Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/32

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Hope End the Barretts removed to Sidmouth, and resided there for two years. Nothing is known of the family doings during that time, save the publication, in 1833, of Elizabeth's second volume. This book was entitled Prometheus Bound, translated from the Greek of Æschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems, and was issued as by the author of An Essay on Mind. That author's own account is that her translation "was written in twelve days, and should have been thrown in the fire afterwards—the only means of giving it a little warmth."

Miss Barrett's judgment on her own work is perhaps somewhat too sweeping, but as she not only replaced it in after life by a more mature version, but desired the earlier attempt should be consigned to oblivion, there can be no incentive to drag it into daylight again. All the copies not issued, she says, "are safely locked up in the wardrobe of papa's bedroom, entombed as safely as Œdipus among the olives." "A few of the fugitive poems connected with that translation," she added, "may be worth a little, perhaps;