Already Browning had in view the collected edition of his Poetical
Works which did not appear until 1849. The poems were to be made so
lucid, "that everyone who understood them hitherto" was to "lose that
mark of distinction." _Paracelsus_ and _Pippa_ were to be revised with
special care. The sales reported by Moxon were considered satisfactory;
but of course the profits as yet were those of his wife's poems. "She
is," he wrote to his publisher, "there as in all else, as high above me
as I would have her."

It was at Pisa that the highest evidence of his wife's powers as a poet
came as an unexpected and wonderful gift to her husband. In a letter of
December 1845--more than a year since--she had confessed that she was
idle; and yet "silent" was a better word she thought than "idle." Her
apology was that the apostle Paul probably did not work hard at
tent-making during the week that followed his hearing of the unspeakable
things. At the close of a letter written on July 22, 1846, she wrote:
"You shall see some day at Pisa what I will not show you now. Does not
Solomon say that 'there is a time to read what is written?' If he
doesn't, he ought." The time to read had now come. "One day, early in
1847," as Mr Gosse records what was told to him by Browning, "their
breakfast being over, Mrs Browning went upstairs, while her husband
stood at the window watching the street till the table should be
cleared. He was presently aware of someone behind him, although the
servant was gone. It was Mrs Browning who held him by the shoulder to
prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time pushed a packet
of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to read that, and
to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled again to her own
room." The papers were a transcript of those ardent poems which we know
as "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Some copies were printed at Reading in
1847 for private circulation with the title "Sonnets by E.B.B." The
later title under which they appeared among Mrs Browning's Poems in the
edition of 1850 was of Browning's suggestion. His wife's proposal to
name them "Sonnets from the Bosnian" was dismissed with words which
allude to a poem of hers, "Catarina to Camoens," that had long been
specially dear to him: "Bosnian, no! that means nothing. From the
Portuguese: they are Catarina's sonnets!"

Pisa with all its charm lacked movement and animation. It was decided to
visit Florence in April,