==

Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the widening
perspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare

as he did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred,
that her `PERFECT behaviour as a woman' and her `admirable playing

as an actress' had been (or at all events were) to him
`the one gratifying circumstance connected with it.'

He also felt it a just cause of bitterness that the letter
from Charles Dickens,* which conveyed his almost passionateadmiration of

`A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', and was clearly written to Mr. Forster in order
that it might be seen, was withheld for thirty years from his knowledge,

and that of the public whose judgment it might so largely have influenced.
Nor was this the only time in the poet's life that fairly earned honours

escaped him.
--

* See Forster's `Life of Dickens'.
--

`Colombe's Birthday' was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;*
and afterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit,

who created the principal part. It was again performed
for the Browning Society in 1885,** and although Miss Alma Murray,

as Colombe, was almost entirely supported by amateurs,
the result fully justified Miss Mary Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter)

in writing immediately afterwards in the Boston `Literary World':***
--

* Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston.
** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning Society,

and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King, in January 1882.
*** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons'

`Introduction to the Study of Browning'.
--

==
`"Colombe's Birthday" is charming on the boards, clearer,

more direct in action, more full of delicate surprises
than one imagines it in print. With a very little cutting

it could be made an excellent acting play.'
==

Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting,
and alludes in his `Personalia' to the greatly increased

knowledge of the stage which its minute directions displayed.
They told also of sad experience in the sacrifice of the poet

which the play-writer so often exacts: since they included the proviso
that unless a very good Valence could be found, a certain speech of his

should be left out. That speech is very important to the poetic,
and not less to the moral, purpose of the play: the triumph

of unworldly affections. It is that in which Valence defies the platitudes
so often launched against rank and power, and shows that these

may be very beautiful things -- in which he pleads for his rival,
and against his own heart. He is the better man of the two, and Colombe

has fallen genuinely in love with him. But the instincts of sovereignty
are not outgrown in one day however eventful, and the young duchess

has shown herself amply endowed with them. The Prince's offer promised much,
and it held still more. The time may come when she will need

that crowning memory of her husband's unselfishness and truth,
not to regret what she has done.

`King Victor and King Charles' and `The Return of the Druses' are both
admitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage;

and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted
to witnessing the revival of `Strafford' or `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon',

from neither of which the best amateurperformance could remove
the stigma of past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friend

belonging to the Browning Society told him she had been seriously occupied
with the possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assented to the idea

with a simplicity that was almost touching, `It WAS written for the stage,'
he said, `and has only one scene.' He knew, however, that the single scene

was far from obviating all the difficulties of the case, and that the Society,
with its limited means, did the best it could.

I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in `King Victor and King Charles'
which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence,

revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth,
while its occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery,

the frequenthopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that
in which Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for DUTY'S sake

to retain the crown, though he will earn, by so doing,
neither the credit of a virtuous deed nor the sure, persistent consciousness

of having performed one.
Four poems of the `Dramatic Lyrics' had appeared, as I have said,

in the `Monthly Repository'. Six of those included in
the `Dramatic Lyrics and Romances' were first published in `Hood's Magazine'

from June 1844 to April 1845, a month before Hood's death.
These poems were, `The Laboratory', `Claret and Tokay',

`Garden Fancies', `The Boy and the Angel', `The Tomb at St. Praxed's',
and `The Flight of the Duchess'. Mr. Hood's health had given way

under stress of work, and Mr. Browning with other friends
thus came forward to help him. The fact deserves remembering

in connection with his subsequentunbroken rule never to write for magazines.
He might always have made exceptions for friendly or philanthropic objects;

the appearance of `Herve Riel' in the `Cornhill Magazine', 1870,
indeed proves that it was so. But the offer of a blank cheque

would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to this concession,
as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literary purpose.

`In a Gondola' grew out of a single verse extemporized for a picture
by Maclise, in what circumstances we shall hear in the poet's own words.

The first proof of `Artemis Prologuizes' had the following note:
==

`I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained
of a tragedy I composed, much against my endeavour, while in bed with a fever

two years ago -- it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia;
but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once,

I soon forgot the remainder.'*
--

* When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for the `Handbook',
he spoke as if his illness had interrupted the work,

not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I think, the more striking.
--

==
Mr. Browning would have been very angry with himself if he had known

he ever wrote `I HAD better'; and the punctuation of this note,
as well as of every other unrevised specimen which we possess

of his early writing, helps to show by what careful study of the literary art
he must have acquired his subsequentmastery of it.

`Cristina' was addressed in fancy to the Spanish queen. It is to be regretted
that the poem did not remain under its original heading of `Queen Worship':

as this gave a practical clue to the nature of the love described,
and the special remoteness of its object.

`The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and another poem were written in May 1842
for Mr. Macready's little eldest son, Willy, who was confined to the house

by illness, and who was to amuse himself by illustrating the poems
as well as reading them;* and the first of these, though not intended

for publication, was added to the `Dramatic Lyrics', because some columns
of that number of `Bells and Pomegranates' still required filling.

It is perhaps not known that the second was `Crescentius, the Pope's Legate':
now included in `Asolando'.

--
* Miss Browning has lately found some of the illustrations,

and the touchingchildish letter together with which
her brother received them.

--
Mr. Browning's father had himself begun a rhymed story on the subject

of `The Pied Piper'; but left it unfinished when he discovered
that his son was writing one. The fragment survives as part of a letter