A man scarcely ever finds it out from his own observation; he is too vain for that.

But Browning knew it.

A poet sees many things, and perhaps his wife told him this secret.

It was like his audacity to express it.
This increased knowledge of womanhood was probably due to the fact that Browning possessed in his wife a woman of genius who had studied her own sex in herself and in other women.

It is owing to her, I think, that in so many poems the women are represented as of a finer, even a stronger intellect than the men.