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64 fecting—love without speech." But the patient sufferer, who could write only while lying on her back, had also the solace of her beloved books. "She read," says Miss Mitford, "almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and gave herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." From time to time volumes of her writing issued from the press. Before she left London, in 1838, she had published the "Seraphim and other Poems." This is the first of her books that she wished afterwards to acknowledge. The earlier ones she endeavored to suppress, saying, "I would as soon circulate a caricature or lampoon on myself as that 'Essay, and pronouncing her "Prometheus" "blasphemy of Æschylus." So severely did she judge herself! From her sick-chamber she sent to the London Athenæum a series of critical essays on the Greek Christian Poets, whose merits her own sufferings had enabled her fully to understand.

In 1844 she published "The Drama of Exile," and with it gathered into two volumes all she wished to preserve of her previous publications. At the end of the first volume appeared the splendid poem, "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," which, Miss Mitford assures us; was written in the incredibly short space of twelve hours. That poem, thus rapidly tossed off, revealed her heart, and on it, altogether unknown to her, depended her own fate. The book fell into the hands of Robert Browning, who was already known as the author of "Paracelsus," and was then issuing a series of plays and poems, under the somewhat fantastic Biblical title, "Bells and Pomegranates." What was his delight to read these lines:

Could he do less than call to thank the author for the