CHAPTER VII.
AFTERMATH.
Which wins--Earth's poet or the Heavenly Muse?
-- _Aristophanes' Apology_.
The publication of _The Ring and the Book_ marks in several ways a turning-point in Browning's career.

Conceived and planned before the tragic close of his married life, and written during the first desolate years of bereavement, it is, more than any other of his greater poems, pervaded by his wife's spirit, a crowning monument to his Lyric Love.
But it is also the last upon which her spirit left any notable trace.
With his usual extraordinary recuperative power, Browning re-moulded the mental universe which her love had seemed to complete, and her death momentarily to shatter, into a new, lesser completeness.

He lived in the world, and frankly "liked earth's way," enjoying the new gifts of friendship and of fame which the years brought in rich measure.

The little knot of critics whose praise even of _Men and Women_ and _Dramatis Personae_; had been little more than a cry in the wilderness, found their voices lost in the chorus of admiration which welcomed the story of Pompilia.

Some stout recalcitrants, it is true, like Edward FitzGerald, held their ground.