Thursday July 14.
At breakfast, my parcel of books from Eaton came up the road. Fresh from the carrier. Unpacked it eagerly, & read the title pages of Barnes’s Euripides[,] Marcus Antoninus, Callimachus, the Anthologia, Epictetus[,] Isocrates, & Da Vinci’s Painting.[1] The last I had sent for, for Eliza Cliffe; but the externals are so shabby that I have a mind to send it back again. Finished my dream about Udolpho;—& began Destiny, a novel by the author of the Inheritance,[2] which Miss Peyton lent me. I liked the Inheritance so much that my desires respecting this book were “all alive”. I forgot to say that I dont like the conclusion of the Mysteries. It is “long drawn out” & not “in linked sweetness”.[3] Read some of the Alcestis. Mr. Boyd wished me to read it; & I wished so too.
No letter!-- Sent mine to Papa!--
1. Most of these books appeared in Browning Collections: lot 661, Euripidis Tragoediœ XX, … ex edit. J. Barnes, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1812); Lot 338, Marci Antonini Imperatoris De Rebus Suis … studio T. Gatakeri (1697); Lot 540, Callimachi Cyreni Hymni et Epigrammata (Glasgow, 1755); Lot 654, Epicteti Manuale, illustravit J. Simpson (London, 1758); Lot 785, Isocratis Orationes et Epistolœ, cum latina interpretatione H. Wolfii (1613). The Rivinus Anthologia, later offered to H.S.B. by E.B.B. (see 2 September), was not catalogued. Da Vinci’s A Treatise on Painting E.B.B. subsequently exchanged (see 18 July).
2. [Susan Edmondstone Ferrier], The Inheritance, 3 vols. (London, 1824); Destiny: or, the Chief’s Daughter, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1831).
3. Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, Compos’d at several times (London, 1645), “L’Allegro,” p. 36:
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that ty
The hidden soul of harmony.
