homer’s fire were more astonishing than his judgement,—or Virgil’s judgement less often deficient than his fire! There cannot be (to my mind) a more palpable instance of this deficiency in judgement than a circumstance which everybody thinks it a bounden duty to applaud vehemently—I mean the silence of Dido in the 6th book. Did you ever hear of any “silent woman” except Ben Jonson’s [13] —who turns out to be a gentleman, in the last act? And can you conceive a woman’s being silent under Dido’s circumstances? [14] If indeed she had been meditating a violent attack upon Æneas or upon herself, she might be allowed a limited dumbness: as in the case of Dejanira a short time preceding her suicide [15] —or in that of Jocasta, whose moment’s silence (she had been speaking immediately before.) terribly alarmed the Chorus.
δεδοιχ᾽ οπως
Μη ᾿κ της σιωπης τησδ᾽ αναρρηξη κακα [16] —Œdip: Tyr:
But Dido meditated nothing but a walk with Sichæus—&, being quite at leisure to abuse the pious Æneas as he deserved, only proves by her unnatural & unprecedented conduct, that she was really dead. The silence of Ajax Telamon in the 11th Odyssey, is on the other hand, highly natural—highly characteristic of the sulleness & moroseness of that proud warrior: [17] and certainly in this instance, Homer has not only all the originality but all the judgement on his side. I have been writing on at random, without considering that perhaps, after all, you may be a thorough Virgilianas—that you may be as fond of Dido’s silence “as a Scotchman of Scotland, or as Miss Barrett of the modern Greeks”. In that case I recommend myself to mercy, which, however, I can scarcely extend to you on the latter question. Really, when you call the Greeks “savage monsters” & profess a total want of interest in their emancipation from the Turkish yoke, [18] I wonder Æschylus does not let loose his Furies upon you. They must be snoringvery hard! [19] I do not know how horrible the story may be which you are unwilling to tell me; but I have heard of many atrocities practiced by the Greeks—& not one narration has had the effect of shaking from my mind, the strong interest with which it regards their cause. Indeed, the more barbarous the atrocities, the more earnest is my desire for the emancipation of the criminals. If they are darkened by subjection, there is another reason for removing the obstacle to light! If the “iron has entered into the soul”, [20] there is another reason for striking away the iron! The bravery of the Greeks, their eagerness for glory & contempt of death—the quickness of their apprehensions, & the pride with which, in spite of imperfect knowledge, they advert to their ancestral dignity, are I believe, unquestioned & unquestionable! When Lord Elgin committed his profanation (“Quod not fecerunt Goti, Hoc fecerunt Scoti.”) [21] many of the people shed tears,—& a rumour was abroad, which sufficiently proved the state of public feeling in Greece, that the statues on being removed from their bases, emitted a moaning sound. The Greeks are Greeks by name & soil & descent: the antique cast lives on their countenances: & their language (tho’ quantum mutata ab illâ!) [22] has degenerated wonderfully less than analogical cases would lead us to suppose. You cannot think how delighted I was the other day, to discover the Trochaic Tetramater in a part of the patriot Riga’s spirited war song. The following lines, put into one, & read, in the Romaic manner, according to accent, have “exactly” the old cadence.
Σπάρτα, Σπάρτα, τί κοιμᾶσθε
Ὕπνον λήθαργον βαθύν; [23]
Any one, altho’ as totally ignorant of modern Greek as I am, may make out the greater part of this song. Besides, I have a regard for the very earth & air—& would not have tyrants breathe where poets sang,—or slaves tread in the footsteps of heroes!——
So you do not hold the divine right of kings! Then, when you told me that Lady Olivia Sparrow annihilated you on the subject, I suppose you only meant that her Ladyship made nothing of you! I am glad to understand this. I should not like to hear of the annihilation—(from any cause whatever)—of the Malvern Demodocus
τον περι Μουσ᾽ εφιλησε, διδου δ'αγαθον τε κακον τε
οφθαλμων μεν αμερσε, διδου δ᾽ ηδειαν αοιδην– [24]
&, without meaning disrespect to you, I certainly never knew a person less fitted for being ‘passively obedient’, than you appear to me to be. With regard to Berkeley, I neither doubt his conscientiousness, nor am surprised at his conclusions—for,—rejecting, as he did, the testimony of his eyes & ears,—he could not be expected to recieve that of his reason!
What a world of closely written words, I am going to burden you with! & yet, I assure you, their writer,—notwithstanding her opinion stated a page or two back, & notwithstanding her loquacious letters,—is often uncommonly afflicted by Virgiliandidoism,—when she is off paper, & out of the reach of exciting influences. But this will seem incredible–!
You have too much universal information, to need being assured from the best authority, that I remain
Very sincerely yours
E B Barrett.
I will follow your prescription for a huge memory.
Address, on integral page: Hugh Stuart Boyd Esqr / Ruby Cottage / Malvern Wells.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 20–24 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. “Long.”
2. George Pretyman Tomline (1750–1827), Bishop of Winchester. Boyd’s “artillery” may have been directed against Tomline’s religious views; his Elements of Christian Theology, although popular and issued in many editions, was dismissed by some authorities as “without pretensions to depth or originality” (DNB).
3. “New words.” Boyd’s friend, Edmund Henry Barker (1788–1839), had just reedited Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica from the sixth American edition of Charles Anthon, Adjunct Professor of Language at Columbia. The following epigram, composed by Boyd, was published in The Classical Journal, LXXIII (March 1828), p. 152:
On Professor Anthon’s edition of Lempriere, re-edited by E.H. Barker, Esq.
Ω βιβλιον καλον, νεαροις ανθοῠν τε λογοισιν,
Υμνῶν σε κλεινος Βαρκερ ἑηκε βοην.
“O excellent book, blossom with new words / Renowned Barker has sent you, a shout of hymns.” (The pun is on Anthon and the Greek anthoon, “blossom.”)
4. Friedrich Heinrich Bothe (1771–1855) and Christian Gottfried Schütz (1747–1832) were both classical scholars and editors. Οι περι means “those around” i.e., their circle; magnanimi, “most high-minded”; sagacessimi, “shrewdest, cleverest.”
5. In a note on p. 48 of his translation of Agamemnon, Boyd upheld Schütz’s reading of an obscure passage in the play.
6. “Fixed by its own weight” (Pharsalia, I, 139).
7. In the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus. In Greek mythology, Io was seduced by Zeus and later transformed into a cow and pursued all over Greece by a gadfly sent by Hera to torment her.
8. The Phorcides were the Gorgons and the Graeae (Sea Hags), the monstrous offspring of Ceto and Phorcys (Homer’s Old Man of the Sea). Hesiod does not have “a long story about them”—just a passing reference in lines 270–273 of his Theogony.
After “Phorcides,” EBB has obliterated several words.
9. These two adjectives, meaning “swan-shaped” and “single-toothed,” together with Bothe’s Latin translation of the former, mentioned by EBB, are found on p. 57 of his edition of Prometheus Vinctus.
10. “Brother.” Boyd’s note, to which EBB refers, erroneously speaks of Tryphon as the brother of Prometheus.
11. “Whoever stands against the gods” (Prometheus Vinctus, 353).
12. “The Death of Orpheus and Eurydice,” from Georgics, Bk. IV, appeared on pp. 31–35 of Boyd’s Thoughts on an Illustrious Exile.
13. Epicoene, or, The Silent Woman (1620).
14. The reference is to Bk. VI of the Æneid, line 450ff., in which Æneas pleads with Dido, who “fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground; And, what he says and swears, regards no more / Than the deaf rocks” (Dryden’s translation).
15. “Why steal’st thou forth in silence? Know’st thou not / Thy silence argues thine accuser’s plea?” (Sophocles’ Trachinian Maidens, 815–816).
16. “I fear / Lest from this silence some sorrow spring” (Œdipus Tyrannos, 1074–75).
17. “But he gave no reply, and turned away, / Following other ghosts towards Erebos” (Odyssey, XI, 563–564, trans. Robert Fitzgerald).
18. The Greeks had been fighting their War of Independence since 1821. Autonomy was not achieved until 1829. Feelings on the cause of the Greeks, both pro and con, ran very high in England; EBB was decidedly pro.
19. In Æschylus’ Eumenides, the ghost of Clytemnestra finds the Furies asleep on the seats of the temple (lines 94–134 of Scholefield’s 1828 edition).
20. “The Captive. Paris” in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) by Laurence Sterne (1713–68).
21. “The Goths did not do this, the Scots did.” This was carved on a wall inside the Erechtheum by “some donnish wit” (Lord Elgin and the Marbles, by William St. Clair, 1967, p. 193). We have found no evidence to support Barbara McCarthy’s statement (EBB-HSB, p. 23, note 21) that Byron himself was responsible for the inscription.
22. “How much changed from the former” (cf. Æneid, II, 274).
23. “Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers / Lethargic dost thou lie?” EBB probably owed her knowledge of this patriotic poem to Byron, who included both the translation here quoted and the Greek original in the 1812 edition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (the English text at pp. 223–225 and the Greek at pp. 273–274). This supposition is strengthened by EBB’s use of Byron’s spelling of the Greek patriot’s name in her poem “Riga’s Last Song,” rather than the more usual “Rhigas” or “Rhegas.”
24. Demodocus was the minstrel “whom the Muse loved greatly, and gave him both good and evil: of his sight she deprived him, but gave him sweet song” (Odyssey, VIII, 63–64).
___________________
