'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last
made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication,
English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between
two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott,
Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the
first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor,
Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era
as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson,
though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still
but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music
by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only
'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have
given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And
between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of
the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There
was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered
the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.

Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and
to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems
which have proved the most popular among its authoress's complete
works, except 'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which
deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems were 'The
Poet's Vow,' 'Isobel's Child,' 'The Romaunt of Margret,' 'My Doves,'
and 'The Sea-mew.' The volume did not suffice to win any wide
reputation for Miss Barrett, and no second edition was called for; on
the other hand, it was received with more than civility, with genuine
cordiality, by several among the reviewers, though they did not fail
to note its obvious defects. The 'Athenaeum'[39] began its review with
the following declaration: