Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/67



found Elizabeth Barrett better than she had dared to hope, yet still an utter invalid. Speaking of her appearance now as contrasted with what it was when she first met her, she says:—

She has totally lost the rich, bright colouring, which certainly made the greater part of her beauty. She is dark and pallid; the hair is almost entirely hidden; the look of youth gone (I think she now looks as much beyond her actual age as formerly she looked behind it), nothing remaining but the noble forehead, the matchless eyes, and the fine form of her mouth and teeth—even now their whiteness is healthy. . . .The expression, too, is completely changed; the sweetness remains, but it is accompanied with more shrewdness, more gaiety, the look not merely of the woman of genius—that she always had—but of the superlatively clever woman. An odd effect of absence from general society, that the talent for conversation should have ripened, and the shyness have disappeared—but so it is. When I first saw her, her talk, delightful as it was, had something too much of the lamp—she spoke too well—and her letters were rather too much like the very best books. Now all that is gone; the fine thoughts come gushing and sparkling like water from a spring, but flow as naturally as water down a hillside, clear, bright, and sparkling in the sunshine. All this, besides its great delightfulness, looks like life, does it not? Even in this weather—very trying to her—she has been translating some hymns of Gregory Nazianzen. . . and is talking of a series of articles for the Athenæum, comprising critiques on the Greek poets of the early Christian centuries, with poetical