with this singer of sad songs, I shall like to quote Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a weary night and day "How shall ever one like me All but those who need thee not. "As a lizard with the shade Of a trembling leaf, Thou with sorrow art dismayed; Reproach thee, that thou art not near, And reproach thou wilt not hear. "Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure. Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. "I love all that thou lovest, Spirit of Delight! The fresh earth in new leaves drest, And the starry night; Autumn evening and the morn When the golden mists are born. "I love snow and all the forms I love waves and winds and storms- Which is Nature's, and may be Untainted by man's misery. "I love tranquil solitude, As is quiet, wise, and good; What difference? But thou dost possess "I love Love-though he has wings, Spirit, I love thee Thou art love and life! O, come, Make once more my heart thy home." [The life, letters and remains of Keats, edited by R. M. Milnes (now Lord Houghton), appeared in 1848. He also prefixed a memoir (the best we have) to an edition of the poems published in 1868. Another edition of the poetry appeared in 1872, with a memoir by Mr. William Rossetti. Of Shelley there are numerous editors and biographers. Ten or twelve years ago Mr. W. M. Rossetti published his poetical works in two volumes. Another and more elaborate edition, edited by Mr. II. B. Forman, appeared in 1876. The volume likely to attract young readers is "Poems from Shelley, Selected and Arranged by Stopford A. Brooke" (Macmillan and Co.) It contains the choicest work of the poet. His two volumes of essays and letters are likely, in Mr. Matthew Arnold's judgment, "to resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally to stand higher than his poetry."] CHAPTER XVIII. POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (Continued). ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING-JOHN KEBLE. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, THE biography of Mrs. Browning has not yet been written, and perhaps never will be. Much of it may be read in her poems and in her correspondence, and it must suffice to insert here the few dates and facts which link together the different portions of her life. 1809-1861. Elizabeth Barrett was born in 1809, at Hope End (near Ledbury), a house built by her father in the Turkish style. Her childhood and youth were spent in the most eager acquisition of knowledge, which extended to the poets and philosophers of Greece. Miss Mitford, who won her friendship in 1836, describes her as "of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend that the translator of the "Prometheus" of Æschylus, the authoress of the "Essay on Mind,” was old enough to be introduced into society-in technical language, was out.” The next year Miss Barrett broke a blood-vessel on the lungs, and after many months of ill health, she was ordered to spend the winter at Torquay. Her eldest brother-"a brother in heart and talent worthy of such a sister"-accompanied her, and there, at a later period, he was drowned within sight of his sister's windows. "This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett; she was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but most unjust feeling that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home." Arriving there, she was confined to her room, Miss Mitford adds, for many years, "reading almost every book in every language, and giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." In 1846 Miss Barrett married Mr. Robert Browning, and began a new and happy life in Italy. They settled at Florence, and the one son was born (now well known as an artist) whom his mother addresses with such tenderness, in "Casa Guidi Windows," as her own young Florentine. Mrs. Browning died in 1861, the year in which that Italy which she loved so well gained her freedom, and took her rightful place among the nations of Europe. To say that Mrs. Barrett Browning is the greatest poetess of this country is to say little. There is no woman who stands near her on the poetic heights. If her power of execution were equal to the scope and buoyancy of her imagination, her place would be among the crowned kings of poetry. Unfortunately her splendid gifts were recklessly, or perhaps it would be more correct to say wilfully, trifled with. Her finest work is often marred by some defect in the execution, by perversity of taste, by eccentricities of language, or by jarring notes of rhythm which irritate the sensitive reader. And this flaw is the more remarkable, since from early years she had been familiar with the sanity and symmetry of Greek poetry. "Aurora Leigh," a long, rambling poem, which might be almost called a novel in verse, was, in the writer's judgment, the most mature of her works, and expressed her highest convictions upon life and art. It has passages of almost unequalled beauty, but as a whole the poem is spasmodic, hysterical, unreal. The characters are lifeless, there is much in the descriptive passages of doubtful taste, and in the social judgments, of which there are not a few, one detects also an ignorance of human nature. Self-restraint and sustained energy are wanting, and these deficiencies compel the reader who would gain pleasure from "Aurora |