Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/41

Rh be such a delight to you," she wrote, "to help the parent birds to bring up their young."

A few months after this incident Miss Barrett had a very different theme to write upon, and upon it she wrote in hot haste. William the Fourth died on June 20th, 1837, and on July 1st the Athenæum contained a poem on "The Young Queen," by E. B. B.

Why this poem, so characteristic of its author, should not have been included in her Collected Works, where several earlier and less worthy pieces are given, it is difficult to say; but it is still less easy to comprehend what principle or plan has guided the editor's selection when we find excluded from the collection Miss Barrett's next production, "Victoria's Tears," a poem even finer than "The Young Queen," published the week following in the Athenæum; one quatrain of this poem has become quite a standard quotation:—

About 1837, a publication entitled Finden's Tableaux of National Character, Beauty and Costume, was started by W. and E. Finden. It was to be issued in fifteen monthly parts, each part to contain four plates, "designed and engraved by the most eminent artists," and "original tales and poems, by some of the most distinguished authors of the day." Mrs. S. C. Hall undertook the editorship of the new publication, and obtained the assistance of several well-known writers as contributors. The illustrations were of that ultra-sentimental type which adorned fashionable annuals of fifty years ago; and, although they would