Part 8 (2/2)

But having drawn up this iy, possibly with faults of commission and probably orse errors of omission, I should like to take the reader into inally coht of one or two dear kinsmen of a scattered Brotherhood--a volume half the size of the projected Transcripts, and rare as that star in the tip of the e speaks

_Flower o' the Vine_, so it is called, has for double-ue to the Pacchiarotto voluhts and loves and hates!

Earth is rew there--”

and these words, already quoted, frohest attainh”

1 Froht be thine for ever!” 2 The Dawn of Beauty; 3 Andro fro from ”Paracelsus”) IV The Joy of the World (”Paracelsus”)[17] V Froitive Ethiop;[19] 3 Dante[20] VI Ottima and Sebald (Pt i, ”Pippa Passes”) VII Jules and Phene (Pt ii, ”Pippa Passes”) VIII My Last duchess IX In a Gondola X Hoht: Parting at Morning XII A Grammarian's Funeral

XIII Saul XIV Rabbi Ben Ezra XV Love a the Ruins XVI Evelyn Hope XVII My Star XVIII A Toccata of Galuppi's XIX Abt Vogler XX

Mena XXII

Ja and the Book”--1 O Lyric Love (The Invocation: 26 lines); 2 Caponsacchi (ll

2069 to 2103); 3 Pompilia (ll 181 to 205); 4 Pompilia (ll 1771 to 1845); 5 The Pope (ll 2017 to 2228); 6 Count Guido (Book XI, ll

2407 to 2427) XXV Prologue to ”La Saisiaz” XXVI Prologue to ”Two Poets of Croisic” XXVII Epilogue to ”Two Poets of Croisic” XXVIII

Never the Time and Place XXIX ”Round us the Wild Creatures,” etc

(song from ”Ferishtah's Fancies”) xxx ”The Walk” (Pts ix, x, xi, xii, of ”Gerard de Lairesse”) xxxI ”One word more” (To EBB)[21]

[Footnote 16: The first, froh 55 lines--”To see thee for a , ”They came to me in my first dawn of life” No 3, the xi ll of the Androht, and one single ridge of narrow path” (to ”delight”)]

[Footnote 17: No IV co, ”The centre fire heaves underneath the earth,” down to ”ancient rapture”]

[Footnote 18: No V The vi ll beginning, ”That autuinning, ”As, shall I say, so, ”For he,--for he”]

[Footnote 21: To these xxxI selections there must now be added ”Now,”

”Suue,” from ”Asolando”]

It is here--I will not say in _Flower o' the Vine_, nor even venture to restrictively affirreed, for the moment, to call ”Transcripts fro's reatness is to be sought In these ”Men and Women” he is, in modern times, an unparalleled drah these, and the incalculably cuenerations to come, is not to be looked for in individuals only, but in the whole thought of the age, which he has moulded to new form, animated anew, and to which he has imparted a fresh sti But over and above this shaping force, this ht, he has enriched our language, our literature, with a neealth of poetic diction, has added to it new symbols, has enabled us to inhale a more liberal if an unfamiliar air, has, above all, raised us to a fresh standpoint, a standpoint involving our construction of a new definition

Here, at least, we are on assured ground: here, at any rate, we realise the scope and quality of his genius But, letof those ould iven us also a Dorado of pure poetry, of priceless worth Tried by the severest tests, not merely of substance, but of for, but of rare and potent verbal er number of his ”Men and Women” poems are as treasurable acquisitions, in kind, to our literature, as the shorter poems of Milton, of Shelley, of Keats, and of Tennyson But once again, and finally, let reatness, but i forced us to take up a novel standpoint, involving our construction of a new definition

CHAPTER VII

There are, in literary history, few _scenes de la vie privee_ lish poetesses, in theflower, 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 e know of a story of singular beauty, there is an added pathos in the circus lay on her invalid's sofa, dreaht 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 ht to knoeeter 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 falish 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 Herefordshi+re, the not yet eleven-year-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 deamemnon In the same year, in suburban Caerly to his father's narrative of the sanificant that these two children, so far apart, both with the light of the future upon their brows, grew up in fa 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 aeschylus, and wrote ”The Dead Pan”: ht were spent in that ”beloved environment” by the poet rote ”Balaustion's Adventure” and translated the ”Agamemnon”

The chief sorrow of her life, however, occurred in her thirty-first year She never quite recovered froic death, aof 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 drea in ”

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 ell known and beca like a clarion throughout the country The poeist Horne, the friend whom some years previously she had won in correspondence, and hoh without personal acquaintance, that she had agreed to write a drama in collaboration with him, to be called ”Psyche Apocalypte,” and to be edy”