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early as February 1813, Elizabeth Barrett had prepared another volume of poems for the press, but was unable to find a publisher willing to undertake the risk of publication. Moxon, when applied to, declared that Tennyson was the only poet he did not lose by.

In the spring of 1844 she tells Horne: "I hope my book will be out in a few weeks now. It fags me and over-excites me too much. Perhaps you will think me improved? Perhaps—I seem to myself to have more strength. I only wish that bodies and souls would draw together."

Her hope notwithstanding, the poems remained unpublished all through the summer, and when at last the collection appeared, it had grown into two well-filled volumes which, after all, were issued by Moxon. The work was inscribed to her father in as affectionate terms as was her childhood's poetry, and the Dedication is interesting as showing, apart from other reasons, on what a footing she still lived with her surviving parent. "My father," she writes—

When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a