Do you think it was wrong to make eternity feminine?  I knew that the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined that the English personification should be so.  Am I wrong in this?  Will you consider the subject again?

Ah, yes!  That was a mistake of mine about putting Constantine for Constantius.  I wrote from memory, and the memory betrayed me.  But say nothing about it.  Nobody will find it out.  I send you Silentiarius and some poems of Pisida in the same volume.  Even if you had not asked for them, I should have asked you to look at some passages which are fine in both.  It appears to me that Silentiarius writes difficult Greek, overlaying his description with a multitude of architectural and other far fetched words!  Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other causes, particularly in the ‘Hexaemeron,’ which is not in the book I send you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish giants), which you may see if you please.  I will send a coach and six with it if you please.

John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge of to you.  You lent me the book with his poems, you know.  He is a great favorite of mine in all ways.  I very much admire his poetry.

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.

[Footnote 64:  George Burges, the classical scholar.  He had in 1832 contributed to the Gentleman’s Magazine (under a pseudonym) some lines purporting to be a newly discovered portion of the Bacchae, but really composed by himself on the basis of a parallel passage in the Christus Patiens.  It is apparently to these lines that Miss Barrett alludes, though the ‘discovery’ was then nearly ten years old.]

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.