To write thus early of =Robert Browning (1812-1889)= is to anticipate in the literary record. "Pauline," the poet's first poem, was published, it is true, in 1833; and that and successive poems were accepted by good critics as the work of a true poet. Nevertheless, Browning had to fight his way as no poet of equal merit has ever had to do, and it was very late indeed in the Victorian epoch that he became more than the poet of a limited circle. One there was, certainly, who appreciated his work from the first with no common fervour, for the world has long been familiar with the statement that a reference by Elizabeth Barrett in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" first brought the two poets together in 1845-- "From Browning some 'Pomegranate' Which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, Of a veined humanity." They were married a year later. As exemplifying the condescension of their earlier contemporaries it is interesting to note Wordsworth's observation on the event--and Wordsworth had no humour--"So, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have gone off together! Well, I hope they may understand each other--nobody else could!" Lord Granville, who was staying in Florence when a son was born to the poets there in 1849, was still more amusing although equally uncritical. "Now there are not two incomprehensibles but three incomprehensibles," he said. It cannot be charged against =Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)= that she was in the least incomprehensible. Her "Cry of the Children," "Cowper's Grave," and "Aurora Leigh," have the note of extreme simplicity. Nor is obscurity a characteristic of "Sonnets from the Portuguese," which were not translations, but so named to disguise a wife's devotion to her husband. "Aurora Leigh" she styled a "novel in verse," and it was in fact a very readable romance, marked by that zest for social reform which characterised the period.[4] "The most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered," she wrote of it. After the marriage the pair lived principally at Florence. In their Florentine home--Casa Guidi--"Aurora Leigh," and "Casa Guidi Windows" were written, and here Mrs Browning died in June 1861. One may still see the house upon which the Florentine municipality has inscribed a tablet in gratitude for the "golden ring" of poetry with which the enthusiastic woman poet had attempted to unite England and Italy.