Six years had passed since the publication of "The Seraphim and Other Poems," and on Mr. Browning's arrival at home again, he found two new volumes of Miss Barrett's, entitled simply "Poems," in which were "A Drama of Exile," "Bertha in the Lane," "Catarina to Camoens," "A Vision of Poets," nearly all of the sonnets that she ever wrote save that immortal sequence, "Sonnets from the Portuguese," and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship." These volumes absolutely established her poetic rank with that of Tennyson and Browning. She "heard the nations praising her far off." While she had many expressions of grateful gladness for all this chorus of praise with hardly a dissenting voice, the verdict did not affect her own high standards. "I have written these poems as well as I could," she says, "and I hope to write others better. I have not reached my own ideal ... but I love poetry more than I love my own successes in it."
Her love of absolute truth, and the absence of any petty self-love in her character, stand out in any study of her life. "Why, if you had told me that my books were without any value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship?" she writes to a friend.
The reviews are eminently appreciative and satisfying. _Blackwood's_ gave a long critique in a special article, frankly pointing out faults, but asserting that her merits far outweighed her defects, and that her genius "was profound, unsullied, and without a flaw." The long poem, "A Drama of Exile" was pronounced the least successful of all, and the prime favorite was "Lady Geraldine's Courtship." Of this poem of ninety-two stanzas, with eleven more in its "Conclusion," thirty-five of the stanzas, or one hundred and forty-four lines, were written in one day.
Though lack of health largely restricted Miss Barrett to her room, her sympathies and interests were world-wide. She read the reviews of the biography of Dr. Arnold, a work she desired to read, entire, and records that "Dr. Arnold must have been a man in the largest and noblest sense." She rejoices in the refutation of Puseyism that is offered in the _Edinburgh Review_; she reads "an admirable paper by Macaulay" in the same number; she comments on the news that Newman has united himself with the Catholic Church; and in one letter she writes that Mr. Horne has not returned to England and adds: "Mr. Browning is not in England, either, so that whatever you send for him must await his return from the east, or west, or south, wherever he is; Dickens is in Italy; even Miss Mitford talks of going to France, and the 'New Spirit of the Age' is a wandering spirit."