We find it lingering in _Hudibras_, and we do not find it again until we come to such strange and strong lines as these of Elizabeth Barrett in her poem on Napoleon:-- "Blood fell like dew beneath his sunrise--sooth, But glittered dew-like in the covenanted And high-rayed light.

He was a despot--granted, But the [Greek: autos] of his autocratic mouth Said 'Yea' i' the people's French! He magnified The image of the freedom he denied." Her poems are full of quaint things, of such things as the eyes in the peacock fans of the Vatican, which she describes as winking at the Italian tricolor.

She often took the step from the sublime to the ridiculous: but to take this step one must reach the sublime.
Elizabeth Barrett contrived to assert, what still needs but then urgently needed assertion, the fact that womanliness, whether in life or poetry, was a positive thing, and not the negative of manliness.
Her verse at its best was quite as strong as Browning's own, and very nearly as clever.

The difference between their natures was a difference between two primary colours, not between dark and light shades of the same colour.
Browning had often heard not only of the public, but of the private life of this lady from his father's friend Kenyon.

The old man, who was one of those rare and valuable people who have a talent for establishing definite relationships with people after a comparatively short intercourse, had been appointed by Miss Barrett as her "fairy godfather." He spoke much about her to Browning, and of Browning to her, with a certain courtly garrulity which was one of his talents.
And there could be little doubt that the two poets would have met long before had it not been for certain peculiarities in the position of Miss Barrett.