The poems of Elizabeth Barrett were written from a sick-chamber. The precise nature of the malady from which she suffered is dificult to determine, but there can be no reasonable doubt that the measures taken to meet it were the worst possible.
It is difficult to read about Elizabeth's home life without a feeling of repulsion, The stuly root with its door and windows always shut, the odour of decaying flowers, the stiff Victorian formalism that was enjoined upon her and ay which she never dreamed of re-
Selling, the daily contact with a father who loved her indeed in his own selfish way, but who never ame within a whole world of under. standing her—it is small wonder that the unhappy woman developed into a confirmed hypochondriac. Poetry was her one abiding solation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.