n. On the further side lie the "Men and Women" of the period
anterior to "The Ring and the Book": midway is the transitional zone
itself: on the hither side are the "Men and Women" of a more temperate
if not colder clime.

The first part of "The Ring and the Book" was not published till
November. In September the poet was staying with his sister and son at
Le Croisic, a picturesque village at the mouth of the Loire, at the end
of the great salt plains which stretch down from Guerande to the Bay of
Biscay. No doubt, in lying on the sand-dunes in the golden September
glow, in looking upon the there somewhat turbid current of the Loire,
the poet brooded on those days when he saw its inland waters with her
who was with him no longer save in dreams and memories. Here he wrote
that stirring poem, "Herve Riel," founded upon the valorous action of a
French sailor who frustrated the naval might of England, and claimed
nothing as a reward save permission to have a holiday on land to spend a
few hours with his wife, "la belle Aurore." "Herve Riel" (which has been
translated into French, and is often recited, particularly in the
maritime towns, and is always evocative of enthusiastic applause) is one
of Browning's finest action-lyrics, and is assured of the same
immortality as "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," or
the "Pied Piper" himself.

In 1872 there was practical proof of the poet's growing popularity.
Baron Tauchnitz issued two volumes of excellently selected poems,
comprising some of the best of "Men and Women," "Dramatis Personae," and
"Dramatic Romances," besides the longer "Soul's Tragedy," "Luria," "In a
Balcony," and "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"--the most Christian poem of
the century, according to one eminent cleric, the heterodox
self-sophistication of a free-thinker, according to another: really, the
reflex of a great crisis, that of the first movement of the tide of
religious thought to a practically limitless freedom. This edition also
contained "Bishop Blougram," then much discussed, apart from its poetic
and intellectual worth, on account of its supposed verisimilitude in
portraiture of Cardinal Wiseman. This composition, one of Browning's
most characteristic, is so clever that it is scarcely a poem. Poetry and
Cleverness do not well agree, the muse being already united in perfect
marriage to Imagination. In his Essay on Truth, Bacon says that one of
the Fathers called poetry _Vinum Daemonum_,