panion was her brother Edward, who had all her life been her
favorite. What little good Torquay seemed to be doing her was more than
overbalanced by a tragedy which occurred in the summer of 1840. Her
brother, with two of his friends, went for a sail in a small boat,
intending to be absent only until evening. When they did not return,
inquiry was set on foot, and it was learned that a small boat had been
seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay. The fears caused by this report
became certainty three days later, on the recovery of the bodies. The
effect on Miss Barrett may be partially imagined. Not only had she lost
her best-loved companion, but she was haunted by the morbid feeling that
she had caused his death, since he had come to Torquay only to be with
her. Twelve years afterward she wrote: "I have lived heart to heart with
my husband these five years. I have never yet spoken out, in a whisper
even, what is in me; never yet could find heart or breath; never yet
could bear to hear a word of reference from his lips."

Naturally her health suffered greatly from the shock, and it was thought
that she could not possibly live more than a few months. Quite
unexpectedly, however, she began to improve; it seemed that the desire
to quit Torquay, which had grown unendurable to her since the tragedy,
gave her strength of body. During the spring and summer of 1841 she was
able to resume work on translations, compositions, plans for new poems.
Indeed, it was this which saved her, for she wrote some time later to a
friend--"I do believe I should be _mad_ at this moment, if I had not
forced back the current of rushing recollections by work, work, work."

After her return to London in the autumn of 1841, her life went on as
before--or rather, stood still as before. From her couch she continued
to send forth the poems which were bringing her ever-increasing fame,
and the letters which were binding her friends closer to her. But an
event was drawing nearer, which was from the first an event and not an
episode in Miss Barrett's life. In January, 1845, we find her writing
"And I had a letter from Browning the poet last night, which threw me
into ecstasies--Browning, the author of _Paracelsus_, and the king of
mystics;" and a little later she says, "I am getting deeper and deeper
into correspondence with Robert Browning, poet and mystic, and we are
growing to be the truest friends."

Robert Browning had felt and expressed great admiration for