Rome the actual capital of Italy. She died at Florence, June 29th, 1861.
On the front of the gray walls of Casa Guidi is a memorial tablet, bearing this inscription:
"Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who in the heart of a woman united the scholar's learning and the poet's genius, and made with her verse a golden bond between Italy and England. To her memory grateful Florence has erected this tablet, 1861."
Mrs. Browning is beyond controversy the greatest English poetess. Among the early poems which she afterwards omitted from her collected works there were some which gave decided proof of original power. As her experience grew wider and deeper through study and suffering, her poetic genius took longer and bolder flights. Her fully developed powers were able to sustain her in prolonged excursions, which passed through the whole range of human feeling and rose from earth to heaven. Again at times in the brief compass of a sonnet or in a lyrical poem of a few pages she gave utterance to a truth which found echo and acceptance in the hearts of all. Into her poems she put her heart and life. She said herself, "Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work, as the completest expression of my personal being to which I could attain." Her works, skilfully planned and carefully wrought out in this noble spirit, fully establish her the noblest female poet of the world. Her genius, working in every effort of her mind, enabled her to infuse passion and enthusiasm into an otherwise cumbrous mass of knowledge. Her soul, refreshed by intercourse with the master minds of all ages, rose above even the intensest physical suffering and bodily weakness, to give new utterance to the grand truths of humanity, and to cheer her
