He was now partly occupied with preparing for the press whatever writings by his wife seemed suitable for publication.

In 1862 he issued with a dedication "to grateful Florence" her _Last Poems_; in 1863, her _Greek Christian Poets_; in 1865 he prepared a volume of Selections from her poems, and had the happiness of knowing that the number of her readers had rather increased than diminished.

The efforts of self-constituted biographers to make capital out of the incidents of her life, and to publish such letters of hers as could be laid hands on, moved him to transports of indignation, which break forth in a letter to his friend Miss Blagden with unmeasured violence: what he felt with the "paws" of these blackguards in his "very bowels" God knows; beast and scamp and knave and fool are terms hardly strong enough to relieve his wrath.

Such sudden whirls of extreme rage were rare, yet were characteristic of Browning, and were sometimes followed by regret for his own distemperature.

In 1862 a gratifying task was laid on him--that of superintending the three volume edition of his Poetical Works which was published in the following year.