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 ne republished, 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 masterpieces as "Karshish," "The Arab Physician," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Bishop Blougram," and "Cleon." It is amusing to note, if the authority of the bibliographers is to be trusted, that these volumes were reviewed, in the Roman Catholic paper called The Rambler, by no less a person than Cardinal Wiseman, who was extremely complimentary to "Bishop Blougram," and did not by any means despair of the writer's conversion. After "Men and Women "the poet was silent for a long time. His wife's health was failing, though at the time of the war in Lombardy her burning energy burst out in the "Poems before Congress," and though she watched the course of the struggle with never-ceasing excitement
In 1861 the great grief of his life fell upon Mr. Browning, and he published nothing new till 1864, when there appeared the volume called "Dramatis Personam" It is pretty safe, however, to declare that in this volume, with "The Ring and the Book," which was published in 1 868, he reached his greatest height of performance. It is enough to recall to the memory of readers that "Dramatis Personæ" contains "James Lea's Wife," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and "Prospice."
