Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/77

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Another piece included in the collection, "To Flush, my Dog," is of a very different calibre, although replete with excellence in its way. "Flush," the many years canine companion and four-footed friend of the poetess, was a gift from Miss Mitford and, says Elizabeth Barrett, "belongs to the beautiful race she has rendered celebrated among English and American readers. The Flushes have their laurels as well as the Cæsars, the chief difference (at least the very head and front of it) consisting, according to my perception, in the bald head." If Miss Mitford made "Flush" celebrated by her prose, Miss Barrett immortalised it by her poesy. "Loving friend," she writes—