Elizabeth Barrett Browning by A.C. Benson — Read

IT is a matter of regret that there is no adequate biography of one of the very few women who have achieved real eminence in literature. Mrs. Richmond Ritchie has indeed written an article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, but this from the nature of things could not be much more than a record. In the series of _Eminent Women_, Mr. Ingram has attempted to supply the want, and after reading his book through more than once we are bound to say that we regret that he has been first in the field. However, as Mrs. Browning herself says, "we get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book."

When Horne in the _New Spirit of the Age_ gave some biographical particulars about Miss Barrett to the public, she wrote to him as follows:"My dear Mr. Horne, the public do not care for me enough to care at all for my biography. If you say anything of me (and I am not affected enough to pretend to wish you to be absolutely silent, if you see any occasion to speak) it must be as a writer of rhymes, and not as the heroine of a biography. And then as to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. _A bird in a cage_ could have as good a story. Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in thoughts." And again later, when the paper had appeared:"You are my friend I hope, but you do not on that account lose the faculty of judging me or the right of judging me frankly. I do loathe the whole system of personal compliment as a consequence of personal interest.