The Brownings, Letters and Poetry

The face of Robert Browning gives nothing away -- handsome and polished, it offers no hold to those who would pry into the soul behind. Its metallic mirror gives us back ourselves. But the face of Elizabeth Barret Browning speaks openly of her sufferings -- of ill health, of an iron father, of miscarriages -- yet speaking in the accents of courage and good sense. Any woman of sensitivity and talent can imagine herself as Elizabeth, in the hope that she might get as much as did Elizabeth out of a life which sometimes seemed to offer so little. No man can imagine himself as Robert. And if that is because genius is a mystery, it is even more because Robert Browning is a mystery. - p. 1.