887. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 194–195.
50 Wimpole Street
Decr 29th 1841
My dear friend,
I shd not have been half as idle about transcribing these translations [1] if I had fancied you could care so much to have them as Arabel tells me you do. They are recommended to your mercy, O Greek Daniel!– [2] The last sounds in my ears most like English poetry—but I assure you I took the least pains with it. The second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does not) equal it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to the Greek. I praised that Greek poem above all of Gregory’s, for the reason that it has unity & completeness—for which, to speak generally, you may search the streets & squares & alleys of Nazianzum [3] in vain!– Tell me what you think of my part!——
Ever affectionately yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Have you a Plotinus? [4] & wd you trust him to me, in that case?– Oh no—you do not tempt me with your musical clocks. My time goes to the best music when I read or write—& whatever money I can spend upon my own pleasures, flows away naturally in books.
Publication: LEBB, I, 93–94.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. EBB’s translations of three hymns of Gregory Nazianzen appeared in The Athenæum of 8 January 1842 (no. 741, pp. 39–40).
2. i.e., for judgement (cf. The Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 223ff).
3. The town in Cappadocia where Gregory Nazianzen was born, ca. 329 A.D.
4. Plotinus (d. 270 A.D.), a Platonic philosopher, wrote on metaphysical subjects; 54 of his treatises are extant.
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