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.

My very dear Friend,—­Have you thought all unkindness out of my silence?  Yet the inference is not a true one, however it may look in logic.

You do not like Silentiarius very much (that is my inference), since you have kept him so short a time.  And I quite agree with you that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory Nazianzen, however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his versification.  My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two of each of them as a poet.  His poems strike me as standing in the very first class of the productions of the Christian centuries.  Synesius and John of Euchaita!  I shall always think of those two together—­not by their similarity, but their dignity.

I return you the books you lent me with true thanks, and also those which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your hands for me.  I thank you for them, and you must be good enough to thank her.  They were of use, although of a rather sublime indifference for poets generally....

I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you asked for, and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the English Poets, under the pretence of a review of ‘The Book of the Poets,’ a bookseller’s selection published lately.  I begin from Langland, of Piers Plowman and the Malvern Hills.  The first paper went to the editor last week, and I have heard nothing as to whether it will appear on Saturday or not, and perhaps if it does you won’t care to have it sent to you.  Tell me if you do or don’t.  I have suffered unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty of east winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better, in that.  Flushie means to bark the next time he sees you in revenge for what you say of him.

Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as

Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.

To H.S.  Boyd June 3, 1842.

My very dear Friend,—­I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know of the publication of my ‘English Poets,’ because I did not know myself when the publication was to take place, and I hope you will forgive the innocent crime and accept the first number going to you with this note.  I warn you that there will be two numbers more at least.  Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible magnanimity of reading them through.

And now I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, papa having given me an Aeolian harp for the purpose.  Do you know the music of an Aeolian harp, and that nothing below the spherical harmonies is so sweet and soft and mournfully wild?  The amusing part of it is (after the poetical) that Flushie is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes it as very hard that I should say ‘beautiful’ to anything except his ears!