the personal matters
of relatives and friends, and if those are not here represented, it is
simply that they are in their nature colloquial, and to be taken for
granted rather than repeated for reading, when so long separated by time
from the conditions and circumstances that called them forth. She was glad
to return from Torquay to her family again. "Papa's domestic comfort is
broken up by the separation," she said, "and the associations of Torquay
lie upon me, struggle against them as I may, like a nightmare.... Part of
me is worn out; but the poetical part--that is, the love of poetry--is
growing in me as freshly every day. Did anybody ever love poetry and stop
in the middle? I wonder if any one ever could?... besides, I am becoming
better. Dear Mr. Boyd," she entreats, "do not write another word about my
illness either to me or to others. I am sure you would not willingly
disturb me. I can't let ... prescribe anything for me except her own
affection." These words illustrate the spirit in which Miss Barrett
referred to her own health. No one could be more remote from a morbid
invalidism too often associated with her.

One of her first efforts after her return from Torquay was to send to the
_Athenaeum_ some Greek translations, which, to her surprise, were accepted,
and she writes to Mr. Boyd that she would enclose to him the editor's
letter "if it were legible to anybody except people used to learn reading
from the Pyramids." It must have been due to a suggestion from the editor
of the _Athenaeum_ at this time that she wrote her noble and affluent essay
on "The Greek Christian Poets," which is perhaps her finest work in prose.
Something in the courteous editorial note suggested this to her, and she
discusses the idea with Mr. Boyd.

Mr. Dilke was then the editor of the _Athenaeum_. He quite entered into the
idea of this essay, only begging Miss Barrett to keep away from theology.
Mr. Dilke also suggests that she write a review of English poetical
literature, from Chaucer to contemporary times, and this initiated her
essay called "The Book of the Poets." For her Greek review she desired a
copy of the _Poetae Christiani_, but found the price (fourteen guineas)
ruinous. But whether she had all the needful data or not, the first paper
was a signal success, and she fancied that some _bona avis_, as good as a
nightingale, had shaken its wings over her. Of the three Greek tragedians,
Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, Eli