Text: N. P. Willis (?), Personal Notice of Elizabeth Barrett, Weekly Mirror (New York), December 7, 1844, vol. 1, no. 9, p. 135, cols. 1-2

[page 135, column 1:]

The lines of light which have lately pierced the length of the periodical press, in England and America, in the name of Miss BARRETT, have been shot out of the darkness of a sick room in Wimpole street, London. The fair, poetess has lived in a cloud, we believe, for many years; seen by few, heard of by many, and quiring away in the seclusion of ill-health, so delicate at times as to shut from her the very light of day; calm through the chill winter as the ‘steeping swallow, and chirping s fresh with better spirits and a new life as the summer draws on. She is the daughter of an India merchant, (a princely father he needs must be to whom a dedication such as her's could be ascribed!) living at the West End. Her occupation is, and has been for many years, literature, in its highest forms of meditation and poetry. She has a wide correspondence; and her new volumes, recently published, have added to her list of friends some of the most distinguished names in England. Among these she ranks THOMAS CARLYLE, HARRIET MARTINEAU, Mr. HORNE, Miss MITFORD, and a publisher who, can always be worthily classed with the good and great, EDWARD MOXON. Her acquisitions in literature are of the widest range; and she regards with particular good-will the promise of her own day in writers like ROBERT BROWNING, TENNNYSON, CHARLES DICKENS, and others of the new generation. But when we say that she acknowledges a profound interest in the rising hope and prospect of America, in literature of a true order and spirit, we are sure to seize the attention of the public by a link which brightens and grows firmer every day. It cannot be denied, we think, that the popular heart of this country is stirred at this time by desires in behalf of literature which nothing but the truest and noblest efforts of her authors can satisfy. It is felt on many hands that the new times demand new speakers, and that the, pens of the country should move to a higher music than any have heretofore attained. lithe cycles of the country are to be measured by the order of the Presidential successions, we would say, let the four years now coming form a lustrum of fresh endeavor and nobler art! Two passages from letters of Miss Barrett to an American author, will indicate the sentiment with which she regards America, and the hope she has of its doings in literature.

“The cataracts and mountains you speak of, have been, are, mighty dreams to me; and the great people, proportioned to that scenery, which is springing up in their midst to fill a yet vaster futurity, is dearer to me than a dream. America is our brother-land; and, though a younger brother, sits already in the teacher's seat and expounds the common rights of our humanity. It would be strange, indeed, if we in England did not love and exult in America — if English poets, of whom I am last, if at all, did not receive with a peculiar feeling of gratitude and satisfaction, the kind welcoming words of American readers.”

And a word for you, ye ‘Poets and Poetry of America!’

“When American poets write, as they too often do,” says Miss Barrett,” English poems, must not the sad reason be that they draw their inspiration from the English poets, rather than oar the grand omnipresence of nature? Must not both cause and result partake of a certain wrongness? I fear so. And all should be hope and nothing fear in America. You have room there for whole chorusses of poets — autodithenes — singing out of the ground: you, with your Niagra for a Hippocrene, and your silent cities of the woods, too old for ruins,* and your present liberties, and your aspirations filling the future!”

There are passages of comment too, in her correspondence, on various American writers, I showing the high ideal that possesses her of the duty of this new world in the labor of the imagination. It may be worth while to know that it is only less than four years since that the name of this poetess, now confirmed and established in English literature, was first heard in America, and that the first to speak it (and to him will be all praise and honor for it!) was Mr. CHARLES WELFORD, our New York bookseller. From a copy of the “Seraphim and other Poems, by Elizabeth B. Barrett,” belonging to him, a review, entering with true heart and sympathy upon her merits, was prepared by Mr. EVERT C. [[A.]] DUYCKINCK, and published in 1841 in the February number of Arcturus. Since then her reputation has steadily advanced, and she now commands for readers and friends a circle of the best minds in the country. The appearance of many of her best minor poems in the magazine of Mr. GRAHAM, at Philadelphia, has added not a little in bearing her name throughout the Union; and the recent publication of her later poetical writings, (including the two long works of “The Drama of Exile,” and a Vision of Poets,”) by Mr. Langley, in an, elegant form, secures for her a place in the library and a constant reading at the fireside and under the tree. The opinion expressed in Mr. GRISWOLD’S recent collection of English poetry that Miss Barrett is destined to take her place at the head of the female poets of Great Britain, is sustained by the chief organs of critical opinion in England and in this country. Leigh Hunt, in his Feast of the Violets, has spoken of her as “Tennyson's fair sister” — figuratively, of course — although another impression has prevailed : she is related to that poet only in intellect — witness the courtship of Lady Geraldine in her new volumes; — but she has for cousin, we believe, another poet, Mr. KENNYON, whom the Examiner has lately charged with being of the select few “who write too little.” A blessed relationship, and of a kind which few in this age of multifarious versifying could make boast Well! what further know we of the personal relations or belongings of this admirable writer? To tell the truth, very little! We can make sure of a dog of her's, Flush by name, and well-behaved by nature, the gift of the Mitford, authoress of “Sketches of our Village,” and the subject of certain spirited lines by the present owner. Then we think we may venture to assert that she has (in her day) been a drinker of Cyprian wine, by reason of a series of animated stanzas, inscribed To H. S. Boyd, Esq., author Of Select Passages from the Greek Fathers;” predicated on the imbibing of a draught or so of that beverage. If written without the wine of Cyprus, whose name they bear, and to whose outpouring and up-bubbling they seem to move, all we can then venture to assert is that the liquor so named, is an altogether unnecessary drink for Miss BARRETT, or any other poetess that writes — like her. Furthermore, now that we are about it, we may make bold to declare it as a peculiarity of her's that she has certain American volumes (gift copies) in her book-case; and an eccentricity indeed, that she has been free to read them at times, as appears by quotations in her writings, therefrom!

So much for the present; and when there is another volume of her's forthcoming, the world shall know more of her!

[The following footnote appears ???]

* This is finely thought; but Miss Barrett had not heard of the MOUND-BUILDERS.