Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/173

Rh was a novelty; the rush of impassioned arguments, startling comparisons, and brilliant similes carried the reader along at fever heat, never allowing him time to linger ever the improbabilities of the tale, or to criticise its faulty construction.

The plot of this autobiography—this three volume novel in verse—is evidently founded, although probably unconsciously, upon Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, whilst the character of Romney, the hero, frequently reminds the reader of Hollingsworth of The Blithedale Romance. Such coincidences of thought, however, are common among contemporaries, and only prove how really limited is man's imagination.

The mere story of Aurora Leigh, stripped of its poetry, is not unlike many novels in prose. It is the record of a life told by the heroine herself. Aurora, the daughter of an English father and an Italian mother, is born in Florence. At five years old a great misfortune befell her; her mother died, and the sunshine of infancy faded out of her little life, for

Aurora's father was an "austere Englishman," but had loved his wife almost madly. When left with nothing to love but his little girl, for her sake he contrived with "his grave lips" to smile "a miserable smile." For a time he led a lonely life with his only,