Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/49

Rh Barrett is better. . . If she be spared to the world and should, as she probably will, treat of such subjects as afford room for passion and action, you will see her passing all women and most men, as a narrative or dramatic poet. After all," she adds, "she is herself in her modesty, her sweetness, and her affectionate warmth of heart, by very far more wonderful than her writings, extraordinary as they are." A few days after these eulogistic lines their writer received a letter from the subject of them, in which she remarks, "Whenever I forget to notice any kindness of yours, do believe, my beloved friend, that I have, notwithstanding, marked the date of it with a white stone, and also with a heart not of stone." Referring then to some precious seedlings which Miss Mitford, from her own luxuriant little floral realm had sent her, she adds: "You said, 'Distribute the seeds as you please,' so, mindful of 'those of my own household,' I gave Sept. and Occy. (Septimus and Octavius, her youngest brothers) leave to extract a few very carefully for their garden, composed of divers flower-pots and green boxes a-gasping for sun and air from the leads behind our house, and giving the gardeners fair excuse for an occasional coveted colloquy with a great chief gardener in the Regent's Park. Yes, and out of a certain precious packet inscribed—as Arabel (her sister Arabella) described it to me—from Mr. Wordsworth—I desired her to reserve some for my very own self, because, you see, if it should please God to permit my return to London, I mean ('pway don't wangh,' as Ibbit says, when she has been saying something irresistibly ridiculous)—I mean to have a garden too—a whole flower-pot to myself—in the window of my particular sitting-room; and then it will be hard indeed if, while the flowers