their married life Mr. and Mrs.
Browning lived almost entirely in Italy, and especially at that house
in Florence, close by the Porta Romana, which now bears a tablet with
her name, and which gave its title to one of her best-known volumes of
poetry. They had one child, born in 1849, Robert Barrett Browning,
favorably known as a painter and a sculptor After just fifteen years'
marriage, Mrs. Browning died, in 1861; the frail body almost literally
burnt up by the fiery soul within. Of the closeness of their union Mr.
Browning, of course, never spoke, except to his intimate friends; but
that it was of a degree of happiness to which it is seldom given to
poor humanity to attain was made evident to the world when he wrote
the splendid invocation to his "Lyric Love" at the opening of "The
Ring and the Book."

During the first years of married life, Mr. Browning wrote little, but
he read widely and deeply, and in 1849 he published, in two
reasonable-sized volumes, "Paracelsus" and "Bells and Pomegranates,"
under the title of "Poems, by Robert Browning." Next year followed his
most definitely Christian poem, "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"--a
small volume in which the mysteries of the Christian religion were
handled in their relations with the modern world. Then, in 1852,
followed a prose publication, which was, unfortunately, founded upon a
mistake, and which was at once suppressed and not brought to light
until the Browning Society reprinted it years afterward. This was the
celebrated introductory essay to a volume purporting to consist of
letters from Shelley. The letters were soon discovered to be
fabrications, but Mr. Browning's essay was quite independent of their
genuineness, being really a very interesting discussion on subjective
and objective poetry, and of Shelley's writings as a type of the
former. In 1855 came the two volumes called "Men and Women," and in
their pages were to be found many of the poems best worth reading of
all Mr. Browning's productions, and many of those that are best
remembered at the present day.

It is only somewhat exasperating to the student, to find that in
subsequent collected editions of his works, Mr. Browning has allowed
his fondness for renaming and rearrangement to break up these volumes,
and to distribute the greater part of their contents under other
titles. In "Men and Women" the intensely dramatic quality of his
genius found its best scope, for here are to be found such
masterp