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Notes
W. O. Raymond in a review of Gardner B. Taplin, The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Victorian Studies, I [1957], 96) has recently said of her letters: "Their sparkle, charm, and easy, graceful style are as delightful as their naturalness and sincerity."
She did not know him "personally" at that time: see The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon (1898), I, 200.
He writes: "As this very interesting volume modestly presents itself to our notice without a name, we deem it uncourteous to break the studied silence of the author, or to say more than that it is to a female pen we are indebted for what we believe to be absolutely unique in English literature—an attempt on the part of a young lady to translate a play of Aeschylus; and who, if report speaks truly, has read every word of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and this, too, ere she is well out of her teens. . . . For ourselves . . . the appearance of a volume, that reminds us of the days of a Dacier and Carter, cannot fail to be highly welcome. . . ." After quoting a specimen of the translation he concludes: "By comparing this version with the original, it will be seen that our author has, to use her own words, 'kept as closely to the sense, as was poetically possible'; and so little, indeed, has she swerved, not only here, but through the whole play, from her purpose, that every reader of the Prometheus, who wants a crib-book, would do well to bind up this translation with the Greek text, in lieu of the literal prose Latin or English version usually put into the hands of their pupils by the teachers of the March-of-Intellect area. "As regards the Miscellaneous Poems attached to the translation of the Prometheus, and for which the authoress pleads so prettily in her preface, we are free to confess that to our taste they are the gems of the volume."
It was through Barker, however, that the volume was published by Barker's friend A. J. Valpy: see Elizabeth Barrett to Mr Boyd, Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hugh Stuart Boyd, ed. Barbara P. McCarthy (1955), p. 158. The letters generally contain numerous references to Barker.
I wish to thank Messrs. John Murray, holders of the Browning copyright, and Mr. R. Norris Williams, 2d, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for their kind permission to publish this and the following letter, and Mr. Williams and the Society to print excerpts from the letters of Cornelius Mathews of November 26, 1842 and July 26, 1843. I should also like to thank the Haverford College Library for permission to publish the excerpt from the Mathews' letter of March 30, 1843, which is in the Roberts Collection.
This second version was finished in 1845 and included in the Poems of 1850; see Taplin, Life of Elizabeth Barret Browning (1957), pp. 230-232.
"Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets," Athenaeum, Feb. 26, 1842, pp. 189-190; Mar. 5, 1842, pp. 210-212; Mar. 12, 1842, pp. 229-231; Mar. 19, 1842, pp. 249-252. These were later collected in The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (London, 1863), pp. 1-103.
Cornelius Mathews arranged for Henry G. Langley to publish the book in America, where it was given the title A Drama of Exile: and Other Poems (New York, 1844); see Taplin, p. 109.
In "Blue-Stocking Revels," The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, ed. H. S. Milford (1923), pp. 180-181. Hunt's tribute contains the well-known line: "I took her at first for a sister of Tennyson."
For a discussion of her relations with Mathews see Taplin, pp. 108-110 et passim. See also Letters of E. B. Browning, ed. Kenyon, passim; Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett, ed. Paul Landis, with the assistance of Ronald E. Freeman (1958), pp. 362-366; Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Addressed to Richard Hengist Horne, ed. S. R. Townshend Mayer (1877), I, 173-174, 245-247, II, 152, 178; Frances Price, "Some Uncollected Letters of Mrs. Browning," Notes & Queries, CLXXXVII (Nov. 18, 1944), 227-231. Excerpts from three unpublished letters of Mathews to Rufus W. Griswold give additional demonstration of his interest. He writes on November 26, 1842: "Be good enough not to forget the [word illegible] 3 or 4 extra copies of Dec. Graham for Miss Barrett— I see this lady, by the by, announced as a regular contributor to your Magazine. Have you opened any correspondence—? I am about to write to her in a few days & if you wish any proposition laid before her I shall be happy to serve you." And on March 30, 1843: "On enquiry at Mr. Wiley I learn that Mr. Putnam (his partner) is not in funds at London to honor a draft in favour of Miss Barret, for Mr. Graham. The proper & briefest method of adjusting the matter will be remitting to me $52—in current funds which will cover the draft, postage, Messr. Wiley & Putnam's comission. Be good enough to have Mr. Graham do this at once." On July 26, 1843, he writes: "You will oblige me by stating in what manner the claim of Miss Barrett on Graham's Mage. has been arranged? I beg to ask an immediate answer, &, as I desire that no farther unpleasant feeling shall grow of this matter I trust it will be, a satisfactory one." For Miss Barrett and Griswold, see further Taplin, p. 135. In another letter to Griswold, October 28, 1844, printed in Passages from the Correspondence and Other Papers of Rufus W. Griswold, ed. W. M. Griswold (1898), p. 233, Mathews reveals that Evart A. Duyckinck is the author of the review of the 1844 Poems in the American Whig Review, I (Jan. 1845), 38-48, and indicates that Griswold wrote the review appearing in Graham's Magazine, XXVI (Jan. 1845), 46-47.
Perhaps the chapters on her, written by R. H. Horne, in A New Spirit of the Age (1844), II, 131-140, although she seemingly is referring to a review of The Seraphim, and Other Poems. It may be that Horne wrote the review of that work in the Monthly Chronicle, II (1838), 195, but, if so, the review does not correspond very well with her description of it.
Such as those in John Bull, Aug. 31, 1844, pp. 551-552, the Atlas, Aug. 31, 1844, pp. 593-594, to which she refers elsewhere (Letters, ed. Kenyon, I, 192, 194) and the London Globe, Aug. 22, 1844.
For Mrs. Sigourney see Gordon S. Haight, Mrs. Sigourney, The Sweet Singer of Hartford (1930). For other expressions of Miss Barrett's opinion of Mrs. Sigourney, see Letters, ed. Kenyon, I, 135, 251, and Elizabeth Barrett to Miss Mitford, The Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, ed. Betty Miller (1954), pp. 171, 217, 241.
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