f his "Pericles and Aspasia" and his
"Pentameron" as "books for the world and for all time, complete in beauty
of sentiment and subtlety of criticism." Two of Landor's works, very
little known, the "Poems from the Arabic and Persian" and "A Satire upon
Satirists," are here noted. "It will be delightful to me to praise
Tennyson,--although, by Saint Eloy, I never imitated him," she writes to
Mr. Horne; "and I take that oath because the _Quarterly_ was sure that if
it had not been for him I should have hung a lady's hair 'blackly' instead
of 'very blackly.'" Miss Mitford was somewhat concerned with this
hazardous venture, but she had no desire to discuss Dickens, as she "could
not admire his love of low life!" Miss Barrett's appreciation of Tennyson
is much on record. She finds him "a divine poet." Monckton Milnes, whose
first work she liked extremely, seemed to her in his later poems as
wanting in fire and imagination, and as being too didactic. Barry
Cornwall's lyrics impressed her "like embodied music." Mr. Horne finally
wrote the critique on Dickens, and of it Miss Barrett said: "I think the
only omission of importance in your admirable essay is the omission of the
influence of the French school of imaginative literature upon the mind of
Dickens, which is manifest and undeniable.... Did you ever read the
powerful _Trois Jours d'un Condamne_, and will you confront that with the
tragic saliences of 'Oliver Twist'?... We have no such romance writer as
Victor Hugo ... George Sand is the greatest female genius of the world, at
least since Sappho." (At this time George Eliot had not appeared.) Miss
Barrett appreciatively alludes to Sir Henry Taylor (the author of "Philip
van Artevelde") as "an infidel in poetry," and to the author of "Festus"
as "a man of great thoughts." She finds part of the poem "weak," but,
"when all is said," she continues, "what poet-stuff remains! what power!
what fire of imagination, worth the stealing of Prometheus!"

In relation to some strictures on Carlyle, Miss Barrett vivaciously
replies that his object is to discover the sun, not to specify the
landscape, and that it would be a strange reproach to bring against the
morning star that it does not shine in the evening.

The idea of a lyrical drama, "Psyche Apocalypte," was entertained by Mr.
Horne and Miss Barrett, but, fortunately, no fragment of it was
materialized into public light. There was a voluminous correspondence
between them concerning