From her couch went forth those poems which have crowned her as "the world's greatest poetess"; and on that couch, where she lay almost speechless at times, and seeing none but those friends dearest and nearest, the soul-woman struck deep into the roots of Latin and Greek, and drank of their vital juices. We hold in kindly affection her learned and blind teacher, Hugh Stuart Boyd, who, she tells us, was "enthusiastic for the good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple and upright of human beings." The love of his grateful scholar, when called upon to mourn the good man's death, embalms his memory among her Sonnets, where she addresses him as her "Beloved friend, who, living many years With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun, Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune To visible Nature's elemental cheers!" Nor did this "steadfast friend" forget his poet-pupil ere he went to "join the dead":-- "Three gifts the Dying left me,--Aeschylus, And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock Of stars, whose motion is melodious." We catch a glimpse of those communings over "our Sophocles the royal," "our Aeschylus the thunderous," "our Euripides the human," and "my Plato the divine one," in her pretty poem of "Wine of Cyprus," addressed to Mr. Boyd. The woman translates the remembrance of those early lessons into her heart's verse:-- "And I think of those long mornings Which my thought goes far to seek, When, betwixt the folio's turnings, Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek. Past the pane, the mountain spreading, Swept the sheep-bell's tinkling noise, While a girlish voice was reading,-- Somewhat low for [Greek: ais] and [Greek: ois]." These "golden hours" were not without that earnest argument so welcome to candid minds:-- "For we sometimes gently wrangled, Very gently, be it said,-- Since our thoughts were disentangled By no breaking of the thread! And I charged you with extortions On the nobler fames of old,-- Ay, and sometimes thought your Persons Stained the purple they would fold." What high honor the scholar did her friend and teacher, and how nobly she could interpret the "rhythmic Greek," let those decide who have read Mrs. Browning's translations of "Prometheus Bound" and Bion's "Lament for Adonis." Imprisoned within the four walls of her room, with books for her world and large humanity for her thought, the lamp of life burning so low at times that a feather would be placed on her lips to prove that there was still breath, Elizabeth Barrett read and wrote, and "heard the nations praising" her "far off." She loved "Art for art, And good for God himself, the essential Good,"