When reading other love-letters one does not experience a like hesitation. Those letters belong to other times and other ways of thought. The letters of the Brownings, however, are so intimate and near!

In a sense, however, so utterly at one were both these poets with their poetry, nothing more is revealed in these letters than appeared in the " Sonnets of the Portuguese." These are merely Mrs. Browning's letters turned into poetry.

This detracts a little from one's sense of intrusion, but emotion when expressed in verse usually guards itself in some way from too close contact with the crowd. Emotion, moreover, when it speaks without reserve or arriere pensee, when the world has no inhabitants save two lovers, gives a very different expression to its thoughts.

Certainly never was there such a revelation of two noble spirits ! The spirit of Browning, the great-hearted man, filled to the brim with a rushing, burning, eager life which overflowed the limits of speech like a mountain stream splashing from rock to rock, and the spirit of Elizabeth Barrett, through whose closed curtains (till they were so startlingly thrown back), the sun but rarely shone. Both had that belief in the ultimate goodness of life which is like a straight road leading through a desert, and from that road neither strayed until the end.

Fate, so often employed in bringing together the wrong people and keeping the right ones apart, was in a radiant mood surely when it revealed the Brownings to each other.

They recognised each other at once; he at the first meeting, she only a little later. Not often do two lives ripen to such perfection. Not often is the best given without reservation to those who are worthy of the best. "God sends nuts to the toothless " is a proverb which is only too often proved to be true.

Did Love enrich their Verse?

To what extent, however, the coming together of these two poets enriched their poetry is, of course, impossible to tell. Browning already had written " Paracelsus," " Pippa Passes," and " Luria " (among other great poems) before his marriage. He would probably have done, therefore, what he had to do in any case, but it is fairly certain that had not her life been re-set to a large emotion, Elizabeth Browning could never have equalled the Portuguese sonnets.

The only experience really useful to a great artist is that which, by pain or joy, quickens his imagination to declare the things it knows. He has not - like most men - to learn life; he knows it in all its essentials from his birth. Experience sought for its own sake, save in urging him to the expression of emotions which might otherwise lie dormant, will probably serve only to confuse the creative spirit.

Had Mrs. Browning remained always behind closed shutters she would still have understood life in a way in which it is not understood even by those who have the whole world to walk in. This almost miraculous love, however, was necessary to awaken her full powers, although without it her genius would still have spoken.

But rarely does one find great poets who possess character and strength equal to their poetry. The lives and poetry of the Brownings, however, are one, and the story of their love is but that of one of Robert Browning's poems lived to the full.

Some Letters

The following letters are characieristic and, since characteristic, beautiful:

How you write to me! Are there any words to answer to these words, which, when I have read, I shut my eyes as one bewildered, and think blindly, or do not think? Some feelings are deeper than the thoughts touch. My only beloved, it is thus with me, I stand by a miracle in your love, and it covers me, just for that you cannot see me ! May God grant that you never see me, for then we two shall be "happy," as you say, and I, in the only possible manner, be very sure. Meanwhile, you do quite well not to speculate about making me happy; your instinct knows, if you do not know, that it is implied in your own happiness, or rather (not to assume a magnanimity) in my sense of your being happy, not apart from me. As God sees me, and as I know at all the motions of my own soul, I may assert to you that from the first moment of our being to each other anything I never conceived of happiness otherwise, never thought of being happy through you, or by you, or in you even; your good was all my idea of good, and is. I hear women say sometimes of men whom they love, "Such a one will make me happy, I am sure." or "I shall be happy with him, I think," or again. "He is so good and affectionate that nobody need be afraid for my happiness." Now, whether you like or dislike it, I will tell you that 1 never had such thoughts of you, nor ever, for a moment, gave you that sort of praise. I do not know why, or perhaps I do, but 1 could not so think of you. I have not time nor breath, I could as soon play on the guitar when it is thundering. So be happy, my own dearest. "My Riddle" I Jest, best, you were to write to me when you were tired, and so! When I am tired and write to you it is too apt to be what may trouble you. With you, how different! In nothing do you show your strength more than in your divine patience and tenderness towards me, till, not being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would give you my life at a word. Why did you love me, my beloved, when you might have chosen from the most perfect of all women, and each would have loved you with the per-fectest of her nature? That is my riddle in this world; I can understand everything else. I was never stopped for the meaning of sorrow on sorrow, but that you should love me I do not understand, and I think that I never shall.