336. EBB to Edmund Henry Barker
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 190–194.
Hope End.
May 12th 1829.
Dear Sir,
I did not like to write till I could procure Dr Kidd in order to copy out the passage you asked for. Let me assure you, in the first place, that far from your letters being “unpleasant or tiresome” or from any cause unacceptable to me, I shall be happy to receive what you feel inclined to write, & whenever you feel inclined to write it. To tell you the truth, you a little surprised me by proposing to correspond regularly with me; for, having heard a good deal of your extensive correspondence, & knowing a good deal of your engagements in literature, I did not venture to conjecture that you could have any time to throw away. You resemble a Chinese Waterman, who, while he conducts the oars with his feet, & regulates the sail with his hands, is able nevertheless to smoke his pipe all the while. I hope I need not say that I am gratified by your promising to smoke a pipe now & then, for my benefit.
You shall not have to complain of any want of “openness” in me. Indeed, I think the few letters I have written to you, have sufficiently vindicated my character on this point. For, in them, I have told you the truth & the whole truth, of my way of thinking on every suggested subject, even at the risk of exposing myself to suspicions of presumption & obstinacy, which you,—as a stranger to me personally,—might very well have entertained, without being of an over severe & critical disposition.
Though it is impossible to boast a “happy indifference” about the time of receiving your intended kind present of Cato Major & Lælius,—which, after my attack upon your Ciceronian non-conformity, I really dont deserve;—it is of course desirable & judicious to await the 5th edition, & the editor’s good pleasure. [1] You amused me my [sic, for by] praising my “love of order & method”. I should amuse you if I were to tell you how much I have been abused by my friends & observed upon by craniologists, on account of my want of order & method. The room in which I am at present sitting, bears witness to their correctness:
—ει φθογγην λαβοι,
Σαφεστατ᾽ αν λεξειεν. [2]
I at once & with a great many thanks, accept your obliging offer of lending me Schottus’s dissertation & Hall’s works. [3] I promise to take care of them & will try not to over-step the utmost verge of your patience (you say it has “verge enough”) by detaining them for an unreasonably long time.
Your observation respecting Sir Uvedale Price’s style, viz. “if there is no strength there is no feebleness”,—is particularly just: and nothing can be said against anything that you say, of his admirable & captivating talent for letter-writing. I have a number of letters which he was kind enough to write to me, which are placed in my treasury, & valued scarcely less than my staff from Marathon & branch of Athenian Palm. You desire to have my remarks on Dugald Stewart versus Sir Uvedale. Some time ago I read Stewart’s Essays; & I flattered myself, till this moment, that I recollected his arguments clearly enough, to be able to write upon them to you. But upon opening the book & turning over the pages, I find more pages (and more pages are indicative of more arguments) on the subject, than I recollected or reckoned upon: and this letter must not be kept till I can read & think them all over. At any rate, the frank would not admit of my writing at length about them all: and, lest I should commit any great blunder, it will be better for me, & you, if I don’t write about them at all. Stewart’s revision of Sir Uvedale’s motto—“quam multa vident Pictores quae nos non videmus”,—& his reasons for revising it, I admire & approve, feelingly & fully, & have said so in a note to my Essay on Mind; in doing which, Mr. Boyd told me that I was “unquestionably decidedly & positively wrong,”—in doing which, I still maintain that I was unquestionably decidedly & positively right. [4] There are “more things in Heaven & Earth” [5] than are visible to the Painter!——
You desired to be reminded of your promise to transcribe the Bishop of Limerick’s [6] remarks on Mr Boyd,—but dont think of doing it, till you are at leisure. You made me smile by your account of his complimentary reception of your Cicero. You presented the ‘retort courteous’ [7] —and yet, I dont think, with you, that you excited his anger to a silencing degree. I never found him irritable, & never scrupled to contradict his opinions whenever they seemed contradictable,—not even on the sacred ground of Virgil & the belfry!——
But then I did not propose to him to annihilate other authors for the sake of Cicero—to sacrifice those who are unrivalled for the rival of Demosthenes; all that is exquisite & noble in Greek poetry & philosophy for the sake of a standard for the Latin language!! You are “absolutely sceptical” about Mr Boyd’s knowing anything of our old writers. I can conceive that. I corresponded with him some time before I knew him personally,—& I recollect my surprise on hearing him in our first interviews, quote from & allude to, so familiarly, Massinger & Webster, Hooker & Taylor. [8] He appeared to know much more of English literature in general, than I thought apparent from his letters: but in our poetical & ecclesiastical literature, he is very well read. Let me know what you think of the translation from Gregory. I prophecy that you will abuse it thro’ & thro’. You will condemn it for being so elaborate & antithetical—and yet you must acknowledge it to be powerful & elevated. Could Chrysostom have written such a passage?
It is not likely that I could feel otherwise than flattered by your request, much less that I should object to your making the use you propose doing, of my remarks on Arria. [9] Pray act as you please on this point. But without “an affectation of modesty”,—which, you do me the justice of saying, you will not impute to me,—the insertion of the writer’s name appears little advisable. The insertion can answer no end; for the name can carry no weight,—being neither among the clariora nor the majora. [10]
I confess I am curious to see how your prophecy about my “siding with you in the end,” is to be accomplished, when you have told me that you have attacked Dr Jortin & go with Pliny, and when I have told you that I go with Dr Jortin & think Pliny quite in the wrong. [11] Your last remarks leave me unconvinced: “Human nature” you observe “has many motives for action & many impulses of feeling, but one may be predominant.” One may be predominant in all actions, but one must be predominant in all great actions. Great actions require strong motives; & for a plurality of very strong & dissimilar & unconnected motives to be in co-existance & co-action, appears to me as metaphysically impossible, as it is physically impossible for the sun & moon to be visibly shining at the same point of time. Therefore I cannot admit the proposed “complexity” of the motive of Arria, who, if she thought at the same moment of gaining celebrity for herself & of consoling Pætus, must have been activated by two strong coexistant motives, as unconnected & dissimilar as selfishness & selfdevotion. Nor do I see anything in your hero’s “Victory or Westminister Abbey,” [12] calculated to disturb the security of my position. I do not think that “the feeling of his mind was complex”. A simple not a complex motive activated him; & that motive was patriotism, modified patriotism. When you love others you desire their love: he loved his country & desired her love. “Victory or Westminister Abbey”. Let us conquer for England, or die regretted by England—let us meet her smile, or deserve her tears!
I must then continue to believe that Arria’s concealment of her son’s death, her dashing herself against the wall, & her last act & words, proceeded from the one ruling & simple motive stated by Dr Jortin; and that, by representing her with one eye fixed on Pætus, & the other on immortal glory, you produce a moral squint anything but graceful & becoming.
You destroy the touching & poetical character of her act; visiting it with the fate of the Schoolmen’s ass, which, you know, was starved to death between two bundles of hay of equal attraction.
I abjure the Jury subject for ever & ever. As to Porson & Parr, I admit you have made out a very clear case which stands as follows–
Porson was a better critical scholar than Parr, tho’ Parr was a good one.
Parr was a better philosophical scholar than Porson, because Porson was a bad one. Let Mr Taylor be witness [13] —& take if you please, the majority of votes for the constitution of a verdict.
My paper is at an end, & I fear it may have been troublesome to you, therefore I will write no more. Closing a letter is not a ‘great action’, & I may in such case allow complexity of motive. You do not “sin against primogeniture” by addressing me as Miss Barrett. The extracts from Irving will appear to you full of faults as to style, & full of grandeur as to conception. I remain, dear Sir,
Yours very truly
E B Barrett.
Notwithstanding my abjuration of jury subjects, I see something in your handwriting whch I must notice. I advocated the system on the ground of its imperfection, upon whch ground only, I thought it defensible. You in a former letter urged against me an argument only applicable to those who advocated it on the ground of its perfection. Against this I remonstrated. I never forgot that the tendency of my argument was the same as if I had admitted its perfection. Such a subject could have only two sides. Did you think that I supposed a third by an [illegible word] & thus had βους επι γλωσση μεγας? [14] In that case, now I was really Milonic! [15] I should have been!
I did not remonstrate against your opposing me, but against yr opposing me with such weapons.
Address, on integral page: E. H. Barker Esqr / Thetford / Norfolk.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Manuscripts Divisions, New York Public Library.
1. Barker’s edition of Cicero’s Cato Major, and Lælius was first published in 1811, and went to six editions, the last being in 1839.
2. “If it had a voice, it would tell most clearly” (Æschylus, Agamemnon, 36–37).
3. Extracts from Schottus’s dissertation on Cicero were contained in Barker’s Catilinarian Orations (see letter 333, note 2). Various collections of sermons by Robert Hall (1764–1831) were published, and Barker had included one of Hall’s sermons in his book. Hall was widely known for his pulpit style, and Dugald Stewart said of his writings that they exhibited “the English language in its perfection” (DNB).
4. For an explanation of Stewart’s proposed revision of Price’s motto, see letter 303, note 14. EBB’s comments on Stewart’s suggestion are contained in note (1) to Bk. II of An Essay on Mind; she ends by saying of the revision “which if it be as true as ingenious, will go a great way in assisting my position.”
5. Hamlet, I, 5, 166.
6. John Jebb (1775–1833), author of Essay on Sacred Literature (1820). He was nominated to the bishopric of Limerick in 1822.
7. As You Like It, V, 4, 92.
8. Philip Massinger (1583–1640), dramatist; John Webster (1580?–1625?), playwright; Richard Hooker (1554?–1600), theologian; and John Taylor (1580–1653), poet.
9. EBB’s remarks probably related to a passage in Barker’s Parriana (II, 296–297) which quoted Parr’s observations on an epigram on Arria and Pætus. Barker added this comment: “Pætus having received orders to die, and appearing to be in some concern, Arria stabbed herself, and gave him the dagger, saying Pæte, non dolet!” (“Pætus, it doesn’t hurt!”).
10. “Being neither among the distinguished nor the elders.”
11. John Jortin (1698–1770) was the author of Miscellaneous Observations upon Authors Ancient and Modern (1731–32).
12. The hero was Nelson, who, leading a boarding party at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent on 14 February 1797 after his own ship was disabled, is reputed to have cried “Westminster Abbey, or victory!” (Robert Southey, The Life of Nelson, 1813, I, 181).
13. Barker said (Parriana, I, 522): “Between Porson and Parr … the difference was as great as between a mineralogist and a geologist, a pugilist and a pentathlete. Justice will be awarded to each, if we say that Porson was the better critic, Parr the greater scholar.” A letter from Thomas Taylor, the Platonist (1758–1835), being his “judgment on Dr. Parr over the latter’s understanding of Plato,” is printed at I, 544–548.
14. “A great ox upon my tongue.”
15. Milo was the athlete reputed to have eaten an entire heifer, after carrying it through the stadium at Olympia.
___________________
