Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/69



N the west of England, a few miles from the ancient town of Ledbury, in full view of the beautiful Malvern Hills, Elizabeth Barrett lived from infancy to womanhood. There she wrote verses at the age of eight, and even earlier; at eleven she composed a great epic, called "The Battle of Marathon," and her fond father had fifty copies of it printed. Her love of Pope's Homer led her into the study of Greek. She gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and ate and drank Greek and made her head ache with it. Strange education for a girl, delicate and lovely! Stranger still that she should take delight in it.

In 1826, when she was eighteen, her "Essay on Mind, and other Poems" was published. Some of the minor poems had been written at the age of thirteen. The chief one was in the style of Pope's "Essay on Man," and really showed power of thought and expression. Still more did it show her wide range of reading, but she afterwards rejected it from her collected works, condemning it for "didactic pedantry." In her studies she had as guide Hugh Stuart Boyd, a man noted for learning, though blind. Mrs. Browning afterwards described him as "enthusiastic for the good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple and upright of human beings." In her sonnets she embalms his memory, and her beautiful poem, "Wine of Cyprus," recalls her youthful studies.

Her critical faculties were early developed, but the nobility of her mind enabled her to appreciate at their due (61)