discerned dormant genius lurking behind the boyish handwriting,
read them to her sister (afterwards to become known as Sarah Flower Adams),
copied them out before returning them, and persuaded the celebrated Rev.
William Johnson Fox to read the transcripts. Mr. Fox agreed with Miss Flower
as to the promise, but not altogether as to the actual accomplishment,
nor at all as to the advisability of publication. The originals are supposed
to have been destroyed by the poet during the eventful period when,
owing to a fortunate gift, poetry became a new thing for him: from a dream,
vague, if seductive, as summer-lightning, transformed to a dominating reality.
Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes,
a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce."
He had never heard of Shelley, nor did he learn for a long time
that the "Daemon of the World", and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto,
constituted a literary piracy. Badly printed, shamefully mutilated,
these discarded blossoms touched him to a new emotion. Pope became
further removed than ever: Byron, even, lost his magnetic supremacy.
From vague remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two
casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley;
that he had written several volumes; that he was dead.

Strange as it may seem, Browning declared once that the news
of this unknown singer's death affected him more poignantly than did,
a year or less earlier, the tidings of Byron's heroic end at Missolonghi.
He begged his mother to procure him Shelley's works,
a request not easily complied with, for the excellent reason
that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of the poet's name.
Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what she sought
was procurable at the Olliers' in Vere Street, London.

She was very pleased with the result of her visit. The books, it is true,