of Keats, and of Tennyson. But once again, and finally, let me repeat that his primary importance-not greatness, but importance-is in having forced us to take up a novel standpoint, involving our construction of a new definition.

Τ

CHAPTER VII.

~HERE are, in literary history, few scènes de la vie privée more affecting than that of the greatest of English poetesses, in the maturity of her first poetic period, lying, like a fading flower, for hours, for days continuously, in a darkened room in a London house. So ill was Miss Elizabeth Barrett, early in the second half of the forties, that few friends, herself even, could venture to hope for a single one of those Springs which she previsioned so longingly. To us, looking back at this period, in the light of what we know of a story of singular beauty, there is an added pathos in the circumstance that, as the singer of so many exquisite songs lay on her invalid's sofa, dreaming of things which, as she thought, might never be, all that was loveliest in her life was fast approaching-though, like all joy, not without an equally unlooked-for sorrow. "I lived with visions for my company, instead of men and women . . nor thought to know a sweeter music than they played to me."

This is not the occasion, and if it were, there would still be imperative need for extreme concision, whereon to dwell upon the early life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The particulars of it are familiar to all who love English literature for there is, in truth, not much to tell-not

much, at least, that can well be told. It must suffice, here, that Miss Barrett was born on the 4th of March 1809, and so was the senior, by three years, of Robert Browning.

By 1820, in remote Herefordshire, the not yet elevenyear-old poetess had already "cried aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips" in various "nascent odes, epics, and didactics." At this time, she tells us, the Greeks were her demi-gods, and she dreamt much of Agamemnon. In the same year, in suburban Camberwell, a little boy was often wont to listen eagerly to his father's narrative of the same hero, and to all the moving tale of Troy. It is significant that these two children, so far apart, both with the light of the future upon their brows, grew up in familiarity with something of the antique beauty. It was a lifelong joy to both, that serene air of Greece." Many an hour of gloom was charmed away by it for the poetess who translated the "Prometheus Bound" of Eschylus, and wrote "The Dead Pan": many a happy day and memorable night were spent in that "beloved environment" by the poet who wrote "Balaustion's Adventure" and translated the "Agamemnon."

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The chief sorrow of her life, however, occurred in her thirty-first year. She never quite recovered from the shock of her well-loved brother Edward's tragic death, a mysterious disaster, for the foundering of the little yacht La Belle Sauvage is almost as inexplicable as that of the Ariel in the Spezzian waters beyond Lerici. Not only through the ensuing winter, but often in the dreams of after years, "the sound of the waves rang in my ears like the moans of one dying.”

The removal of the Barrett household to Gloucester Place, in Western London, was a great event. Here, invalid though she was, she could see friends occasionally and get new books constantly. Her name was well known and became widely familiar when her "Cry of the Children" rang like a clarion throughout the country. The poem was founded upon an official report by Richard Hengist Horne, the friend whom some years previously she had won in correspondence, and with whom she had become so intimate, though. without personal acquaintance, that she had agreed to write a drama in collaboration with him, to be called "Psyche Apocalypté," and to be modelled on "Greek instead of modern tragedy."

Horne-a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remarkable power-was one of the truest friends she ever had, and, so far as her literary life is concerned, came next in influence only to her poet-husband. Among the friends she saw much of in the early forties was a distant "cousin," John Kenyon-a jovial, genial, gracious, and altogether delightful man, who acted the part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in particular, was "a fairy godfather" to Elizabeth Barrett and to "the other poet," as he used to call Browning. It was to Mr. Kenyon-" Kenyon, with the face of a Bendectine monk, but the most jovial of good fellows," as a friend has recorded of him; "Kenyon the Magnificent," as he was called by Browning-that Miss Barrett owed her first introduction to the poetry of her future husband.

Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. With sure insight she discerned the special quality of the

poetic wealth of the "Bells and Pomegranates," among which she then and always cared most for the penultimate volume, the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." Two years before she met the author she had written, in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship "—

"Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down the middle,

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."

A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side, been a collaborateur with "the author of 'Paracelsus.'" She gave Horne much aid in the preparation of his "New Spirit of the Age," and he has himself told us "that the mottoes, which are singularly happy and appropriate, were for the most part supplied by Miss Barrett and Robert Browning, then unknown to each other." One thing and another drew them nearer and Now it was a poem, now a novel expression,

nearer.

now a rare sympathy.

An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both poets became anxious to know each other. "We artists —how well praise agrees with us,” as Balzac says.

A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one another personally. The story of their first meeting, which has received a wide acceptance, is apocryphal. The meeting was brought about by Kenyon. This common friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's father, and so it was natural that he took a more than ordinary interest in the brilliant young poet, perhaps all the more so that the reluctant tide of popularity which had promised to set in with such unparalleled sweep and weight had since experienced a steady ebb.