Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/22

6 father, from "Hope End, 1819." The Battle of Marathon is divided into four books, and is truly described by its author as "Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an imitative faculty and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar direction."

"The love of Pope's Homer threw me into Pope on one side, and Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek," is her own record of this period of her life, contradicting the legend of her reading Homer in the original at eight years old. About the time of the grand epic, a cousin of Elizabeth was wont to pay visits to Hope End, where their grandmother, says Mrs. Ritchie, "would also come and stay. The old lady did not approve of these readings and writings, and used to say she would rather see Elizabeth's hemming more carefully finished off than hear of all this Greek."

Mr. Barrett evidently differed from the old lady in this respect, and encouraged his daughter both in her studies and her writings. In some of her earliest known verses, inscribed to him, Elizabeth says:—

Mrs. Barrett, who was still living when these lines were written, doubtless divided her affections more equally among her many little sons and daughters