BIB_ID
403389
Accession number
MA 8917.31
Creator
Boyd, Hugh Stuart, 1781-1848.
Display Date
[1843 March 3].
Credit line
Acquired from the University of Illinois, 1961.
Description
1 item (5 pages, with address) ; 22.6 x 18.5 cm
Notes
Date of writing estimated from the postmark. No place of writing is given but Boyd was known to be living in London at that time. See the published editions of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Addressed to: "Miss Barrett,/ 50, Wimpole Street/ London."
Boyd was blind; the letter is in the hands of three amanuenses.
Addressed to: "Miss Barrett,/ 50, Wimpole Street/ London."
Boyd was blind; the letter is in the hands of three amanuenses.
Provenance
Acquired from the University of Illinois, 1961.
Summary
Discussing the charge of obscurity laid against EBB's work: "Remember also, that it is partly owing to the greate depth of your thoughts, and the superiority of your own mind, if you appear obscure to us"; telling her that he has been reading further in the Poems of Ossian; summarizing parts of the poem "The Death of Cuchullin" and commenting that "[i]f these passages do not prove a Man, to be a great and consummate Poet; why then, I do'nt know nothing about no matter at all"; discussing his re-reading of Ossian and how well he has been able to remember the poems after forty years; responding to her invitation to come visit her and saying that if only she lived closer, he would be more likely to visit; writing he hopes that she will come to see him; praising the hero of Ossian's epic, Fingal, as "noble and exalted."
Catalog link
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