I do not mean that you will be interested in all her story—hers and “Cousin Romney’s”—not yet awhile. Some day you will read it, study it, I hope, for the beauty of the language, and for the moral power there is in it. Just now, my main object is to introduce you, so that when you hear the name “Aurora Leigh,” you may be able to say: “I know her; she is one of Mrs. Browning’s characters—a little girl from Florence, who lived with an aunt in England.” Or when you hear Mrs. Browning’s name, you will say, or think: “She wrote a long poem once, named Aurora Leigh.”
Why should you care to know that? Because, my dear, it is a little crumb of knowledge about English Literature, a study which I am hoping you are going to greatly enjoy by and by.
Oh! Mrs. Browning wrote many other poems, though the one about which we have been talking is perhaps considered her greatest. There are some which I think you must know and love. For instance:
“Little Ellie sits alone
’Mid the beeches of a meadow,
By a stream-side on the grass;
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
On her shining hair and face.
“She has thrown her bonnet by,