e "document," by Browning's
insistence, gave her property to her two sisters, in equal division, or,
in case of their death, to the surviving brothers. Nothing less than this
would satisfy Robert Browning.

Meantime, there was the natural London comment. Wordsworth observed: "So
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have gone off together! It is to be
hoped they can understand each other, for no one else can."

Mr. Kenyon wrote "the kindest letter" to them both, and pronounced them
"justified to the uttermost," and to Mrs. Browning he said: "I considered
that you had imperiled your life upon this undertaking and I still thought
you had done wisely!" But by that magic alchemy of love and happiness Mrs.
Browning only gained constantly in strength, and Mrs. Jameson pronounced
them "wise people, whether wild poets or not."

Among the interesting comments on the marriage was Joseph Arnould's letter
to Alfred Domett, under date of November of that year. He wrote:

"... I think the last piece of news I told you of was Browning's
marriage to Miss Barrett. She is, you know, our present greatest
living English poetess: ... she has been in the most absolute and
enforced seclusion from society; cultivating her mind to a wonderful
amount of accomplishment, instructing herself in all languages,
reading Chrysostom in the original Greek, and publishing the best
metrical translation that has yet appeared of the 'Prometheus
Bound'--having also found time to write three volumes of poetry, the
last of which raised her name to a place second only to that of
Browning and Tennyson, amongst all those who are not repelled by
eccentricities of external form from penetrating into the soul and
quintessential spirit of poetry that quickens the mould into which the
poet has cast it. Well, this lady, so gifted, so secluded, so
tyrannized over, fell in love with Browning in the spirit before ever
she saw him in the flesh--in plain English, loved the writer, before
she knew the man. Imagine, you who know him, the effect which his
graceful bearing, high demeanor, and noble speech must have had on
such a mind when first she saw the man of her visions in the twilight
of her darkened room. She was at once in love as a poet-soul only can
be; and Browning, as by contagion or electricity, was no less from
the first interview wholly in love with her.... He is a glorious