s
i's in proportion."

Poetry as a serious art was the most earnest object in the life of
Elizabeth Barrett. To her poetry meant "life in life."

"Art's a service,--mark."

The poetic vocation could hardly be said to be so much a conscious and
definite choice with her as a predetermined destiny, and still it was
both. The possibility of not being a poet could never have occurred to
her. There could have been as little question of Beethoven's being other
than a musician or of Raphael as being other than a painter. In poetry
Elizabeth Barrett recognized the most potent form of service; and she held
that poetic art existed for the sake of human co-operation with the Divine
purposes.

The opening chapters of her life in the lovely seclusion of Hope End
closed in 1832 with the removal of the family to Sidmouth in Devonshire.
Here they were bestowed in a house which had been occupied by the Grand
Duchess Helena. It commanded a splendid sea view, on which four
drawing-room windows looked out, and there were green hills and trees
behind. They met a few friends,--Sir John Kean, the Herrings,--and the
town abounded in green lanes, "some of them quite black with foliage,
where it is twilight in the middle of the day, and others letting in
beautiful glimpses of the hills and the sunny sea." Henrietta Barrett took
long walks, Elizabeth accompanying her sister, mounted on her donkey. The
brothers and sisters were all fond of boating and passed much time on the
water. They would row as far as Dawlish, ten miles distant, and back; and
after the five o'clock dinner there were not infrequently moonlight
excursions on the sea. During these first months at Sidmouth Miss Barrett
read Bulwer's novels, which she asserts "quite delighted" her; as she
found in them "all the dramatic talent which Scott has, and all the
passion which he has not." Bulwer seemed to her, also, "a far more
profound discriminator of character" than Scott. She read Mrs. Trollope,
"that maker of books," whose work she characterized as not novels but
"libels." She found in Mrs. Trollope "neither the delicacy nor the candor
which constitute true nobility of mind," and thought that her talent
formed but "a scanty veil to shadow her other defects."

Miss Barrett grew to love Sidmouth, with its walks on the seashore; and
letters, reading, poetic production, and family interests filled the time.
Here, too, she found time to enter on a task dear to her, the translatio