It appears, too, that her father encouraged her love for rhyme, since she has not only inscribed her collected poems to him in a dedication written with great delicacy and tenderness of feeling, but in her earliest published volumes there is also a poem addressed to him containing the lines:

For 'neath thy gentleness of praise,
My father! ran my early lays.
And when the lyre was scarce awake,
I lov'd its strings for thy dear sake
And the kind Muses; but the while
Thought only how to win thy smile.'

The small volume from which the above lines are taken was published anonymously thirty-five years ago, in 1826, and entitled An Essay on Mind, and other Poems,' with the modest motto from Tasso, Brama assai poco spera e nulla chiede, and is remarkable principally for the ambition of the young authoress; who, after citing the authority of that immortal 'writer we have just lost' (Byron), to prove that 'ethical 'poetry is the highest of all poetry, as the highest of all objects in moral truth,' proceeds at once to grapple with an ethical subject as wide as the universe itself. The poem is written in heroic verse, and extends over eighty-eight pages. The quality of the verse is not much above the level of Hayley or Miss Seward, but is remarkable for the precocious audacity with which she deals with the greatest names in the whole range of literature and science. Gibbon, Berkeley, Condillac, Plato, Bacon, Bolingbroke, all come in for treatment in the scope of the young girl's argument. The minor poems, however, which conclude the volume show much greater promise of originality.

Elizabeth Barrett does not appear at this age to have been an invalid. The severe illness to which she was so long a victim appears, as Miss Mitford in the passage cited below relates, to have commenced with the breaking of a blood-vessel, Her Greek studies at this period were under the direction of Hugh Stuart Boyd, to whom she has addressed some affectionate sonnets, and also dedicated one of her prettiest lyrics, entitled Wine of Cyprus,' in which the course of their studies is charmingly depicted:

And I think of those long mornings,

Which my thought goes far to seek
When betwixt the folio's turnings
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading,
Swept the sheep-bell's tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for au's and oc's.

'Then what golden hours were for us,
While we sat together there;
How the white vests of the chorus
Seemed to wave up a live air.
How the cothurns trod majestic
Down the deep iambic lines,
And the rolling anapæstic

Curled like vapour over shrines!

'Oh, our Æschylus, the thunderous!
How he drove the bolted breath
Through the cloud to wedge it ponderous
In the gnarled oak beneath.
Oh, our Sophocles, the royal,

Who was born to monarch's place;
And who made the whole world loyal
Less by kingly power than grace!

"Our Euripides the human,

With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common,
Till they rose to touch the spheres.
Our Theocritus; our Bion;

And our Pindar's shining goals;
These were cup-bearers undying

Of the wine that's meant for souls.

'And my Plato the divine one!!

If men know the gods aright;
By their motions as they shine on,
With a glorious trail of light.
And your noble Christian bishops,
Who mouthed grandly the last Greek;
Though the sponges or their hyssops
Were distent with wine - too weak.'

(Vol. iii. p. 27.)

6

Her next publication was, in 1833, a translation of the Pro'metheus Bound' of Eschylus; after which she wrote several poems which appeared anonymously in the New Monthly 'Magazine' and the Athenæum,' and at last in 1838 appeared the Seraphim, and other Poems,' under her own name. must have been, however, about the year 1835 that Miss Mitford first saw her, and to this period must be referred the following portrait in the Recollections of a Literary Life': —

It

'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the

same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the "Prometheus" of Eschylus, the authoress of the "Essay on "Mind," was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language, was out. Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town.

"The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs which did not heal. If there had been consumption in the family, that disease would have intervened. There were no seeds of the fatal English malady in her constitution, and she escaped. Still, however, the vessel did not heal, and after attending her for about a twelvemonth at her father's house in Wimpole Street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and in talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay; and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling to her poetry.

Nearly a twelvemonth had passed, and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning her favourite brother, together with two other fine young men his friends, embarked on board a small sailing-vessel for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamt of by any one. After the catastrophe no one could divine the cause; but in a few minutes after their embarkation, in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found. I was told by a party who were travelling that year in Devonshire and Cornwall, that it was most affecting to see on the corner houses of every village street, on every church door, and almost on every cliff, for miles and miles along the coast, handbills offering large rewards for linen cast ashore marked with the initials of the beloved dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the dearest and the best, one, I believe, an only son, the other the son of a widow.

This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs almost close to the

sea; and she told me herself that during the whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to literature and to Greek: in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skilful and kind though he were, that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight.

'Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious but darkened chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself, have often travelled five-and-forty miles to see her, and returned the same evening without entering another house); reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.

Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her once more in London, with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut forests, and scrambling on mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes.'

During this long illness, however, Mrs. Browning continued to devote herself to poetry. Dissatisfied with her first version of the Prometheus Bound,' she wrote another, and reproduced the drama from beginning to end. The Se'raphim' was followed by a collected edition of her poems, in two volumes, published in 1844, and containing the Drama 'of Exile;' and it is said that one of her most admired ballads, The Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' was written in the space of twelve hours, in order to complete the uniformity of the two volumes, and despatch the proofs to America, although at this time the authoress was still a confirmed invalid. It will be seen from the following extract from the Preface to these two volumes, that she was pursuing her poetical career with an intense sense of its earnestness:

Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having outgrown the faults with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something, indeed, I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or unconsciously make with the progress of existence and experience; and in some sort, since we learn "in suffering what we teach in song," my days may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language, on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my favourite wish for this work

would be that it be received by the public as a step in the right track towards a future indication of more value and acceptability. I would fain do better, and I feel as if I might do better. I aspire to do better. In any case, while my poems are full of faults, as I go forward to my critics and confess, they have my heart and life in them; they are not empty shells. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself, and life has been a very serious thing; there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I have done my work so far as work; not as mere hand and heart work apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain; and as work I offer it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration; but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done, should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.'

But notwithstanding the apparent modesty of this preface, we cannot avoid observing that the humility is more professed than real. The writer assumes that her Being alone is sufficient to make good poetry, if she can find the due expression of it— and this assumption accompanied her through life. She studied only to give due expression to what she imagined to be her own. nature; not to become acquainted with human nature generally, to find materials for the exercise of her art and to discover the necessary relation between her own powers and the subjects adapted to them, in order to produce works which should embody, in an artistic form, the real life and the best aspirations of the age. A poet can no more spin poems out of his own brain, unassisted by the thoughts and feelings which he should draw from humanity around him, than a weaver can make tissues out of the tips of his fingers. The originality of the poet is shown in the creations he is able to make out of the solid stuff of human life. And this requires not only careful study of human nature generally, but also a power of passing out of self, forgetting self altogether, in the sentiments and feelings of others, so as to invest them with artistic concreteness; or of drawing into one's own nature the general aspirations and emotions of the time, and finding an echo for them in the individual soul of the poet. But to regard the Poet's Being as the primary cause and motive power of poetry-as at once subject and object-is a fundamental mistake. Originality, doubtless, is much; but true originality will never be attained by a self-conscious, morbid, restless assertion of the value of a man's own individuality. This was the prime error of Mrs. Browning's artistic theories, and drew with it, or perhaps was identical with, other mystical delusions, in which she lost herself and confused her readers. She had persuaded

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