544. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 201–202
[London]
[December 1836] [1]
My dear Mr Boyd,
Just as Annie arrived I was sitting down to thank you for your poem—& to observe that a comma, in my opinion, should be substituted for the semi colon after “garniture” on the first page—& besides that I did not like the epithet “tasty” on the third page.
I would have written this to you yesterday, but I came home late, & read your poem in the darkness. It appears to me that you have been very ingenious in collecting so many thoughts round such a subject,—& that your treatment of it has an interest & an elegance which proceed more from the mind than the matter. Indeed it has pleased me in the reading very much. The turn of thought in the concluding lines, is striking. Oh that laurels shd grow out of nettle seeds!– But dont let your ‘majestical’ ‘magnifical’ Basketts [2] frown awfully at me, for saying so!——
This is written in a great hurry while Annie is sitting by.
Could you not get rid of that detestable “tasty”, by writing the passage thus
“far more than polished Baskerville
Or Hayes refined:” [3]
but this may not do for you!–
It seems very correctly printed.
Yours affectionately
EBB.
Address, on integral page: H S Boyd Esqr / 3 Circus Road / St John’s Wood.
Publication: Weaver, pp. 405–406.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. The fact that EBB is suggesting changes indicates that she is looking at proof sheets, which would place this letter before no. 549, in which she mentions receiving printed copies.
3. John Baskerville (1706–75) printed elegant volumes of Milton, Vergil and others, together with one of the finest Bibles ever produced. Hayes was probably Charles Hayes (1678–1760), the author of Vindication of the History of the Septuagint (1736) and Critical Examination of the Holy Gospels According to St. Matthew and St. Luke (1738).
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