s forced to defer it. My
ballad,[38] containing a ladye dressed up like a page and galloping
off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise you, went to Miss
Mitford this morning. But I augur from its length that she will not be
able to receive it into Finden.

Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your being in the act
of going through my 'Seraphim' for the second time. For the feeling
of interest in me which brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my
dear friend. What your opinion _is_, and _will_ be, I am prepared to
hear with a good deal of awe. You will _certainly not approve of the
poem_.

There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do not keep back one rough
word, for friendship's sake, but be as honest as--you could not help
being, without this request.

If I should live, I shall write (_I believe_) better poems than 'The
Seraphim;' which belief will help me to survive the condemnation heavy
upon your lips.

Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 38: 'The Romaunt of the Page.']

'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last
made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication,
English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between
two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott,
Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the
first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor,
Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era
as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson,
though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still
but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music
by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only
'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have
given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And
between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of
the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There
was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered
the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.

Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and
to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems
which have proved the most popular among its authoress's complete
works, except 'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which