380. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 252–254.
Hope End.
Wednesday. August [sic for September] 8th [1830] [1]
My dear Mr Boyd,
I did not receive your letter which was dated Saturday, until yesterday in the afternoon; for no one went from this house to Ledbury on Monday, except Papa who did not call at the Post office. I admire the poem which you enclosed. [2] There is much in it that is beautiful & graceful & very harmonious; particularly from “What strain infernal” to the end. The two lines which close the first paragraph, beginning, “When Cynthia’s brighter deity,” seem to me the flattest in the poem, as to sound, & to be a mere repetition of the preceding sense. The meaning of the passage would certainly be clear without them; & they do not improve the modulation. Mr James Commeline, of whom I once spoke to you, was here two days ago; & I showed him your acrostic. He thought highly of its elegance & ingenuity. He liked the last part best, as I do; and observed in that part, the flowing of the sense from one line to another, which is so great & rare a merit in compositions of the kind.
I have been reading lately with my brothers some of Racine’s plays. You know how proud the French are of this tragic poet; & how they & even better judges conceive him to have caught the spirit & written upon the model of the Greek tragedians. Voltaire in speaking of Aristophanes, said “That comic poet, who is neither comic nor a poet”; [3] and he might have spoken as severely of that tragic poet his countryman. But if I had suggested such a thing to him how wd he have remonstrated? Perhaps pathetically, with “Ah Madame”; as Racine makes Agamemnon say to Clytemnestra in his classical tragedy of Iphigenia. Any one of Shakespeare’s play’s with all its extravagancies, seems to me more classical than that tragedy, or than any tragedy of Racine’s. It is several years since I read them by myself; and if they disgusted me then, they are intolerable to me now. The French have no part or lot in poetry. I am more & more convinced that they have none. A gentleman in this neighbourhood has been justly criticised for having the borders of a pond near his house levelled & rolled, by which he of course destroyed every picturesque roughness & undulation. The French do just the same with the banks of their Helicon. They are all made smooth & neat & clean & uninteresting. Every neighbouring spot is worked into a parterre. Even sublime & terrible subjects are cultivated with much the same attention to preciseness—laid out, like the burial ground near Paris, with trim shrubs, mown grass, & gravel walks!——
Papa rode to Hereford yesterday to attend the Bible meeting, & came back late & tired. Henrietta & Arabel, & Bro & Sam went to dine at Mathon [4] where the two former slept—so that I was in very good company yesterday evening. Our Ledbury Bible meeting takes place on Monday;– Should you have anyone whom you can send in the shape of a speaker, pray remember the destitute; for by Papa’s account, if Silence is not eloquent, no one will be so, on that day. Some of us are very dull, & others very modest—two qualities which do far better together than separately. I really think that as Ledbury contributed speeches to the Malvern meeting, Malvern should return the compliment.
My sisters are going next Tuesday to spend a few days with Mrs Trant who will chaperone them, or us, to the Worcester music meeting for one morning. Papa wishes us to go; but unless he urges it upon me, I mean to stay at home, much as I should enjoy the music abstractedly. Now I must put a finis to this long miscellany.
Ever yours affectionately
E B Barrett.
Do you recollect my repeating to you the Latin epigram upon Sleep—by Warton? [5] Is this a tolerable translation?
Come Sleep, tho’ likest Death thou art,
And on my couch assume thy part!
Come,—linger long—! How sweet to lie
With Death, & live,—with life, & die!
Address, on integral page: Hugh Stuart Boyd Esqr / Great Malvern.
Publication: Weaver, pp. 400–401.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. EBB has clearly written August 8th. After conjecturing the year as 1830 (based on the style of salutation and Boyd’s dates of residence at Great Malvern), it becomes apparent that EBB erred—8 August fell on Sunday. Her reference to the Three Choirs Festival, held in Worcester 14–16 September, provides the basis for reassigning the month.
2. We have been unable to trace any published poem by Boyd corresponding to EBB’s ensuing comments.
3. In “Athéisme” (Œuvres de Voltaire, 1829, XXVII, 178).
4. Mathon House, home of the Cliffe family.
5. “In Somnum” (The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Warton, B.D., 1802, II, 258).
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