Those among our readers who may have attended principally to the selections which we made from these volumes before we animadverted on the "Drama of Exile," may perhaps be of opinion that we have treated Miss Barrett with undue severity, and have not done justice to the vigour and rare originality of her powers; while others, who may have attended chiefly to the blemishes of style and execution which we have thought it our duty to point out in our later quotations, may possibly think that we have ranked her higher than she deserves. We trust that those who have carefully perused both the favourable and unfavourable extracts, will give us credit for having steered a. middle course, without either running ourselves aground on the shoals of detraction, or oversetting the ship by carrying too much sail in favour of our authoress. And although they may have seen that our hand was sometimes unsteady at the helm, we trust that it has always been when we felt apprehensive that the current of criticism was bearing us too strongly towards the former of these perils. If any of our remarks have been over harsh, we most gladly qualify them by saying, that, in our humble opinion, Miss Barrett's poetical merits infinitely outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound, unsullied, and without a flaw. The imperfections of her manner are mere superficial blot which a little labour might remove. Were the blemishes of her style tenfold more numerous than they are, we should still revere this poetess as one of the noblest of her sex; for her works have impressed us with the conviction that powers such as she possesses are not merely the gifts or accomplishments of a highly intellectual woman; but that they are closely intertwined with all that is purest and loveliest in goodness and in truth.
It is plain that Miss Barrett would always write well if she wrote simply from her own heart, and without thinking of the compositions of any other author—at least let her think of them only in so far as she is sure that they embody great thoughts in pure and appropriate language and in forms of construction which will endure the most rigid scrutiny of common sense and unperverted taste. If she will but wash her hands completely of Æschylus and Milton and all other poets, either great, or whom she takes for such, and come before the public in the graces of her own feminine sensibilities, and in the strength of her own profound perceptions, her sway over human hearts will be more irresistible than ever, and she will have nothing to fear from a comparison with the most gifted and illustrious of her sex.
