844. Chancing to express his
admiration of them to Mr. Kenyon, who had been his friend since 1839
and his father's school-fellow in years long distant, Mr. Browning
was urged by him to write to Miss Barrett himself, and tell her of
his pleasure in her work. Possibly the allusion to him in 'Lady
Geraldine's Courtship' may have been felt as furnishing an excuse for
addressing her; however that may be, he took Mr. Kenyon's advice,
and in January 1845 we find Miss Barrett in 'ecstasies' over a letter
(evidently the first) from 'Browning the poet, Browning the author of
"Paracelsus" and king of the mystics' (see p. 236, above).

The correspondence, once begun, continued to flourish, and in the
course of the same month Miss Barrett tells Mrs. Martin that she is
'getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning,
poet and mystic; and we are growing to be the truest of friends.' At
the end of May, when the return of summer brought her a renewal of
strength, they met face to face for the first time; and from that time
Robert Browning was included in the small list of privileged friends
who were admitted to visit her in person.

How this friendship ripened into love, and love into courtship, it is
not for us to inquire too closely. Something has been told already in
Mrs. Orr's 'Life of Robert Browning;' something more is told in the
long and most interesting letter which stands first in the present
chapter. More precious than either is the record of her fluctuating
feelings which Mrs. Browning has enshrined for ever in her 'Sonnets
from the Portuguese,' and in the handful of other poems--'Life
and Love,' 'A Denial,' 'Proof and Disproof,' 'Inclusions,'
'Insufficiency,'[142] which likewise belong to this period and
describe its hesitations, its sorrows and its overwhelming joys. In
the difficult circumstances under which they were placed, the conduct
of both was without reproach. Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to
be allowed to take charge of an invalid's life--believed indeed
that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was
hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet--but was sure
enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle. Miss Barrett, for
her part, shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with
a responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused his
unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.

[Footnote 142: _Poetical Works_, iv. 20-32.]