About this time, a melancholy accident occurred which for years clouded the life of the poetess, and all but irretrievably shattered her naturally delicate constitution. She burst a blood-vessel in the lungs. Happily, no symptoms of consumption supervened; but after a twelvemonth’s confinement at home, she was ordered by her physician to the mild climate of Devonshire. A house was taken for her at Torquay, near the foot of the cliffs, close by the sea. She was rapidly recovering, when one bright summer morning her brother and two young men, his friends, went out in a small boat for a trip of a few hours. Just as they crossed the bar, the vessel swamped, and all on board perished. Even their lifeless bodies were never recovered. They were sepulchred in the great ocean, which has wrapped its garment of green round many of the fairest and noblest of the sons of men, and which rolls its continued requiem of sublimity and sadness over the millions whom it hath entombed. This sudden and dreadful calamity almost killed Miss Barrett. During a whole year, she lay in the house incapable of removal, whilst the sound of the waves rang in her ears as the moans of the dying. Literature was her only solace. Her physician pleaded with her to abandon her studies; and to quiet his importunities she had an edition of Plato bound so as to resemble a novel. When eventually removed to London and her father’s house in Wimpole Street, it was in an invalid carriage, and at the slow rate of twenty miles a day. In a commodious and darkened room, to which only her own family and a few devoted friends were admitted, she nursed her remnant of life; reading meanwhile the best books in almost every language, and giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. The following beautiful and graphic verses were written to commemorate the faithful companionship of a young spaniel (“Flush, my dog”), presented to her by a friend, in those years of imprisonment and inaction. “Yet, my little sportive friend, Little is’t to such an end That I should praise thy rareness! Other dogs may be thy peers, Haply in these drooping ears, And in this glossy fairness. “But of _thee_ it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary;— Watched within a curtained room, Where no sunbeam broke the gloom, Round the sick and weary. “Roses, gathered for a vase, In that chamber died apace, Beam and breeze resigning— This dog only waited on, Knowing that when light is gone, Love remains for shining.