She translated a number of the curiously characteristic stornelli of Tuscany, and especially of the Pistoja mountains.  And here again it is impossible to make any one, who has never been familiar with these stornelli understand the especial difficulty of translating them.  Of course the task was a slighter and less significant one than that of translating Giusti, nor was the same degree of critical accuracy and nicety in rendering shades of meaning called for.  But there were not—­are not—­many persons who could cope with the especial difficulties of the attempt as successfully as she did.  She produced also a number of pen-and-ink drawings illustrating these stornelli, which I still possess, and in which the spirited, graphic, and accurately truthful characterisation of the figures could only have been achieved by an artist very intimately acquainted intus et in cute with the subjects of her pencil.

She published a volume on the Tuscan revolution, which was very favourably received.  The Examiner, among other critics—­all of them, to the best of my remembrance, more or less favourable—­said of these Letters (for that was the form in which the work was published, all of them, I think, having been previously printed in the Athenaeum), “Better political information than this book gives may be had in plenty; but it has a special value which we might almost represent by comparing it to the report of a very watchful nurse, who, without the physician’s scientific knowledge, uses her own womanly instinct in observing every change of countenance and every movement indicating the return of health and strength to the patient ...  She has written a very vivid and truthful account.”  The critic has very accurately, and, it may be said, graphically, assigned its true value and character to the book.

I have found it necessary in a former chapter, where I have given a number of interesting and characteristic letters from Landor to my wife’s father, to insert a deprecatory caveat against the exuberant enthusiasm of admiration which led him to talk of the probability of her eclipsing the names and fame of other poets, including in this estimate Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  The preposterousness of this no human being would have felt more strongly than Theodosia Garrow, except Theodosia Trollope, when such an estimate had become yet more preposterous.  But Landor, whose unstinted admiration of Mrs. Browning’s poetry is vigorously enough expressed in his own strong language, as may be seen in Mr. Forster’s pages, would not have dreamed of instituting any such comparison at a later day.  But that his critical acumen and judgment were not altogether destroyed by the enthusiasm of his friendship, is, I think, shown by the following little poem by Theodosia Trollope, written a few years after the birth of her child.  I don’t think I need apologise for printing it.

The original MS. of it before me gives no title; nor do I remember that the authoress ever assigned one to the verses.