language.  Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and others actually executed some portions of the work; Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would lend a hand with some of the later parts.  Horne invited Miss Barrett to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of ’Queen Annelida and False Arcite’ and ’The Complaint of Annelida,’[56] she also advised generally on the work of the other writers during its progress through the press.  The other literary project was for a lyrical drama, to be written in collaboration with Horne.  It was to be called ‘Psyche Apocalypte,’ and was to be a drama on the Greek model, treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.

[Footnote 56:  These versions are not reprinted in her collected Poetical Works, but are to be found in ’Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer modernised,’ (1841).]

The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence with Horne, will make the modern reader accept with equanimity the fact that it never progressed beyond the initial stage of drafting the plot.  It is allegorical, philosophical, fantastic, unreal—­everything which was calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss Barrett’s style and to intensify her faults.  Fortunately her removal from Torquay to London interrupted the execution of the scheme.  It was never seriously taken up again, and, though never explicitly abandoned, died a natural death from inanition, somewhat to the relief of Miss Barrett, who had come to recognise its impracticability.

Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has been published elsewhere, very few letters are left from this period; but those which here follow serve to bridge over the interval until the departure from Torquay, which closes one well-marked period in the life of the poetess.

To Mrs. Martin December 11, 1840.

My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,—­I should have written to you without this last proof of your remembrance—­this cape, which, warm and pretty as it is, I value so much more as the work of your hands and gift of your affection towards me.  Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank you too for all the rest—­for all your sympathy and love.  And do believe that although grief had so changed me from myself and warped me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking forwards with pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full amends are made in the looking back with a pleasure more true because more tender than any old retrospections.  Do give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I could not have said even if I had seen him.

Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again?  Don’t think we do not think of the hope you left us.  Because we do indeed.