446. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 12–13.
Hope End.
Monday. [16 April 1832] [1]
I believe I ought to have written to you before to thank you for lending Synesius [2] to me,—but I thought I should have seen you long before now, & did not think that you would expect to hear from me. The rain prevented Mrs Cliffe from taking me with her to Malvern this morning. Tomorrow she is engaged at home,—but on Wednesday she has promised to call for me. In the meantime I will write.
I have gone thro’ the whole of Synesius; and notwithstanding his occasional diffuseness & self-repetition,—which seem to be haunting faults among writers of the first centuries;—he does make you feel that he is a poet. Your Gregory is not as despotic: he will let you think so of him,—but he does not make you feel it. Synesius is certainly a better poet & Platonist than a christian,—& deserves the warning prologue of Franciscus Portus. But I cant write any more about him or anybody else. Only, for fear of forgetting to mention it to you when I see you again, I will observe here, that the finest part of the 9th hymn [3] is a mere paraphrase of the fine passage in Gregory’s oration on the nativity, which relates to the gifts of the magi. You will recollect what I mean,—& Synesius’s verses form so beautiful & striking an illustration of it, that I think you should, either in your preface or in a note, refer to them.
I was planning to send a messenger over to you with the reform news, [4] if I had not seen Miss Henrietta Mushet,—and it appeared from her account that you knew it before I did. They will be obliged to make peers after all.
I hear nothing which I can tell you—& feel nothing pleasant which I can tell you—therefore it is surely better that I should come to an end.
Ever yours affectionately
E B Barrett.
Publication: Diary, pp. 306–307.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by Diary, p. 235, entry for 16 April.
2. On 8 April Henrietta Mushet had carried to EBB from Boyd a copy of the hymns of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaïs (ca. 370–413), presumably the edition of Franciscus Portus (1511–81).
3. EBB’s translation of this hymn appeared in the third part of “Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets” in The Athenæum, 12 March 1842, pp. 229–231.
4. EBB is probably referring to the report in The Times of 14 April of the debate the previous day in the House of Lords. Although the second reading of the reform bill was passed by the narrow majority of 9, many peers spoke against it, and final approval by the Lords appeared doubtful.
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