s "dreadful" to cause pain to her father by a
voluntary act; but another feeling sustained her:--"You _only_! As if
one said _God only_. And we shall have _Him_ beside, I pray of Him." At
Hodgson's, the stationer and bookseller's, they found Browning, and a
little later husband and wife, with the brave Wilson and the discreet
Flush, were speeding from Vauxhall to Southampton, in good time to catch
the boat for Havre. A north wind blew them vehemently from the English
coast. In the newspaper announcements of the wedding the date was to be
omitted, and Browning rejected the suggestion that on this occasion, and
with reference to the great event of his life, he should be defined to
the public as "the author of _Paracelsus_."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: _Letters of E.B.B._, i. 288.]

[Footnote 36: See _Letters of R.B. and E.B.B_., i. 281.]

[Footnote 37: E.B.B. to R.B., March 30, 1846.]

[Footnote 38: E.B.B. to R.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]

[Footnote 39: R.B. to E.B.B., Sept. 14, 1846.]

Chapter VI

Early Years in Italy

The letters from which this story has been drawn have from first to last
one burden; in them deep answers to deep; they happily are of a nature
to escape far from the pedantries of literary criticism. It cannot be
maintained that Browning quite equals his correspondent in the discovery
of rare and exquisite thoughts and feelings; or that his felicity in
giving them expression is as frequent as hers. Even on matters of
literature his comments are less original than hers, less penetrating,
less illuminating. Her wit is the swifter and keener. When Browning
writes to afford her amusement, he sometimes appears to us, who are not
greatly amused, a little awkward and laborious. She flashes forth a
metaphor which embodies some mystery of feeling in an image entirely
vital; he, with a habit of mind of which he was conscious and which
often influences his poetry, fastens intensely on a single point and
proceeds to muffle this in circumstance, assured that it will be all the
more vividly apparent when the right instant arrives and requires this;
but meanwhile some staying-power is demanded from the reader. Neither
correspondent has the art of etching a person or a scene in a few
decisive lines; the gift of Carlyle, the gift of Carlyle's brilliant
wife is not theirs, perhaps because acid is needed to bite an etcher's
plate. And, indeed, many of the minor notabilities of 1845, whose names
appear in these le