ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

BY EDWARD Y. HINCKS.

THERE has probably lived within the past century no woman whose genius, character, and position are more full of interest than Mrs. Browning's. She was not only far above all the female poets of her age, but ranked with the first poets. She was not only a great poet, but a greater woman. She loved and honored art, but she loved and honored humanity more. Born and reared in England, her best affections were given to Italy, and her warmest friends and most enthusiastic admirers are found in America. And when to her rare personal endowments is added the fact that she was the wife of a still greater poet than herself, what is needed to make her the most remarkable woman of this, perhaps of any, age?

And, as there is no woman in whose life and character we may naturally take a greater interest, so there is none whom we have better facilities of knowing. Of the ordinary materials out of which biographies are made, her life indeed furnishes few. Its external incidents were not many nor marked. The details of her family life have been very properly kept from the public. The publication of her letters has been deferred until after her husband's death. But what Mrs. Browning thought, felt, and was, is revealed with almost unexampled clearness in her writings. With all her genius she possessed in full measure the artlessness of her sex. Her

theory of poetry, too, was that it was but the expression of the poet's inner nature. Hence, as might be expected, her poems are but transparent media for the revelation of herself. Her queenly soul shines through them as wine through a crystal vase. Her friendships, her love, her grief, her patriotism, her philanthropy, her religion-all are in them simply and unaffectedly revealed to us. To obtain a correct conception of Mrs. Browning, therefore, we must study her character as revealed in her poems, aided, of course, by the light which our scanty knowledge of the events of her outward life will afford. As the result of our study we shall find that whatever fault we may be compelled to find with the artist, we cannot withhold our entire and hearty admiration for the character of the woman. We shall find that her genius, far from marring, exalted and ennobled her womanhood. We shall feel that the

poet was greater than her poems.

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett was born in London, in 1809. Her father was a private gentleman in opulent circumstances. Her early life was passed partly in London, partly in the county of Herefordshire, in sight of the Malvern Hills. One of her minor poems, "The Lost Bower," describes with her peculiar power of graphic picturing the scenery surrounding her early home.

"Green the land is where my daily

Steps in jocund childhood played,
Dimpled close with hill and valley,
Dappled very close with shade;

Summer snow of apple blossoms running up from glade to glađe.

"Far out, kindled by each other,
Shining hills on hills arise,
Close as brother leans to brother,
When they press beneath the eyes
Of some father praying blessings
From the gifts of Paradise."

The whole poem, which is one of its author's simplest and sweetest, is well worthy of study for its autobiographical interest. It gives us the picture of a dreamy and thoughtful, but not morbid child, loving to ramble in the wild woods, which her fancy peopled with the heroes and heroines of old.

Mrs. Browning was a child of remarkable precocity. She wrote verses at ten, and appeared in print at the age of fifteen.. In the dedication to her father of the edition of her poems which appeared in 1844, she pleasantly speaks "of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic." This childish precocity was not an indication of early ripening genius. Her powers matured slowly. She wrote very crudely when past thirty. She never attained her full maturity. Miss Barrett's education was such as a woman rarely receives. She was taught in classics, philosophy, and science. Her acquaintance with Greek literature was very extensive. It embraced, not only the great classic authors, but also many of the fathers, and the Greek Christian poets. She studied Greek under the instruction of her blind friend, the Rev. Hugh Stuart Boyd, to whom she afterward dedicated the poem entitled "The Wine of Cyprus," in which she thus pleasantly alludes to the hours they had spent together:

"And I think of those long mornings

Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio's turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading

Swept the sheep-bell's tinkling noise,

While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for ats and os."

And then she goes on to give in a word or two, with that happy facility in hitting off the leading features of a great genius in a single phrase, which is one of her most no