The year 1855 was a fortunate year for English poetry. Men and Women was published in the autumn; the beautiful epilogue, addressed to E.B.B., “There they are, my fifty men and women,” was written in Dorset Street.  Tennyson’s Maud had preceded Browning’s volumes by some months.  It bewildered the critics, but his brother poet did justice to Tennyson’s passionate sequence of dramatic lyrics.  And though London in mid-autumn had emptied itself Tennyson happened for a few days to be in town.  Two evenings he gave to the Brownings, “dined with us,” writes Mrs Browning, “smoked with us, opened his heart to us (and the second bottle of port), and ended by reading Maud through from end to end, and going away at half-past two in the morning.”  His delightful frankness and simplicity charmed his hostess.  “Think of his stopping in Maud,” she goes on, “every now and then—­’There’s a wonderful touch!  That’s very tender!  How beautiful that is!’ Yes and it was wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music than speech.”

One of the few persons who were invited to meet Tennyson on this occasion, Mr W.M.  Rossetti, is still living, and his record of that memorable evening ought not to be omitted.  “The audience was a small one, the privilege accorded to each individual all the higher:  Mr and Mrs Browning, Miss Browning, my brother, and myself, and I think there was one more—­either Madox Brown or else [Holman] Hunt or Woolner ...  Tennyson, seated on a sofa in a characteristic attitude, and holding the volume near his eyes ... read Maud right through.  My brother made two pen-and-ink sketches of him, and gave one of them to Browning.  So far as I remember, the Poet-Laureate neither saw what Dante was doing, nor knew of it afterwards.  His deep grand voice, with slightly chaunting intonation, was a noble vehicle for the perusal of mighty verse.  On it rolled, sonorous and emotional.  Dante Rossetti, according to Mr Hall Caine, spoke of the incident in these terms:  ’I once heard Tennyson read Maud; and, whilst the fiery passages were delivered with a voice and vehemence which he alone of living men can compass, the softer passages and the songs made the tears course down his cheeks.’ ...  After Tennyson and Maud came Browning and Fra Lippo Lippi—­read with as much sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity.  Truly a night of the gods, not to be remembered without pride and pang."[61] A quotation from a letter of Dante Rossetti to Allingham gives praise to Mrs Browning of a kind which resembles Lockhart’s commendation of her husband:  “What a delightful unliterary person Mrs Browning is to meet!  During two evenings when Tennyson was at their house in London, Mrs Browning left Tennyson with her husband and William and me (who were the fortunate remnant of the male party) to discuss the universe, and gave all her attention to some certainly not very exciting ladies in the next room."[62] Without detracting from Mrs Browning’s “unliterary” merits, one may conjecture that the ladies who proved unexciting to Rossetti were Arabella Barrett and Sarianna Browning.