were privately married. She returned to her father's house; but on 19 Sept. (Saturday) she stole away at dinner-time with her maid and Flush, her dog. At Vauxhall Station Browning met her, and at 9 p.m. they left Southampton for Havre, and on the 20th were in Paris. In that city they found Mrs. Jameson, and in her company, a week later, started for Italy. They rested two days at Avignon, where, at the sources of Vaucluse, Browning lifted his wife through the 'chiare, frische e dolci acque,' and seated her on the rock where Petrarch had seen the vision of Laura. They passed by sea from Marseilles to Genoa. Early in October they reached Pisa, and settled there for the winter, taking rooms for six months in the Collegio Ferdinando. The health of Mrs. Browning bore the strain far better than could have been anticipated; indeed, the courageous step which the lovers had taken was completely justified; Mr. Barrett, however, continued implacable.
The poets lived with strict economy at Pisa, and Mrs. Browning benefited from the freedom and the beauty of Italy: 'I was never happy before in my life,' she wrote (5 Nov. 1846). Early in 1847 she showed Browning the sonnets she had written during their courtship, which she proposed to call 'Sonnets from the Bosnian.' To this Browning objected, 'No, not Bosnian — that means nothing — but "From the Portuguese"! They are Catarina's sonnets.' These were privately printed in 1847, and ultimately published in 1850; they form an invaluable record of the loves of two great poets. Their life at Pisa was 'such a quiet, silent life,' and by the spring of 1847 the health of Elizabeth Browning seemed entirely restored by her happiness and liberty. In April they left Pisa and reached Florence on the 20th, taking up their abode in the Via delle Belle Donne. They made a plan of going for several months, in July, to Vallambrosa, but they were 'ingloriously expelled' from the monastery at the end of five days. They had to return to Florence, and to rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, Via Maggio, the famous 'Casa Guidi.' Here also the life was most quiet: 'I can't make Robert go out for a single evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfleri's, yet we fill up our days with books and music, and a little writing has its share' (E.B.B. to Mary Mitford, 8 Dec. 1847).
Early in 1848 Browning began to prepare a collected edition of his poems. He proposed that Moxon should publish this at his own risk, but he declined; whereupon Browning made the same proposal to Chapman & Hall, or Forster did it for him, and they accepted. This edition appeared in two volumes in 1849, but contained only 'Bells and Pomegranates' and 'Paracelsus.' The Brownings had now been living in Florence, in furnished rooms, for more than a year, so they determined to set up a home for themselves. They took an apartment of 'six beautiful rooms and a kitchen, three of tliem quite palace rooms, and opening on a terrace' in the Casa Guidi. They saw few English visitors, and 'as to Italian society, one may as well take to longing for the evening star, it is so inaccessible' (l0 July 1848). In August they went to Fano, Ancona, Sinigaglia, Rimini, and Ravenna. In October Father Prout joined them for some weeks, and was a welcome apparition. 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon' was revived this winter at Sadler's Wells, by Phelps, with success. On 9 March 1849 was born in Casa Guidi the poets' only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, and a few days later Browning's mother died. Sorrow greatly depressed the poet at this time, and their position in Florence, in the disturbed state of Tuscany, was precarious. They stayed there, however, and in July moved merely to the Bagni di Lucca, for three months' respite from the heat. They took 'a sort of eagle's nest, the highest house of the highest of the three villages, at the heart of a hundred mountains, sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream.' Here Browning's spirits revived, and they enjoyed adventurous excursions into the mountains. In October they returned to Florence, During this winter Browning was engaged in composing 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day,' which was published in March 1850. They gradually saw more people — Lever, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Kirkup, Greenough, Miss Isa Blagden. In September the Brownings went to Poggio al Vento, a villa two miles from Siena, for a few weeks. The following months, extremely quiet ones, were spent in Casa Guidi, the health of Elizabeth Browning not being quite so satisfactory as it had previously been since her marriage. On 2 May 1851 they started for Venice, where they spent a month; and then by Milan, Lucerne, and Strassburg to Paris, where they settled down for a few weeks.
At the end of July they crossed over to England, after an absence of nearly five years, and stayed until the end of September in lodgings at 26 Devonshire Street. They lived very quietly, but saw Carlyle, Forster, Fanny Kemble, Rogers, and Barry Cornwall. As Mr. Barrett refused all communication with them, in September Browning wrote 'a manly, true, straight-
