My dear Mr. Boyd,—As Georgie is going to do what I am afraid I shall not be able to do to-day—namely, to visit you—he must take with him a few lines from Porsonia greeting, to say how glad I am to feel myself again at only a short distance from you, and how still gladder I shall be when the same room holds both of us. Don't be angry because I have not visited you immediately. You know—or you will know, if you consider—I cannot open the window and fly.
Papa and I were very much obliged to you for the poison—and are ready to smile upon you whenever you give us the opportunity, as graciously as Socrates did upon his executioner. How much you will have to say to me about the Greeks, unless you begin first to abuse me about the Romans; and if you begin that, the peroration will be a very pathetic one, in my being turned out of your doors. Such is my prophecy.
Papa has been telling me of your abusing my stanzas on Mrs. Hemans's death. I had a presentiment that you would: and behold, why I said nothing to you of them. Of course, I maintain, versus both you and papa, that they are very much to be admired: as well as everything else proceeding from or belonging to ME. Upon which principle, I hope you will admire George particularly.
Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.
Arabel's and my love to Annie. Won't she come to see us?
To Mrs. Martin
74 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London: Jan. I, 1836.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am half willing and half unwilling to write to you when, among such dearer interests and deep anxieties, you may perhaps be scarcely at liberty to attend to what I write. And yet I will write, if it be only briefly, that you may not think—if you think of us at all—that we have changed our hearts with our residence so much as to forget to sympathise with you, dear Mrs. Martin, or to neglect to apprise you ourselves of our movements. Indeed, a letter to you should have been written among my first letters on arriving in London, only Henrietta (my scape-goat, you will say) said, 'I will write to Mrs. Martin.' And then after I had waited, and determined to write without waiting any longer, we heard of poor Mrs. Hanford's affliction and your anxiety, and I have considered day after day whether or not I should intrude upon you; until I find myself—thus!
I do hope that you have from the hand of God those consolations which only He in Jesus Christ can give to the so afflicted. For I know well that you are afflicted with the afflicted, and that with you sympathy is suffering; and that while the tenderest earthly comfort is administered by your presence and kindness to your dear friends, you will feel bitterly for them what a little thing earthly comfort is, when the earthly beloved perish before them. May He who is the Beloved in the sight of His Father and His Church be near to them and you, and cause you to feel as well as know the truth, that what is sudden sorrow, to our judgments, is only long-prepared mercy in His will whose names are Wisdom and Love. Should it not be, dear friend, that the tears of our human eyes ought to serve the happy and touching purpose of reminding us of those tears of Jesus which He shed in assuming our sorrow with our flesh? And the memory of those tears involves all comfort. A recognition of the oneness of the human nature of that Divine Saviour who ever liveth, with ours which perishes and sorrows so; an assurance drawn from thence of His sympathy who sits on the throne of God, with us who suffer in the dust of earth, and of all those doctrines of redemption and sanctification and happiness which come from Him and by Him.
Now you will forgive me for writing all this, dearest Mrs. Martin. I like to write my thoughts and feelings out of my own head and heart, just as they suggest themselves, when I write to you; and I cannot think of affliction, particularly when it comes near to me in the affliction or anxiety of dear friends, without looking back and remembering what voice of God used to sound softly to me when none other could speak comfort. You will forgive me, and not be angry with me for trying, or seeming to try, to be a sermon writer.