Page:The complete works of Mrs. E. B. Browning (Volume 1).djvu/31

Rh senses enough to appreciate the town, wrapped up like a mummy in yellow mist. Town life launched her now into physical discomfort, and turned her incipient difficulties into acknowledged invalidism; still, it also lent a more favorable wind to the development of her mind and heart. Her first poetic work to be ventured in the ordinary professional grooves, "The Romaunt of Margret," was now submitted through a friend to the critical judgment of Mr. R. H. Home, who thence became her friend, co-worker, and correspondent. Passing muster beneath the eyes of the editor, the "Romaunt" appeared in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine for July, 1836. It was the entering wedge cleaving a way for "The Poet's Vow" in the October number; for distinctive praise and an open door in The Athenæum; for contributions to Miss Mitford's annual; and for the appearance of "The Seraphim and Other Poems," in 1838, justly regarded by its author as actually "more of a trial of strength" than either of her preceding volumes.

Whenever London seemed particularly disagreeable, she reminded herself, she said, of its many advantages, reckoning highest among these, as an offset to sooty leaves and sparrows, real live poets with heads full of the trees and birds and sunshine of paradise, and she tells her Malvern correspondent how she has stood face to face with Wordsworth and Landor and has come to count Miss Mitford as a dear friend.

Miss Mitford's various descriptions of Miss Barrett as she looked in 1836 show unmistakably that the pallor and frailty belonging to her in later years had not yet effaced her native vividness: