zabeth Barrett had read every line.
Plato she loved and read exhaustively; of Aristotle at this time she had
read his Ethics, Poetics, and his work on Rhetoric, and of Aristophanes a
few, only, of his plays. But Miss Barrett was also a great novel-reader,
keeping her "pillows stuffed with novels," as she playfully declared. Her
room, in the upper part of the house, revealed the haunt of the scholar.
Upon a bracket the bust of Homer looked down; her bookcase showed one
entire shelf occupied by the Greek poets; another relegated wholly to the
English poets; and philosophy, ethics, science, and criticism were
liberally represented. A bust of Chaucer companioned that of Homer. By her
sofa nestled Flush, her dog, Miss Mitford's gift.

It was in this year of 1841 that there penetrated into her atmosphere and
consciousness the first intimation of Robert Browning. "Pippa Passes" had
just been published, and John Kenyon, ever alert to bring any happiness
into the lives of his friends (Kenyon, "the joy-giver," as he was well
termed), suggested introducing the young poet to her, but on the plea of
her ill-health she declined. A little later, in a letter to Mr. Boyd, she
mentions one or two comments made on her essay, "The Greek Christian
Poets,"--that Mr. Horne, and also "Mr. Browning, the poet," had both, as
she was told, expressed approval. "Mr. Browning is said to be learned in
Greek," she adds, "especially the dramatists." So already the air begins
to stir and tremble with the coming of him of whom in later days she
wrote:

"I yield the grave for thy sake, and resign
My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee."

The entrancing thrill of that wonderful Wagner music that ushers in the
first appearance of the knight in the music-drama of "Lohengrin" is
typical of the vibrations that thrill the air in some etherial
announcement of experiences that are on the very threshold, and which are
recognized by a nature as sensitive and impressionable as was that of
Elizabeth Barrett. A new element with its transfiguring power awaited her,
and some undefined prescience of that

"... most gracious singer of high poems"

whose music was to fall at her door

"... in folds of golden fulness"

haunted her like "an odor from Dreamland sent."

She pondered on

"... how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,"

but she dared not dream that the "mystic Shape" that drew her