Horne, Miss Mitford, and others, she was busy assisting the first-named correspondent in sketching out and writing a lyrical drama.
Psyche Apocalypté, the name finally adopted, by the two poets as the title of their joint drama, was to be modelled on "Greek instead of modern tragedy." The correspondence which the suggestions and dual labour on this drama gave rise to was most voluminous, and although the work was never completed, there was quite enough of it put together to justify Horne publishing the fair-sized pamphlet on it he eventually did.
Miss Barrett's original conception of the work is shadowed forth in these words:—
My idea, the terror attending spiritual consciousness—the man's soul to the man—is something which has not, I think, been worked hitherto, and seems to admit of a certain grandeur and wildness in the execution. The awe of this soul-consciousness breaking into occasional lurid heats through the chasm of our conventionalities has struck me, in my own self-observation, as a mystery of nature very grand in itself, and is quite a distinct mystery from conscience. Conscience has to do with action (every thought being spiritual action), and not with abstract existence. There are moments when we are startled at the footsteps of our own being, more than at the thunders of God.
Horne accepted this psychological problem as the basis for the drama, taking good care, however, in his own practical way, to make it more comprehensible, and humanising it by a fairly readable plot and the introduction of numerous supernumerary personages, human and otherwise. Much of it was already written when Miss Barrett's removal from Torquay and journey to London caused a lengthy interregnum in the work, and subsequent events intervened to prevent its continuation and completion.
In her charming literary correspondence with Horne Miss Barrett furnishes many interesting little pieccs of
