Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/97

Rh green wood. I promise not to enact the Archbishop of Granada if you speak the truth to me. . . . "The Drama of Exile," the longest poem, has been thrown aside by nearly all the official critics as inferior to the rest—and perhaps, as a whole, is unsuccessful. "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" appears to be the popular favourite. Oh, for life and strength to do something better and worthier than any of them! I feel as if I could do it.

In this instance all must now agree that the popular voice was the voice of justice. The "Drama of Exile," evidently the author's favourite, her most ambitious performance, and the work on which she had relied for fame, is a failure; a grand failure it is true, but from the very nature of its theme, bound to be more or less a failure, notwithstanding the fact that it contains passages of extraordinary grandeur and is replete with others of lyrical sweetness.

"Lady Geraldine's Courtship" is, deservedly, one of the most popular poems of the age. The best-known legend connected with its composition was, doubtless, originally promulgated by Miss Mitford to account for its wonderful rush of glowing language, and to enhance the mystery of its authoress, of whose personality so few people knew anything. The poem, making forty-two octavo pages, was averred to have been written within the space of twelve hours, written off at electric speed in order to make up the number of sheets required by the American publisher of the poems. How much of truth may be contained in this myth is hard to say, but that Miss Barrett composed at times with great rapidity is a fact. Much of the rugged rhythm and apparent carelessness of construction which characterises so many of her poems is doubtless due to the speed at which they were evolved, and to the same cause may be ascribed their occasional obscurity and other defects, but that their defective or affected