Early friendship with Hugh Stuart Boyd.
Among her friends at this time [1826] and for years afterward—in fact, until his death in 1848—was Hugh Stuart Boyd, favorably known by his translations from the Greek.... They read their favorite authors together, or, rather, the young student read to her old master, for he was blind. A reminiscence of the happy hours they passed together, communing with the mighty minds of old, may be found in Mrs. Browning’s beautiful poem, ‘Wine of Cyprus,’ dedicated to Mr. Boyd, to whom she was indebted for her knowledge of that dainty vintage.
“I think of those long mornings
Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading
Swept the sheep-bell’s tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for ai’s and oi’s.”
R. H. Stoddard: Prefatory Memoir to ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to Richard H. Horne.’
Her learning.
I have her ‘Essay on Mind,’ ... which, and the notes to it, contain allusions to books, as if known by everybody, which Henry Cary declared to me no young man of his day at Oxford had ever looked into.
Mary Russell Mitford: Letter to Rev. Mr. Harness.