do to prop the tottering fortunes of Covent Garden Theatre. After five nights the financial storm broke, and Strafford bent to it. As Browning's boyish writings had been considered too easily melodious and transparent, so Paracelsus was condemned by Sterling and Caroline Fox for being verbose. Browning laid the unexpected word to heart, and Sordello (1840) witnesses to its bitter fruit, for the music of Pauline and Paracelsus is silenced, and in one word he essays the work of five. Strafford is concise too, not with the curtailed compressions of Sordello, but only in keeping with the stern conciseness of its chronicle and characters. Sordello was attacked and ridiculed on all sides, and from this time forth Browning followed his own course and took no more lessons from his critics.1 He had to work and wait for two more decades before any full measure of public recognition became his. As we can well imagine, such neglect was disadvantageous to his art and bitter and hard to bear. In the years following on Strafford, Browning wrote a number of poetical dramas. Two of these, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon and Colombe's Birthday, were performed in by the chief actors of the time-Macready, Miss Helena Faucit, and Phelps. The plays, together with many short poems, included in later editions under the headings of Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances, and Men and Women, came out, between 1841 and 1846, in eight

1 XIII. 70, 71. Aristophanes' Apology; XVI. 257. The Two Poets of Croisic; and XV. 260. Pambo.

numbers, bearing the general name of Bells and Pomegranates. This name, borrowed from the decoration round the high-priest's robe, was thus explained by Browning, "I meant by the title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought, which looks too ambitious thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred." Browning's taste was ever towards such symbols, imaginatively beautiful in themselves, nor was it always his first care to point out how they should be read. First in the series of Bells and Pomegranates was that wonderful proverbe, Pippa Passes (1841).

6. Marriage and Middle Life. The forties form a great epoch in the story of Robert Browning, not only for the marvellous poems he was then writing, but for the commencement of a perfect inward poem, his marriage with Elizabeth Barrett, which took place September 12th, 1846. A week later, the two poets left England, and Mrs. Browning's health for ever forbade her return on any but flitting visits. The first winter was spent in Pisa, the summer in Ancona and its neighbourhood. Before the next winter Mr. and Mrs. Browning had taken up their residence in Florence. Except the house of the Alighieri, there is no spot in Florence so sacred for poetry's sake as Casa Guidi. Here, on March 9th, 1849, a child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, was born. The Brownings spent two or three of their winters in Rome, and one in

1 (No. VIII.) Preface to A Soul's Tragedy.

Paris with Mr. Browning's father and sister, who were living there. Florence gave Browning the prompting idea of his famous Art poems, such as Andrea del Sarto. The time was rich in poetic plans formed and carried out. Mrs. Browning wrote Casa Guidi Windows, Aurora Leigh, and other famous poems, and the publication of the fifty-and One-Men and Women, in 1855, marks a new era in the widening renown of Browning. In 1861, the golden union underwent the sorrow that comes to all unions, for, on June 29th, the fragile life of Mrs. Browning passed beyond mortal ken. A few months after, Browning wrote Prospice, that grand testimony to the faith that looks through death. Three years after, the poem was published in Dramatis Persona. In 1868-69 Browning's giant work, The Ring and the Book, was given to the world. At the beginning of it, Browning tells how, in 1865, he accidentally picked up, at a book-stall in Florence, the square, yellow book, the record of the Franceschini trial, that was the germ of his wonderful production.

7. Later Life.-Bereft of his Wife, Browning ceased to consider Italy his home, and with his boy he came to live in London, at 19. Warwick Crescent, like the Valladolid poet's, a 'stuccoed third house by the bridge.'1 After the death of their father, in 1866, his sister, Miss Browning, came to live with him, and continued to do so till he died. From 1868 forward, few were the years unmarked by a book by Brown

1 IV. 179. How it Strikes a Contemporary.

ing. In 1887, Browning left Paddington for 29. De Vere Gardens. He went abroad every year, and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, La Saisiaz, and Asolando record such visits. Browning spent his autumns in Venice. In The Flight of the Duchess, Browning wrote:

"What a thing friendship is, world without end !” 1 and no man has lived his life through more encompassed with friends. The only ones of whom it behoves here to speak are those to whom Browning refers in his works. We remember how Meres spoke of Shakspere's 'sugred sonnets among his private friends,' and the same epithet applies to Browning's dedications. Among the loved and loving friends in Browning's poems, we early find the names of John Forster and M. Milsand of Dijon,2 the French critic, and Browning's enthusiastic admirer. Walter Savage Landor is referred to in Sordello,3 and Luria is dedicated to him. Browning's goodness to Landor, when the older poet stood in urgent need of a friend's help, is one of the many lovable traits of his character. 'My English Eyebright' of the third Book of Sordello is Miss Euphrasia Haworth, an early friend. Paracelsus is inscribed to another, Count de RipertMonclar, and Strafford to William Macready, for whose little boy, Willy, Browning wrote the Pied Piper, not thinking at the time of including it among

4

1 V. 150.

2 It was the 1863 reprint of Sordello that was dedicated to M. Milsand.

his 'works.' In three epigrammatic lines, Browning dedicated Pippa Passes to Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, and the literary name of Procter is affectionately written at the beginning of Colombe's Birthday. To John Kenyon, Miss Barrett's cousin, who introduced the poet and poetess to each other, and possessed social and intellectual eminence as well as wealth and generosity, Browning dedicated Dramatic Lyrics (1842). The original of ‘Waring' was Mr. Domett, a lyrical writer, sometime a minister of state in New Zealand, and the 'Alfred' to whom The Guardian-Angel is addressed. Belonging to Browning's later period (i.e. taking The Ring and the Book, 1868-69), as in some sort a boundary between the first and second halves of Browning's literary life) is the charming inscription of Balaustion's Adventure to Lady Cowper, who had inspired its production. Browning dedicated his selection from his poetry (1872) to Tennyson, to whom, in the preface to an earlier nosegay (1865), he had done graceful homage. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, besides being formally 'to Miss Thackeray,' is full of sweet and informal reference to her and to honoured Milsand. In the prose 'chat,' that goes with the Agamemnon, Browning quotes from one 'eloquent friend,' Matthew Arnold, and refers his own work to another, 'dear and noble,' Carlyle. The subject of Browning's 'In Memoriam,' La Saisiaz, is Miss Anne Egerton Smith. Parleyings is sacred to the memory of the highly valued Joseph Milsand. With Asolando goes a letter to Mrs. Bronson, Browning's