Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/283

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

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��ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING CENTENARY. (March 6th, 1906.)

The Browning celebration should not pass without a note 1906, Mar. 17. in ' N. & Q.,' for in its pages frequent references have been made Elizabeth to the poetess, and the difficulty in definitely fixing the date and Barrett place of her birth, which some writers on the centenary seem to Browning, imagine has only recently been settled, was solved in ' N. & Q.' on the 20th of July, 1889 (7 S. viii. 41). The subject formed the first article in the number, the following extract being given from the register of Kelloe parish church, co. Durham :

" Elizabeth Barrett Mouldron Barrett, first child of Edward Barrett Mouldron Barrett, Esq., of Coxhoe Hall, a native of St. Thomas's, Jamaica, by his wife, Mary, late Clarke of Newcastle, born March 6th, 1806, and admitted [into the Church] Feb. 10, 1808."

On the 24th of February, 1866, an editorial note states (3 S. ix. 155) that Mrs. Browning " commenced her literary career, while still in her teens, by several contributions to the leading periodicals of the day. Her earliest separate works were, ' An Essay on Mind,' 12mo, 1826, and a translation of the ' Prometheus ' of JSschylus, 12mo, 1833." The Editor refers " for a graphic notice of Mrs. Browning " to Miss Mitford's ' Recollections of a Literary Life.'

On the Princess Victoria's accession to the throne Mrs. Browning g er poems j n contributed two poems to The Athenaeum. The first, entitled The ' The Young Queen,' appeared on the 1st of July, 1837 ; the second, Athenceum. ' Victoria's Tears,' the following week. On the death of Words- worth in 1850 The Athenceum suggested that the Laureateship The Poet's should be conferred on her ; and on the 30th of November of the Vow.' same year a long review of her poems, in quoting " the words of Rosalind's scroll " from ' The Poet's Vow,' states that " the intensity of love was never expressed in a sublimer picture than these last lines present " :

I charge thee, by the living's prayer,

And the dead's silentness,

To wring from out thy soul a cry

Which God shall hear and bless !

Lest Heaven's own palm droop in my hand

And pale among the saints I stand,

A saint companionless.

The death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, wife of George Maclean, 1906, Mar. 24.

the Governor, took place at Cape Coast Castle on the 15th of October, L. E. L.'s

1838. She had predicted that in England she would not find her Last

last resting-place : Question.'

Mine shall be a lonelier ending,

Mine shall be a wilder grave, Where the shout and shriek are blending,

Where the tempest meets the wave.

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