Browning, ELIZABETH BARRETT, the most distinguished of modern poetesses, was born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, March 6, 1806. Her father, Mr Edward Moulton, assumed the surname of Barrett on succeeding to estates in Jamaica. The family afterwards settled at Hope End, near Ledbury, in Herefordshire. Miss Barrett's childhood was nurtured amid beautiful scenery and the happiest of home influences. Her extraordinary talents were very early developed. At ten she was able to read Homer in the original, and at fourteen years of age she wrote an epic on The Battle of Marathon. About 1824 she seriously injured her spine, the result of an accident while endeavouring to saddle her horse. She was compelled for a long period to remain in a recumbent position. After her mother's death the family went to Sidmouth, and subsequently settled in London. Miss Barrett's Essay on Mind, and other Poems, was published when she was nineteen years of age. This was succeeded by The Seraphim, and other Poems (1838), in which volume was republished the fine poem on Cowper's grave. Shortly after this time she was taken to Torquay for the benefit of her health, and during her stay at that place a tragic incident occurred, which, in her own language, 'gave a nightmare to her life for ever.' Her brother Edward, who had gone down to see her, went out in a skiff with some friends, and the whole party were drowned in Babbicombe Bay. The shock was a terrible one for Miss Barrett, and even after her return to her father's town residence in Gloucester Place she remained an invalid, and was confined for many years to the sickroom. Her genius, however, was strongly fostered by her relative, Mr Kenyon. In 1844 appeared Poems by E. Barrett, which contained, amongst other stirring lyrics, The Cry of the Children, a noble outburst over the wrongs of young children employed in factories. Early in 1846 she first saw Robert Browning, whom she had described, when writing of himself and other poets, as a 'pomegranate which, if cut deep down the middle, shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.' The two were married in the following autumn, and in consequence of her fragile health, Mr Browning immediately took his wife abroad. Poems by E. B. Browning appeared in 1850, containing new poems, and an entirely new translation of the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus. This remarkable version testified to the learning as well as the genius of the translator. The Brownings settled in Florence, where a son, Robert Barrett, was born to them in 1849. While in Italy they were visited by many friends, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walter Savage Landor, W. W. Story, and others, who were invariably struck by the sweet demeanour and pure and loving spirit of Mrs Browning. She was described as 'a soul of fire inclosed in a shell of pearl.' In 1851 Mrs Browning wrote her poem entitled Casa Guidi Windows, in which she expressed her earnest sympathy with the movement for the regeneration of Italy, her adopted country. George Eliot observed of this poem that, inter alia, it is 'a very noble expression of the true relation of the religious mind of the past to that of the present.' Aurora Leigh, published in 1851, the authoress described as 'the most mature of my works, the one into which my highest convictions of work and art have entered.' It is a bold, beautiful, and strikingly human poem, into which all the treasures of its writer's mind and heart have been poured. In her later works an added strength and impressiveness are to be found, the result of the influence of her husband. In Poems before Congress, which appeared in 1860, Mrs Browning again manifested her interest in public affairs, and especially in the development of Italian freedom. It was her deep feeling for the Italian cause which led her to hail Napoleon III. with admiration and enthusiasm as the liberator of the land of her adoption from the yoke of despotism. Mrs Browning died at Florence on June 30, 1861. The same month had witnessed the death of the great and patriotic statesman Cavour, and it is said that his end hastened her own. A tablet, voted by the municipality of Florence, with an inscription by Tommaseo, has been placed to Mrs Browning's memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.
In 1862 the Last Poems of the deceased were published by her husband. These posthumous effusions included several translations written in early life. Mrs Browning's Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets, also published posthumously by Mr Browning, appeared in 1863. The work consisted of prose essays and translations, originally published in the Athenæum in 1842. Since Mrs Browning's death, various selections from her works, and illustrated editions of certain of her poems, have appeared in England and the United States. The genius of this writer is incontestable. Her view of life was lofty and serene, and she has inscribed in immortal verse the highest and most sacred aspirations of the human heart. As a poet, her diction was at times splendidly fervid, and always musical and beautiful. She had a fine sensibility, an almost painful delicacy of perception, and a true woman's heart. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese are amongst the best love poems in the language. Her genius taken as a whole, but few of her sex approach her in strength, imagination, and knowledge. Her letters also, like her achievements in verse, were full of learning, of poetic fancy, and of spiritual insight. She has adorned English literature with poems which can never cease to be held in remembrance by a grateful and admiring posterity. See her Letters to R. H. Horne, edited by Mayer (1876).