Your affectionate
E.B.B.

[Footnote 13:  Archbishop Whately.]

[Footnote 14:  The New Monthly Magazine, at this time edited by Bulwer, afterwards the first Lord Lytton.]

The letter just printed contains the first allusion in Miss Barrett’s letters to any of her own writings.  The translation of the ’Prometheus Bound’ of Aeschylus was the first-fruits of the removal to Sidmouth.  It was written, as she told Horne eleven years afterwards, ’in twelve days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards—­the only means of giving it a little warmth.’[15] Indeed, so dissatisfied did she subsequently become with it, that she did what she could to suppress it, and in the collected edition of 1850 substituted another version, written in 1845, which she hoped would secure the final oblivion of her earlier attempt.[16] The letter given above shows that the composition of the earlier version took place at the end of 1832; and in the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that ’a few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy of Aeschylus.’  The volume, which was published anonymously, received two sentences of contemptuous notice from the ‘Athenaeum,’ in which the reviewer advised ’those who adventure in the hazardous lists of poetic translation to touch anyone rather than Aeschylus, and they may take warning by the author before us.’[17]

[Footnote 15:  Letters to R.H.  Home, i. 162.]

[Footnote 16:  It need hardly be said that the literary resurrectionist has been too much for her, and the version of 1833 has recently been reprinted.  Of this reprint the best that can be said is that it provides an occasion for an essay by Mrs. Meynell.]

[Footnote 17:  Athenaeum, June 8, 1833.]

To Mrs. Martin Sidmouth:  May 27, 1833.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­I am half afraid of your being very angry indeed with me; and perhaps it would be quite as well to spare this sheet of paper an angry look of yours, by consigning it over to Henrietta.  Yet do believe me, I have been anxious to write to you a long time, and did not know where to direct my letter.  The history of all my unkindness to you is this:  I delayed answering your kind welcome letter from Rome, for three weeks, because Henrietta was at Torquay, and I knew that she would like to write in it, and because I was unreasonable enough to expect to hear every day of her coming home.  At the end of the three weeks, and on consulting your dates and plans, I found out that you would probably have quitted Rome before any letter of mine arrived there.  Since then, I have been inquiring, and all in vain, about where I could find you out.  All I could hear was, that you were somewhere between Italy and England; and all I could do was, to wait