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Show BROWNING'S MARRIAGE. Wordsworth Thought the Two Might Understand Un-derstand Each Other. Temple Bar. When Wordsworth heard of the marriage of Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, he remarked in his dry, level tone, "Doubtless they will speak more intelligible to each other than they have yet done to the public." pub-lic." Wordsworth was an old man when he uttered these words and unlikely, being the age he was, to accept any new message of poetic inspiration, especially if conveyed in an unaccustomed form. Even forty years earlier Coleridge had complained that Wordsworth desired to make modern poetry sectarian, with limitations fixed by his own dogmatism. - At no period, perhaps, of his life would he have had eyes to see the dawn of anv "new morning" other than that the glow of the "Lyrical Bellads" had brought upon earth, dispelling by their natural colors the cold and rigid forms of classicism. But, allowing for a certain narrowness of vision on the part of Wordsworth Word-sworth in saying what he did on the want of intelligibility, he but echoed public opinion regarding the poetry of Browning at the time. Miss Mitford, the literary gossip of the period, and at the same time the most intimate inti-mate friend of the poetess, shares Word-worth's Word-worth's views with respect to the author of "Paracelsus." In a letter to Charles Boner she writes: "The great news of the season is the marriage mar-riage of my beloved friend Elizabeth Barett to Robert Browning. J have seen him once only, many years ago.He is, I hear from all quarters, a man of immense attainment and great conversational power. As a poet, I think him overrated. Those things on which his reputation rests, 'Paracelsus' 'Para-celsus' and 'Bell and Pomegranates,' are to me as so many riddles." Miss Mitford, had she lived on to the last decade, "doubtless would have joined the Browning society and escaped the danger of being strangled by the Sphinx. In another letter to the correspondent she writes: "1 was at Miss Barrett's wedding! Ah, dearest Mr. Boner, it was a runaway match ; never was I so much astonished. as-tonished. He prevailed ou her to meet him at the church with only the two necessary witnesses. They went to Paiis. There they stayed a week. Happening Happen-ing to meet with Mr. Jameson, she joined them in their journey to Pisa; and accordingly accord-ingly they traveled by diligence, by railway, by Rhode boat anyhow to Marseilles, thence took shipping to Leghorn, and then settled themselves at Pisa for six mouths. She says she is very happy. God grant it continue. I felt just exactly as if 1 had heard that Dr. Chambers had given her over when I got the letter announcing her marriage, and I found that she was about to cross to France. I never had an idea of her reaching Pisa alive. She took her own maid and her dog Flush.- I saw-Mr. saw-Mr. Browning once. Many of his friends and mine William Harkness, John Kenyon and Henry Chorley speak very highly of uiui. i suppose ne is an acconip nencd man, and if he makes his angelic wife happy, I shail of course leurn to like him. . . |