Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/299

seem to have weighed very heavily on her life.

Everybody knows the “One Word More” which formed the dedication of Browning’s “Men and Women” to his wife. A more exquisite poem was never written. The desire of every one, “once and only once and for one only,” to produce something which is a special homage to the beloved, like Raphael’s sonnet, which he wrote with the pencil used to draw his mild Madonnas, and Dante’s Angel, which he painted away from all the smoke and gloom of his dread Inferno—is one of those original intuitions of the heart which break constantly through the great labouring of thought which is his habitual exercise. She, “his moon of poets,” turns to him another side from that which the world knows. He lays at her feet a varied gift—something at least which, if not another art, is at least different from what he has ever done before. The noble and chastened love of true marriage could not have a more beautiful exposition.

Mrs Browning lived for fifteen years, surrounded by her husband with everything that affection and care could do to make her fragile life happy. And it was so. He took care of her as if she were the goddess on her pedestal and he her priest, making light of his own gifts in comparison with the genius which he imputed to her. The present writer remembers well meeting the pair in Rome in the later years of Mrs Browning’s life. The delicate little woman with ringlets hanging over her face in a fashion long antiquated, and never very beautiful, with eyes which she fixed upon her interlocutor in a manner more impressive than agreeable; and the burly, manly, not remarkable-looking (at that time) husband, who talked like other people, and made no pretence of being a lion, are very clearly visible in the light of memory. So much of Mrs Browning’s face as could be seen between those dark ringlets possessed no beauty except in the eyes: and his appearance to a young observer was exasperatingly “like other people,” as we have said. In after-life his white hair and beard gave much dignity to a really fine head. It is regrettable, though very natural, that the portrait which is given in illustration of the memoir should have been taken from his son’s portrait of Mr Browning, which, though a good portrait, exaggerates what has been called his “Jewish look.” There are photographs of him existing which give a much better representation of the man.

Mr Browning was not a good letter-writer, if we may take the letters here as an evidence. They are not characteristic—that is to say, there is no particular character in them at all—which, for a man who could not use his own medium of poetry without leaving his name writ large upon every verse, is curious and remarkable. The letters are careless and ordinary, even when speaking, as they do but rarely, of poetical subjects. Here and there occurs a fragment like this, which we quote with pleasure; but they are few. It is written some time after his wife’s death, when he was producing with rapidity poems such as the “Red Cotton Night-cap Country,” which have not, we think, though they must be included in every edition of his works, done much for his fame:—