Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.[97] My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will bring with it, happily, literary association in others....  Still, I am not a great letter writer, and I don’t write ‘elegant Latin verses,’ as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark for seven years by any manner of means.  By the way, a barrister said to my barrister brother the other day, ’I suppose your sister is dead?’ ‘Dead?’ said he, a little struck; ‘dead?’ ’Why, yes.  After Mr. Home’s account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.’

ELIZABETH BARRETT.

Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of Miss Barrett’s best known and most quoted poems.

[Footnote 97:  In The New Spirit of the Age.]

To H.S.  Boyd June 18, 1844.

Thank you, my very dear friend!  I write to you drunk with Cyprus.  Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am sorry for him.  I suppose Jupiter had it instead, just then—­Hebe pouring it, and Juno’s ox-eyes bellowing their splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken metaphor, for the sake of Aeschylus’s genius, and my own particular intoxication.

Indeed, there never was, in modern days, such wine.  Flush, to whom I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it was supernatural, and ran away.  I have an idea that if he had drunk that drop, he would have talked afterwards—­either Greek or English.

Never was such wine!  The very taste of ideal nectar, only stiller, from keeping.  If the bubbles of eternity were on it, we should run away, perhaps, like Flush.

Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from you?  Is it right of me? are you not too kind in sending it? and should you be allowed to be too kind?  In any case, you must, not think of sending me more than you have already sent.  It is more than enough, and I am not less than very much obliged to you.

I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I only hope that critics may say of the rest that it smells of Greek wine.  Dearest Mr. Boyd’s

Ever affectionate
E.B.  BARRETT.

To Mr. Westwood June 28, 1844.