Browning's eye fell upon a passage written by the distinguished Edward Fitzgerald, who had been dead for many years, in which Fitzgerald spoke in an uncomplimentary manner of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Browning immediately wrote the "Lines to Edward Fitzgerald," and set the whole literary world in an uproar.

The lines were bitter and excessive to have been written against any man, especially bitter and excessive to have been written against a man who was not alive to reply.

And yet, when all is said, it is impossible not to feel a certain dark and indescribable pleasure in this last burst of the old barbaric energy.

The mountain had been tilled and forested, and laid out in gardens to the summit; but for one last night it had proved itself once more a volcano, and had lit up all the plains with its forgotten fire.