backward,
and whose voice spoke "in mastery," had come to lead her,--not to Death,
but Love.

CHAPTER V

1841-1846

"... If a man could feel,
Not one day in the artist's ecstasy,
But every day,--feast, fast, or working-day,
The spiritual significance burn through
The hieroglyphic of material shows,
Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings."

"BELLS AND POMEGRANATES"--ARNOULD AND DOMETT--"A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON"--
MACREADY--SECOND VISIT TO ITALY--MISS BARRETT'S POETIC WORK--
"COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY"--"LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP"--"ROMANCES AND
LYRICS"--BROWNING'S FIRST LETTER TO MISS BARRETT--THE POETS MEET--
LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT--"LOVES OF THE
POETS"--VITA NUOVA.

The appearance of "Bells and Pomegranates" made a deep impression on
Elizabeth Barrett, as the numbers, opening with "Pippa Passes,"
successively appeared between 1841 and 1846. Of "Pippa" she said she could
find it in her heart to covet the authorship, and she felt all the
combinations of effect to be particularly "striking and noble." In a paper
that Miss Barrett wrote in these days for the _Athenaeum_, critically
surveying the poetic outlook of the time, she referred to Browning and
Tennyson as "among those high and gifted spirits who would still work and
wait." When this London journal reviewed (not too favorably) Browning's
"Romances and Lyrics," Miss Barrett took greatly to heart the injustice
that she felt was done him, and reverted to it in a number of personal
letters, expressing her conviction that "it would be easier to find a more
faultless writer than a poet of equal genius." An edition of Tennyson, in
two volumes, came out, including the "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur,"
"Locksley Hall," and "OEnone," of which she says no one quite appeals to
her as does "OEnone," and she expresses her belief that philosophic
thinking, like music, is always involved in high ideality of any kind.
Wordsworth she insisted upon estimating from his best, not from his
poorest work, and his "Ode" was to her so grand as to atone for a
multitude of poetic sins. "I confess," she wrote to Boyd, "that he is not
unfrequently heavy and dull, and that Coleridge has an intenser genius."
To her cousin, Kenyon, Miss Barrett sent the manuscript of her poem, "The
Dead Pan," which he showed to Browning, who wrote of it to Kenyon with
ardent admiration. This note was sent to Miss Barrett, who display