ession so frankly described by
Frederick Tennyson to his brother, of "Chinese puzzles, trackless
labyrinths, unapproachable nebulosities." Even among these intimates of
his own generation were doubtless some who, with F. Tennyson again,
believed him to be "a man of infinite learning, jest, and bonhomie, and
a sterling heart that reverbs no hollowness," but who yet held "his
school of poetry" to be "the most grotesque conceivable." This was the
tone of the 'Fifties, when Tennyson's vogue was at its height. But with
the 'Sixties there began to emerge a critical disposition to look beyond
the trim pleasances of the Early Victorians to more daring romantic
adventure in search of the truth that lies in beauty, and more fearless
grip of the beauty that lies in truth. The genius of the pre-Raphaelites
began to find response. And so did the yet richer and more composite
genius of Browning. Moreover, the immense vogue won by the poetry of his
wife undoubtedly prepared the way for his more difficult but kindred
work. If _Pippa Passes_ counts for something in _Aurora Leigh, Aurora
Leigh_ in its turn trained the future readers of _The Ring and the
Book_.

[Footnote 39: His father beautifully said of Mrs Browning's portrait
that it was a face which made the worship of saints seem possible.]

The altered situation became apparent on the publication, in rapid
succession, in 1864, of Browning's _Dramatis Personae_ and Mr Swinburne's
_Atalanta in Calydon_. Both volumes found their most enthusiastic
readers at the universities. "All my new cultivators are young men,"
Browning wrote to Miss Blagden; adding, with a touch of malicious
humour, "more than that, I observe that some of my old friends don't
like at all the irruption of outsiders who rescue me from their sober
and private approval, and take those words out of their mouths which
they 'always meant to say,' and never did." The volume included
practically all that Browning had actually written since 1855,--less
than a score of pieces,--the somewhat slender harves of nine years. But
during these later years in Italy, as we have seen, he had done little
at his art; and after his return much time had been occupied in
projecting the great scheme of that which figures in his familiar
letters as his "murder-poem," and was ultimately known as _The Ring and
the Book_. As a whole, the _Dramatis Personae_ stands yet more clearly
apart from _Men and Women_ than that does from all that had gon