e
publication at any time; but, in the present dearth of poetical genius,
their appearance is doubly welcome; their claims on our consideration
are doubly strong; and we cannot allow ourselves to pass them over
without some detailed notice of their contents. In spite of many
blemishes in point of execution, this lady's poems have left a very
favourable impression on our mind. If the poetess does not always
command our unqualified approbation, we are at all times disposed to
bend in reverence before the deep-hearted and highly accomplished
woman--a woman, whose powers appear to us to extend over a wider and
profounder range of thought and feeling, than ever before fell within
the intellectual compass of any of the softer sex.

If we might venture to divine this lady's moral and intellectual
character from the general tone of her writings, we should say, that
never did woman's mind dwell more habitually among the thoughts of a
solemn experience--never was woman's genius impressed more profoundly
with the earnestness of life, or sanctified more purely by the
overshadowing awfulness of death. She aspires to write as she has lived;
and certainly her poetry opens up many glimpses into the history of a
pure and profound heart which has felt and suffered much. At the same
time, a reflective cast of intellect lifts her feelings into a higher
and calmer region than that of ordinary sorrow. There are certain
delicate and felicitous peculiarities in the constitution of her
sensibilities, which frequently impart a rare and subtle originality to
emotions which are as old, and as widely diffused, as the primeval
curse. The spirit of her poetry appears to us to be eminently religious;
not because we think her very successful when she deals directly with
the mysteries of divine truth, but because she makes us feel, even when
handling the least sacred subjects, that we are in the presence of a
heart which, in its purity, sees God. In the writings of such a woman,
there must be much which is calculated to be a blessing and a benefit to
mankind. If her genius always found a suitable exponent in her style,
she would stand unrivaled, we think, among the poetesses of England.

But whether it be that Miss Barrett is afraid of degrading poetry to the
low rank of an _accomplishment_--whether it be that she has some
peculiar theory of her own on the subject of language, and on the mode
in which poetical emotions may be most felicitously expresse