complimentary reference to his work, and in January, 1845, he wrote
her a letter properly beginning with the two words, "I love." It was
her verses that he loved, and said so. In May he saw her and
illustrated his own doctrine by falling in love with her at first
sight. She was in her fortieth year, and an invalid; but if any one
is surprised at the passion she aroused in the handsome young poet,
six years her junior, one has only to read her letters. She was a
charming woman, feminine from her soul to her finger-tips, the
incarnation of _das Ewigweibliche_. Her intimate friends were mostly
what were then known as strong-minded women--I suppose to-day they
would seem like timid, shy violets. She was modest, gentle, winsome,
irresistible: profoundly learned, with the eager heart of a child.

Wimpole Street in London, "the long, unlovely street," as Tennyson
calls it, is holy ground to the lover of literature: for at Number
67 lived Arthur Henry Hallam, and diagonally opposite, at Number 50,
lived Elizabeth Barrett. This street--utterly commonplace in
appearance--is forever associated with the names of our two great
Victorian poets: and the association with Tennyson is Death: with
Browning, Love.

Not only was Elizabeth believed to be a hopeless invalid, but her
father had forbidden any of his children to marry. He was a
religious man, whose motto in his own household was apparently
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." He had the particular
kind of piety that is most offensive to ordinary humanity. He gave
his children, for whom he had a stern and savage passion, everything
except what they wanted. He had an insane jealousy of any possible
lover, and there is no doubt that he would have preferred to attend
the funeral of any one of his children rather than a marriage. But