magnificence of phrase and movement touched in its turn with that
suggestion of the homely and the familiar which in the inmost recesses
of Browning's genius lurked so near--so vitally near--to the roots of
the sublime.




CHAPTER VII.

AFTERMATH.

Which wins--Earth's poet or the Heavenly Muse?
--_Aristophanes' Apology_.


The publication of _The Ring and the Book_ marks in several ways a
turning-point in Browning's career. Conceived and planned before the
tragic close of his married life, and written during the first desolate
years of bereavement, it is, more than any other of his greater poems,
pervaded by his wife's spirit, a crowning monument to his Lyric Love.
But it is also the last upon which her spirit left any notable trace.
With his usual extraordinary recuperative power, Browning re-moulded the
mental universe which her love had seemed to complete, and her death
momentarily to shatter, into a new, lesser completeness. He lived in the
world, and frankly "liked earth's way," enjoying the new gifts of
friendship and of fame which the years brought in rich measure. The
little knot of critics whose praise even of _Men and Women_ and
_Dramatis Personæ_; had been little more than a cry in the wilderness,
found their voices lost in the chorus of admiration which welcomed the