And while the tone of even hostile criticism became respectful, enough of it remained to provide objects, seven years later, for the uproarious chaff of _Pacchiarotto_.
From 1869 to 1871 Browning published nothing, and he appears also to have written nothing beyond a sonnet commemorating Helen, the mother of Lord Dufferin (dated April 26, 1870), almost the only set of fourteen lines in his works of which not one proclaims his authorship.

But the decade which followed was more prolific than any other ten years of his life.

Between 1871 and 1878 nine volumes in swift succession allured, provoked, or bewildered the reading world.

Everything was now planned on a larger scale; the vast compass and boundless volubility of _The Ring and the Book_ became normal.

He gave free rein to his delight in intricate involutions of plot and of argument; the dramatic monologue grew into novels in verse like _Red-cotton Night-cap Country_ and _The Inn Album_; and the "special pleaders," Hohenstiel and Juan, expounded their cases with a complexity of apparatus unapproached even by Sludge.
A certain relaxation of poetic nerve is on the whole everywhere apparent, notwithstanding the prodigal display of crude intellectual power.