er when she was very young; I had been honoured with her father's
friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and she had said at home,
"If I send him, in my own name, verses that he does not honestly like,
either it will be very painful to him to return them, or he will print
them for papa's sake, and not for their own. So I have made up my mind
to take my chance fairly with the unknown volunteers."

Perhaps it requires an editor's experience of the profoundly unreasonable
grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable articles--such as
having been to school with the writer's husband's brother-in-law, or
having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer's wife's nephew,
when that interesting stranger had broken his own--fully to appreciate
the delicacy and the self-respect of this resolution.

Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the Book of Beauty, ten
years before she became Miss Berwick. With the exception of two poems in
the Cornhill Magazine, two in Good Words, and others in a little book
called A Chaplet of Verses (issued in 1862 for the benefit of a Night
Refuge), her published writings first appeared in Household Words, or All
the Year Round. The present edition contains the whole of her Legends
and Lyrics, and originates in the great favour with which they have been
received by the public.

Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October,
1825. Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an age, that I have
before me a tiny album made of small note-paper, into which her favourite
passages were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself
could write. It looks as if she had carried it about, as another little
girl might have carried a doll. She soon displayed a remarkable memory,
and great quickness of apprehension. When she was quite a young child,
she learned with facility several of the problems of Euclid. As she grew
older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages; became a
clever pianoforte player; and showed a true taste and sentiment in
drawing. But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties
of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and
pass to another. While her mental resources were being trained, it was
not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift of authorship,
or any ambition to become a writer. Her father had no idea of her having
ever attempted to turn a