Wednesday. Jany. 25th.

I lay awake last night listening to the rain, & hoping that it wd. rain on. But it did not!—a fine morning.

In Mr. Boyd’s room only a few minutes before breakfast today,—& Mr. Rickards[1] came afterwards, so that I was not settled there until later than usual.

Finished the oration. It is very fine & Mr. Boyd has determined on translating it. I begged him to do so. Miss H M will be his secretary. I protested against his sending it to the Methodists’ Magazine, few of whose readers could estimate a line of it.[2]

He wished me to translate it while he was translating it, & at the end make what “is odious.” I wd. not do such a thing for πασαν την οικουμενην,[3] & all the seas & deserts thrown in!— Besides, (I know him,) the very act of seeming to compete with him, tho’ suggested by himself, wd. diminish his regard for me. And really there is none to spare.

Mr. Boyd asked me to visit him again next week— That I cant do!—except by a morning visit.

I see plainly that Mrs. Boyd & Annie have determined on leaving Malvern next May!—

Annie asked me at breakfast where I had advised Mr. Boyd to settle?— What a question!— I cd. not help the tears coming into my eyes.

All well at home. Sam with H[enry] T[rant] somewhere!— I wish they had not come for me until tomorrow.

1. Not positively identified; possibly Thomas Rickards of Preston Court, 3 miles S.W. of Ledbury.

2. Despite her objection, H.S.B.’s translation was published in The Methodist Magazine, December 1832, pp. 848–861. Writing to Mrs. Martin on 14 December 1832, she said: “Mr. Boyd has made me quite angry by publishing his translations by rotation in numbers of the ‘Wesleyan Magazine,’ instead of making them up into a separate publication, as I had persuaded him to do. There is the effect, you see, of going, even for a time, out of my reach! The readers … are pious people, but not cultivated, nor, for the most part, capable of estimating either the talents of Gregory or his translator’s” (BC, 3, 64–68).

3. “All the inhabited world.”


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