5244. RB to Alfred Tennyson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 260–261.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
July 2. ’63.
My dear Tennyson,
There are tritons among minnows, even—and I wanted the grammarian “dead from the waist down” [1] —(or “feeling middling,” as you said last night) [2] —to spend his last breath on the biggest of the littlenesses: such an one is the “enclitic δε,” [3] the “inseparable,” just because it may be confounded with δὲ, “but,” which keeps its accent. You have it in ὄδε, ἤδε, τόδε [4] —from ὁ, ἡ, τὸ [5] —τοσόςδε, [6] τηλικόςδε, [7] κ.τ.λ. [8] from τόσος, τηλίκος. [9] Also, in reply to “whither?” as, ἔρεβόςδε, [10] ἅλαδε, [11] οὐρανόνδε [12] —from Ἒρεβος, κ.τ.λ. [13] See Buttmann [14] on these points. It was just this pin-point of a puzzle that gave “δε” its worth rather than the heaps of obvious rhymes to “be”—in all the oblique cases, for instance, of personal pronouns, μὲ, σὲ, ἕ, σφὲ [15] —the indefinite adverb πὴ [16] —the particles τὲ, [17] γὲ, [18] κὲ, [19] —to which I beg you to add, in a guffaw,” he-he-he!” Only, you would have it!
Ever yours affectionately, RB.
Publication: BBIS-22, pp. 29–30.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. RB, “A Grammarian’s Funeral” (Men and Women, 1855), line 132.
2. Tennyson was in London staying with the Prinseps at Little Holland House, Kensington, from where he wrote to his wife on 2 July 1863: “Browning, William Rossetti, and Mr. Bowman were here last night and there was a very pleasant evening” (see SD2647).
3. Cf. “A Grammarian’s Funeral,” line 131.
4. “This” (in masculine, feminine, and neuter).
5. “The” (in masculine, feminine, and neuter).
6. “So many.”
7. “Of such an age.”
8. Abbreviation for καὶ τὰ λοιπά (“et cetera”).
9. “So many, of such an age.”
10. “To Erebos” (a place of darkness, the underworld).
11. “To the sea.”
12. “To heaven.”
13. “Erebos, et cetera.”
14. Philipp Karl Buttmann (1764–1829), German philologist and classical scholar. RB refers to Buttmann’s Griechische Grammatik (1792). The “points” mentioned, including the one on “the ‘encliticδε’,” can be found in Greek Grammar, trans. Edward Robinson (2nd ed., New York, 1939), Sec. 116, p. 313.
15. “Me, you, him, them.”
16. “Somewhere.”
17. “And.”
18. Emphatic particle.
19. Modal particle.
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