“ In the magnificent gallery of portrait studies, no two alike, which his poems present to us, the nationalities are legion. Yet Italian scenes predominate; for Browning could gauge, with the unerring instinct of genius, all the subtleties of the Italian temperament. So we come, at every turn, across some ardent vision of the South,—here, Waring sailing out of Trieste under the furled lateen-sail; and there, Fra Lippo Lippi tracking "lutestrings, laughs, and whifts of song" down the darkling streets of Florence. ”

“ His subject-matter fell naturally into three groups of poems: those interpreting love in its various phases, those occupied with art and artists, those treating of religious ideas and emotions. And these again may be subdivided into poems of failure and attainment: it is hard to say which are which, for Browning was the singer of heroic failures, and they, to him, were spiritual triumphs. He held that "we fall to rise—are baffled to fight better,—sleep, to wake." No such moral tonic has ever been proffered to the weary and dispirited as the invulnerable optimism of Browning. ”

“ Therefore, as sleep, "Death's twin-brother," came slowly through the darkness, the fighter faced his last hour in imagination, and made haste to "greet the future with a cheer." For Prospice is an "act of the faith which comes through love.... No lonely adventure is here to reward the victor o'er death: the transcendant joy is human love recovered" ”

“ In the course of the day the poet would lose no opportunity of hearing any important concert: an accomplished musician himself, his love for the tone-art amounted to a passion: and in many of his greatest poems, he had voiced the most secret meanings of music, and [Pg 35] the yearning aspirations of a composer. ”

“ After a light and early breakfast—the poet, when abroad, lived almost entirely on milk, fruit, etc., abjuring animal food—Browning would follow his invariable custom, a stroll along the Riva to the public gardens. He never failed to leave the house at the same hour of the day: he was a man of singularly methodical habits in many ways. ”

“ It tells far more than any portrait could: and expresses the writer's doctrine that in art, as in life, the aspiration toward the higher is greater than the achievement of the lower: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's heaven for?" According to Browning's belief, a soul's probation, its growth, its ultimate value, lie mainly if not wholly in this choice between the high and the less high.
... Love, we are in God's hand. ”

“ In that perpetual contemplation of Nature, which with Wordsworth became an [Pg 14] all-absorbent passion, Browning had but little share: his chief interest was in man. But "now and again external nature was for him ... pierced and shot through with spiritual fire."
Three times punctually he would walk round the gardens, and then walk home. Upon these daily strolls he was accompanied by his sister Sarianna: in whose love and companionship he was singularly fortunate. Sarianna Browning had always been the best of sisters to the poet and his wife,—a kindred spirit in every sense of the word ”

“ Love is best!
Another characteristic of Browning was his consummate comprehension of artistic ideals, those of temperaments so opposite as Fra Lippo Lippi, Pictor Ignotus, and that too-perfect painter Andrea del Sarto. ”

“ Hence, even where the shadow of death broods over a poem, as we see it In a Gondola, that shadow "glows with colour like the shadows of a Venetian painter." Love, to the very last, is infinitely stronger than death.
I send my heart up to thee, all my heart,
In this my singing.
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.
[Pg 16]
Painting by W. Russell Flint. IN A GONDOLA.
He sings. ”

“ Well (and it was graceful of them) they'd break talk off and afford—
—She to bite her mask's black velvet, he to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!" ”

“ Social intercourse occupied a large portion of the day. Browning identified himself with the daily life of Venice, and, besides this, English and American acquaintances were frequently in Venice: the poet, his reputation now firmly established and extending, was sought after by innumerable admirers. ”

“ The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.
(Abt Vogler.)
And, as a final contrast, drawn out of that shoreless sea of contrasts which music can [Pg 37] reveal, we have A Toccata of Galuppi's, suffused with the melancholy of mundane pleasure, steeped in the ephemeral voluptuousness of eighteenth-century Venice. In these lines, it has been pointed out, "Browning's self-restraint is admirable.... The poet will not say a word more than the musician has said in his Toccata."
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? ”

“ It had to be fought for—struggled for from strength to strength,—attained through incessant and arduous combat. [Pg 47] For those do not "mount, and that hardly, to eternal life," who remain content upon terrestrial planes ”