pon her books for company. Impatient because a
horse which she desired to ride was not ready just when she wanted it,
she went out into the field and attempted to saddle it herself. She
fell, with the saddle on top of her; and while this did not leave her
the invalid she later became, it weakened her and made her an easy prey
to the troubles which afterward came upon her.

That Pope, as well as Homer, left his mark on Miss Barrett was shown by
her first published volume, which was brought out when she was about
twenty. It was entitled _An Essay on Mind, and Other Poems_, and the
poem which gave its name to the book was quite after the manner of Pope.
This poem, while remarkable for a girl of Miss Barrett's age, contained
little freshness or originality, and she spoke of it afterwards as
having been "long repented of as worthy of all repentance."

In 1828 Mrs. Barrett died, and left Elizabeth, the eldest of the ten
children, with much of the responsibility of the family. Since her death
came before her daughter reached fame or began that voluminous
correspondence from which have been gathered most of the facts of her
life, little can be known of the mother's character, or of her influence
on her daughter. That Miss Barrett was devotedly attached to her mother,
however, is to be seen from a sentence in one of her letters. "Her
memory," she says, "is more precious to me than any earthly blessing
left behind!"

The beloved home at Hope End was sold in 1832, owing, apparently to some
fall in the family fortunes, and the Barretts removed to Sidmouth, in
Devonshire. The life there was uneventful, as the life at Hope End had
been. Miss Barrett, in writing later of herself, declared that "a bird
in a cage would have as good a story." But she was by no means idle, for
her Greek studies and her writing kept her busy and happy. While at
Sidmouth, she brought out a translation of the _Prometheus Bound_ of
AEschylus, a version with which she was so dissatisfied that she later
replaced it, in her collected works, with another.

For three years the Barretts lived at Sidmouth, and their removal to
London, in 1835, made important changes in Elizabeth's life. Her health,
never good since her fifteenth year, broke down, and from some date
shortly after the arrival in London she became an apparently hopeless
invalid, confined to her room and often to her bed. Some compensation
for this confinement, however, she found in the new friends,