Synopses & Reviews
CO NT E NTS Part One. PARALLEL LIVES L Mr. Barrett and His Young Genius 3 IL The Poet-Boy 16 IIL Pauline, the Sun-Treader, and the Critic 29 IV. From Hope End to London 42 V. Expanding Circles 54 VL De Profundis 66 VII. Magnificent Failure 78 VIII. quot Or from Browning Some Pomegranate quot 90 Part Two. O LYRIC LOVE IX. quot I love your verses . . . dear Miss Barrett quot 105 X. quot In the spring we shall see 5 1 19 XL quot I who am scarcely to be called young now . . . quot 130 XII. Andromeda s Eyes 143 XIII. Trial Flights 155 XIV. Fugitive Angel 166 Part Three. FREEDOM, LIFE, AND TRIUMPH XV. Flush and an Anniversary 189 XVL The Claimant 205 XVII. Revolutions and Marvels 218 XVIIL There s always an East Wind with me in England quot 229 XIX. Men and Women 247 XX. quot Beautiful quot 264 XXL On the Stalwart Shoulders of Youth 282 XXII. The Ring and the Book 293 XXIIL One Who Never Turned His Back 307 Acknowledgments 326 Bibliography 3 2 7 Index 337 Part One PARALLEL LIVES Chapter I Mr. Barrett and His Young Genius MR. BARRETT was pleased, as pleased as his rigorous nature would permit without doing violence to moralistic strictures against pride and vainglory. Yet he had good reason to be both proud and vainglorious as he held in his hand a little book hardly more than a pamphlet, bearing in bold print across the title page the words, THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. Then followed two verse quotations a tribute to the Muses by Akenside, and Byron s famous apostrophe to quot An cient of Days August Athena Below appeared the name of the author, E. B. Barrett, in letters not too large for modesty yet not so small as to be self-effacing. Last of all one learned that the poem had been printed inLondon for W. Lindsell, of 87 Wimpole Street, in the year 1820. Who was E. B. Barrett The initials belonged equally to Mr. Edward Moulton-Barrett, to his son Edward, and to his firstborn, his daughter Elizabeth, in 1820 a girl of fourteen. The dedication of the four-canto epic cleared the mystery while gratifying the feelings of a stem, fanatical but devoted father. It read To him to whom 1 owe the most and whose admonitions have guided my youthful Muse even to her earliest infancy, to the father, whose never-failing kindness, whose unwearied affection I never can repay, I offer these pages, as a small testimony of the gratitude of his affectionate child, Elizabeth B. Barrett, Hope End 1819. quot There were some members of the family who though still infants were yet sufficiently experienced to dread Mr. Barrett s admonitions, especially when accompanied by the resounding thunder of his wrath. For them his never-failing kindness and unwearied affection remained still to be proved. As for Mrs. Barrett, she had early made a virtue of self-withdrawal. With more than her share of meekness for a woman she bore her husband s children twelve of them in unfailing succession and otherwise lived a life of uncomplaining domesticity, not allowing her sweet and gentle spirit to be so soured by marital oppression as to affect her duties toward her family...