_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ was published by Chapman & Hall in the year 1850. It was reported to the author that within the first fortnight two hundred copies had been sold, with which evidence of moderate popularity he was pleased; but the initial success was not maintained and subsequently the book became, like _Sordello_, a "remainder." As early as 1845, in the opening days of the correspondence with Miss Barrett, when she had called upon her friend to speak as poet in his own person and to speak out, he assured her that whereas hitherto he had only made men and women utter themselves on his behalf and had given the truth not as pure white light but broken into prismatic hues, now he would try to declare directly that which was in him. In place of his men and women he would have her to be a companion in his work, and yet, he adds, "I don't think I shall let _you_ hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I must say." We can only conjecture as to whether the theme of the poem of 1850 was already in Browning's mind. His wife's influence certainly was not unlikely to incline him towards the choice of a subject which had some immediate relation to contemporary thought. She knew that poetry to be of permanent value must do more than reflect a passing fashion; that in a certain sense it must in its essence be out of time and space, expressing ideas and passions which are parts of our abiding humanity. Yet she recognised an advantage in pressing into what is permanent through the forms which it assumes in the world immediately around the artist. And even in 1845 the design of such a poem as her own _Aurora Leigh_ was occupying her thoughts; she speaks of her intention of writing a sort of "novel-poem, running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so, meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly." Browning's poem did not rush into drawing-rooms, but it stepped boldly into churches and conventicles and the lecture-rooms of theological professors.