Thoroughly interested in the social and political conditions of struggling Italy, she gave vent to her views and sympathies in a volume of poems, entitled Casa Guidi Windows.  Casa Guidi was the name of their residence in Florence, and the poems vividly describe what she saw from its windows—­divers forms of suffering, injustice, and oppression, which touched the heart of a tender woman and a gifted poet, and compelled it to burst forth in song.

AURORA LEIGH.—­But by far the most important work of Mrs. Browning is Aurora Leigh:  a long poem in nine books, which appeared in 1856, in which the great questions of the age, social and moral, are handled with great boldness.  It is neither an epic, nor an idyl, nor a tale in verse:  it combines features of them all.  It presents her clear convictions of life and art, and is full of philosophy, largely expressed in the language of irony and sarcasm.  She is an inspired advocate of the intellectual claims of woman; and the poem is, in some degree, an autobiography:  the identity of the poet and the heroine gives a great charm to the narrative.  There are few finer pieces of poetical inspiration than the closing scene, where the friend and lover returns blind and helpless, and the woman’s heart, unconquered before, surrenders to the claims of misfortune as the champion of love.  After a happy life with her husband and an only child, sent for her solace, this gifted woman died in 1863.

HER FAULTS.—­It is as easy to criticize Mrs. Browning’s works as to admire them; but our admiration is great in spite of her faults:  in part because of them, for they are faults of a bold and striking individuality.  There is sometimes an obscurity in her fancies, and a turgidity in her language.  She seems to transcend the poet’s license with a knowledge that she is doing so.  For example: 

    We will sit on the throne of a purple sublimity,
    And grind down men’s bones to a pale unanimity.

And again, in speaking of Goethe, she says: 

    His soul reached out from far and high,
    And fell from inner entity.

Her rhymes are frequently and arrogantly faulty:  she seems to scorn the critics; she writes more for herself than for others, and infuses all she writes with her own fervent spirit:  there is nothing commonplace or lukewarm.  She is so strong that she would be masculine; but so tender that she is entirely feminine:  at once one of the most vigorous of poets and one of the best of women.  She has attained the first rank among the English poets.

ROBERT BROWNING.—­As a poet of decided individuality, which has gained for him many admirers, Browning claims particular mention.  His happy marriage has for his fame the disadvantage that he gave his name to a greater poet; and it is never mentioned without an instinctive thought of her superiority.  Many who are familiar with her verses have never read a line of her husband.  This is in part due to a mysticism and an intense subjectivity, which are not adapted to the popular comprehension.  He has chosen subjects unknown or uninteresting to the multitude of readers, and treats them with such novelty of construction and such an affectation of originality, that few persons have patience to read his poems.