To The Macmillan Company, the publishers for both the first and the present Lord Tennyson; To Houghton Mifflin Company; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Company; to The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted for some data regarding Browning and Professor Masson); to each and all, acknowledgments are offered for their courtesy which has invested with added charm a work than which none was ever more completely a labor of love. To Edith, Contessa Rucellai (_náta_ Bronson), whose characteristically lovely kindness placed at the disposal of this volume a number of letters written by Robert Browning to her mother, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, special gratitude is offered. "Poetry," said Mrs. Browning, "is its own exceeding great reward." Any effort, however remote its results from the ideal that haunted the writer, to interpret the lives of such transcendent genius and nobleness as those of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, must also be its own exceeding reward in leading to a passion of pursuit of all that is highest and holiest in the life that now is, and in that which is to come. LILIAN WHITING THE BRUNSWICK, BOSTON Midsummer Days, 1911 CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I 1812-1833 The Most Exquisite Romance of Modern Life--Ancestry and Youth of Robert Browning--Love of Music--Formative Influences--The Fascination of Byron--A Home "Crammed with Books"--The Spell of Shelley--"Incondita"--Poetic Vocation Definitely Chosen--"Pauline" 1 CHAPTER II 1806-1832 Childhood and Early Youth of Elizabeth Barrett--Hope End--"Summer Snow of Apple-Blossoms"--Her Bower of White Roses--"Living with Visions"--The Malvern Hills--Hugh Stuart Boyd--Love of Learning--"Juvenilia"--Impassioned Devotion to Poetry 16 CHAPTER III 1833-1841 Browning Visits Russia--"Paracelsus"--Recognition of Wordsworth and Landor--"Strafford"--First Visit to Italy--Mrs. Carlyle's Baffled Reading of "Sordello"--Lofty Motif of the Poem--The Universal Problem of Life--Enthusiasm for Italy--The Sibylline Leaves Yet to Unfold 26 CHAPTER IV 1833-1841 Elizabeth Barrett's Love for the Greek Poets--Lyrical Work-- Serious Entrance on Professional Literature--Noble Ideal of Poetry--London Life--Kenyon--First Knowledge of Robert Browning 44 CHAPTER V 1841-1846 "Bells and Pomegranates"--Arnould and Domett--"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon"--Macready--Second Visit to Italy--Miss Barrett's Poetic Work--"Colombe's Birthday"--"Lady Geraldine's Courtship"--"Romances and Lyrics"--Browning's First Letter to Miss Barrett--The Poets Meet--Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett--"Loves of the Poets"--Vita Nuova 67 CHAPTER VI 1846-1850