d not like it; and then she fled
again to her room." Mr. Browning felt at once that he had no right to
keep such poetry as a private possession. "I dared not," he said,
"reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since
Shakespeare's." They were accordingly published in 1850, under the
intentionally mystifying title, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.

The Brownings reached Florence April 20, 1847. After several changes
they were, in May, 1848, established in the home in which they remained
during Mrs. Browning's life. It was a suite of rooms on the second floor
of the Palazzo Guidi. Of the practical side of this early Florentine
life, Mrs. Browning wrote, "My dear brothers have the illusion that
nobody should marry on less than two thousand a year. Good heavens! how
preposterous it does seem to me! We scarcely spend three hundred, and I
have every luxury I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up,
at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid bill dragged
itself by any chance into another week. He says that when people get
into pecuniary difficulties his sympathies always go with the butchers
and the bakers." In accordance with this horror of owing five shillings
five days, the furnishings of the new home, "the rococo chairs, spring
sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the rest," were
accumulated at a pace dictated by the bank account, but for all that it
was not long before the rooms began to take on an aspect as beautiful as
it was homelike.

By preference the Brownings lived very quietly. At the end of fifteen
months Mrs. Browning wrote, "Robert has not been out an evening of the
fifteen months; but what with music and books and writing and talking,
we scarcely know how the days go, it's such a gallop on the grass."
March 9, 1849, was born Wiedemann, later known as "Penini" or "Pen"
Browning. Coincident with this joy was the grief caused by the death of
Browning's mother, a sorrow from which he rallied but slowly. The
Florentine life was occasionally varied by summers at Bagni di Lucca,
winters in Paris or Rome, and several visits to England. There was also
an increasing social life. Americans were especially welcome to the
Brownings because, while England was still indifferent to Browning's
work, America had given it an appreciative welcome. In March, 1861, Mrs.
Browning wrote, "I don't complain for myself of an unappreciative
public. _I have no reason_. But j