.

We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's
genius without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can
have been little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem
to have lain in the direction of too great splendour of language and too
little wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read 'Incondita' and been
struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning that he had
feared these tendencies as his future snare. But the imitative first
note of a young poet's voice may hold a rapture of inspiration which
his most original later utterances will never convey. It is the child
Sordello, singing against the lark.

Not even the poet's sister ever saw 'Incondita'. It was the only one of
his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read, or even
help him to write out. She was then too young to be taken into his
confidence. Its writing, however, had one important result. It procured
for the boy-poet a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary
patron and friend Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the
first substantial record of an acquaintance which made a considerable
impression on his personal life.

The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters,
both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place
in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie,
was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams,
a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known
'Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.* They
sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment,
their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were, in their
different ways, very attractive; both interesting, not only from their
talents, but from their attachment to each other, and the delicacy which
shortened their lives. They died of consumption, the elder in 1846, at
the age of forty-three; the younger a year later. They became acquainted
with Mrs. Browning through a common friend, Miss Sturtevant; and the
young Robert conceived a warm admiration for Miss Flower's talents,
and a boyish love for herself. She was nine years his senior; her own
affections became probably engaged, and, as time advanced, his feeling
seems to have subsided into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We
hear, indeed, of his falling in love, as he was