My dear friend,—I am rather better than otherwise within the last few days, but fear that nothing will make me essentially so except the invisible sun. I am, however, a little better, and God's will is always done in mercy.

As to the poems, do forgive me, dear Mr. Boyd; and refrain from executing your cruel threat of suffering 'the desire of reading them to pass away.'

I have not one sheet of them; and papa—and, to say the truth, I myself—would so very much prefer your reading the preface first, that you must try to indulge us in our phantasy. The book Mr. Bentley half promises to finish the printing of this week. At any rate it is likely to be all done in the next: and you may depend upon having a copy as soon as I have power over one.

With kind regards to Miss Holmes,

Believe me, your affectionate friend,
E.B.B.

Thank you for your inquiry, my dear friend. I had begun to fancy that between Saunders and Otley and the 'Seraphim' I had fallen to the ground of your disfavour. But I do trust to be able to send you a copy before next Sunday.

I am thrown back a little just now by having caught a very bad cold, which has of course affected my cough. The worst seems, however, to be past, and Dr. Chambers told me yesterday that he expected to see me in two days nearly as well as before this casualty. And I have been, thank God, pretty well lately; and although when the stethoscope was applied three weeks ago, it did not speak very satisfactorily of the state of the lungs, yet Dr. Chambers seems to be hopeful still, and to talk of the wonders which the summer sunshine (when it does come) may be the means of doing for me. And people say that I look rather better than worse, even now.

Did you hear of an autograph of Shakespeare's being sold lately for a very large sum (I think it was above a hundred pounds) on the credit of its being the only genuine autograph extant? Is yours quite safe? And are you so, in your opinion of its veritableness?

I have just finished a very long barbarous ballad for Miss Mitford and the Finden's tableaux of this year. The title is 'The Romaunt of the Page,'^[37] and the subject not of my own choosing.

I believe that you will certainly have 'The Seraphim' this week. Do macadamise the frown from your brow in order to receive them.

Give my love to Miss Holmes.

Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Mr. Boyd,—Papa is scarcely inclined, nor am I for myself, to send my book or books to the East Indies. Let them alone, poor things, until they can walk about a little! and then it will be time enough for them to 'learn to fly.'

I am so sorry that Emily Harding saw Arabel and went away without this note, which I have been meaning to write to you for several days, and have been so absorbed and drawn away (all except my thoughts) by other things necessary to be done, that I was forced to defer it. My ballad,^[38] containing a ladye dressed up like a page and galloping off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise you, went to Miss Mitford this morning. But I augur from its length that she will not be able to receive it into Finden.

Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your being in the act of going through my 'Seraphim' for the second time. For the feeling of interest in me which brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my dear friend. What your opinion is, and will be, I am prepared to hear with a good deal of awe. You will certainly not approve of the poem.

There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do not keep back one rough word, for friendship's sake, but be as honest as—you could not help being, without this request.

If I should live, I shall write (I believe) better poems than 'The Seraphim;' which belief will help me to survive the condemnation heavy upon your lips.

Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication, English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson, though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only 'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.

Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems which have proved the most popular among its authoress's complete works, except 'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems were 'The Poet's Vow,' 'Isobel's Child,' 'The Romaunt of Margret,' 'My Doves,' and 'The Sea-mew.' The volume did not suffice to win any wide reputation for Miss Barrett, and no second edition was called for; on the other hand, it was received with more than civility, with genuine cordiality, by several among the reviewers, though they did not fail to note its obvious defects. The 'Athenaeum'^[39] began its review with the following declaration:

This is an extraordinary volume—especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and accomplishment—but it is hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy and indistinct, and her language wanting in the simplicity of unaffected earnestness.

The 'Examiner,'^[40] after quoting at length from the preface and 'The Seraphim,' continued:

Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these (and they are not sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of many of the highest qualities of the divine art? We regret to have some restriction to add to an admission we make so gladly. Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common order; yet is she in danger of being spoiled by over-ambition; and of realising no greater or more final reputation than a hectical one, like Crashaw's. She has fancy, feeling, imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise or other, between the material and spiritual, she aims at flights which have done no good to the strongest, and therefore falls infinitely short, except in such detached passages as we have extracted above, of what a proper exercise of her genius would infallibly reach.... Very various, and in the main beautiful and true, are the minor poems. But the entire volume deserves more than ordinary attention.

The 'Atlas,'^[41] another paper whose literary judgments were highly esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder, and dwelt more on the faults of the volume, but added nevertheless that 'there are occasional passages of great beauty, and full of deep poetical feeling. In 'The Romaunt of Margret' it detected the influence of Tennyson—a suggestion which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly; and it concluded with the declaration that the authoress 'possesses a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in this volume, a work of considerable merit.'

Such were the principal voices among the critical world when Miss Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she might well be satisfied with them. Two years later, the 'Quarterly Review'^[42] included her name in a review of 'Modern English Poetesses,' along with Caroline Norton, 'V.,' and others whose names are even less remembered to-day. But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically. He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests warmly against her 'reckless repetition of the name of God'—a charge which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final syllable—'kissed,' 'bowed,' and the like—and her fondness for the adverb 'very;' both of which mannerisms he charges to the example of Tennyson. He condemns the 'Prometheus,' though recognising it as 'a remarkable performance for a young lady.' He criticises the subject of 'The Seraphim,' 'from which Milton would have shrunk;' but adds, 'We give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and striking in expression.' He sums up as follows:

In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted genius and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged her inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly without displaying great power, yet at the expense of that clearness, truth, and proportion, which are essential to beauty; and has most unfortunately fallen into the trammels of a school or manner of writing, which, of all that ever existed—Lycophron, Lucan, and Gongora not forgotten—is most open to the charge of being vitiis imitabile exemplar.

So much for the reception of 'The Seraphim' volume by the outside world. The letters show how it appeared to the authoress herself.

The first of them deserves a word of special notice, because it is likewise the first in these volumes addressed to Miss Mary Russell Mitford, whose name holds a high and honourable place in the roll of Miss Barrett's friends. Her own account of the beginning of the friendship should be quoted in any record of Mrs. Browning's life.

'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago.^[43] She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that 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 Aeschylus, 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,^[44] to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of age,^[45] 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.'^[46]

Miss Barrett's letters show how warmly she returned this feeling of friendship, which lasted until Miss Mitford's death in 1855. Of the earlier letters many must have disappeared: for it is evident from Miss Mitford's just quoted words, and also from many references in her published correspondence, that they were in constant communication during these years of Miss Barrett's life in London. After her marriage, however, the extant letters are far more frequent, and will be found to fill a considerable place in the later pages of this work.

We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa and I and all of us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both gladdening and surprising—and the one the more for being the other also. Oh! it was so kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us!

As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and Mr. Kenyon are indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism over it—before it went to you—and so if you did not find as many obscurities as he did in it, the reason is—his merit and not mine. But don't believe him—no!—don't believe even Mr. Kenyon—whenever he says that I am perversely obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not perversely—that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods. Because, indeed, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition....

I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was not permitted to get out of bed, and was haunted with leeches and blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call here, and to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of a return; but Mr. Kenyon's opinion turned the balance. I was very sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her note expressive of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice (except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.

Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either. It is well that, in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our dependence upon God.

I feel as if I had not said half, and they have come to ask me if I have not said all! My beloved friend, may you be happy in all ways!

Do write whenever you wish to talk and have no one to talk to nearer you than I am! Indeed, I did not forget Dr. Mitford when I wrote those words, although they look like it.

Your gratefully affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Friend,—Do not think me depraved in ingratitude for not sooner thanking you for the pleasure, made so much greater by the surprise, which your note of judgment gave me. The truth is that I have been very unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the painful physical feeling went away to make room for the pleasurable moral one—and this I fancied it would do every hour, so that I might be able to tell you at ease all that was in my thoughts. The fancy was a vain one. The pain grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been here for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it bore all Jupiter's ambrosial curls; and is to be here again to-day, but with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch as the leeches last night did their duty, and I feel much better—God be thanked for the relief. But I am not yet as well as before this attack, and am still confined to my bed—and so you must rather imagine than read what I thought and felt in reading your wonderful note. Of course it pleased me very much, very very much—and, I dare say, would have made me vain by this time, if it had not been for the opportune pain and the sight of Dr. Chambers's face.

I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman before I read your suggestion. I knew that her kind feeling for me would interest her in the sight of it.

Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd! May all my critics be gentle after the pattern of your gentleness!

Believe me, affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

My dear Friend,—I send you a number of the 'Atlas' which you may keep. It is a favorable criticism, certainly—but I confess this of my vanity, that it has not altogether pleased me. You see what it is to be spoilt.

As to the 'Athenaeum,' although I am not conscious of the quaintness and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought and feeling) to have studied 'attitudes,' yet the critic was quite right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for the liberal praise he has otherwise given me. Upon the whole, I like his review better than even the 'Examiner,' notwithstanding my being perfectly satisfied with that.

Thank you for the question about my health. I am very tolerably well—for me: and am said to look better. At the same time I am aware of being always on the verge of an increase of illness—I mean, in a very excitable state—with a pulse that flies off at a word and is only to be caught by digitalis. But I am better—for the present—while the sun shines.

Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall hold in memory, and use whenever I am not particularly obstinate, in all my SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!

You will smile at that, and so do I.

Arabel is walking in the Zoological Gardens with the Cliffes—but I think you will see her before long.

Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

Don't let me forget to mention the Essays^[47]. You shall have yours—and Miss Bordman hers—and the delay has not arisen from either forgetfulness or indifference on my part—although I never deny that I don't like giving the Essay to anybody because I don't like it. Now that sounds just like 'a woman's reason,' but it isn't, albeit so reasonable! I meant to say 'because I don't like the ESSAY.'

My dear Friend,—Notwithstanding this silence so ungrateful in appearance, I thank you at last, and very sincerely, for your kind letter. It made me laugh, and amused me—and gratified me besides. Certainly your 'quality of mercy is not strained.'

My reason for not writing more immediately is that Arabel has meant, day after day, to go to you, and has had a separate disappointment for every day. She says now, 'Indeed, I hope to see Mr. Boyd to-morrow.' But I say that I will not keep this answer of mine to run the risk of another day's contingencies, and that it shall go, whether she does or not.

I am better a great deal than I was last week, and have been allowed by Dr. Chambers to come downstairs again, and occupy my old place on the sofa. My health remains, however, in what I cannot help considering myself, and in what, I believe, Dr. Chambers considers, a very precarious state, and my weakness increases, of course, under the remedies which successive attacks render necessary. Dr. Chambers deserves my confidence—and besides the skill with which he has met the different modifications of the complaint, I am grateful to him for a feeling and a sympathy which are certainly rare in such of his profession as have their attention diverted, as his must be, by an immense practice, to fifty objects in a day. But, notwithstanding all, one breath of the east wind undoes whatever he labours to do. It is well to look up and remember that in the eternal reality these second causes are no causes at all.

Don't leave this note about for Arabel to see. I am anxious not to alarm her, or any one of my family: and it may please God to make me as well and strong again as ever. And, indeed, I am twice as well this week as I was last.

Your affectionate friend, dear Mr. Boyd,
E.B. BARRETT.

I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr. Chorley, editor of the 'Athenaeum,'^[48] which speaks huge praises of my poems. If he were to say a tithe of them in print, it would be nine times above my expectation!

My dear Friend,—I begged your servant to wait—how long ago I am afraid to think—but certainly I must not make this note very long. I did intend to write to you to-day in any case. Since Saturday I have had my thanks ready at the end of my fingers waiting to slide along to the nib of my pen. Thank you for all your kindness and criticism, which is kindness too—thank you at last. Would that I deserved the praises as well as I do most of the findings-fault—and there is no time now to say more of them. Yet I believe I have something to say, and will find a time to say it in.

Dr. Chambers has just been here, and does not think me quite as well as usual. The truth is that I was rather excited and tired yesterday by rather too much talking and hearing talking, and suffer for it to-day in my pulse. But I am better on the whole.

Mr. Cross,^[49] the great lion, the insect-making lion, came yesterday with Mr. Kenyon, and afterwards Lady Dacre. She is kind and gentle in her manner. She told me that she had 'placed my book in the hands of Mr. Bobus Smith, the brother of Sidney Smith, and the best judge in England,' and that it was to be returned to her on Tuesday. If I should hear the 'judgment,' I will tell you, whether you care to hear it or not. There is no other review, as far as I am aware.

Give my love to Miss Bordman. When is she coming to see me?

The thunder did not do me any harm.

Your affectionate friend, in great haste, although your servant is not likely to think so, E.B.B.

My dear Friend,—You must let me feel my thanks to you, even when I do not say them. I have put up your various notes together, and perhaps they may do me as much good hereafter, as they have already, for the most part, given me pleasure.

The 'burden pure have been' certainly was a misprint, as certainly 'nor man nor nature satisfy'^[50] is ungrammatical. But I am not so sure about the passage in Isobel:

I am not used to tears at nights Instead of slumber—nor to prayer.

Now I think that the passage may imply a repetition of the words with which it begins, after 'nor'—thus—'nor am I used to prayer,' &c. Either you or I may be right about it, and either 'or' or 'nor' may be grammatical. At least, so I pray.^[51]

You did not answer one question. Do you consider that 'apolyptic' stands without excuse?^[52]

I never read Greek to any person except yourself and Mr. MacSwiney, my brother's tutor. To him I read longer than a few weeks, but then it was rather guessing and stammering and tottering through parts of Homer and extracts from Xenophon than reading. You would not have called it reading if you had heard it.

I studied hard by myself afterwards, and the kindness with which afterwards still you assisted me, if yourself remembers gladly I remember gratefully and gladly.

I have just been told that your servant was desired by you not to wait a minute.

The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think there is the least probability of my going before the end of next week, if then. You shall hear.

Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take digitalis again, which makes me feel weak; but still I am better, I think.

In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett's health had become so great that her doctor advised removal to a warmer climate for the winter. Torquay was the place selected, and thither she went in the autumn, accompanied by her brother Edward, her favourite companion from childhood. Other members of the family, including Mr. Barrett, joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able to live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to stay during the summers as well as the winters of the next three years. Letters from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford's correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now ripening into a close literary intimacy. A story relating to Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter, the hero of so many racy anecdotes, is contained in a letter of Miss Barrett's which must have been written about Christmas of either 1838 or 1839:—

'He [the bishop] was, however, at church on Christmas Day, and upon Mr. Elliot's being mercifully inclined to omit the Athanasian Creed, prompted him most episcopally from the pew with a "whereas;" and further on in the Creed, when the benign reader substituted the word condemnation for the terrible one—"Damnation!" exclaimed the bishop. The effect must have been rather startling.'

A slight acquaintance with the words of the Athanasian Creed will suggest that the story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction, however, the story may be added to the many others on record with respect to 'Henry of Exeter.'

The following letter is shown, by the similarity of its contents to the one which succeeds it, to belong to November 1839, when Miss Barrett was entering on her second winter in Torquay.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Henrietta shall not write to-day, whatever she may wish to do. I felt, in reading your unreproaching letter to her, as self-reproachful as anybody could with a great deal of innocence (in the way of the world) to fall back upon. I felt sorry, very sorry, not to have written something to you something sooner, which was a possible thing—although, since the day of my receiving your welcome letter, I have written scarcely at all, nor that little without much exertion. Had it been with me as usual, be sure that you should not have had any silence to complain of. Henrietta knew I wished to write, and felt, I suppose, unwilling to take my place when my filling it myself before long appeared possible. A long story—and not as entertaining as Mother Hubbard. But I would rather tire you than leave you under any wrong impression, where my regard and thankfulness to you, dearest Mrs. Martin, are concerned.

To reply to your kind anxiety about me, I may call myself decidedly better than I have been. Since October I I have not been out of bed—except just for an hour a day, when I am lifted to the sofa with the bare permission of my physician—who tells me that it is so much easier to make me worse than better, that he dares not permit anything like exposure or further exertion. I like him (Dr. Scully) very much, and although he evidently thinks my case in the highest degree precarious, yet knowing how much I bore last winter and understanding from him that the worst tubercular symptoms have not actually appeared, I am willing to think it may be God's will to keep me here still longer. I would willingly stay, if it were only for the sake of that tender affection of my beloved family which it so deeply affects me to consider. Dearest papa is with us now—to my great comfort and joy: and looking very well!—and astonishing everybody with his eternal youthfulness! Bro and Henrietta and Arabel besides, I can count as companions—and then there is dear Bummy! We are fixed at Torquay for the winter—that is, until the end of May: and after that, if I have any will or power and am alive to exercise either, I do trust and hope to go away. The death of my kind friend Dr. Bury was, as you suppose, a great grief and shock to me. How could it be otherwise, after his daily kindness to me for a year? And then his young wife and child—and the rapidity (a three weeks' illness) with which he was hurried away from the energies and toils and honors of professional life to the stillness of that death!

Don't fancy me worse than I am—or that this bed-keeping is the result of a gradual sinking. It is not so. A feverish attack prostrated me on October 2—and such will leave their effects—and Dr. Scully is so afraid of leading me into danger by saying, 'You may get up and dress as usual' that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he left me in this durance vile for a great part of the winter. I am decidedly better than I was a month ago, really and truly.

May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin! My best and kindest regards to Mr. Martin. Henrietta desires me to promise for her a letter to Colwall soon; but I think that one from Colwall should come first. May God bless you! Bro's fancy just now is painting in water colours and he performs many sketches. Do you ever in your dreams of universal benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?

—found guilty of egotism and stupidity 'by this sign' and at once!

If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence which has not been intended, there will be another reason for being thankful to you, in addition to the many. To do myself justice, one of my earliest impulses on seeing my beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness with which you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt. But she had promised, she said, to write herself, and moreover she and only she was to send you the ballad—in expectation of your dread judgment upon which I delayed my own writing. It came in the first letter we received in our new house, on the first of last October. An hour after reading it, I was upon my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that bed have never even been lifted since—to these last days of November—except for one hour a day to the sofa at two yards' distance. I am very much better now, and have been so for some time; but my physician is so persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do me harm than good, that he will neither permit any present attempt at further exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for him to permit it. Under the circumstances it has of course been more difficult than usual for me to write. Pray believe, my dear and kind friend, in the face of all circumstances and appearances, that I never forget you, nor am reluctant (oh, how could that be?) to write to you; and that you shall often have to pay 'a penny for my thoughts' under the new Postage Act—if it be in God's wisdom and mercy to spare me through the winter. Under the new act I shall not mind writing ten words and then stopping. As it is, they would scarcely be worth eleven pennies.

Thank you again and again for your praise of the ballad, which both delighted and surprised me ... as I had scarcely hoped that you might like it at all. Think of Mr. Tilt's never sending me a proof sheet. The consequences are rather deplorable, and, if they had occurred to you, might have suggested a deep melancholy for life. In my case, I, who am, you know, hardened to sins of carelessness, simply look aghast at the misprints and mispunctuations coming in as a flood, and sweeping away meanings and melodies together. The annual itself is more splendid than usual, and its vignettes have illustrated my story—angels, devils and all—most beautifully. Miss Mitford's tales (in prose) have suffered besides by reason of Mr. Tilt—but are attractive and graphic notwithstanding—and Mr. Horne has supplied a dramatic poem of great power and beauty.

How I rejoice with you in the glorious revelation (about to be) of Gregory's second volume! The 'De Virginitate' poem will, in its new purple and fine linen, be more dazzling than ever.

Do you know that George is barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple—is? I have seen him gazetted.

My dearest papa is with me now, making me very happy of course. I have much reason to be happy—more to be grateful—yet am more obedient to the former than to the latter impulse. May the Giver of good give gratitude with as full a hand! May He bless you—and bring us together again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit! again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!

Your ever affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.

Do write—when you are able and least disinclined. Do you approve of Prince Albert or not?^[53]

My ever dear Friend,—It was very pleasant to me to see your seal upon a letter once more; and although the letter itself left me with a mournful impression of your having passed some time so much less happily than I would wish and pray for you, yet there remains the pleasant thought to me still that you have not altogether forgotten me. Do receive the expression of my most affectionate sympathy under this and every circumstance—and I fear that the shock to your nerves and spirits could not be a light one, however impressed you might be and must be with the surety and verity of God's love working in all His will. Poor poor Patience! Coming to be so happy with you, with that joyous smile I thought so pretty! Do you not remember my telling you so? Well—it is well and better for her; happier for her, if God in Christ Jesus have received her, than her hopes were of the holiday time with you. The holiday is for ever now....

I heard from Nelly Bordman only a few days before receiving your letter, and so far from preparing me for all this sadness and gloom, she pleased me with her account of you whom she had lately seen—dwelling upon your retrograde passage into youth, and the delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still more youthful, fair, and gay monstrum amandum, some prodigy of intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long? She didn't tell me that, thinking of course that I knew something more about you than I do. Yes indeed; you do treat me very shabbily. I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many hills and woods should interpose between us—that I should be lying here, fast bound by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a forest, and that you, who used to be such a doughty knight, should not take the trouble of cutting through even a hazel tree with your good sword, to find out what had become of me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last, whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have taken a house there and have carried your books there, and wear Hampstead grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did at Athens) to prove yourself of the soil.

All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and indeed I am pretty well just now—quite, however, confined to the bed—except when lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise while they make it; even then apt to faint. Bad symptoms too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be blistered every few days—but I am free from any attack just now, and am a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There has been a consultation between an Exeter physician and my own, and they agree exactly, both hoping that with care I shall pass the winter, and rally in the spring, both hoping that I may be able to go about again with some comfort and independence, although I never can be fit again for anything like exertion....

Do you know, did you ever hear anything of Mr. Horne who wrote 'Cosmo de Medici,' and the 'Death of Marlowe,' and is now desecrating his powers (I beg your pardon) by writing the life of Napoleon? By the way, he is the author of a dramatic sketch in the last Finden.

He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day, and has written to me so kindly (offering, although I never saw him in my life, to cater for me in literature, and send me down anything likely to interest me in the periodicals), that I cannot but think his amiability and genius do honor to one another.

Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in the infant schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the death of a saint, as he had lived a saintly life, about three weeks ago. It affected me a good deal. But he was always so associated in my thoughts more with heaven than earth, that scarcely a transition seems to have passed upon his locality. 'Present with the Lord' is true of him now; even as 'having his conversation in heaven' was formerly. There is little difference.

May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear friend! In the meantime do not forget me.

I never can forget you.

Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.