ttle, Brown, and Company) had
written to Tennyson (under date of April 27, 1838) regarding a
republishing of his volume, as the future laureate was already recognized
for the musical quality and perfection of art in his work. Browning had
published only "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Strafford." Shelley and Keats
were dead, their mortal remains reposing in the beautiful English cemetery
in Rome, under the shadow of the tall cypresses, by the colossal pyramid
of Caius Cestus. Byron and Scott and Coleridge had also died. There were
Landor and Southey, Rogers and Campbell; but with Miss Barrett there came
upon the scene a new minstrelsy that compelled its own recognition. Some
of her shorter poems had caught the popular ear; notably, her "Cowper's
Grave," which remains, to-day, one of her most appealing and exquisite
lyrics.

"It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying;
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying."

The touching pathos of the line,

"O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!"

moves every reader. And what music and touching appeal in the succeeding
stanza:

"And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,
How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory,
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted."

In seeing, "on Cowper's grave,... his rapture in a vision," Miss Barrett
pictured his strength--

"... to sanctify the poet's high vocation."

Her reverence for poetic art finds expression in almost every poem that
she has written.

Among other shorter poems included with "The Seraphim" were "The Poet's
Vow," "Isobel's Child," and others, including, also, "The Romaunt of
Margret." _The Athenaeum_ pronounced the collection an "extraordinary
volume,--especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and
accomplishment,--but hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss
Barrett's genius is of a high order," the critic conceded; but he found
her language "wanting in simplicity." One reviewer castigated her for
presuming to take such a theme as "The Seraphim" "from which Milton would
have shrank!" All the critics agree in giving her credit for genius of no
ordinary quality; but the general consensus of opinion was that this
genius manifested itself unevenly, that she was sometimes led into errors
of taste. That sh