Which he pushed his nose within,
After—platforming his chin
On the palm left open.”
It was during those six or seven years of seclusion and study that she composed or completed the most striking of those poems, published in two volumes in 1844, which first brought her into notice as a poetess of genius. “Poetry,” said the authoress in her preface, “has been as serious a thing to me as life itself, and life has been a very serious thing. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work, not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain; and as work I offer it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration, but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.”
In 1846, she became the wife of a kindred spirit, Robert Browning, the poet. Never were man and woman more clearly ordained for each other than Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. They were imperfect apart; together they were rounded into one. With marriage came Mrs. Browning’s welcome restoration to health and strength. The poet-pair started for Italy, staying first at Pisa, and then settling at Florence. In that metropolis of one of the most wealthy and powerful of the Italian States, she witnessed, in 1848-49, the struggle made by the Tuscans for freedom. Mrs. Browning published her collected works in 1850. In 1851, she issued her important work, “Casa Guidi Windows,” a semi-political narrative of actual events and genuine feelings.
Inspirited by what she saw around her, and by a new tie, an only child, a boy of great intellectual and musical precocity, the genius of Mrs. Browning had become practical and energetic. “The future of Italy,” says our authoress, “shall not be disinherited.” Then came, in 1856, “Aurora Leigh,” a long and elaborate poem or novel in blank verse, which our poetess considered the most mature of her works, into which her highest convictions upon life and art were entered. “Poems before Congress” followed in 1860.
After a brief illness, Mrs. Browning died at Florence on the 29th of June, 1861. When the sad news reached England, universal regret was expressed for the loss of the talented lady; the press confessing with singular unanimity that the world had lost in her the greatest poetess that had ever appeared.
She was borne to the tomb amidst the lamentations of Tuscany no less than of her own dear England. Above the door of a decent little house in Florence is a small square slab, with an inscription in Italian, which may be thus translated:—“Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who to the heart of a woman joined the science of a scholar and the spirit of a teacher, and who made with her golden verse a nuptial ring between Italy and England. Grateful Florence places this memorial.”
PLACE AS A POETESS.
In no languages, save Greek and English, so far as we remember at present, have poetesses achieved special fame; and we think all competent judges will unhesitatingly rank Mrs. Browning as the Queen of song. But we do not wish to judge her by a less elevated standard or less rigid rules than those we apply to the poets generally. “Good for a woman,” is the sort of praise she would have rejected with scorn. She entered fairly into the lists against all the world, and she claims a place among literary worthies as such. Genius is of no sex. What place shall we assign her?