"Aurora Leigh" was published, and met with an almost unparalleled
success: even Landor, most exigent of critics, declared that he was
"half drunk with it," that it had an imagination germane to that of
Shakspere, and so forth.

The poem was dedicated to Kenyon, and on their homeward way the
Brownings were startled and shocked to hear of his sudden death. By the
time they had arrived at Casa Guidi again they learned that their good
friend had not forgotten them in the disposition of his large fortune.
To Browning he bequeathed six thousand, to Mrs. Browning four thousand
guineas. This loss was followed early in the ensuing year (1857) by the
death of Mr. Barrett, steadfast to the last in his refusal of
reconciliation with his daughter.

Winters and summers passed happily in Italy--with one period of feverish
anxiety, when the little boy lay for six weeks dangerously ill, nursed
day and night by his father and mother alternately--with pleasant
occasionings, as the companionship for a season of Nathaniel Hawthorne
and his family, or of weeks spent at Siena with valued and lifelong
friends, W.W. Story, the poet-sculptor, and his wife.

So early as 1858 Mrs. Hawthorne believed she saw the heralds of death in
Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor and the hectic flush upon the cheeks,
in her extreme fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering
breath. Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed her. But "her soul
was mighty, and a great love kept her on earth a season longer. She was
a seraph in her flaming worship of heart." "She lives so ardently," adds
Mrs. Hawthorne, "that her delicate earthly vesture must soon be burnt up
and destroyed by her soul of pure fire."

Yet, notwithstanding, she still sailed the seas of life, like one of
those fragile argonauts in their shells of foam and rainbow-mist which
will withstand the rude surge of winds and waves. But slowly, gradually,
the spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. With the waning of her
strength came back the old passionate longing for rest, for quiescence
from that "excitement from within," which had been almost over vehement
for her in the calm days of her unmarried life.

It is significant that at this time Browning's genius was relatively
dormant. Its wings were resting for the long-sustained flight of "The
Ring and the Book," and for earlier and shorter though not less royal
aerial journeyings. But also, no doubt, the prolonged comparatively
unproductive