224
NOTES AND QUERIES. uo s. v. MA. 24, im.
read. Putting on his eye-glasses, he reads part of a
sentence, and then discards them for the next few
lines. The MS- is in loose sheets, which are care
fully transferred one by one, face downwards, on
his right hand, as read. His voice, which is a shril 1
treble, puts me in mind of that of the late Paxtor
Hood. I could not hear him well at first, but as he
warmed to his subject his voice became much
stronger and clearer. In appearance he is rather
tall, and possesses a fine protruding forehead. His
hands are thin, and the fingers long and tapering."
I am nob aware whether the discourse I heard on this occasion has been published or not. JOHN T. PAGE.
Long Itchington, Warwickshire.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
, CENTENARY.
(Concluded from p. 205.)
THE death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, wife of George Maclean, the Governor, took place at Cape Coast Castle on the 15th of October, 1838. She had predicted that in England she would not find her last resting- place :
Mine shall be a lonelier ending, Mine shall be a wilder grave, Where the shout and shriek are blending, Where the tempest meets the wave.
On the 5th of January, 1839, The Athenaeum -contained an obituary notice of her. This was followed three weeks later by Mrs. Browning's *L. E. L.'s Last Question,'* Do you think of me, as I think of you? In 1856, on the death of her cousin John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning came into a legacy of 10,0001.
On the 24th of March, 1866 (' N. & Q,,'
- 3 rd S. ix. 248), NOELL RADECLIFFE states that
Mrs. Browning's first poem was " * The Battle
of Marathon,' in the metre of Pope's Homer,"
seventy-two pages, and divided into four
'books. The title-page says that it was
" printed for W. Lindsell, Wimpole Street,
Cavendish Square, 1820."
MR. T. WESTWOOD. on the llth of January, 1873 (4 th S. xi. 29), has an interesting note in reference to Mrs. Browning's dog Flush, and
quotes some letters he had received from her
during 1845 in reference to this "dog famous in song." The dog was the gift of "her
- L. E. L.'s poem 'Night at Sea':
'Tis night, and overhead the sky is gleaming,
Thro' the slight vapour trembles each dim star ; [I turn away my heart is sadly dreaming Of scenes they do not light, of scenes afar. My friends, my absent friends ! Do you think of me, as I think of you ? ' Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L.,' by Laman Blanchard, vol. i. p. 191.
dear and admired friend Miss Mitford."
"Flush," Mrs. Browning writes,
" loves me to the height and depth of the capacity
of his own nature ; if I did not love him, I could
love nothing. Besides, Flush has a soul to love.
Do you not believe that dogs have souls? I am
thinking of writing a treatise on the subject, after
the manner of Plato's famous one."
The letter concludes thus:
" 1 live in London, to be sure, and except for the glory of it, I might live in a desert, so profound is my solitude, and so complete my isolation from things and persons without. I lie all day, and day
after day, on this sofa Domestic tenderness can
and ought to leave nobody lamenting. Also God's
wisdom, deeply steeped in His Love, is as far as
we can stretch out our hands."
On the 8th of March following a note appears from MR. WESTWOOD (4 th S. xi. 191) on the " Shadow " in the poem * Romaunt of Margret,' first published in 1836 in The New Monthly Magazine.
On the llth of December, 1875, over the signature of ANNIE PROCTOR, a curious coincidence is noted (5 th S. iv. 465) :
"In Kingsley's ' Westward Ho! 5 and in Mrs. Browning's l Aurora Leigh r the hero of each tale is 'sacrificed on Hymen's altar,' in consequence of both of them losing their eyesight, at the latter end of the book, in fearful though diverse acci- dents ; both of the heroes rejoice in the name of Leigh."
On the 1st of June, 1895, DR. R. M. SPENCE makes interesting reference (8 th S. vii. 425) to parallel passages in the works of "the superhuman poet pair," pointing out that in 'Aurora Leigh' Mrs. Browning shows in- debtedness to her husband's ' Paracelsus ' (' Aurora Leigh,' book vi. ; ' Paracelsus,' part v.).
The French have in recent years shown remarkable interest in the life and work of Mrs. Browning. On the 8th of August, 1903, The Athenaeum reviewed M. Le'on Morel's translation into French of the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' "a close and careful trans- lation." In this book the English text is given opposite the French, and there is a preface in which " the story of the Brownings is told simply and sympathetically." The Athenaeum did not up to this "recall any serious study of Mrs. Browning's work in France except the essay of M. Gabriel Sarra- zin, published in 1885, in his * Poetes Modernes de 1'Angleterre,' and Madame Mary Duclaux's chapter in her recent ' Grands Ecrivains d'Outre-Manche.' " Another French transla- tion of the Sonnets is reviewed in The Athenaeum on the 15th of April, 1905. This was by M. Fernand Henry. In the review eference is made to the elaborate biography of Mrs. Browning by Mile. Merlette, and to
