myself some late sunshiny afternoon with my face turned toward
Florence...."

While at Audierne, Browning put the final touches to the new six-volume
edition of his works that was about to appear from the house of Smith,
Elder, and Company, on the title-page of which he signs himself as M.A.,
Honorary Fellow of Balliol College. Mr. Nettleship's volume of essays on
Browning's poems was published that season, indicating a strong interest
in the poet; and another very gratifying experience to him was the
interest in his work manifested by the undergraduates of both Oxford and
Cambridge. Undoubtedly the pleasant glow of this appreciation stimulated
his energy in the great poem on which he was now definitely at work, "The
Ring and the Book." Publishers were making him offers for its publication,
"the R. B. who for six months once did not sell a single copy of his
poems," he exclaimed in a letter to a friend, to whom he announced that he
should "ask two hundred pounds for the sheets to America, and get it!"
with an evident conviction that this was a high price for his work. The
increasing recognition of the poet was further indicated by a request from
Tauchnitz for the volumes of selections which Browning dedicated to the
Laureate in these graceful words: "To Alfred Tennyson. In
Poetry--illustrious and consummate; In Friendship--noble and sincere."

The publication of "The Ring and the Book" was the great literary event of
1869. Two numbers had appeared in the previous autumn, but when offered in
its completeness the poem was found to embody the most remarkable
interpretation of transfigured human life to be found in all the
literature of poetry. The fame of the poet rose to splendor. This work was
the inauguration of an epoch, of a period from which his work was to be
read, studied, discussed, to a degree that would have been incredible to
him, had any Cassandra of previous years lifted the veil of the future.
The great reviews united in a very choral pean of praise; the
_Fortnightly_, the _Quarterly_, the _Edinburgh Review_, the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_, and others were practically unanimous in their recognition
of a work which was at once felt to be the very epitome of the art and
life of Robert Browning. The poem is, indeed, a vast treasure into which
the poet poured all his searching, relentless analysis of character, and
grasp of motive; all his compassion, his sensitive susceptibility to human
emotion; all his