Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/201

Rh But for the kindly care of Mr. Browning, it is hard to say what would have been the ultimate fate of the strange old genius. He saw to his immediate wants, and made such pecuniary arrangements with Landor's relatives as secured him from any further dread of downright poverty. Apartments were secured for him in the close vicinity of Casa Guidi, and Mrs. Browning's old servant, Wilson, was induced to devote herself to the care of him. Wilson, who had been a more than servant to her mistress, was most faithful in the discharge of her duties to the new master, and fully fulfilled the trust reposed in her by the Brownings, notwithstanding she had family ties of her own.

The winter was spent by the Brownings in Rome, where the mild climate seemed to have somewhat restored the invalid, for such the poetess was again. In the beginning of 1860 she collected her recent political pieces, and published them as Poems Before Congress. In her Preface, dated February, she says:—"These poems were written under the pressure of the events they indicate, after a residence in Italy of so many years, that the present triumph of great principles is heightened to the writer's feelings by the disastrous issue of the last movement, witnessed from Casa Guidi Windows in 1849."

"If the verses should appear to English readers," she explains, "too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself on such, nor on the grounds of my attachment to the Italian people, and my admiration of their heroic constancy and union. What I have written has simply been because I love truth and justice—quand même—more than Plato and Plato's