Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe that the book I send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places, unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked to compare judgments with you.
Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.
To H.S. Boyd
50 Wimpole Street: April 2, 1842.
My very dear Friend,—... As to your kind desire to hear whatever in the way of favorable remark I have gathered together for fruit of my papers, I put on a veil and tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well done, although 'labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of the subject;' that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the warmheartedness common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [sic] read them 'with great pleasure' unconsciously of the author; and that Mr. Home the poet and Mr. Browning the poet were not behind in approbation. Mr. Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists; and of Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss Mitford and Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly cultivated women, are not Grecians, and therefore judge the papers simply as English compositions.
The single unfavorable opinion is Mr. Hunter's, who thinks that the criticisms are not given with either sufficient seriousness or diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of effort through the whole. Many more persons may say so whose voices I do not hear. I am glad that yours, my dear indulgent friend, is not one of them.
Believe me, your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
To H.S. Boyd
May 17, 1842.