Horne--a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remarkable power--was one of the truest friends she ever had, and, so far as her literary life is concerned, came next in influence only to her poet-husband. Among the friends she saw much of in the early forties was a distant "cousin," John Kenyon--a jovial, genial, gracious, and altogether delightful man, who acted the part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in particular, was "a fairy godfather" to Elizabeth Barrett and to "the other poet," as he used to call Browning. It was to Mr. Kenyon--"Kenyon, with the face of a Bendectine monk, but the most jovial of good fellows," as a friend has recorded of him; "Kenyon the Magnificent," as he was called by Browning--that Miss Barrett owed her first introduction to the poetry of her future husband. Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. With sure insight she discerned the special quality of the poetic wealth of the "Bells and Pomegranates," among which she then and always cared most for the penultimate volume, the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." Two years before she met the author she had written, in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship"-- "Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side, been a collaborateur with "the author of 'Paracelsus.'" She gave Horne much aid in the preparation of his "New Spirit of the Age," and he has himself told us "that the mottoes, which are singularly happy and appropriate, were for the most part supplied by Miss Barrett and Robert Browning, then unknown to each other." One thing and another drew them nearer and nearer. Now it was a poem, now a novel expression, now a rare sympathy. An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both poets became anxious to know each other. "We artists--how well praise agrees with us," as Balzac says. A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one another personally. The story of their first meeting, which has received a wide acceptance, is apocryphal. The meeting was brought about by Kenyon. This common friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's father, and so it was natural that he took a more than ordinary interest in the brilliant young poet, perhaps all the more so that the reluctant tide of popularity which had promised to set in with such unparalleled sweep and weight had since experienced a steady ebb. And so the fates brought these two together. The younger was already far the stronger, but he had an unbounded admiration for Miss Barrett. To her, he was even then the chief living poet. She perceived his ultimate greatness; as early as 1845 had "a full faith in him as poet and prophet."