1 July 1826. Price, Uvedale to Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.

              Foxley

July 1st 1826

Dear Miss Barrett

This very amicable controversy, may, I think, be of use to us both; for you are well furnished with arms, & dextrous in the use of them. The line from Lucretius is aptly quoted in favour of your repeatedly attacked & defended Aonian; I think, however, there is a clear distinction between the two cases; you will form your judgment when I have given my reasons. You ask me very pertinently, whether I think the epithet—pierio—superfluous? I do not; tho’ it might be called without any disparagement super-abundant. It seems to have been the poet’s intention in this & other places, strongly to impress on Memmius, the dryness, obscurity, & novelty of the subject & the difficulty of treating it in Latin

 

Proper egestatem linguæ et rerum novitatem.

& his earnest wish & endeavour to allure his patron’s attention by all the charms of poetry; he therefore adds pierio to suaveloquenti[4] & immediately afterwards dulci to Musæo

 

Et quasi Musæo dulci contingere melle.

That he was well satisfied with what he had done we learn from what he had just said

 

Primum, quod magnis doceo de rebus & arctis [sic, for artis].

- - - - - - - - - -

Deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango

Carmina, Musæo contingens cuncta lepore.

He therefore in the pride & fulness of his heart abounds in epithets, & the whole of the context plainly shews the meaning & force of pierio. Now I must own, & I believe have already confessed, that when I read

 

Lisp’d his first accents in Aonian rhyme

I said to myself (knowing nothing of Cowley’s early productions, or in what metre, or language they were written) in what rhyme? The reason of my asking such a question,—for I should be sorry to think it sheer dulness of apprehension—I take to be this, that Aonian pierian, heliconian, & such epithets, if used singly & simply, do not, in my judgment