he
highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of
pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and
absolute restraint. Leonora's speech ends thus:

... Speak, I pray thee, Floribel,
Speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye';
Well, well, I will not press her; I am sure
She has the welcome news of some good fortune,
And hoards the telling till her father comes;
... Ah! She half laughed. I've guessed it then;
Come tell me, I'll be secret. Nay, if you mock me,
I must be very angry till you speak.
Now this is silly; some of these young boys
Have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport.
'Tis very like her. I could make this image
Act all her greetings; she shall bow her head:
'Good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face
Falls on my neck.--Oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed!
I know it all--don't tell me.

The last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, such
as Webster himself might have been proud to write.

_The Brides' Tragedy_ was well received by critics; and a laudatory
notice of Beddoes in the _Edinburgh_, written by Bryan Waller
Procter--better known then than now under his pseudonym of Barry
Cornwall--led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. The
connection had an important result, for it was through Procter that
Beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his
friends--Thomas Forbes Kelsall, then a young lawyer at Southampton. In
the summer of 1823 Beddoes stayed at Southampton for several months,
and, while ostensibly studying for his Oxford degree, gave up most of
his time to conversations with Kelsall and to dramatic composition. It
was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come,
even to the most fortunate, once and once only--when youth, and hope,
and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and
opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. The spade-work of _The Brides'
Tragedy_ had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the
harvest was beginning. Beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as Kelsall
wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,'
poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. 'His
poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: more
than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished
act of a drama, in which the editor [Kels