* * * * * [Sidenote: How ‘Aurora Leigh’ was written.] I am still too near ‘Aurora Leigh’ to be quite able to see it all; my wife used to write it, and lay it down to hear our child spell, or when a visitor came,--it was thrust under a cushion then. At Paris, a year ago last March, she gave me the first six books to read, I never having seen a line before. She then wrote the rest, and transcribed them in London, where I read them also. I wish, in one sense, that I had written and she had read it. ROBERT BROWNING: _Letter to Leigh Hunt_. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son. * * * * * [Sidenote: Landor’s delight in ‘Aurora Leigh.’] I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy--Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh.’ In many pages there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare. I had no idea that any one in this age was capable of so much poetry. I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good hearty draught of poetry again: the distemper had got into the vineyard that produced it. Here are indeed, even here, some flies upon the surface, as there always will be upon what is sweet and strong. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR: _Letter to J. Foster_, 1857. ‘Walter Savage Landor: A Biography,’ by John Forster. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869. * * * * * [Sidenote: George Eliot’s enjoyment.] We are reading ‘Aurora Leigh,’ for the third time, with more enjoyment than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion with a large as well as beautiful mind. MARIAN EVANS LEWES: _Letter to Sara Hennell_, 1857. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885. * * * * * [Sidenote: Sympathetic criticism of the ‘Portuguese Sonnets.’]