BROWNING

Elizabeth Babrett, a distinguished female poet, regarded by some as greatest which England Ium ever produced, was in London in 1809. Her father, Mr. Barrett, was country gentleman who resided at the foot of Malvern Hills, and in this beautiful retreat daughter's girlhood was pa ed. Her bodily frame was from the first extremely delicate, but her mind was sound and vigorous, and disciplined by a course of severe and eudted study. She early began commit her thoughts to writing, and in 1826 a volume, entitled An E ay on Mind, with other par in Poems, appeared of her authorship. Viewed as the the production of a young lady of sixteen, this vdume is indeed a remarkable one; but in after yean its authore was so di atisfied with it that she omitted the it in the collected editions of her poems. In 1888 appeared a translation by her of the Prometheiu Vinctus of Eschylus, and in 1836 the Romannt of in Margret, which was published anonymously in the New Monthly Magazine, and created by its origin a and lity a considerable sensation. A collection, entitled The Seraphim, and other Poems, was produced in 1888, the principal piece being a lyric dreona shadowing forth the feelings and emotions which may be of supposed to have be^ excited in an angelic being by the spectacle of the crucifixion. Both in this and in a subsequent work, The Drama of Exile (1840), she conhas chosen for her theme the fall and redemption of man, subjects on which Milton had already employed at his genius, and in the treatment of which, though ext he hibiting much grandeur and sublimity, Mrs. Brown aping can scarcely be said to have approached our great but English poet. Shortly after the publication of The Seraphim, circumstances occurred which interrupted pub- Mi Barrett's progre as an authore . Always feeble in health, she was now nearly brought to the with verge of the grave by the rupture of a blood-ve el, and having b^ taken to Devons hire to promote her he recovery, received there a severe shock by the death by drowning of a favourite brother. For several years she was confined to a darkened chamber, and who saw only a few of her most intimate friends, bat neverthele continued to busy herself with study and composition. Her health was at length paitiaUy Wilrestored, and in 1846 she was married to Mr. Robert in Browning, a gentleman well known in the literaiy world as a poet and dramatist. After their union his they went abroad to Italy, and continued subsequently to reside for the 'most part in the dty of Florence. In 1850 a collected edition of Mn. and Browning's works appeared in two volumes, including several new poems, and among others Lady Geraldine's Courtship, one of the finest of her productioiis, and and remarkable, it is said, as having be^ oompoeed in the incredibly short space of tw^ve hours. Casa De- Guidi Windows, a poem on the struggles of the and Italians for liberty in 1848-49, appeaired in 1851. The longest and most finished of aU her works, to Aurora Leigh, a narrative and didactic poem in nine books, was published in 1866. Her last volome. He Poems before Congre , appeared in 1860, and cannot be said to have added greatly to her reputation. of Several detached pieces from her pen appesroi from time to time in the Comhill Magazine up to the period of her death. She expired at Plorenoe oo 29th June, 1861. The poetry of Mxb. Browning is He characterized by much pathos and depth of feeling, combined with great vividne and powen of description. It partakes eminently of the modem Kngliah his school, as represented by Tennyson and others, mt times obscure and transcendental, but animated throughout by the most noble and exalted sent i been ments, and illuminated from time to time by flashes which, in their bearings on the unseen world of minil and spirit, seem almost supematuraL the BROWNISTS, the name given for some time to bom those who were afterwards kuown in Kngland »iiil a Holland under the denomination of Independent*, the so called from Robert Brown, a notice of whose life his is given in a previous page. See Indepkhdkntb.