The earlier years of Elizabeth Barrett’s life were spent at Hope End, near Ledbury, Herefordshire.  I visited the place and thereby added not only one day, but several to my life, for Ali counts not the days spent in the chase.  There is a description of Hope End written by an eminent clergyman, to whom I was at once attracted by his literary style.  This gentleman’s diction contains so much clearness, force and elegance that I can not resist quoting him verbatim:  “The residentiary buildings lie on the ascent of the contiguous eminences, whose projecting parts and bending declivities, modeled by Nature, display astonishing harmoniousness.  It contains an elegant profusion of wood, disposed in the most careless yet pleasing order; much of the park and its scenery is in view of the residence, from which vantage-point it presents a most agreeable appearance to the enraptured beholder.”  So there you have it!

Here Elizabeth Barrett lived until she was twenty.  She never had a childhood—­’t was dropped out of her life in some way, and a Greek grammar inlaid instead.  Of her mother we know little.  She is never quoted; never referred to; her wishes were so whisperingly expressed that they have not reached us.  She glides, a pale shadow, across the diary pages.  Her husband’s will was to her supreme; his whim her conscience.  We know that she was sad, often ill, that she bore eight children.  She passed out seemingly unwept, unhonored and unsung, after a married existence of sixteen years.

Elizabeth Barrett had the same number of brothers and sisters that Shakespeare had; and we know no more of the seven Barretts who were swallowed by oblivion than we do of the seven Shakespeares that went not astray.

Edward Moulton Barrett had a sort of fierce, passionate, jealous affection for his daughter Elizabeth.  He set himself the task of educating her from her very babyhood.  He was her constant companion, her tutor, adviser, friend.  When six years old she studied Greek, and when nine made translations in verse.  Mr. Barrett looked on this sort of thing with much favor, and tightened his discipline, reducing the little girl’s hours for study to a system as severe as the laws of Draco.  Of course, the child’s health broke.  From her thirteenth year she appears to us like a beautiful spirit with an astral form; or she would, did we not perceive that this beautiful form is being racked with pain.  No wonder some one has asked, “Where then was the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children?”

But this brave spirit did not much complain.  She had a will as strong as her father’s, and felt a Spartan pride in doing all that he asked and a little more.  She studied, wrote, translated, read and thought.

And to spur her on and to stimulate her, Mr. Barrett published several volumes of her poems.  It was immature, pedantic work, but still it had a certain glow and gave promise of the things yet to come.