stine chapel to Mr Fox's, those
kneeling and those standing."[35] Yet she demurs, a little farther on in
the same letter, to both these extremes. "The Unitarians seem to me to
throw over what is most beautiful in the Christian Doctrine; but the
Formulists, on the other side, stir up a dust, in which it appears
excusable not to see." To which he replies (Aug. 17): "Dearest, I know
your very meaning, in what you said of religion, and responded to it
with my whole soul--what you express now is for us both, ... those are
my own feelings, my convictions beside--instinct confirmed by reason."

[Footnote 34: _E.B.B. to R.B._, 15th Aug. 1846.]

[Footnote 35: Ib.]

These words of Browning's seem to furnish the clue to the relation
between their minds in this matter. Their intercourse disturbed no
conviction on either side, for their convictions were identical. But her
intense personal devoutness undoubtedly quickened what was personal in
his belief, drew it into an atmosphere of keener and more emotional
consciousness, and in particular gave to that "revelation of God in
Christ" which they both regarded as what was "most beautiful in the
Christian doctrine," a more vital hold upon his intellectual and
imaginative life. In this sense, but only in this sense, his fervid
words to her (February 1846)--"I mean to ... let my mind get used to its
new medium of sight, seeing all things as it does through you; and then
let all I have done be the prelude and the real work begin"--were not
unfulfilled. No deep hiatus, such as this phrase suggests, divides the
later, as a whole, from the earlier work: the "dramatic" method, which
was among the elements of his art most foreign to her lyric nature,
established itself more and more firmly in his practice. But the letters
of 1845-46 show that her example was stimulating him to attempt a more
direct and personal utterance in poetry, and while he did not succeed,
or succeeded only "once and for one only," in evading his dramatic bias,
he certainly succeeded in making the dramatic form more eloquently
expressive of his personal faith.

This was peculiarly the case in the remarkable _Christmas-Eve and
Easter-Day_ (1850), the first-fruits of his married life, and the most
instinct of all his poems with the mingled literary and religious
influences which it brought. The influence of the ardent singer, which
impelled him to fuller self-expression, here concurred with that of the
devout but undogma