The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Letters, by Frederic G. Kenyon.

Evidently a reference to the name of some wine (perhaps Montepulciano) sent her by Mr. Boyd. See the end of the letter.

It will be observed that this is not quite the same as the current legend, which asserts that the whole poem (of 412 lines) was composed in twelve hours.

See letter of January 3, 1845.

Letters to R.H. Horne, ii. 119.

Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the principal members of the staff of the Athenaeum, especially in literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the Dictionary of National Biography) says of him, shortly after his first joining the staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely contributed to maintain the reputation the Athenaeum had already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little popular success.

Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:

'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
And died, not young.'

('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; Poetical Works, vi. 38.)

Poetical Works, iii. 172.

A summary of its contents is given in the next letter but one.

Music and Manners in France and Germany: a Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society, published by Mr. Chorley in 1841.

The Athenaeum had reserved the two longer poems, the 'Drama of Exile' and the 'Vision of Poets,' for possible notice in a second article, which, however, never appeared.

The reversal by the House of Lords of his conviction in Ireland for conspiracy, which the English Court of Queen's Bench had confirmed.

Mrs. Jameson's earliest book, and one which achieved considerable popularity, was her Diary of an Ennuyée.

It will be remembered that 'Punch' had only been in existence for three years at this time, which will account for this apparently superfluous advice.

Newman did not actually enter the Church of Rome until nearly a year later, in October 1845.

Miss Martineau, besides having been cured by mesmerism herself, was blest with a housemaid who had visions under the same influence, concerning which Miss Martineau subsequently wrote at great length in the Athenaeum.

The Athenaum of November 23 contained the first of a series of articles by Miss Martineau, giving her experiences of mesmerism.

A great robbery from Rogers' bank on November 23, 1844, in which the thieves carried off 40,000£ worth of notes, besides specie and securities.

Strathfieldsaye, the Duke of Wellington's house.

William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, the first part of whose Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect appeared in 1844.

Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century. Her elegies on Captain Cook and Major André went through several editions, as did her Louisa, a poetical novel, a class of composition in which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. Her collected poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott (1810).

The real name of George Sand.

By Hans Andersen; an English translation by Mary Howitt was published in 1845.

Duchesses in the French court had the privilege of seating themselves on a tabouret or stool while the King took his meals; hence the droit du tabouret comes to mean the rank of a duchess.

The mention of her brothers being at Alexandria is sufficient to show that 1845 must be the true date.

A copy of the 1838 volume for which Mrs. Martin had asked.

Evidently a slip of the pen for Douglas Jerrold, whose 'Shilling Magazine' began to come out in 1845.

By Porson, on the authenticity of I John v. 7.

A monster bell for York Minster, then being exhibited at the Baker Street Bazaar. Mr. Boyd was an enthusiast on bells and bell ringing.

No doubt The Swiss Family Robinson.

These versions were not published in Mrs. Browning's lifetime, but were included in the posthumous Last Poems (1862). They now appear in the Poetical Works, v. 72-83.

Referring to the Pythagorean doctrine of the sanctity of beans.

Hood died on May 3, 1845; while on his deathbed he received from Sir Robert Peel the notification that he had conferred on him a pension of 100£ a year, with remainder to his wife.

One of the visions of Miss Martineau's 'apocalyptic housemaid' related to the wreck of a vessel in which the Tynemouth people were much interested. Unfortunately it appeared that news of the wreck had reached the town shortly before her vision, and that she had been out of doors immediately before submitting to the mesmeric trance.

Afterwards Mdme. Emil Braun; see the letter of January 9, 1850. At this time she was engaged in editing an album or anthology, to which she had asked Miss Barrett to contribute some classical translations.

A novel by Mr. Chorley, a copy of which he had presented to Miss Barrett.

The first number of the Daily News appeared on January 2l, 1846, under the editorship of Charles Dickens.

The well-known lines beginning, 'There is delight in singing.' They appeared in the Morning Chronicle for November 22, 1845.

Beloved, them hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through,
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, xliv.

He committed suicide on June 22, under the influence of the disappointment caused by the indifference of the public to his pictures, the final instance of which was its flocking to see General Tom Thumb and neglecting Haydon's large pictures of 'Aristides' and 'Nero,' which were being exhibited in an adjoining room of the Egyptian Hall.

Poetical Works, iv. 20-32.

Mrs. Sutherland Orr says that the marriage took place in St. Pancras Church; but this is a mistake, as the parish register of St. Marylebone proves.

Memoirs of Anna Jameson, by G. Macpherson, p. 218.

Afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, and Mrs. Jameson's biographer.

The date at the head of the letter is October 2, but that is certainly a slip of the pen, since at that date, as the following letter to Miss Mitford shows, they had not reached Pisa. See also the reference to 'six weeks of marriage' on p. 295. The Pisa postmark appears to be October 20 (or later), and the English postmark is November 5.

The original is torn here.

This letter is of earlier date than the last, having been written en route between Orleans and Lyons; but it has seemed better to place the more detailed narrative first.

Blackwood's Magazine for October 1846 contained the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time: 'A Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,' 'A Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the Garden.'

Better known as Fanny Kemble.

Miss Gerardine Bate, Mrs. Jameson's niece.

This surname is a mistake on Mrs. Browning's part; see her letter of October 1, 1849.

See Lady Geraldine's Courtship, stanza xli.

'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' (Poetical Works, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called The Liberty Bell, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery Bazaar of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a small pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.

'Critical Kit-Kats,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).

A list of the works composing Balzac's Comédie Humaine is attached to this letter for Miss Mitford's benefit.

Miss E.F. Haworth (several letters to whom are given farther on) was an old friend of Robert Browning's, and published a volume of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.

It will be remembered that Mr. Boyd took a great interest in bells and bell ringing. The passage omitted below contains an extract from Murray's Handbook with reference to the bells of Pisa.

This bell was tolled on the occasion of an execution.

The American sculptor.

Miss Henrietta Barrett was engaged to Captain Surtees Cook, an engagement of which her brothers, as well as her father, disapproved, partly on the ground of insufficiency of income. Ultimately the difficulty was solved in the same way as in the case of Mrs. Browning.

Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.

Tennyson's Princess had just been published.

'This country saving is a glorious thing:
And if a common man achieved it? well.
Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king?
That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable.
A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring
Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell

So heavy round the neck of it—albeit
We fain would grant the possibility
For thy sake, Pio Nono!'

Casa Guidi Windows, part i.

The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was made to popular aspirations.

In Tennyson's Princess.

A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in Casa Guidi Windows, part i.:

'Shall I say
What made my heart beat with exulting love
A few weeks back,' &c.

Chloroform, then beginning to come into use.

Miss Bate's fiancé.

Novels by George Sand.

See Browning's The Statue and the Bust.

'the stone Called Dante's—a plain flat stone scarce discerned From others in the pavement—whereupon He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone the lava of his spirit when it burned.' Casa Guidi Windows, part i.

This edition, published in 1849 in two volumes contained only Paracelsus and the plays and poems of the Bells and Pomegranates series.

Apparently it had been proposed to omit Luria from the new edition; but, if so, the intention was not carried out.

It will interest many readers to know that Casa Guidi is now the property of Mr. R. Barrett Browning.

Mr. Boyd died on May 10, 1848.

Otherwise known as Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne, author of the Handlyng Synne and a Chronicle of England. He flourished about 1288-1338.

The insurrection of Lombardy against Austrian rule had taken place in March, and was immediately followed by war between Sardinia and Austria, in which the Italians gained some initial successes. Fighting continued through the summer, and was temporarily closed by an armistice in August.

'Guercino drew this angel I saw teach
(Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray
Holding his little hands up, each to each
Pressed gently, with his own head turned away,
Over the earth where so much lay before him
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,
And he was left at Fano by the beach.

'We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul's content
My angel with me too.'

The first two volumes of Modern Painters bore no author's name, but were described as being 'by a graduate of Oxford.' At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin's acquaintance, as some subsequent letters testify.

At this time President of the Council, after suppressing the Communist rising of June 1848.

Abd-el-Kader surrendered to the French in Algeria early in 1848, under an express promise that he should be sent either to Alexandria or to St. Jean d'Acre; in spite of which he was sent to France and kept there as a prisoner for several years.

Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French Republic by a popular vote on December 10.

Count Pellegrino Rossi, chief minister to the Pope, was assassinated in Rome, at the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies, on November 15, 1848. Ten days later the Pope fled to Gaeta, and his experiments in 'reform' came to a final end.

The Pope, having declared war against Austria before his flight, had invited French support, with the concurrence of his people; being expelled from Rome, he invited (and obtained) French help to restore him, in spite of the desperate opposition of his people.

Wiedeman was the maiden name of Mr. Browning's mother, her father having been a German who settled in Scotland and married a Scotch wife.

A revolution, fomented chiefly by the Leghornese, expelled the Grand Duke in March 1849; about seven weeks later a counter-revolution, chiefly by the peasantry, recalled him.

Chief administrator of the Republic of Tuscany during the short absence of the Grand Duke Leopold.

Minister of the Interior in the Republic of 1848, and one of the most prominent f the advanced Republican leaders.

A letter, addressed to a private friend but intended to be made public, denouncing the reactionary and oppressive administration of the restored Pope.

Probably the first part of Casa Guidi Windows.

By A.H. Clough and T. Burbidge.

Christmas Eve and Easter Day.

A long description of the baby's meals and daily programme follows, the substance of which can probably be imagined by connoisseurs in the subject.

Apparently the Echo-song which now precedes canto iv. of the Princess, though one is surprised at the opinion here expressed of it. It will be remembered that this and the other lyrical interludes did not appear in the original edition of the Princess.