ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.--The literary usher is now called upon to cry
with the herald of the days of chivalry--_Place aux dames_. A few ladies,
as we have seen, have already asserted for themselves respectable
positions in the literary ranks. Without a question as to the relative
gifts of mind in man and woman, we have now reached a name which must rank
among those of the first poets of the present century--one which
represents the Victorian age as fully and forcibly as Tennyson, and with
more of novelty than he. Nervous in style, elevated in diction, bold in
expression, learned and original, Mrs. Browning divides the poetic renown
of the period with Tennyson. If he is the laureate, she was the
acknowledged queen of poetry until her untimely death.
Miss Elizabeth Barrett was born in London, in 1809. She was educated with
great care, and began to write at a very early age. A volume, entitled
_Essays on Mind, with Other Poems_, was published when she was only
seventeen. In 1833 she produced _Prometheus Bound_, a translation of the
drama of AEschylus from the original Greek, which exhibited rare classical
attainments; but which she considered so faulty that she afterwards
retranslated it.
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