Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/42

26 not in any way satisfy the more critical taste of the present time, were thought very highly of in those days. Instead of the illustrations being made to illustrate the text, writers had to manufacture, and generally in hot haste, poetry and prose to elucidate or accompany the illustrations. This system, unfortunately not yet abolished, was ruinous as a rule to the production of anything of permanent value, and yet, for various reasons, many truly high-class authors submitted to its tyranny. Elizabeth Barrett, strange to say, was one of those who did not deem it prostrating her talents to patch up pieces to accompany these pictorial shams, and, for Finden's Tableaux, wrote the introductory poem of "The Dream." The peg upon which she hung her lines was the picture of a chubby Cupid surrounded by such conventional emblems as one would expect to see decorating a "Valentine." That her stanzas were unequal—that some of them were unworthy of their authoress—is not surprising, and the only matter for wonder is that she could have been persuaded into doing such hack work.

For the third number of the Tableaux, to accompany one of these commonplace pictures, Miss Barrett wrote her ballad, "The Romaunt of the Page." The subscribers to the five-shillings part must, if they were intellectually capable of appreciating it, have been surprised at the power, originality, and beauty of the poem thus given to them.

Notwithstanding many defects, partly due to the nature of her inspiration, "The Romaunt of the Page," although not to be included among her finest poems, will always be a favourite one with Elizabeth Barrett's readers, because it is free from metaphysical obscurity and deals directly with the "human feeling and human