Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/154

138 the American sculptor, and his wife. They were the most intimate friends of the Brownings, and for several summers visited and lived with them in Siena. Story's reminiscences of Mrs. Browning during the latter period of her life are among the most interesting extant of her, and will have to be largely cited from.

This 1850 passed away undisturbedly so far as the poetess was concerned. Besides her domestic ties she was busy with her pen, preparing for publication in a complete form her poem of Casa Guidi Windows. The poem never was and never will be popular. It contains little likely to arouse the sympathies of its author's usual readers, and to most Italians is, naturally, a scaled book. Mrs. Browning, living amid a people whom she came to regard to no little extent as fellow countrymen and friends, was naturally intensely impressed by their wrongs and moved by their aspirations for liberty. As was customary with her, her feelings found vent in song. Casa Guidi Windows was the result of her impressions "upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness;" but despite its powerful passages and occasional felicities of speech, it is impossible to regard it as a success.

"It is a simple story of personal impression," says Mrs. Browning, but that is just what it strikes the reader as not being. It is full of recondite allusions, comprehensible only to those fully conversant with Florentine literary and political history. It deals with numerous political things unsuited to poesy, however worthy of prose, from which indeed, despite some outbursts of sweetest song, the work through a great portion of its length is barely discernible. As Mrs. Browning's work it will be read with interest, although interest of a somewhat languid type, but at the present