Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/28

12 wonderful even for a girl of seventeen, but the Essay is remarkable, as has been pointed out, "for the precocious audacity with which she deals with the greatest names in the whole range of literature and science. Gibbon, Berkeley, Condillac, Plato, Bacon, Bolingbroke, all come in for treatment in the scope of the young girl's argument."

Some of Elizabeth's words in her preface, needlessly long and wordy as it is, offer a much better specimen of her prose than does the Essay on Mind of her poesy, and, as the first known example of her unrhymed writings may be cited from. With youthful modesty she says: "I wish that the sublime circuit of intellect, embraced by the plan of my Poem, had fallen to the lot of a spirit more powerful than mine. I wish it had fallen to the lot of one more familiar with the dwelling-place of mind, who could search her secret chambers, and call forth those that sleep; or of one who could enter into her temples, and cast out the iniquitous who buy and sell, profaning the sanctuary of God; or of one who could try the golden links of that chain which hangs from Heaven to earth, and show that it is not placed there for man to covet for lucre's sake, or for him to weigh his puny strength at one end against Omnipotence at the other; but that it is placed there to join, in mysterious union, the natural and the spiritual, the mortal and the eternal, the creature and the Creator. I wish the subject of my poem had fallen into such hands that the powers of the execution might have equalled the vastness of the design—and the public will wish so too. But as it is—though I desire this field to be more meritoriously occupied by others, I would mitigate the voice of censure for myself. I would endeavour to show that while I may