y into
execution. For no apparent cause, he suddenly changes his tone, and
condescends to hold parley with his foe on a variety of not very
interesting particulars, informing him, among other things, that he
"does not dream!"

The following is Lucifer's description of our First Mother. It is
impregnated with Miss Barrett's mannerisms, and strongly characterized
by that fantastical and untrue mode of picturing sensible objects, which
the example of Shelley and Keates tended especially to foster, if they
were not the first to introduce it:--

"_Lucifer._ Curse freely! curses thicken. Why, this Eve
Who thought me once part worthy of her ear,
And somewhat wiser than the other beasts,--
Drawing together _her large globes of eyes,
The light of which is throbbing in and out
Around their continuity of gaze_,--
Knots her fair eyebrows in so hard a knot,
And, down from _her white heights of womanhood_,
Looks on me so amazed,--I scarce should fear
To wager such an apple as she pluck'd,
Against one riper from the tree of life,
That she could curse too--as a woman may--
_Smooth in the vowels_."

We do not very well understand why Eve's curses should have been
smoother in the vowels than in the consonants. But as we are no great
elocutionists, or at all well conversant with the mysteries of
"labials," "dentals," and "gutterals," we shall not contest the point
with Lucifer, lest we should only expose our own ignorance.

Respecting the leading conception of her drama, Miss Barrett writes
thus:--"My subject was the new and strange experience of the fallen
humanity as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness; with a
peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief, which, considering that
self-sacrifice belonging to her womanhood, and the consciousness of
originating the Fall to her offence--appeared to me imperfectly
apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man." No
wonder that Miss Barrett failed in her undertaking. In the conception of
Eve's grief as distinguished from Adam's, and as coloured by the
circumstances of her situation--namely, by the consciousness that she
had been the _first_ to fall, and the proximate cause of Adam's
transgression--there is certainly no sufficient foundation to sustain
the weight of a dramatic poem. At the most, it might have furnished
materials for a sonnet. It therefore detracts nothing from the genius of
Miss Barrett to