unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is that I have made
progress since 'The Seraphim,' only it is too possible (as I confess
to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.

You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some
conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture,
with Octavius--Occy, as we call him. He is very much obliged to you,
and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon
you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o'clock. Friday is mentioned
because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry's. Otherwise
he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the
morning to five in the afternoon. May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.
I am ever

Your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 96: John Kenyon: see the last letter.]

_To Mr. Westwood_
April 16, 1844.

... Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism
in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that
article leans somewhere--_I_, who am reproached with
trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with
insufficient reason.

Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged
considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.[97]
My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for
instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will
bring with it, happily, literary association in others.... Still, I am
not a great letter writer, and I don't write 'elegant Latin verses,'
as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark
for seven years by any manner of means. By the way, a barrister said
to my barrister brother the other day, 'I suppose your sister is
dead?' 'Dead?' said he, a little struck; 'dead?' 'Why, yes. After Mr.
Home's account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so
many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.'

ELIZABETH BARRETT.

Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that
celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of
Miss Barrett's best known and most quoted poems.

[Footnote 97: In _The New Spirit of the Age_.]

_To H.S. Boyd_
June 18, 1844.

Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk with Cyprus.
Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you
say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am