’Ay, could a man inquire
When it shall come!’ I say. 
The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire—­
‘Then let him turn to-day!’

II.

Quoth a young Sadducee,—­
’Reader of many rolls,
Is it so certain we
Have, as they tell us, souls?’—­

‘Son, there is no reply!’
The Rabbi bit his beard: 
’Certain, a soul have I—­
We may have none,’ he sneer’d.

      Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s Hammer,
        The Right-Hand Temple column,
      Taught babes their grace in grammar,
        And struck the simple, solemn.”

It was in this year (1855) that “Men and Women” was published.  It is difficult to understand how a collection comprising poems such as “Love among the Ruins,” “Evelyn Hope,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” “Any Wife to any Husband,” “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” “Andrea del Sarto,” “In a Balcony,” “Saul,” “A Grammarian’s Funeral,” to mention only ten now almost universally known, did not at once obtain a national popularity for the author.  But lovers of literature were simply enthralled:  and the two volumes had a welcome from them which was perhaps all the more ardent because of their disproportionate numbers.  Ears alert to novel poetic music must have thrilled to the new strain which sounded first—­“Love among the Ruins,” with its Millet-like opening—­

     “Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
                    Miles and miles
      On the solitary pastures where our sheep
                    Half asleep
      Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
                    As they crop—­
      Was the site once of a city great and gay ...”

Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, was preferable in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to her frequent correspondent Miss Mitford, and mentioned that about four thousand lines of “Aurora Leigh” had been written.  She added a significant passage:  that her husband had not seen a single line of it up to that time—­significant, as one of the several indications that the union of Browning and his wife was indeed a marriage of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane of matrimonial life found existence.  Moreover, both were artists, and, therefore, too full of respect for themselves and their art to bring in any way the undue influence of each other into play.

By the spring of 1856, however, the first six “books” were concluded:  and these, at once with humility and pride, Mrs. Browning placed in her husband’s hands.  The remaining three books were written, in the summer, in John Kenyon’s London house.

It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful dedicatory poem, “One Word More,” wherewith her husband, a few months earlier, sent forth his “Men and Women,” to be for ever associated with “E.B.B.”

I.

“There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished! 
Take them, Love, the book and me together: 
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.