It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian, and I never did much delight in him, as that fact proves.  Since your letter came I have taken him up again, and have just finished ‘Carthon.’  There are beautiful passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think, ‘Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,’ and the next place being filled by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise.  But the charm of these things is the only charm of all the poems.  There is a sound of wild vague music in a monotone—­nothing is articulate, nothing individual, nothing various.  Take away a few poetical phrases from these poems, and they are colourless and bare.  Compare them with the old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each.  How cold they grow in the comparison!  Compare them with Homer’s grand breathing personalities, with Aeschylus’s—­nay, but I cannot bear upon my lips or finger the charge of the blasphemy of such comparing, even for religion’s sake....

I had another letter from America a few days since, from an American poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine, and asked for contributions from my pen.  The Americans are as good-natured to me as if they took me for the high Radical I am, you know.

You won’t be angry with me for my obliquity (as you will consider it) about Ossian.  You know I always talk sincerely to you, and you have not made me afraid of telling you the truth—­that is, my truth, the truth of my belief and opinions.

I do not defend much in the ‘Idiot Boy.’  Wordsworth is a great poet, but he does not always write equally.

And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest between Ossian and Homer. I fashion it in this way:  Homer sometimes nods, but Ossian makes his readers nod.

Ever your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Did I tell you that I had been reading through a manuscript translation of the ‘Gorgias’ of Plato, by Mr. Hyman of Oxford, who is a stepson of Mr. Haydon’s the artist?  It is an excellent translation with learned notes, but it is not elegant.  He means to try the public upon it, but, as I have intimated to him, the Christians of the present day are not civilised enough for Plato.

Arabel’s love.

To H.S.  Boyd [About the end of January 1843.]

My very dear Friend,—­The image you particularly admire in Ossian, I admire with you, although I am not sure that I have not seen it or its like somewhere in a classical poet, Greek or Latin.  Perhaps Lord Byron remembered it when in the ‘Siege of Corinth’ he said of his Francesca’s uplifted arm, ’You might have seen the moon shine through.’  It reminds me also that Maclise the artist, a man of poetical imagination, gives such a transparency to the ghost of Banquo in his picture of Macbeth’s banquet, that we can discern through it the lights of the festival.  That is good poetry for a painter, is it not?