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its stalk."

      ​

CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      WOMANHOOD.

      From Hope End the Barretts removed to Sidmouth, and resided there for two years. Nothing is known of the family doings during that time, save the publication, in 1833, of Elizabeth's second volume. This book was entitled Prometheus Bound, translated from the Greek of Æschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems, and was issued as by the author of An Essay on Mind. That author's own account is that her translation "was written in twelve days, and should have been thrown in the fire afterwards—the only means of giving it a little warmth."

      Miss Barrett's judgment on her own work is perhaps somewhat too sweeping, but as she not only replaced it in after life by a more mature version, but desired the earlier attempt should be consigned to oblivion, there can be no incentive to drag it into daylight again. All the copies not issued, she says, "are safely locked up in the wardrobe of papa's bedroom, entombed as safely as Œdipus among the olives." "A few of the fugitive poems connected with that translation," she added, "may be worth a little, perhaps; ​but they have not so much goodness as to overcome the badncss of the blasphemy of Æschylus."

      Some of the fugitive pieces thus carelessly referred to are, indeed, worth something more than a little. The initial poem, styled "The Tempest: A Fragment," not only suggests a tale of intense horror, but contains lines as grand, sonorous, and truly poetic as any blank verse Elizabeth Barrett ever published.

      Several other short pieces in the 1833 volume are well worthy republication; as a reviewer has said they are, "for the most part, in no sense immature, or unworthy of the genius of the writer," and certainly are equally good with many of those poems given in her collected works. There are some grand thoughts in "A Sea-side Meditation," "A Vision of Life and Death," "Earth"; and others in the volume are well worthy their author's name, and very different from the general juvenilia of even eminent poets. There is sustained pathos, albeit bitter irony, in the lines, "To a Poet's Child"—presumably Ada Byron—whilst none of the pieces are common-place or devoid of some traces of their author's peculiar originality and genius. The lines "To Victoire, on her Marriage," unless totally different from all Elizabeth Barrett's personal poems, in being pure imagination instead of a record of real life, refer to a certain period of her life spent in France. There are not wanting proofs that Elizabeth Barrett proposed to republish, with revision, some of the poems, at least, of this volume of her early womanhood, as she did, indeed, still earlier but less meritorious pieces.

      After two years' residence in Devonshire, the Barretts removed to London, where Mr. Barrett took a house at 74, Gloucester Place. After the pure country air ​and invigorating sea-breezes, the change was naturally a trying one for all the household, but more especially did it affect Elizabeth. Her health for years past had been delicate—as she said herself, at fifteen she nearly died—and now it gave way entirely. Instead of rambling about Devonshire lanes, or gazing upon the varying ocean, she sat and watched the sun,

      Push out through fog with his dilated disk,

       And startle the slant roofs and chimney pots

       With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw

       Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog,

       Involve the passive city, strangle it

       Alive, and draw it off into the void,

       Spires, bridges, streets and squares, as if a sponge

       Had wiped out London.

      Notwithstanding, or rather because of, her want of health, Elizabeth devoted herself more and more to poesy. She no longer contented herself with the composition of poems, but began to send them for publication to contemporary periodicals. Chief among the friends outside her own immediate family circle whom she saw was John Kenyon, a distant relative. Mr. Kenyon, West Indian by birth, but European by education and choice, being in possession of ample means, was enabled to select his own method of living. Fond of literary and artistic society, and a dabbler in verse himself, he devoted his time to entertaining and being entertained by the makers of pictures and poems. Crabb Robinson, who knew everybody of his time worth knowing, describes Kenyon as having the face of a Benedictine monk and the joyous talk of a good fellow. He delights, he says, in seeing at his hospitable table every variety of literary notabilities, and was popularly styled the "feeder of lions." Coleridge, ​Wordsworth, and most of the best, as well as best known, literary folk of the day were among Kenyon's most intimate assoeiates, and it was one among the many pleasant traits of his character to seek to introduce and make acquainted with each other such celebrities as he knew himself. Such was Kenyon, whom it delighted Elizabeth Barrett to call "cousin," and to whom she naturally turned for advice in literary matters.

      It was Kenyon who introduced the young poetess to most of her earliest literary friends, and he was the means of getting her poems accepted and works noticed by the chief literary journals of the day. Many of her earlier poems have, doubtless, been lost sight of altogether, not so much on account of their unworthiness as through their author's carelessness or forgetfulness of their existence.

      "The Romaunt of Margret," which appeared in the July part of the New Monthly Magazine, was a great advance upon everything the poetess had as yet published, and was well calculated to enhance her reputation, not only among those few literary acquaintances who began to proclaim her as a rising star, but also with the outside public. This fine ballad is based upon the idea which permeates so many literatures, and has excited the imagination of so many great poets, of the possibility of man's dual nature; upon the possibility of a mortal being enabled, generally just before death, to behold the double or duplicate of himself.

      Although here and there somewhat misty in the filling up, as are, indeed, many of her later poems, the "Romaunt" is worthy of its author's most matured powers. It has that weird, pathetic, indescribable glamour often found pervading the older ​ballads, but rarely discoverable in those of modern date, and is noteworthy as being the earliest known specimen of Miss Barrett's use of the refrain, a metrical, euphonic adornment which Elizabeth Barrett, as well as her contemporary Edgar Poe, doubtless adopted from, or rather had suggested, to them by, Tennyson's resuscitation of it.

      During May of this year, Miss Barrett formed the acquaintance of Mary Russell Mitford, whose friendship and advice had no little influence on her future literary career. Miss Mitford being up in London on a visit, was taken by her friend Kenyon sight-seeing; on the way they called at Gloucester Place, and, after much persuasion, induced Miss Barrett to go out with them. Miss Mitford described her as "a sweet young woman who reads Greek as I do French, and has published some translations from Æschylus, and some most striking poems. She is a delightful young creature, shy and timid and modest."

      The day following Miss Mitford dined at Kenyon's, and there met several notabilities, including Wordsworth, described as "an adorable old man," Landor, "as splendid a person as Mr. Kenyon, but not so full of sweetness and sympathy," and chief of all, "the charming Miss Barrett," who, so Miss Mitford wrote home, "has translated the most difficult of the Greek plays—the Prometheus Bound—and written most exquisite poems in almost every style. She is so sweet and gentle, and so pretty, that one looks at her as if she were some bright flower." Again, Miss Mitford describes her as being at this time "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 eye-lashes, a smile like a ​sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend that the translatress of Æschylus, the author of the Essay on Mind, was, in technical language, 'out.'"

      To another friend, Miss Mitford described Miss Barrett as "a slight, girlish figure, very delicate, with exquisite hands and feet, a round face with a most noble forehead, a large mouth, beautifully formed and full of expression, lips like parted coral, teeth large, regular, and glittering with healthy whiteness, large dark eyes, with such eye-lashes, resting on the cheek when cast down, when turned upwards touching the flexible and

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