648. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 53–54.
[London]
Monday. [25 June 1838] [1]
My dear friend,
I send you the Examiner wherein is a review, which I cannot but consider a favorable & gratifying one, of my book. [2]
And I send to dear Miss Bordman my deep repentance for an omission on Saturday evening which has haunted my conscience ever since. I suffered her to go away without any of Miss Mitford’s flowers!! And now, that their petals are frailer, I dare not put them into motion again. Beg her not to think me the most selfish & miserly, but only the most careless person of her acquaintance—for indeed I did mean to give them to her,—but you know my meanings are apt to be obscured—& for want of any other kind of obscuration, came forgetfulness, on the present occasion.
The ‘betterness’ in which she found me has lasted until now,—& Dr Chambers called me yesterday a most astonishing person for rallying!—not for ‘sneering’, mind, whatever the Reviewer may think—& with regard to the Reviewer I think that if I had said Dr Johnson was Longinus, the saying would be less pardonable (even from “a woman”) than the “sneer” itself. [3] It would be as great a mistake as my chronology about Adam [4] —I dont say, as “the stars roll on afar” [5] which indeed I cannot admit to be a mistake at all. The Virgin is sitting in the sunlight, & can therefore discern no stars visible or invisible. But she may infer the vainness of her adjuration, & the consequent calm on-rolling of the bodies she adjured, by the continued darkness, & the uncrownedness of the Infant’s brow. Have I spoken clearly? at last?
My dear friend, I cannot let you have the extract you ask for. If ever I see you again I will explain the why; and you in the meanwhile must try to forgive me.
Is not this, blessed sunshine?—to thank God for?—— Dr Chambers thinks that if I try the carriage again while it lasts & while there is a south wind, I shall be able to breathe this time.
<…> [6]
And I mean to try—but as to being able to go to you, there seems to be not a hope of it. Even if I went to your door, & were carried up stairs, there would be no power of talking for long afterwards. I say this, to prevent your reproaching me in a thought.
I thank you my dear friend, for all your kind expressions, & if I did not, should still feel them gratefully. Mr Crosse is staying with Mr Kenyon.
Affectionately yours
E B Barrett.
I petition for Miss Bordman to come & see me sometimes!——
Her parcel has not arrived yet!
Will you return the Examiner when you have quite done with it?–
Address: H S Boyd, Esqr / 3 Circus Road / St John’s Wood.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 229–230.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by The Examiner review.
2. The Seraphim was reviewed in The Examiner of 24 June 1838 (no. 1586, pp. 387–388): “This book opens with a preface which is very remarkable for power and beauty of expression.” After quoting “a few of its striking and brilliant bursts of fancy and of passion,” the reviewer continued: “Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these … the possession of many of the highest qualities of the divine art? … Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common order; yet is she in danger of being spoilt by over-ambition … She has fancy, feeling, imagination, expression; but … she aims at flights which have done no good to the strongest, and therefore falls infinitely short … of what a proper exercise of her genius would infallibly reach.... The entire volume deserves more than ordinary attention.” (For the full text, see pp. 373–375.)
3. In the course of the review, there is a reference to “the sneer … in Miss Barrett’s admirable preface, at the unlucky critic who was ‘not Longinus’ (Doctor Johnson, we presume).”
EBB had said (p. xiv): “The generation of such as held the doctrine of that critic who was not Longinus, and believed in the inadmissibility of religion into poetry, may have seen the end of vanity.” A note in the Porter-Clarke edition of EBB’s works (1900) identifies the critic as Nicolas Boileau Despréaux.
4. “Adam dead four thousand years” (line 972 of The Seraphim).
5. Cf. the third stanza of “The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus.”
6. About one line obliterated, apparently by EBB.
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