LITMIR.BIZ

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literally as bright as the dark china rose, a profusion of silky, dark curls, and a look of youth and of modesty hardly to be expressed. This, added to the very simple but graceful and costly dress by which all the family are distinguished, is an exact portrait of her."

      Once introduced to each other, the acquaintanceship between the two authoresses grew rapidly. "I saw much of her during my stay in town," writes Miss Mitford. "We met so constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of age, intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country, we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be—her own talk put upon paper."

      No sooner had Miss Mitford returned home to the companionship of her idolized but extremely undeserving father, than she commenced a constant and voluminous correspondence with her new friend Elizabeth Barrett, confiding all her troubles to her, in return being made acquainted with the young poetess's ​aspirations and achievements. The first letter from the elder correspondent, soon after her return home, was entrusted for delivery, with some flowers, to Henry Chorley, an author and influential critic, "who, if he have the good luck to be let in, as I hope he may," says Miss Mitford, "will tell you all about our doings. … To be sure I will come and see you when next I visit London, and I shall feel to know you better when I have had the pleasure of being introduced to Mr. Barrett, to be better authorized to love you, and to take a pride in your successes—things which, at present, I take the liberty of doing without authority." Some not altogether needless advice to her young friend on the fault of obscurity wound up the epistle.

      A few weeks later Miss Mitford returned to the charge saying, "You should take my venturing to criticise your verses as a proof of the perfect truth of my praise. I do not think there can be a better test of the sincerity of the applause than the venturing to blame. It is also the fault, the one single fault (obscurity) found by persons more accustomed to judge of poetry than myself; by Mr. Dilke, for instance (proprietor of the Athenæum), and Mr. Chorley (one of its principal writers). Charles Kemble once said to me," says Miss Mitford, par exemple, "with regard to the drama, 'Think of the stupidest person of your acquaintance and, when you have made your play so clear that you are sure that he would comprehend it, then you may venture to hope that it will be understood by your audience.' And really I think the rule will hold good with regard to poetry in general." Happily Miss Barrett did not try to bring her poetry down to the level of the stupidest person's comprehension, and, although she never ​did free it from occasional obscurity, fortunately it never came within the category of "poetry in general."

      In October, Miss Barrett contributed to the pages of the New Monthly Magazine, her lengthy ballad of "The Poet's Vow." It certainly justified Miss Mitford's hint that, though prepared to love ballads, she was "a little biassed in favour of great directness and simplicity." The poem, after opening with allusions to the duality of most mundane things, proceeds to recount, more or less directly, how a poet chose to forego all human intercourse. He gave away his worldly goods and spurned his bride expectant, in the hope, apparently, that by casting off the trammels of human sympathy he might escape the woes Adam had entailed upon the human race. To comprehend the nature of the vow and its result the poem must be read in its entirety.

      "The Poet's Vow" is not only a beautiful poem but is also one of the most characteristic and representative Elizabeth Barrett ever wrote. It has not the grasp of character of "Aurora Leigh," nor the gush and glow of passion which flows through the melody of "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," but it has a mournful weirdness that haunts the memory long after the words of it have been forgotten. That no sane man could make such a vow, nor that making could keep it, is beside the question; the problem being one in every respect suitable for a poet to grapple with.

      Poems of the mystical nature of the two last referred to were scarcely the class of writing to prove attractive to the clear-minded, somewhat conventional, kindly-hearted Miss Mitford, Miss Barrett's chief correspondent. From time to time in the course of her chatty epistles she cautions her young friend ​against lapses into obscurity, bidding her write "poems of human feeling and human action." Such warnings could not have hindered Elizabeth Barrett at any time from writing as she felt, but they may have caused her to feel occasionally that the human element should not be quite overshadowed by the psychological. Sometimes when she turned her thoughts to incidents of her daily life, she wrote with a simplicity and pathetic tenderness as unparalleled in their way as were her spiritualistic speculations in theirs. One such poem as these, entitled "My Doves," refers to a pair of doves recently sent to her from the tropics as a present. She wrote to Miss Mitford:—

      My little doves were ta'en away

      From that glad nest of theirs,

       Across an ocean rolling grey,

      And tempest-clouded airs;

       My little doves, who lately know

       The sky and wave by warmth and blue.

       And now, within the city prison,

      In mist and chillness pent,

       With sudden upward look they listen

      For sounds of past content,

       For lapse of water, swell of breeze,

       Or nut-fruit falling from the trees.

      The doves formed quite a topic for the two authoresses to dilate upon. Miss Mitford considered that when she said that her father was quite charmed with Miss Barrett's account of the little brown birdies, she had, indeed, awarded high honour, and when she heard that they had so far grown accustomed to the strangeness of their new habitation as to build a nest and lay their eggs therein, she sent her love to them, with the hope that the eggs might be good. "It would ​be such a delight to you," she wrote, "to help the parent birds to bring up their young."

      A few months after this incident Miss Barrett had a very different theme to write upon, and upon it she wrote in hot haste. William the Fourth died on June 20th, 1837, and on July 1st the Athenæum contained a poem on "The Young Queen," by E. B. B.

      Why this poem, so characteristic of its author, should not have been included in her Collected Works, where several earlier and less worthy pieces are given, it is difficult to say; but it is still less easy to comprehend what principle or plan has guided the editor's selection when we find excluded from the collection Miss Barrett's next production, "Victoria's Tears," a poem even finer than "The Young Queen," published the week following in the Athenæum; one quatrain of this poem has become quite a standard quotation:—

      They decked her courtly halls—

      They reined her hundred steeds—

       They shouted at her palace gates

      "A noble Queen succeeds!"

      About 1837, a publication entitled Finden's Tableaux of National Character, Beauty and Costume, was started by W. and E. Finden. It was to be issued in fifteen monthly parts, each part to contain four plates, "designed and engraved by the most eminent artists," and "original tales and poems, by some of the most distinguished authors of the day." Mrs. S. C. Hall undertook the editorship of the new publication, and obtained the assistance of several well-known writers as contributors. The illustrations were of that ultra-sentimental type which adorned fashionable annuals of fifty years ago; and, although they would ​not in any way satisfy the more critical taste of the present time, were thought very highly of in those days. Instead of the illustrations being made to illustrate the text, writers had to manufacture, and generally in hot haste, poetry and prose to elucidate or accompany the illustrations. This system, unfortunately not yet abolished, was ruinous as a rule to the production of anything of permanent value, and yet, for various reasons, many truly high-class authors submitted to its tyranny. Elizabeth Barrett, strange to say, was one of those who did not deem it prostrating her talents to patch up pieces to accompany these pictorial shams, and, for Finden's Tableaux, wrote the introductory poem of "The Dream." The peg upon which she hung her lines was the picture of a chubby Cupid surrounded by such conventional emblems as one would expect to see decorating a "Valentine." That her stanzas were unequal—that some of them were unworthy of their authoress—is not surprising, and the only matter for wonder is that she could have been persuaded into doing

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