twelve or fifteen pounds. In this manner eight numbers of "Bells and Pomegranates appeared between 1841 and 1846, in yellow paper covers. The price was at first sixpence, but it was raised to a shilling, which greatly increased the sale, and finally to half-a-crown. These strangely printed pages, of which my elder brother, himself a poet, was very fond, are amongst my earliest recollections. Pippa is a young girl of Asolo, who on her year's holiday from silk-weaving, during the course of her pleasure ramble, unconsciously influences, through her innocent songs, the various groups of human life she passes -the adulterous blood-stained lover, the dreaming artist, the scheming Italian patriot, the crafty Churchman. An advertisement to the first edition of this poem says: "Two or three years ago I wrote a play about which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present is that a Pit-ful of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better award their attention. What follows I mean for the first of a series of dramatised pieces to come out at intervals; and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which they appear will, for once, help me to a call of Pit audience again. Of course such a work must go on no longer than it is liked, and to provide against a too certain and but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say now-what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say circumstantially enough at the close-that I dedicate my best intentions most admiringly to the author of 'Ion,' most affectionately to Serjeant Talfourd." 66 The second volume of "Bells and Pomegranates" contained a play, King Victor and King Charles." The King Victor of Sardinia was the Duke of Savoy, well known to Englishmen in the war of the Spanish Succession and the Peace of Utrecht. The play does not seem to have attracted any great attention. The third number, published in the same year, contained, under the title of "Dramatic Lyrics," a number of pieces, now well known, and written on different occasions. Of these, “In a Gondola," was written to illustrate a picture by Maclise exhibited at the British Institution in 1842. 66 "Waring" referred to a friend of Browning's, Alfred Dommett, who went to New Zealand and eventually became Prime Minister there. Some ten years later Browning wrote the poem on the "Guardian Angel at Fano" for him, ending thus: "My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend? How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end? "Cristine," rather an obscure poem, is supposed to refer to someone who fell in love with Queen Victoria. The two poems, in “Madhouse Cells," were written six years before. The last poem in the number is the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," a rhymed version of the story told in Howell's "Letters." It was written for William Macready, the eldest son of Macready the actor who died in Ceylon in 1871. He had a talent for drawing, and asked Browning to write him something to illustrate. Browning wrote a short poem on an account of the death of the Pope's Legate at the Council of Trent. Young Macready's drawings for this were so clever that Browning "tried at a more picturesque subject for him, and wrote the 'Piper,' a thing of joy for ever to all with the child's heart, young and old." Number IV. of "Bells and Pomegranates" contained "The Return of the Druses," which had been announced in "Sordello as "Mansor the Hierophant,' in preparation." It was a play in five acts. One of the characters is Karshook, a namne which occurs in two other poems of Browning's. The fifth number of "Bells and Pomegranates," published also in 1843, contained a tragedy in three acts, "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon." It was played at Drury Lane, Mr. Phelps, Miss Faucit, and Mrs. Stirling forming part of the cast. The play was revived at Sadler's Wells in 1848. It was written very hurriedly, in four or five days. The production led to a misunderstanding, and then to a breach of friendship between Browning and Macready, the dispute turning mainly on the question as to whether Phelps or Macready was to act the principal part. It is said that Browning, on returning to the green-room after the rehearsal, drove his hat more firmly on to his head and said to Macready, "I beg pardon, sir, but you have given the part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied that he should act it," and that when Macready heard this he crushed up the manuscript and flung it on the ground. The two friends did not meet again until Browning had returned a widower . from Italy, and Macready had also lost his wife. They greeted each other with deep emotion. The next instalment of the periodical contained "Colombe's Birthday," a play in five acts. It was not acted until nine years later, when Miss Helen Faucit again took the principal part. The same year, 1844, saw the composition of "The Laboratory," written for Hood's Magazine, also “Claret and Tokay,” "Garden Fancies,” "The Boy and the Angel," "The Tomb at St. Praxed's," and "The Flight of the Duchess," printed in the same periodical. Tom Hood, the famous humourist, had been seized with a severe attack of hæmorrhage from the lungs, so that fears were entertained for his life. Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, asked Browning to help in making up some numbers of the magazine for its incapacitated editor, which he did. The seventh number of "Bells and Pomegranates contained these six poems, as well as the four published in the Monthly Repository. In this also appeared "The Lost Leader," an often quoted invective against political renegades. It was aimed at Wordsworth, who had just turned Tory, but other men and incidents were mixed up in the poet's mind. It also contains the great poem of "Saul." In fact this volume contains some of the finest poetry which Browning ever wrote. It appeared in 1845, and in the previous autumn Browning had been to Italy again, sailing direct to Naples. He stayed some time at Rome, and on his return called upon Trelawney, the friend of Byron and Shelley, at Leghorn. What pleasure to talk with a man who had "seen Shelley plain !" The "Englishman in Italy" gives us a graphic picture of some reminiscences of this tour. The last number of "Bells and Pomegranates," the eighth, contained "6 'Luria," a tragedy in five acts, and "A Soul's Tragedy," in two parts, one the "Poetry of Chiappino's Life" in blank verse, and the second part, its Prose, in prose. The tone of the poem is, in the main, humorous. Shortly after the publication of this number a great change took place in Browning's life. On September 12, 1846, he married, at St. Marylebone Parish Church, the great poetess Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, he being thirty-four years of age, and she forty. She was the daughter of a Mr. Moulton, who had married an heiress, Miss Barrett, and added her name to his. She was a great invalid, and lived in two rooms at the top of a house in Wimpole Street. Her father was a wealthy man, but had the peculiarity that he would never hear of his children marrying, but loved to keep them about him. I have heard from relations how "Ba," as Miss Barrett was affectionately called, was always in bed or on the sofa, and how visitors stole up to call upon her by a special staircase. She was regarded as quite unable to move, but one morning the startling news came that she was married and had left her father's house. She had already made a considerable name as a poetess, and had published "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" during Browning's absence from England. Browning expressed admiration of it to Mr. Kenyon, Miss Barrett's cousin, saying that she was a great invalid and saw no one, "but great souls jump at sympathy." A correspondence was begun which lasted for some months. After this Browning asked if he might call, but received the reply," There is nothing to see in me, nothing to hear in me. I am a weed fit for the ground and darkness." However, he persevered and was admitted. At last an engagement was made between them contingent on Miss Barrett being restored to health. The stimulus of love and hope did improve' her condition. They saw each other three times a week and exchanged letters constantly. Towards the autumn of 1846 Miss Barrett's doctor pronounced that her only chance of improvement lay in spending the winter in the South of Europe. Mr. Barrett refused to part with her or to allow his son to accompany her. The only hope was to travel as Browning's wife. They were married, as I have said above, on September 12th. For a week they returned to their ordinary life, only they did not see each other. Browning could not bear to ask for his wife under a false name. She dare not tell her father because she was certain of his refusal, and she would then have been guilty of active instead of passive disobedience. Mr. Barrett, when Browning's cause was pleaded at a later period, said: "I have no objection to the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking of another world.” He had in fact an insuperable objection to his children leaving him. On the evening of September 19th, just a week after her marriage, Mrs. Browning stole away from her father's house accompanied by her maid and her dog Flush. That night they crossed by Havre to Paris. Her sister had been in the secret, but her brothers at that time shared the wrath of their father at the marriage. From Paris they went to Pisa. In April, 1847, they passed from Pisa to Florence, and stayed there some time. They had intended to spend the next winter in Rome, but they found themselves so devoted to Florence that the idea was given up, and they engaged apartments in the Piazza Pitti, just opposite the Grand Duke's palace. In the spring of 1848 they determined to furnish rooms in Florence for themselves (furniture being very cheap in those troubled times), and they established themselves in the well-known Casa Guidi, in the Via Maggio, the long streets on the other side of the Arno, "in the favourite suite of the last Count (his arms are in scagliola over the floor of my bedroom). Though we have six beautiful rooms and a kitchen, three of them quite palace rooms and opening on a terrace, and though such furniture as comes by slow degrees into them is antique and worthy of the place, we yet even have saved money by the end of the year." In August they went to Fano for a change, but were bitterly disappointed in it, the only redeeming feature apparently being Guercino's Guardian Angel. Then they spent a week at Ancona and returned to Florence. On March 9th, 1849, their son, Robert Barrett Browning, familiarly called Penini or Pen, was born, and just at the same time Browning's mother died. The summer was spent at the Baths of Lucca, the winter and spring in the Casa Guidi at Florence, Mrs. Browning being very strong and well. Venice was visited in June. Mrs. Browning writes in an ecstacy of delight: "The beauty of the architecture, the silver trail of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas-I mix up all together and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it-not a second Venice in the world." The first two years of Browning's married life seem to have been completely absorbed by the sense of his new position. When, however, the pair was settled down in the Casa Guidi he resumed work again, and by the close of 1848 prepared a new |