Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these (and they are not sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of many of the highest qualities of the divine art?  We regret to have some restriction to add to an admission we make so gladly.  Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common order; yet is she in danger of being spoiled by over-ambition; and of realising no greater or more final reputation than a hectical one, like Crashaw’s.  She has fancy, feeling, imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise or other, between the material and spiritual, she aims at flights which have done no good to the strongest, and therefore falls infinitely short, except in such detached passages as we have extracted above, of what a proper exercise of her genius would infallibly reach....  Very various, and in the main beautiful and true, are the minor poems.  But the entire volume deserves more than ordinary attention.

[Footnote 40:  June 24, 1838.]

The ’Atlas,’[41] another paper whose literary judgments were highly esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder, and dwelt more on the faults of the volume, but added nevertheless that ’there are occasional passages of great beauty, and full of deep poetical feeling.  In ‘The Romaunt of Margret’ it detected the influence of Tennyson—­a suggestion which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly; and it concluded with the declaration that the authoress ’possesses a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in this volume, a work of considerable merit.’

[Footnote 41:  June 23, 1838.]

Such were the principal voices among the critical world when Miss Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she might well be satisfied with them.  Two years later, the ’Quarterly Review’[42] included her name in a review of ‘Modern English Poetesses,’ along with Caroline Norton, ‘V.,’ and others whose names are even less remembered to-day.  But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically.  He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests warmly against her ’reckless repetition of the name of God’—­a charge which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in one of her later letters.  On points of technique he criticises her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final syllable—­’kissed,’ ‘bowed,’ and the like—­and her fondness for the adverb ‘very;’ both of which mannerisms he charges to the example of Tennyson.  He condemns the ‘Prometheus,’ though recognising it as ’a remarkable performance for a young lady.’  He criticises the subject of ‘The Seraphim,’ ‘from which Milton would have shrunk;’ but adds, ’We give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and striking in expression.’  He sums up as follows: