Page:The complete works of Mrs. E. B. Browning (Volume 1).djvu/47



"How proud we are, in daring to look down upon ourselves!" cries Aurora Leigh, when she is rejecting her past work. Such pride spoke in Miss Barrett's opposition, as early as 1844, to the reissue of any of her Juvenilia. It was the pride of the glowing aim and growing power that made all her young accomplishment look not merely immature and weak, but also imitative beside the dim outline of work peculiarly her own and yet to be.

In those upon whom the mass of her later work now looms imposingly, carrying the delighted eye up to many a sudden peak of skiey rapture, the pride of looking back and down upon the early poems collected in the first volume of this edition will be a pride of another kind. It will be the pride of affectionate interest in tracing out in the lowly plains and pasturelands of the Juvenilia the roots of the mountains that soar against the sun.

Justice to the unequivocal self-criticism of the poet demands, however, that the eyes resting upon this work so nearly forbidden to the public regard it with affection and without servility.

A blushless imitation belongs to page after page of "The Battle of Marathon," re-echoing the Homeric echoes of Pope; but bold and spiritedly well done it undeniably is.