333. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 184–185.
Hope End.
Monday. Feb 2d 1829.
Dear Mr Boyd,
I meant to have written to you by last Sunday’s conveyance, to thank you for sending Mr Barker’s parcel,—& to make a request to you. The parcel contained his Cicero. [1] I suppose you received a copy at the same time,—& that you will, of course, write to him on the subject. Will you therefore, if your letter should not have gone, introduce a single line into it, for the purpose of thanking him in my name, for his very obliging attention? If your letter should have gone, & you are not thinking of writing to him again soon, let me know thro’ my brother, when he calls on you,—& I will write for myself. Otherwise I would prefer my thanks being conveyed thro’ you; as I scarcely know how to fill a letter about such a mere compilation,—& have nothing else to write about. I was much interested by the extracts from Schottus’s dissertation. I was surprised that Tacitus’s treatise should be printed without notes, [2] when, for the purposes of students, notes must be infinitely more necessary to that treatise than to the Catiline orations. I was also surprised, with regard to the latter, to find Mr Barker’s notes in English, while the notes of Ernesti & Ernestus are left in Latin. [3] Surely some uniformity should have been preserved: either the Latin notes should have been rendered into English, or the English notes into Latin. These remarks are for you. You need not take the trouble of repeating, to Mr Barker, anything more than my thanks.
I might conclude here. But I am tempted to express an earnest hope that you have put no unjust construction upon my relinquishment of epistolary claims, the other day. After I had sent away my letter, it occurred to me that you might make such a misconstruction, in consequence of my not having laid the natural emphasis upon my own regrets. My reason for not doing so, could only be one,—& shall not be concealed from you: it was a fear, that, in your desire to oblige me, you might inconvenience & annoy yourself; and that were an obligation which I could not submit to owe, even to you, to whom I owe so many. You told me you were “not wearied of writing to me”. I am sure you were not, as you said so. But then your new dislike of dictation must have operated, in a degree at least, on every correspondence;—perhaps, without your being sensible of it; and you said so much about your preferring talking to writing, when I had previously spoken of my inability to visit you just at present,—that I could not help supposing that you would prefer not writing at all. To this supposed & not unnatural preference, I make a sacrifice,—which,—tho’ a real sacrifice,—is made, I do assure you, with willingness & entire good-humour. After all the kind & long & frequent letters, I have received from you,—you would have a right to think it hard, if I could not think of your convenience.
I will explain to you when we meet, why I cannot visit you at the present time & under present circumstances, without visiting other people,—& then you will make allowances for my unwillingness to leave home just now. It is scarcely four months, since I lost what was dearest & kindest,—& it is impossible, sometimes, to help thinking bitterly! I may assure you, that if I could have seen you whenever I wished, & wished earnestly, not seventeen weeks, or seventeen hours, should have passed since our last meeting. I shall find & make some opportunities of enquiring about you & Mr Segur—now & then. May God bless you!——
Give my best regards to Mrs Boyd & to Miss Boyd—& think of me as
Your ever sincere friend
E B Barrett
Address, on integral page: Hugh Stuart Boyd Esqr / Great Malvern.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 66–67 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Cicero’s Catilinian Orations, ed. E. H. Barker, 1829.
2. Besides the Catilinarian Orations, the book contained “Several Beautiful Extracts from English Authors” (pp. xiii–xliv), Tacitus’s Dialogus de Oratoribus (pp. 85–116) and extracts from Cicero A Calumniis Vindicatus, by Andreas Schottus (pp. 117–136).
3. Along with his own notes to the Catilinian Orations, Barker used Latin notes from Johann August Ernesti’s edition of Cicero’s works and his Clavis Ciceroniana, and from the 1827 text of the Orations, edited by Ernestus Antonius.
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